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.

GiS, GIs and gIS

The All Points Blog has a good article on the changing scene involving GIS interoperability. It is locatd here. Link. It really is all about the enterprise architecture helping make consumption of data as easy as possible.

Google Tailors Earth For DOD Users

Here's a great article on how Google Earth is creating the ability to fuse geospatial information layers for visualization purposes for the US Department of Defense. Link.

I'll have to admit, even as a die-hard former ESRI employee, that the Google Earth visualization platform is hard to beat. It is simple and easy to use, provides a good viewing tool, and Google seems to be able to responsively make changes to Google Earth rapidly to meet customer's needs. But, it still isn't useful as an analysis tool like ESRI's ArcGIS is. The DOD executive decision makers may be asking for Google Earth to help them visualize the information needed to make the tough decisions, but most of the information creating the layers behind what they see comes from ArcGIS users.

ESRI is marketing a Google Earth-like viewing platform that will work well with ArcGIS 9.2 called ArcGIS Explorer that blends good visualization tools and detailed analysis capabilities, but it still isn't quite there. I played with it extesively last week and it still has some bugs in it. ESRI is trying to compete with Google Earth, and it is sad to say, but I believe as the Google organization gets bigger and more cumbersome it should be easeir for ESRI to compete in the viewer market.