Welcome Back

I can't believe it has been nearly 10 months since I have posted here. In that time VGSI has done some great work. Most recently, we have been awarded the contract to manage the US Air Force's Air Mobility Command Expeditionary Installation Geospatial Information and Services (IGI&S) and GeoReach Programs. VGSI has been managing the program since July.

thangs have been going great and we are continuing to expand our business interests.

Goings On at VGSI

We have been looking at leasing a location to hold GIS training classes in the local area (St Louis Metro East, Illinois). We have also been contacted by a couple of businesses about designing webpages for them. It has been a busy month at VGSI and one hopefully that will help define us in the future.

Are We Headed For Dramatic Global Cooling?

Here's a great article by R. timothy Patterson, in the Canadian National Post, on the global warming and cooling cycles that have affected the earth over the centuries. Is the debate over Global Warming dead, are we headed for a rapid increase on the size of the icecap? Here's the article. Link.

VGSI Posts Illinois Tallgrass Prairies Google Earth File

Vertical GeoSolutions (VGSI) has been working on an Illinois Native Tallgrass Prairie Mapping Project to catalog and visualize the state's Tallgrass Prairies. We've been using the Illinois Department of Natural Resources Nature Preserve Directory as a source for Prairie Preserve location information and then visualizing them through Google Earth. Last night we posted the first of many Google Earth files on the VGSI website. Here's a link to VGSI's Illinois Native
Tallgrass Prairie Mapping Project page. Link.

Here's a link to our first Google Earth file. Link.

Here is the Google Maps Link for the same picture. Link.

Here is a small thumbnail of what we have so far:

VIPeR - Small, Portable Reconnaissance Robot Designed to Support Combat Within Buildings

I came across an interesting announcement in the ASD Daily Report that talks about VIPeR Robots that the Israeli Defense Force have developed to use in the near future. These robots can help save lives in the war against terrorism. We will see more and more use of robots in the military as we find the force levels dropping and explore alternatives to sesnding our troops into harm's way.

The announcement is located here. Link.

12 Crackpot Tech Ideas That Could Transform The Enterprise

I ran across a pretty good article on Info World that lists 12 ideas that could be the next big ideas in technology. Here's their list, it looks a little like a wishlist on Amazon.com. I don't want to get into any depth on each item, so to get more information on each item go to the article:

1. Superconducting computing
2. Solid-state drives
3. Autonomic computing
4. DC power
5. Holographic and phase-change storage
6. Artificial intelligence
7. E-books
8. Desktop web applications
9. Project Blackbox
10. Quantum computing and quantum cryptography
11. Semantic Web
12. Total information awareness

ORNL scores hit with National Geospatial Intelligence Agency

Thanks to the All Points Blog for directing us to an Oak Ridge National Laboratory News Release titled, ORNL scores hit with National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. The news release can be found here. Link. NGA was so enamored with the RFID technology that they plan to implement it at their St Louis facility to maintain 100% accountability of all personnel for emergency response operations and hands off inventory control.