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Welcome to the Friday’s Food for Thought post from got geoint? We hope everyone enjoyed the little taste of spring — and tomorrow is the first official day of spring — that we had this week on the east coast. For this week’s FFT post, we thought we would tackle the idea of GEOINT being in the “hands of the people.” Yesterday, we covered an “everyone-as-an-informant” mapping and tracking application called Ushahidi , which made us think…will GEOINT truly be a democratic thing in the future? We will be relying on crowd-sourced data “from the people” to find our enemies? Possibly. The technology and applications are out there.

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Imagine if any Pakistani could send an anonymous text message to the authorities suggesting the location of Osama Bin Laden. Each location could be plotted on a map. The dots would be scattered widely, perhaps, with promising leads indistinguishable from rubbish. But on a given day, a surge of dots might point to the same village, in what could not be coincidence. Troops could be ordered in. This kind of everyone-as-informant mapping is shaking up the world, bringing the Wikipedia revolution to the work of humanitarians and soldiers who parachute into places with little good information. Sounds pretty cool, huh? Perhaps we are headed to a future where the best sources of Intel will be actual citizens? We highly recommend you check out this NY Times article about Ushahidi, which is shaking up the GEOINT world with its unique Intel sharing application. And, our faithful got geoint? readers may remember the podcast we did last October with Patrick Meier, Co-Founder, The International Network of Crisis Mappers (INCM). Meier also directs Ushahidi’s crisis-mapping operation.

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The White House threatened to veto the Intelligence Authorization bill because its demands for transparency and oversight would, in some cases, put American lives at risk, in the view of the Obama administration. President Obama’s budget director, Peter Orszag (pictured), sent letters to the heads of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on Monday stating the that the House and Senate Intelligence Authorization bills “and their classified annexes still contain several provisions of serious concern to the Intelligence Community (IC). Three categories of provisions are so serious that the President’s senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill if they are included in the version presented for his signature: the Congressional notification provisions, GAO provisions, and provisions regarding the amounts authorized for the National Intelligence Program.” What do you all think? There is a fine line between transparency and risking the lives of those who work in the IC. Check out the Washington Posts’s coverage here.

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Following is an exclusive podcast with Brady Forest, Chair for O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 Conference, which is taking place March 31 through April 1 in San Jose, CA. For those of you not familiar with Where 2.0 it is the premier event for grassroots and leading edge developers building location-aware technology to gather with the businesses and entrepreneurs seeking out location apps, platforms, and hardware to gain a competitive edge. Don’t miss out on this event!

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Welcome to the Friday’s Food for Thought post from got geoint? As always, we hope that you all had a productive work week and are ready to coast into the weekend. Earlier this week, we covered a story about DARPA’s “Transparent Underground,” and how Geospatial Corporation has actually been doing the whole underground mapping thing since 2005. So, we wanted to take the concept of “underground” and take it to the next level. For example, why are underground bands soo much cooler than mainstream ones? Why do underground artists and designers seem to have more cred? And, are there any cool underground GEOINT trends happening right now? Well, we try our best to answer these questions in this week’s FFT post. And, be sure to check out the funny video at the end of this post.

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As our loyal got geoint? readers know, we like to start the week off with our Monday Morning News Kick Off post, which highlights all the actionable news you need to get your week started on the right foot. Well, every so often we like to break out of the mold and do a news round up post in the middle of the week. And, since our research department just found a whole slew of very cool location, imagery and science stories, we had to do a “Thursday News Round Up” post. All the news you need to get through the last leg of the week. Read on and enjoy.

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By documenting satellite images of the earth, as well as images from the street, Google Earth and Google Street View often stumble upon some pretty interesting things. Do you recall our story last year about Google Street View capturing an image of Oasis frontman, Liam Gallagher, enjoying a pint of beer outside of a local pub in north London. Of course, he would be enjoying a pint of beer – he is a rock star. That is what they do! What is amazing is that Google Street View captured him in the act. Well, it seems that many in the UK are “throwing a wobbly” (that’s British slang expression for pitching a fit, in case you did not know) about how Google Earth has captured some critical football matches. Of course, we are not talking about good old fashioned Joe Namath-style American football. We are talking about soccer — yes, very confusing. Check out this Guardian UK story. Of course, it is impossible to tell the score of the game, but you all just wait. One day, we all will be able to watch the Super Bowl in real time from streaming satellite imagery. All in due time… And, check out this blog post from Spatial Law and Policy about the EU potentially being short-sighted when it comes to Google Street View. Perhaps Liam Gallagher complained about having his image on Street View??

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Recently, we covered a story that Wired’s “Danger Room” broke about DARPA’s “Transparent Underground”, which creates real-time 3-D maps that display “the physical, chemical and dynamic properties of the earth down to 5 kilometer depth.” Cool stuff, no doubt. But, it seems that someone had someone has beaten DARPA to the punch on this one. Since 2005, Geospatial Corporation has been using a proprietary gadget called ‘Smart Probe’ to map deep earth via underground pipes. According to Wired’s “Danger Room,” the company’s probe can be inserted into pipes as small as 1 1/2 inches, and then travel their length while taking super-speedy coordinates — 800 per second — and saving them onto a USB key. The probe is removed, the data extracted, and a 3D map of the underground region is created. The probe can travel through pipes that are empty, or contain fluid or gas. And, it seems to be taking off. Check out this press release announcing Geospatial Corporation’s partnership with Tom Ridge’s firm, Ridge Global. Bigger takeaway: Geospatial Corporation was ahead of the curve…or perhaps they got luck with the timing? What do you think?

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Welcome to the Monday Morning News Kick Off post from got geoint? Could spring actually be here?? It will be in the 60s this week in the Washington, DC area and the sun is a shining. So, do you find that this nice weather puts a spring (bad pun) in your step? If so, why not add a little more juice to your day by checking out of MMNKO post. This week, we mainly cover a number of industry news including Orbital Sciences’ plan to buy GD Advanced Information System, Raytheon’s massive GPS contract, and IceWEB’s contract with the Navy. As we always say, fire up that second cup of coffee and read on.

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We are excited to host an exclusive podcast with Mark Lowenthal, President of the Intelligence & Security Academy, who will discuss the Open IntellAcademy of courses, which includes the GEOINT 101 – a one-day course that provides an introduction to the fundamentals of the Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) community, core GEOINT technologies and operations, and the role of GEOINT in national security affairs supporting decision makers and operations. You can also listen to our previous podcast we did with Mr. Lowenthal last year here.

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