Thoughts About ASPRS 2007 | May 10th 2007
One can never say that they dislike a conference. For one, it gets you out of the cubicle farm for a few days. I’m at ASPRS this week in Tampa and the weather is pleasant, the people friendly. . . and I’m somewhat disinterested.
Nothing new really jumps out anymore to nab my attention. Photogrammetery suites are advanced, yes. Camera/LiDAR systems are schweet. I finally learned what Intergraph does well. And, ok, Microsoft does photogrammetery.
The most interesting conversations I had today were with DigitalGlobe and GeoEye folks and getting their response to the NGA Director’s comments about commercial satellite imagery. I guess everyone’s first takes were, “Holy-holy-holy crap!” Then everyone realized the commercial providers aren’t going to “out” American assets to make a buck. There are laws that they abide by, but there are even situations that the commercial providers see something and say, “let’s hold off on this product for release.” So, it’s good to know at least someone is using common sense.
. . . Then of course the commentary on the All Points Blog post about this subject was interesting. . .
On one note, Microsoft Photogrammetery and Virtual Earth are quite visible here. Demo showings are just as frequent as Spiderman-3. This kind of presence also tips us off to another visible thing on the expo hall floor: The Absence of Google Earth.
As we’ve read today, the GE Team, of course, had more important things to do. Like, launch their new blog. Welcome to the club.
Michael Jones, the CTO of Google, noted that GE’s user base is approximately the tenth most populated country coming in with 200,000,000 users in the world in his keynote. Today we also learned that about 8 million of those users are Dutch. But an interesting point to bring out of left field is: if GE is the world’s tenth largest country, what is Adobe Reader?
Don’t let the GeoPDF marketing team catch on to that, we may soon all be the victims of a similar rhetorical question.
Then again, we could all fall victim to bad jokes like, “If people in Poland are called pols; then are people in Holland called hols? And can you see those 16 million holes in Google Earth?”
Finally, the my point is that it has been an interesting day and I cannot wait for Where 2.0.
Tomorrow’s schedule: I’ll think about “WWGD” and will conduct a survey and mapping expedition to map local Hooters restaurants in VE and MyMaps.
Interesting that Microsoft is so much more visible there than Google (well interesting that even Microsoft is so much present there, apart from their Vexcel company).
Any details on how Microsoft autogenerates their 3D city models? As a former 3D city modeler/photogrammetry/lidar/orthophoto/mapping-kinda guy it is a very interesting how the hell they have pulled that off.
Comment by Morten — May 10, 2007 @ 5:55 am
A lot of folks asked about this, and I think that the shear number of aerial services and modeling companies that MSFT has acquired actually help them stand up those models. In other words, “modeling gnomes.”
I had a conversation with another colleague who said, “That’s nice, they [Microsoft] can make buildings look nice. Now, what are they? How do you access their attribution? A search result?”
Of course, the Slippy Map Kid vs. GIS Pro debate is ongoing. The discussion should always be about “the right tool for the right job”.
Comment by GeoMullah — May 10, 2007 @ 11:55 am
FP> if GE is the world’s tenth largest country, what is Adobe Reader?
Depending on the source, there are somewhere between a half billion and three-quarters of a billion seats of Reader. That would put it ahead of US (301M) the EU (461M) (not a country, exactly), and just behind number 3 India (1130M).
FP> Don’t let the GeoPDF marketing team catch on to that, we may soon all be the victims of a similar rhetorical question.
Well, I’m not a marketer, or a member of the marketing team — just a lowly hacker in the corporate world view. However, I’ve gleaned what could be a cool marketing meme off of the internet (somewhere): Imagine if the Adobe Reader of GIS was Adobe Reader. How’s *that* for rhetorical hype!
Anyway, I’m heading to Where 2.0 as well, so I hope to see you there.
G
Comment by George Demmy — May 10, 2007 @ 12:39 pm
Err, that would be number 2 India. — G
Comment by George Demmy — May 10, 2007 @ 12:52 pm
[...] Fantom Planet reports that Google Earth is like a country upon itself: Michael Jones, the CTO of Google, noted that GE’s user base is approximately the tenth most populated country coming in with 200,000,000 users in the world in his keynote [...]
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