got geoint?

Welcome to the Friday’s Food for Thought post on got geoint? Do you ever get the feeling that people no longer actually speak to one another? We like to stay within the safe bubble of email and texting as a primary communications vehicle. And do you remember Jerry Seinfield’s classic stand up joke about being surprised when someone actually answers his or her phone – as opposed to the call going to voicemail. So, where are we going with this? The big GEOINT story we covered this week was regarding war fighters using innovative smart phones. We could not help but think that mobile/digital communications is finally everywhere.

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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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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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Welcome once again to the Friday’s Food for Thought post on got geoint? Remember life before television remote controls? It seems like ages ago, but there was a time when you had to get up from off the couch and change the channel manually. Fortunately, back then — prior to the advent of cable television — there were only about four channels to choose from. How does this tie into GEOINT? Well, we did several posts this week about Commercial Remote Sensing (CRS), so how could we not dive into the concept of remote technologies and daily life? So, read on and enjoy. And for those who have been snow bound this week, hopefully, this post will be a fun respite from all that shoveling. Happy Friday!

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Welcome once again to our Friday’s Food for Thought post on got geoint? For anyone living in the mid-Atlantic region, you all have experienced an unusual Winter this year, marked by several snow storms — some being very being pretty massive. And, a major snow storm is predicted to hit this weekend, and the masses are being whipped up into a frenzy; the shelves at stores are being cleared out by hoarding consumers, Washington DC has already declared a State of Emergency,” and Arlington County executives told citizens to “shelter in place” for up to five days with supplies of nonperishable food, flashlights and extra batteries. What? Is this the end of the world as we know it (more on that)? For those of us who grew up in New England and the snow-prone states like Michigan and Minnesota, we can’t help but get a chuckle out of this mass hysteria. Happy Friday!

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Welcome once again to the Friday’s Food for Thought post on got geoint? This week, we decided to take a look back at geographic history and make note of some very important dates and milestones. For example, on January 27, 1888, the National Geographic Society was founded. And, did you know that in 1351 The Medici sea atlas was published that contained a ‘world’ map? Yep, you can learn about that, and much more in this historic GEOINT post. Oh, and as the late Bob Marley once said, “In this great future, you can’t forget your past.” Happy Friday!

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Welcome once again to the Friday’s Food for Thought post on got geoint? We hope everyone had a productive work week. This week, we covered a story about the U.S. Air Force re-assessing the use of GPS and how they may consider going back to using old fashioned paper maps. So, for this week’s FFT theme we wanted to tackle the concept of paper versus digital. 10 years ago industry pundits predicted — with the advent of the Internet — that we would all go completely paperless. Has this actually happened? We are certainly more digitally connected than we have ever been, but will paper eventually go away? We hope to tackle this subject in today’s post. So, read on and enjoy.

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Welcome once again to the official Friday’s Food for Thought post. We hope you all had a productive work week. Unfortunately, for many in Haiti, it was not a good week by any stretch of the imagination. The island nation experienced the worst earthquake in 200 years in the Caribbean. And, we covered extensively the role that GEOINT has played in humanitarian efforts. When a disaster of this magnitude strikes, we can’t help but reflect on how fragile the human existence is and how important it is to help out others. And, we are seeing this happen in real life, as many people are donating funds to help those in need in Haiti. So, always be thankful for what you have and help out others in need. Read on and happy Friday!

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Welcome to the first Friday’s Food for Thought post in 2010. As many of our readers know, we like to take a somewhat humorous/creative take on various topics that tie into the concept of GEOINT. This week, with two major events happening in the Intelligence Community (X-mas bomber and CIA Afghanistan bombing), we thought we would bring up the theme “New Threats, New Thinking.” Now more than ever this concept has to come into play as the IC faces new, unique and unknown challenges every day. So, this post is all about “thinking.”

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Welcome to once again to our Friday’s Food for Thought post exclusively on got geoint? We hope that everyone is weathering the cold weather (like the pun), surviving the holiday party season, and has all of their holiday shopping done. We are officially seven days from X-mas. So, this means NORAD is kicking off it’s efforts to track Santa’s whereabouts. And, for fun, we decided to showcase the classic line “Charlie Don’t Surf” from Apocalypse Now. Hey, Christmas and Apocalypse Now; the two go together right? Hope you enjoy and Happy Friday!

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