got geoint?

As our faithful got geoint? readers know, we often like to do a mid-week news summary post – especially when there is just soo much news to cover. For this installment, we have a completely mixed bag of stories related to the GEOINT world. From Apple acquiring a geo-location patent, to analysis on how aerial mapping will continue to grow despite the recession, as well as a story about some NASA satellites for measuring ocean plant life being on their last legs. Although we often use this expression for the Monday Morning post, here we go. Fire up that second cup of coffee and read on!

Apple, Taking Target Marketing Seriously
Apple’s new advertising centric webpage states that “iAd rich media ads bring motion and emotion to mobile advertising through branded experiences that entertain and inform. With the iAd logo on each ad, your target Apple audience will know a great experience awaits them behind the banner.” Yeeeesss, Apple is taking Target Marketing seriously – very seriously. In fact we learned just yesterday that Apple has recently acquired a new powerful geo-location patent that packs quite the punch. It’s focused on delivering informative content proactively rather than reactively in response to a person’s manual query to a service or human. Beyond delivering advanced marketing retail services, the patent provides us with a series of other feasible life-based scenarios. For instance, the new service could give home users the ability to announce a Garage Sale that they’re having to anyone in a given vicinity or send emergency live Amber Alerts to your iPhone along with photos of the missing child in question. Advanced geolocation services could go far beyond just commerce. Read the full Patently Apple post here.

Technology Leads More Park Visitors Into Trouble
Cathy Hayes was cracking jokes as she recorded a close encounter with a buffalo on her camera in a recent visit to Yellowstone National Park. “Watch Donald get gored,” she said as her companion hustled toward a grazing one-ton beast for a closer shot with his own camera. Seconds later, as if on cue, the buffalo lowered its head, pawed the ground and charged, injuring, as it turns out, Ms. Hayes. “We were about 30, 35 feet, and I zoomed in on him, but that wasn’t far enough, because they are fast,” she recounted later in a YouTube video displaying her bruised and cut legs. The national parks’ history is full of examples of misguided visitors feeding bears, putting children on buffalos for photos and dipping into geysers despite signs warning of scalding temperatures. Read the full NY Times article here.

In New Approach to Titanic, an Exhibitor Aids Scientists
In the 23 years since divers first reached the wreckage of the Titanic, commercial efforts to salvage artifacts from the doomed ocean liner have aroused as much scientific dispute as public curiosity. Many archaeologists and others — including Robert D. Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who led an American-French team that discovered the remains 25 years ago — wanted the site left untouched as a memorial. Some of them compared salvage efforts to grave robbing. Now, R.M.S. Titanic, the American company that has removed about 4,650 artifacts from the Titanic, will try to mend fences with the scientific community by sponsoring two voyages, the first of which sets sail on Sunday from St. John’s, Newfoundland. Read the full NY Times story here.

Even in a Recession, Aerial Mapping Continues to Grow in Many Ways
A number of interesting developments come to my mind when I think about the state of the aerial mapping industry as we transition from the first decade of the third millennium to the second. The cell phones now carried by 87 percent of Americans are GPS-enabled, driven by a government requirement that carriers be able to report the locations associated with emergency calls. The Public Safety Answering Points that receive those calls use some combination of topographic, planimetric, and image data; the life-or-death accuracy requirements make map updating an ongoing demand. Read the full Professional Surveyor article by Tina Cary here.

Google Earth vs Microsoft Bing Map
I reported on Aug. 20 that the folks over at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency determined only Google had the smarts to handle visualization of the planet. NGA said in a FedBizOps announcement last week that it planned to award Google a sole-source contract for Web-based access to geospatial visualization services because the company was the only outfit on Earth that could meet the viewing requirements. Not so fast, said Microsoft, which told me that the MS Bing Map Server could do the job, too. Now it appears NGA has re-thought, at least, the wording of the Google sole-source contract. Read the full NextGov post here.

Wanted: Those With Top Secret Clearances
Outside a hotel ballroom near Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport airport, about three dozen men and a handful of women lined up one recent morning to have a colored dot — green, blue or red — affixed to their suits and dresses. The colors were key to what’s known as the “meal ticket” for landing a job in the intelligence community: a top-secret clearance. We hung out (yes, we were cleared to attend) at two TechExpo Top Secret job fairs – one near Fort Meade and the other in Reston. The job fairs are run by a New York-based firm that specializes in helping those with clearances connect with companies doing intelligence work under U.S. government contracts. At a check-in booth, organizers asked, “What’s your clearance level?” and passed each candidate an appropriately colored sticker. Read the full Washington Post article here.

The Precarious Future of Ocean-Color Satellite Imagery
The United States owns three orbiting satellites capable of measuring plant life in the world’s oceans, and they’re all on their last legs. That has ocean scientists pushing NASA to have its next satellite take an occasional look at the moon, a critical step for transmitting accurate images of the sea. The three satellites, SeaWiFS, Aqua and Terra, have been flying far longer than they were designed to. SeaWiFs, for example, was built to last three to five years but has lasted 13. Critically, all of these satellites look at the moon on a monthly basis to calibrate the ocean color sensors, which degrade over time. Read the full Reuters story here.

Happy Wednesday!

Tags: Apple and geo-location, Geo-location, GEOINT 2010, geospatial intelligence, got geoint?, NASA, Ocean Color Satellite Imagery, SeaWiFS, Spy Satellites, Yellow Stone National Park