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Welcome to the Friday’s Food for Thought post on got geoint? We hope everyone had a productive work week and are ready for some weekend relaxation. Is part of your weekend relaxation involve leaving the house? Perhaps going out to dinner with friends? And, are you a big fan of location sharing (i.e., letting the whole world know that you are away from your house)? Well, then, perhaps you are sharing too much and letting potential burglars know that you are away from your house? This week’s FFT post focuses on how in this age of information- and location-ubiquity (is that really a term?) can potentially leave us vulnerable.

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The United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) today announced its Board of Directors voted on three new directors during its quarterly meeting held January 20. Joining the board and enhancing the breadth of knowledge, experience and strength of it are Jeff Jonas of IBM, Stephen S. Oswald of The Boeing Co., and Dr. Peggy Agouris of George Mason University. “These three individuals, each with equally impressive and unique professional backgrounds, will bolster the activities of the board and help lead USGIF as the preeminent organization for the GEOINT Community,” said USGIF CEO and Chairman of the Board Stu Shea. “It is exciting and rewarding be able to add to the rich composition of our directors with a distinguished industry visionary, a former astronaut and industry icon, and an academic exemplar.” Read the full press release here.

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Only slightly more than 30 days into a new year, and much has already been said about 2010. Some pundits have heralded the year as a clean slate from a tough 2009, while others have been less optimistic, predicting more of the same for the next 365 days. At the macro level, the U.S. economy is still very much in the midst of recovery. The president’s recently released budget indeed presents challenges for many, but national security spending continues to be supported. The Quadrennial Defense Review will continue to be scrutinized, but its commitment to ISR sensors and platforms is unambiguous. Emergent lessons-learned from the attempted Christmas Day attack call for increased investment in analysts and tools to help the “connect the dots.” The National Reconnaissance Office will soon release documents that will be the foundation for the future of our classified overhead reconnaissance. To read all of this, check out the “From the Desk of the President” column by Keith Masback, USGIF President, in the latest issue of the Geospatial Intelligence Forum, the official publication of the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, here. And, we urge everyone to get a subscription to the publication if you have not already.

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Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates vocalized his ongoing concern about Europe’s lacking contributions to NATO, and said that European public and political opposition to the military was directly affecting operations in Afghanistan. Here’s what he said on Tuesday at the National Defense University: “The demilitarization of Europe — where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st.” Mr. Gates’s comments came just after the dispute over keeping Dutch troops in Afghanistan. Allied support has never been more critical in helping our effort in Afghanistan, and hopefully his blunt comments will have a positive impact – unlike the “Old Europe” comment from his predecessor. What do you all think?

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Yesterday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced that Letitia Long, deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, will serve as the next director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). Long will assume the NGA leadership later this year, and will be replacing Navy Vice Adm. Robert Murrett who has served as NGA director for 4 years.

“Yet another great leader for NGA and the NSG,” said USGIF President Keith Masback about the announcement. “I’ve had the privilege to work with and around Tish on and off for more than 10 years. She has a unique set of experiences that have prepared her superbly for this opportunity. Moreover, Tish has a well-deserved reputation of going at every challenge with drive, passion and common sense.”

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Welcome to the Monday Morning News Kick Off post from got geoint? As always, we hope you had a restful weekend and a recharged and ready to take on the world. The big news we cover this week is the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency awarding $1 billion in engineering contracts as part of its “TASER” program, as well as Army Gen. David Petraeus’ support of closing the prison camps at Guantánamo and more. As we always say, fire up that second cup of coffee and read on!

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Welcome to the Friday’s Food for Thought post on got geoint? Last Friday, the opening day of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics was marred by the tragic death of Georgia luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. While this event tragic set the tone for the start of the Olympics and (rightly) trumped most of the other press coverage of the Winter Games, there was a world of GEOINT-related stories happening around the Olympics. So, for this week’s FFT post, we would like to showcase all the GEOINT stories — giving these stories their full due. Happy Friday.

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Roger Bacon, the Franciscan monk in the 13th century, wrote, “there is no doubt that corporeal roads signify spiritual roads.” Cartographers believed this as well: early maps reveal visual histories, littered with legends, lore and drawings of monsters and “terra incognita,” maps that embody the view of the world at the time, complete with gods, demons and strange creatures. In this sumptuous, lavishly illustrated history of map-making and the visions of the world it incarnated, Toby Lester, contributing editor and writer for The Atlantic, presents an epic tale of mariners and explorers, monks and merchants, popes and kings from Ptolemy’s first-century Guide to Drawing a World Map to the centerpiece of this book, Martin Waldseemuller’s 1507 map on which the word “America” first appears. Read the full review of the new book, “THE FOURTH PART OF THE WORLD: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name” by The Providence Journal here.

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The Where 2.0 conference program is almost complete. The focus is on the tech industry’s advances in Mapping, Mobile and Local. Each of these areas are being treated equally and each will have its own afternoon track. Coming back this year we have great speakers such as John Hanke (Google), Jack Dangermond (ESRI), Ryan Sarver (Twitter), Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land) and Dennis Crowley (Foursquare). Maps have moved from flat and static creations to rich representations of the world. And now maps are moving to realtime. The idea of constantly-updated community maps are now the norm and the modifications are constant. The base data of the map you are looking at could have been updated in the past couple of days in time those updates will be instantaneous. Read the full O’Reilly Radar post from Brady Forrest here.

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The U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command and the Army Forces Strategic Command are developing some highly innovative GEOINT strategies, which include the development of a futuristic, self-powered, intelligence-gathering airship. While still in the conceptual phase, according to the Washington Post, the ideal model would be able to linger for more than three weeks over a target area at 20,000 feet, carrying a 2,500-pound payload of signals and imagery interceptors with a view of 173 miles — according to a special notice issued last week. The success in Iraq and Afghanistan of “spy blimps” has inspired the creation of these new airships. Wow. Read more of the Washington Post article here.

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