Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Thursday, April 8th, 2010
At AU it appeared that geospatial had an uncertain future at Autodesk. Senior director, Infrastructure Modeling Product Line Paul McRoberts stated at Autodesk’s AEC Technology Day this week that geospatial is the underlying component for all of Autodesk products. The FDO platform is extensible open source software that can be noted in transportation, water and waste water, land development, power and energy.
McRoberts said that 24% of the gross revenue collected by AEC firms is for planning, according to an American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) study. It might appear that the role of geospatial at Autodesk is visual in nature: modeling and visualization for water, transportation, energy and water and wastewater, where getting public approval is primary to getting projects off the ground. What is needed here is a way to show a workflow including location and geospatial data. The technologies spoken most about – 3ds Max for visualization and Dynamite VSP Exporter are for showing how problems can be solved, interoperability, and being able to migrate information to others.
The laser scanning environment and lidar data play a part in this. McRoberts said that surveying may become a thing of the past. With the need in many places for ground truth data, particularly in areas that aren’t readily accessible with laser scanning equipment or lidar, I think it may be a long time before this is realized.
“Digital cities,” a hot buzz term of a year or two ago, will now go by the name “sustainable cities” as one part of a greater vision including extension of assets such as tranmission lines into rural communities. It is part of the scope of LandXplorer, in its quest to address large scale projects and visualization. McRoberts said LandXplorer holds a GIS layer underneath that contains real data.
Tags: Autodesk, geospatial
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Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
Touch Inspect is a handheld inspection app that runs on Windows Mobile 6, 6.1 and 6.5, with the Mobile PC and tablet edition running on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.
This app was designed to capture a wide variety of data types in the field and employs GPS to allow workers to map the location of individual assets as well as search for them by proximity to the user. The company Mobile Epiphany got its start in the video game industry, so it naturally makes use of multimedia features, so users can have detailed visual information on assets. “For example, a utility inspector could take a picture of a metal power pole then use the drawing tool to circle rust spots in the picture and save it to the inspection history. Inspectors who see the pole at some later date could then call up the picture for comparison, to see if the rust spots have grown, and decide whether or not to recommend maintenance. Mobile epiphany refers to this as one part of field decision support.”
Mobile Epiphany’s CEO, Glenn Kletzky said that the application is already built so users can start using it almost immediately.
Data is stored on the handheld device itself, and transmitted to the database when a connection is available. Data is not lost if a connection is lost, rather, it is stored on the device until a transmission is available. Data can also be transmitted in real time and reports can be auto-generated in moments.
Tags: inspection, Mobile Epiphany
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Tuesday, March 30th, 2010
Counting the nation’s residents only comes around once every ten years, and each time it does, new technologies have been created in that period of time that make it easier to get a figure on the population.
What is important about the Census Bureau is that it collects valuable information about city and county trends. This can range from data about the age of residents in a particular county or city, the median household income, jobless figures, and housing data. What effect has the recession had on income and joblessness? What languages other than English do residents speak?
Another less publicized fact about the U.S. Census is that it is not always easy to collect this information. Most households receive their Census forms in the mail. The new forms have a streamlined questionnaire this time around. However, there are some people living in the back country who don’t receive their mail at their homes.
In northern mountain communities in New Mexico, for example, there is significant snowfall and the U.S. Mail just simply doesn’t deliver there in the winter. What has happened this year is that census takers have strapped on snowshoes and cross-country skis to slog their way to some out of the way cabins.
One census taker reported driveways that are three miles long with very deep snow.
Tags: Census 2010
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Monday, March 8th, 2010
Forest Fire Detection March 1, 2010, P-GIS.com
David Fletcher, CTO, Utah Andy Opsahl, March 1, 2010 Government Technology
Cellphones Let Shoppers Point, Click and Purchase Stephanie Rosenbloom, February 26, 2010, The New York Times (registration required)
Video: Bloom Energy unveils the Bloom Energy Server CNET News.com
Olympics notebook: Mapping the Vancouver Games by Ina Fried, CNET News.com
Satellite Images and GIS Aid in Disease Mapping and Surveillance Satellite Imaging Corporation
Indiana Launches Innovative Site Selection Website StateIN.ZoomProspector.com March 1, 2010, PRWeb
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Monday, March 8th, 2010
Today Intergraph Security, Government & Infrastructure (SG&I) division Senior Vice President Jack Pellicci was appointed to serve on the National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC), a Federal Advisory Committee sponsored by the Department of the Interior.
On February 8, 2010, The Geospatial Information & Technology Association (GITA) announced in a press release that three key GITA leaders have been appointed to the National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC).
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar appointed a total of 14 individuals to serve as members of the NGAC on Thursday, Feb. 4. The NGAC provides advice and recommendations on federal geospatial policy and management issues as well as a forum to convey views representative of partners in the geospatial community. The members of the NGAC report to the chair of the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC), which is the Federal interagency executive group responsible for providing leadership and direction in federal geospatial programs. The FGDC is chaired by the Secretary of the Interior or the Secretary’s designee.
The appointed individuals include GITA’s 2010 President, Cindi Salas, Director, Land & Field Services, CenterPoint Energy; 2010 President-elect Dr. Robert F. Austin, Enterprise Application Integration Manager, City of Tampa; and Research Committee Chair and Past President David DiSera, Vice President & CTO, EMA, Inc. Past GITA Board and Executive Committee Member Xavier Lopez, Director, Location Based Services, Oracle Corporation, was also appointed.”
Tags: NGAC appointments
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Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
“With mail-out of the 2010 Census forms less than one month away, the U. S. Census Bureau unveiled a new online mapping tool that allows communities nationwide to prepare for the 2010 Census by seeing how well they did mailing back their 2000 Census forms.
Visitors to the new Google-based map will be able to find the 2000 Census mail participation rates for states, counties and cities, as well as smaller areas called “census tracts.” After the 2010 Census forms are mailed out in mid-March, the online map will be updated to include a tracking tool with daily updates of the 2010 Census mail participation rates for local areas across the nation. Users will be able to compare their 2010 Census progress using their 2000 Census rates as a benchmark..”
–from the press release March 3, 2010
Tags: Google, mapping tool, U.S. Census 2010
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Monday, March 1st, 2010
The market is ripe for Yellowfin Business Intelligence which offers new location intelligence, allowing inbound call data from customers to be analyzed as easily as their web data. The integrated Business Intelligence and Location Intelligence solution makes greater use of spatial data and targets customers like Jet Interactive, Australia’s leading inbound number provider. This company has integrated Yellowfin BI and LI to its Call Tracker solution. The system uses GIS to facilitate the visualization of customers’ call data and regional statistical and demographic data in conjunction with standard tabular data.
Tags: location intelligence, Yellowfin
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Thursday, February 25th, 2010
On Wednesday Autodesk stock fell 2% after the company’s announcements of profitability on Tuesday:
Tech Stocks Head South, Wall Street Journal, Thursday, February 25, 2010
News stories on Autodesk’s Q4 announcement:
Autodesk Posts Sequential Revenue, Profitability and Cash Flow Growth, AECCafe News
Autodesk, Inc. Q4 2010 Earnings Call Transcript Seeking Alpha
Autodesk (ADSK) Reports Strong Q4 Results, Shares Jump StreetInsider.com, February 23, 2010
Tags: Autodesk, Q4 earnings
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Thursday, February 25th, 2010
It would seem that Google and Microsoft have been vying for mapping airtime during the Olympics in Vancouver. According to a CNET article, “Google has been featuring Olympic-themed doodles on its home page, while Bing is featuring Olympic-themed photos as its background, with the images rotating several times a day. Microsoft can also tap the fact it is helping power NBC’s Olympics Web site through MSN, giving it access to quite a bit of content from the Games….
Bing Maps has a special Olympics page that lets visitors see medal charts and click on a country to see how its athletes are faring. Meanwhile, Microsoft has also updated Vancouver with new street-side imagery and made it one of three cities (along with Seattle and San Francisco) in which it is trying out new features, such as Flickr integration”
For its part, Google features an interactive schedule, with links to medal results, news, and the venues. To get additional imagery for its maps program, Google augmented its usual fleet of cars with Street View photos captured by snowmobile.
Vancouver Sun reporter Jeff Lee has been covering the preparation for the Games since 2003.
His Vancouver map, created on top of Google Maps, has pin points for everything from the venues, to public events, national pavilions, and public transit stops and road closures.”
Olympics notebook: Mapping the Vancouver Games by Ina Fried, CNET News.com
Tags: Google, Microsoft, Olympics, Vancouver
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