Month: September 2007

Open Aerial Map

Open Aerial Map is a non-profit, open access, meeting place for the aerial imaging community. It exists to provide a freely available image map of the world created solely by community contribution, and to facilitate the free exchange of imagery, technology, and ideas. In order to provide an unrestricted, free, an unbiased view of the world, OpenAerialMap encourages the free exchange of aerial imagery, without restriction on its use.

that & gps data & lots of people = free maps for the world.

National Positioning Architecture

Data communications networks currently support PNT capabilities by carrying PNT aiding and augmentation data, GIS data, etc.; however, opportunities exist to exploit the synergy between RF-based PNT and communications by leveraging communications capabilities to provide PNT capabilities directly. This is consistent with the multiphenomenology vector of employing diverse sources and information paths, and would increase PNT robustness by offering services outside of traditional radionavigation spectrum. Leadership and initiative is needed to avoid stove-piped solutions, and detailed assessments regarding specific solutions are needed, so the US should establish a community of experts to pursue synergies between communications and PNT. Initially, the US should study the lessons learned from existing PNT/Communications fusion efforts, such as cellular and WiFi networks, iGPS, tactical radio networks, E911, the Air Force Satellite Control Network, and NASA‘s SCA to help determine what provides the best options for both systems and their users.

this might a common clock and reference frame encoded on all broadcast signals, and compatibility with indoor systems (such as WiFi)- if you get a signal from anything you get some location info.

Why Did Yahoo Buy Zimbra?

“The real power of Zimbra is its APIs, which together with Zimbra’s open source status makes this a potentially powerful development platform. The APIs enable developers to access messaging functions inside the Zimbra application, meaning external apps can hook into Zimbra’s functionality. The example used in the demo is a travel application using Zimbra’s APIs to “automatically create a calendar event for the person traveling”.”

And that is probably one of the main reasons why Yahoo acquired Zimbra.

so now oddpost gets the axe just as they were finally launching?

Suit Dreams

Domain Workbench would hand enterprise software design to businesspeople. Here’s how it works: Users write clear directions in text, spreadsheet, or flowchart-like forms describing what the software should do. In some cases, they can use an interface where lines are drawn between boxes and documents to establish the relationships and rules that an application must follow. The information is sent to a code generator, which spits out the 1000s of lines necessary to build the application. Intentional users must still have a software engineer on hand to help set up the programming language and to tweak it anytime a variable changes.

pfft. typical suit wanking fantasies. “no programming skills necessary”. simonyi has been hyping this vaporware for almost 10 years now, where is it?

Hulu Doomed?

NBC will start offering its top television shows as ad-supported downloads this fall from the NBC Direct website. The announcement is a major setback for the NBC/ News Corp joint venture Hulu, which was originally set up to offer this very content. The announcement also follows on from NBC’s decision to discontinue offering its TV shows via iTunes by the end of the year.

what are those assclowns doing to The Office? i was willing to pay for it on itunes, but now they force me into bittorrent.