Worldview-1 launch tomorrow

As a part of the NextView contract from the United States- National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Digital Globe will launch its much awaited World View 1 satellite tomorrow the 18th of September. To keep up with the tight schedule, World View 1 has been designed with just a panchromatic sensor. The first of the crisp half meter resolution imageries are expected to be available within a month – if done on 4th of October, it will be a fitting tribute to Sputnik 1 as a 50th anniversary celebration.

The launch of World View 1 from the Vandenburg Air base on 18th September at approximately 1835 hrs. GMT is being broadcast live by Boeing

ESRI and Jane's Information Group forges strategic alliance

The Jane's Defence weekly and the Jane's Intelligence Review will now be clothed by ESRI's GIS software suite. This marriage of the best with the best will change the way Jane's users analyse and visualise data. From air force fleets to amassed armies and effective radius of an artillery shell to state of preparedness of a platoon, Jane's has managed through its network of sources to keep the world informed. With this same data now available in a locational context on a virtual globe the prognosis by defence analysts will be rather formidable. Jane's is a subscription based service hence this geospatially enabled version of Jane's offerings will probably stay within the domain of defence specialists and it is probably intended to stay so.

Google Maps may break Canada privacy law

The Street View feature of Google Maps, with its close-up views of city streets and at times shots of people in rather compromising situations, could violate a Canadian law protecting individual privacy. It is not just in Canada where such pictures would raise hackles and it is just a matter of time when more countries come under the 'Street View' gaze. An easier way out for Google Maps is to carry out texture inserts the way Microsoft Live has done for removal of parked and moving cars in its aerial data. Automated object recognition and texture insertion in context with cars in an image is obviously not as complicated as removal of human faces in Street View.

Product news review

The geospatial products' world this week saw the release of Tiltan systems engineering’s TLiD a state of the art LiDar data processing tool kit capable of processing streaming data with no limit on input file size and hence permitting near real time data processing. Other major releases included GeoLocator 2.0 by Digital Reasoning; geotagging software which is widely used by intelligence professionals has now been made available commercially. And Map24’s AJAX API 2.0 that helps in integration of interactive maps can into web-, mobile- and software based applications easily.
In the extensions and add-ons domain, the release of new A-Prime software is developing itself so as to eliminate the need for CAD or outside software within ESRIs ArcGIS platform and TimeSlider from ASA will continue to provide animation of time-varying data for free use by GIS community for newer ArcGIS version 9.2.
In the hardware section, two new printers for GIS and CAD in the imagePROGRAF series – the iPF610 and iPF 710 are now available from Canon. These printers apart from 24 and 36 inch wide prints respectively, using five colour pigment inkset, also support HP GL2 and HP-RTL page description languages.