got geoint?

Welcome to our Friday’s Food for Thought post on got geoint? In the GEOINT world, we tend to focus on the actual imagery provided — and less so the actual data. The data provides the context and knowledge required to make GEOINT situation actionable and effective. And, of course the combination of imagery and data is the winning solution — to put it in a a very simple context. Hey, it is Friday, we are allowed to keep things basic today, right. So, the theme of this week’s FFT is all about “data.” We hope you had a productive week and can take a few minutes to enjoy this post. Go data!

Welcome to Data.gov
Data.gov is new initiative by the Obama Administration to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. According to the new web site, Data.gov increases the ability of the public to easily find, download, and use datasets that are generated and held by the Federal Government. Data.gov provides descriptions of the Federal datasets (metadata), information about how to access the datasets, and tools that leverage government datasets. The data catalogs will continue to grow as datasets are added. Federal, Executive Branch data are included in the first version of Data.gov. Data for the people, by the people and of the people. Cool stuff.

ESRI’s Dangermond’s Notion of Turning Geospatial Databases Into Services
Jack Dangermond, founder and president of ESRI and USGIF board member, recently sat down with the editor-in-chief of Government Computer News and discussed of the advent of Data.gov, and much of the data delivered through it, is to a large extent an outgrowth of work that has evolved in the geographic information systems community. According to the article, the roots of GIS software tools, used around the world to share geospatial information, lie in the vision and work of ESRI. Read the full Q&A here.

The Definition of Data
According to our team of consultants at Wikipedia, the term data means groups of information that represent the qualitative or quantitative attributes of a variable or set of variables. Data (plural of “datum”, which is seldom used) are typically the results of measurements and can be the basis of graphs, images, or observations of a set of variables. Data are often viewed as the lowest level of abstraction from which information and knowledge are derived. So, there you go.

Crazy Data Disasters
Since most of us live with laptops connected to our hips, we are often vulnerable to losing all of our valuable data — with the simple spill of a cup of coffee. The key is to back up all of your data on a separate server, or take advantage of cloud-like services that protect your data. Well, we found a blog post that lists out some pretty funny (not to participate in too much schadenfreude) stories of people losing their data. Here’s the post. Enjoy.

She Blinded Me With Science
When searching for a song to feature about data, Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me With Science” immediately came to mind. The beauty of YouTube is that one can find video clips that go beyond the standard 1984 MTV videos that we all know. As such, here’s a live clip of Thomas Dolby playing his (one) hit. Hope you enjoy!

Tags: Blinded with Science, data, ESRI, Geospatial Data, geospatial intelligence, Jack Dangermond, Science, Star Trek, Thomas Dolby