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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 are ready to take on the work week. What’s that? Oh, yes, we definitely like to kick off the work week on the right foot and knowledge is power. Looking for that power? Look no more. As always, we have compiled all the key GEOINT-related stories you need to exercise that power. From a story about the viability of the U-2 spy plane more news about GEOINT and Japan, we have it all. So, as we always say, fire up that second cup of coffee and read on. Happy Monday!

After Five Decades, the U-2 is Still Flying High
The Air Force is breathing new life into an old Cold Warrior — the iconic U-2 spy plane — to meet the need for battlefield surveillance in Afghanistan. The Air Force had intended this year to ground the U-2, famed for flying over the Soviet Union to hunt for ballistic missiles in the 1950s and ’60s. But there have been delays in the development of the drone aircraft that is to succeed the U-2 and the demand for images on what’s happening on the battlefield is a top concern, the military says. “In Afghanistan, I can pretty much guarantee that we’re using just about every spare electron we’ve got,” says Lt. Col. Kevin Quamme, who manages the program for the Air Force. “Trying to find the IEDs (improvised explosive devices) is an ongoing, high-priority issue. … How do you quantify the cost of one soldier’s life?” Read the full USA Today article here.

It’s Tracking Your Every Move and You May Not Even Know
A favorite pastime of Internet users is to share their location: services like Google Latitude can inform friends when you are nearby; another, Foursquare, has turned reporting these updates into a game. But as a German Green party politician, Malte Spitz, recently learned, we are already continually being tracked whether we volunteer to be or not. Cellphone companies do not typically divulge how much information they collect, so Mr. Spitz went to court to find out exactly what his cellphone company, Deutsche Telekom, knew about his whereabouts.The results were astounding. In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times. Read the full NY Times article here.

AUM to Help Japan with Satellite Imagery Analysis
Auburn Montgomery has been selected as one of four universities across the U.S. to assist the Japanese government in processing and analyzing satellite images of Japan’s northeastern coastal cities before and after the recent earthquake and tsunami. Associate professor Terry Winemiller and students in AUM’s Geographic Information Systems program are examining changes in the landscape using remote sensing data from the U.S. Geological survey Hazards Data Distribution Center. Read the full Montgomery Advisor article here.

Online Mapping Shows Potential to Transform Relief Efforts
Digital maps assembled by far-flung networks of online volunteers through the process called crowd-sourcing have been powerful tools in humanitarian relief work in the last few years. In Japan after the earthquake and tsunami, crowd-sourced maps have helped give local relief workers a clearer picture of the situation on the ground as they set priorities for food, shelter and sanitation services. The Web maps are also being used to track the fighting in Libya and the needs of refugees fleeing that conflict. But a new report says that the potential of online mapping to transform humanitarian services will not be realized without better coordination and communication between digital volunteers and veteran agencies in the relief field, like the United Nations and the Red Cross. Read the full NY Times article here.

ForeverMap: App Gets You There From Here
ForeverMap distinguishes itself from other mapping apps by letting users navigate while offline. A U.S. version of Skobbler, the popular map app in Britain, it uses information from OpenStreetMap, a collaborative mapping project, to bring a free, editable map of the world. The app is perfect for mobile users who don’t want to pay for a data plan or roaming charges. Download the maps once, and ForeverMap stores the data you need to navigate. The app also has optional layers showing sites for entertainment, transport, shopping and more. For Wikipedia addicts, the app gives you one-tap access to articles about the landmarks around you from the site. Read the full Washington Post article here.

Satellite imagery Shows Power Outages in Japan
Air Force satellite imagery is showing exactly how widespread the electric power outages have been in northeast Japan since the March 11 earthquake and subsequent tsunami damaged whole towns and cities, and much of the power infrastructure. The image below compared power usage before the quake and immediately after. Yellow indicates regions where the electric power has remained on. Red shows where outages occured after the quake. Readthe full Baltimore Sun post here.

DigitalGlobe Reaches Major Milestone in China, Collecting 34 Million Square Kilometers of Satellite Imagery
DigitalGlobe has extended its lead in the Chinese market with its latest ImageLibrary. After collecting millions of square kilometers of imagery over the last 12 months, the company’s ImageLibrary now encompasses 34 million square kilometers of cloud-free China coverage. It includes a mix of rich archive and constantly refreshed satellite imagery covering more than 150 of China’s largest cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Kunming and Qingdao. With the latest collections, DigitalGlobe’s ImageLibrary is three times the size of other available high resolution, commercial image libraries and offers government and business customers a strong foundation for making business and policy decisions. Read the full press release here.

Happy Monday!

Tags: Auburn Montgomery and Japan Satellite Imagery, DigitalGlobe, DigitalGlobe and China, ForeverMap, Online Mapping and Japan Relief Efforts, OpenStreetMap, Power Outtages in Japan, U-2, U-2 Spy Plane