CAD-Space

Please go Over

2011-01-18T15:03:00.000+05:30

As announced in the last post, we switch from today to the combined Debasis & Associates as the only blog for all the specialized areas we have been looking at.

CAD Space to be Combined into Debasis & Associates- Collective Musings

2011-01-13T20:53:00.000+05:30

In my enthusiasm to take advantage of this new medium I had started with many specialized blogs. It will be easier to manage for me now when these are combined. After a time, when the currently scheduled posts are published.

A GPS Device For Everyone

2011-01-09T21:55:00.000+05:30

Garmin as a company has always strived to provide a wide range of GPS devices. I did not know the company has actually shipped something like 72 million devices since they started operating in 1989. The following article says that. The company seems to be persuing the mission of providing a GPS device for everyone! They widen their range of products in their offering in the current CES show. Now the application areas cover automotive & trucking, tracking, outdoor, mobile, fitness/sports, marine, aviation and automotive OEM. Wow! They do take their GPSs seriously!!! Garmin has survived in the market for 20 odd years and that's a huge credential to their doing a good job! I had the opportunity to review quite a few Garmin devices, head over here to look them up!
Garmin Has A GPS Device For Everyone

Japan eyes building its own GPS system

2011-01-07T20:37:00.000+05:30

First there was the grand parent of them all, the navigation satellite dynasty, the GPS. Then came Glonass (Russian), Galieleo (French), Baidou (Chinese). Each of these systems have multiple satellites up in the sky though not a complete constellation. India also had announce the GAGA system. That is more like a augmentation system rather than a full fledged navigation system.

Now come news that Japan to want to join the fun. The GPS Daily had a news item datelined 5 Jan, 2011 to this effect. They have a satellite in orbit from Sep last year that created an augmentation system for Japanese motorists.The Yomiuri Shimbun had a report that Japan plans to have six to seven new satellites for its GPS system by 2014 and 2015. It would cover the entire Asia-Pacific region. Car navigation accuracies are expected to be improved some 10x by using this data along with the grand daddy GPS data.

Japan eyes building its own GPS system

GSLV space rocket explodes after lift-off

2011-01-01T08:18:00.001+05:30

The latest communication cum multi role satellite of ISRO, the INSAT-5P failed to reach orbit. The launch vehicle failed in about 60 seconds after launch. GSLV and PSLV are the vehicles of ISRO for them to get a share of global launch market. This certainly is a set back. I guess, by implication, it is a set back to any true ICBM plans. As has been demonstrated by other countries, including China, one can morph from a space launcher to an inter continental missile quite easily.

GSLV space rocket explodes after lift-off

NavCom Announces New Capabilities

2010-12-30T10:12:00.000+05:30

Here's another vendor (besides SkyTraq) who announced a product that can take advantage of more than GPS system, Navtek has announced a system that can take advantage of the Russian Glonass system in addition to the American GPS system.

NavCom’s SF-3050 family uses the latest StarFire™ chipset. In the RTK mode the set is able to provide decimeter-level position accuracy. The multi-constellation support includes GPS, GLONASS and Galileo. It also incorporates high-speed I/O components, including Ethernet, Bluetooth and USB capability. It is fully upgradeable from a single frequency receiver to multi-frequency or anything in between with just a software bundle upload. saves the users the expense of purchasing a new receiver. This flexible framework makes the SF-3050 suitable for any application. Read more details in the following.

NavCom Announces New Capabilities

New GeoGroups App Reinvents Geo-Social Experience

2010-12-28T07:49:00.001+05:30

Location based information and social networking, when mashed together, can derive benefits to your shared network of friends.

GeoGroups has launched a geo-social mobile app now doing just that. It provides families, friends, like-minded individuals and professionals interact on a single personalized map. They can on

separate public or private groups.

Anyone can create public groups to share points of interest with like minded people. Private groups can share location data including such details as family members locations and map shared locations. Public groups can be used to map nearby weather alerts, Wi-Fi hotspots, speed traps and more.Public groups then can charge you a subscription fee or a transaction fee.

Things you can do will include create and manage private or a public group, manage privacy controls and control who can have your location information, check where the group members are in real time and also find new points of interest, share messages, tips, images securely, receive geo-alerts when someone leaves predefined boundary for example. You could integrate with facebook too. Details can be looked up in the following article.

New GeoGroups App Reinvents Geo-Social Experience

Universal Address And GPS Enhanced Google Maps For iPhones

2010-12-26T08:46:00.000+05:30

The Natural Area Coding System is able to uniquely identify an area on the face of the earth is linked to the World Geodetic System (WGS) - 1984. This is directly linked to the latittude, longitude and the altitude of a place. Universal address system is derived from NAC. Three are two big advantages using these codes, the code is just a combination of a few characters and is not as complicated looking as the latittude and the longitude. Second advantage is that it gives you an uniformity in the address of a place. No two countries have similar address system!

Once the maps, GPS receivers and all such navigation devices start using these address codes, there is going to be absolute uniformity in finding a location, particularly a street address. As a trend towards this move, universal addresses have started appearing on the iPhones. Checkout the following article for further details.

Universal Address And GPS Enhanced Google Maps For iPhones

A High-performance Antenna and Well Known GPS Chipset

2010-12-20T18:55:00.001+05:30

Antenova has gone and done something very innovative. They had a patented high efficiency antenna design. They have now combined an antenna with the SiRFstarIV GPS receiver chipset and made it into an one chip solution for a GPS receiver. That makes the M10372 very suitable for use in a multitude of embedded GPS, machine-to-machine (M2M) and mobile applications such as personal navigation devices (PNDs), automatic vehicle locators (AVLs), trackers and portable media players (PMPs).

Like the trend in every electronic design these days, it is a micro power device. It works on 1.8 v supply and would draw very low currents and the chipset can be set for further low power operations. It can connect to a host through UART, SPI and I2C interfaces.

Antenova Launches M10372 GPS RADIONOVA with CSR's SiRFstarIV Architecture

SkyTraq Introduces New GLONASS/GPS Receiver

2010-12-05T17:54:00.000+05:30

We have talked about how GLONASS, the Russian GPS network, was coming up. News comes now of a receiver that can handle signals from both GLONASS as well as GPS set of satellites. Would it not be really nice to have readings from these two sets of navigation satellites and get more precise driving directions, location information and everything else that you can derive from these positioning satellites! It will even be nicer to have even more accurate information when the Chinese set comes up! Watch this space.

Read the complete news and the specs via the link below.

SkyTraq Introduces New GLONASS/GPS Receiver

After bitter row, Google launches Street View in Germany

2010-11-04T20:03:00.002+05:30

Street view has always been controversial. People have been complaining about invasion of privacy almost from the start of the service. The debate is really about the trade off you need to make regarding a convenience for many people vs. a few that may misuse it. It will help you find an address very easily while a robber may plan his robbery using the same videos. By the logic of preventing access to detail for everybody is like saying binoculars should be banned as it can also let you peep into somebody's bedroom!

After bitter row, Google launches Street View in Germany

China Launches Sixth Satellite For Own GPS Network

2010-11-02T18:47:00.000+05:30

China's sixth satellite of its own global positioning network went up on Monday. The network will eventually contain a constellation of 35 satellites. Services will be extended to APAC by 2012 and globally by 2020.

China Launches Sixth Satellite For Own GPS Network

Task Force on Geospatial Technology Courses

2010-11-01T14:47:00.000+05:30

That geospatial technology is increasingly important for all the infrastructure and other activities of the emerging India is a give. India also has been a destination for geospatial off-shore work for quite a while. While that industry initially managed with CAD trained people, there has been a growing demand for trained personnel in geospatial tech. Looks like Indian Govt is waking up to the demand. A task force has been set up that is tasked with defining the training courses needed for developing personnel for appropriate use of the technologies involved. Hopefully, when they submit their reports by Mar next year, the task force would have come up with precise definitions of these required courses.

Satellite Images

2010-10-18T20:50:00.000+05:30

There is nothing new about satellite images! Getting sub meter resolution images of practically any area on the globe is so easy! When I first started to get involved with maps in the digital mapping services at Rolta, some 15 odd years ago, you had to depend on paper maps. These would have been actually surveyed, or checked on the ground, god knows how many years back! Updates were similarly few and far between. Survey of India was the sole authority that could be involved with the actual survey and mapping activities.

In this short one and a half decade, I can get a photograph of any place every few days where most buildings could be easily identified. Making an accurate map thus should be so easy. Map making has still not kept up, updates take time. All that information is actually going waste, we do not process them still! What would it take to get instant updated maps! car navigation needs them anyway, one could use updated data in handheld navigators. Technology seems to be running faster than their suitable utilization is done!

Mapping Satellite for China

2010-09-19T22:27:00.003+05:30

By third week of Aug China successfully launched a mapping satellite, named the "Mapping satellite-1". Except for a statement of purpose nothing much is known. The statement says the satellite will help in mapping, scientific research and economic development etc. Nothing about the sensors on board this remote sensing satellite is known.

Launch was by the Long March type rocket. This has been used by China since 1970, when the rocket launched the first ever satellite from China.

GPS Satellites Family getting New Members.

2010-09-19T22:22:00.000+05:30

The constellation of 31 GPS satellites are going to get a new set of satellites. Boeing has been building the GPS satellites for a long time. US army has just finished testing the first of the new generation satellites, designated GPS IIF, Boeing is going to build a dozen of these satellites for renewal of the constellation.

GPS IIF satellites are introducing some new features too. The military signal is made jam proof now. Greater accuracy is offered through integration of atomic clock technology. It also offers a new protected signal designated L5. The satellites launched in May completed the planned 3 months of testing and are said to have met all the design goals.

3 Satellites to Augment GLONASS

2010-09-09T23:24:00.000+05:30

3 satellites were launched on 2 Sep 2010 by Russia to augment GLONASS, their equivalent of GPS network of USA. There are 26 satellites in the GLONASS constellation in orbit currently. Of these two are reported to be non-operational. The GLONASS network needs at least 24 satellites to provide the location service worldwide. 18 satellites are required for service in the Russian territory. Russia is planning to start worldwide service before year end.

Boeing to Help Out ISRO in Manned Mission of 2016

2010-09-09T21:26:00.000+05:30

The Indian Space Research Organisation has been offered help by Boeing to help out in its manned mission due for 2016. Boeing has said it can collaborate with ISRO with their experience of manned flights over the years. The collaboration will include the design of a space vehicle for going up to the international space station and reentry into the earth. The reentry part is considered to be the most difficult part of the complete flight. This is one of the four areas where Boeing has offered to collaborate.

ISRO To Launch Two More Satellites By December

2010-09-07T21:24:00.001+05:30

The ISRO is planning two major launches. Both are with the high powered launchers of the organization, the PSLV and the GSLV rockets. Both launches are scheduled for the coming month of December.

The first mission would be a PSLV-C16 mission that places Resourcesat satellite and two other satellites in orbit. One is the 90 kg satellite by Singapore University and a 90 kg Youthsat. The Youthsat is designed by students of Russian and Indian universities. The next launch would be of GSLV-F06 launching the Indian Communication Satellite GSAT-5B. The GSLV-F 06 uses a Russian cryogenic stage.

GAGAN Launched

2010-08-24T15:52:00.001+05:30

A satellite based navigation system that would aid air traffic was launched on the 10th.GAGA or the GPS aided geo augmented navigation system will eventually have 24 satellites in the system. The system will be able to provide a unified coverage to air traffic from south Asia to Africa and mesh with the European and the Japanese systems. With the better accuracies available through the system, marine and transportation navigation as well as search & rescue operations, survey and mapping should work better.The real , direct benefit comes from the ability of aircraft to have precision guidance in their approach to runways in all weather conditions. The news item appeared here.

Chinese and Russian Global Positioning Networks being Augmented

2010-08-02T07:30:00.001+05:30

China launched its 5th satellite of their Beidou or Compass global positioning network this Sunday. The network is going to become a 35 satellite chain providing navigation services globally by 2020. They plan to start navigation, SMS and time information services locally by 2012. Looks like they are well into their plans. Look for more launches to come soon!

Meanwhile the GLONASS, or the Russian position system also is being augmented as they plan the launch of 3 additional satellites in early Sep.GLONASS has 22 satellites up in the sky already but only 16 of these are operational currently. The plan requires 18 operational satellites to start navigation services in Russia and eventually go up to 24 to start providing services globally. Looks like that may not be too far away.

References:
1.China Launches Fifth Satellite For Its Own Global Navigation Network
2.Russia To Launch 3 Glonass Satellites In September

GPS on Mangalore Buses

2010-07-07T13:12:00.001+05:30

Couple of posts ago, I talked about GPS on auto-rickshaws in Delhi. Comes news, same thing is going to happen with buses in Mangalore. The reason this is being promoted is the operators/owners will be able to track the plying of their vehicles. One of several service operators will be selected for doing the monitoring. Owners will be able to subscribe and get the necessary information. On the other hand the transport authorities will be able to monitor all the buses operating and exactly how they are doing it! they'll get the larger picture easily.

Crop Yield Growth in India Stagnating

2010-07-05T18:42:00.001+05:30

Apparently 25 years of remote sensing data analysis by NASA and research by NASA, Univ of Boston as well as Indian Institute of tropical meteorology confirms that this is so. Changes in the vegetation studied confirms this. In the water limited tropics (WLT), where India belongs, the growth of crop depends on the availability of water. This finding seems to confirm the earlier finding that water resources available are getting fully exploited and further growth will dry out the country as the resources are not being replenished enough.

Looks like, as long as the water resources looked more than required, the so called "green revolution" took off. Now that these resources are becoming the limitation the crop yield is tapering off. What's going to happen in not too distant future is a scary thought! Particularly since we have not achieved the zero population growth yet!

GPS on Auto Rickshaws in Delhi Soon!

2010-07-03T17:32:00.000+05:30

There's going to be GPS receivers installed in Delhi's autorickshaws soon. In fact an announcement dated 24 Jun says it would get done in about 6 month's time. What the administration hopes to do with it is to monitor the 55, 000 odd rickshaws on the Delhi's roads. There's going to be a call center too where you could book a rickshaw foe a trip.

The drivers of this form of transport are well known for taking their fares for a ride. Now with the actual track taken by the drivers ther will be records of what actual route has been taken by the drivers. So that, when there is a complaint, that can be backed up by data of whether or not the route taken was longer than it needed to be. It'll be great if this thing really gets implemented. It'll be a great help for the long suffering passengers. GPS/GIS would have come mainstream in India too.

Beidou Gets its Fourth Satellite

2010-06-07T14:52:00.001+05:30

The Beidou or the Compass is the Chinese GPS system and it is being set up in right earnest.The Beidou system got its 4th satellite of the constellation of satellites that you need for an operational GPS system. This was launched on the 3rd of this month. The system is eventually going to have 35 satellites and will provide navigation, time and short message services in the Asia and Pacific region by around 2012. It will start providing global navigation services by 2020.

The way the common users in the world are getting so highly dependent on the navigation system, the global positioning system, it will be good to have an alternative system to fall back on, in case of trouble in one.

Nice way of Integrating Congestion Data on Maps

2010-06-03T20:19:00.001+05:30

While reviewing GPS navigation units I found a different way of incorporating traffic data by one of the manufacturers. Typically this is done through traffic data receivers which receive congestion data and alert drivers accordingly in real time.

This manufacturer has taken a different approach. They keep collecting speed data on the roads and based on this data on any section they have possible speeds on road sections integrated with the map data.Even if one were to use current data that will be like long term averages. This should be useful in calculating optimum routes. But this won't help if there is some instantaneous pile up and complete traffic bottlenecks.

Ideal I guess would be to have such data so that the plan is optimum overall and then depend on instantaneous data if some correction is to be made.

GPS based Air Navigation System

2010-06-03T20:12:00.000+05:30

The federal aviation agency is getting the air traffic management systems, the ATC or the air traffic control, chnged to GPS based systems. here the planes will have a on board system that'll communicate the position data to the ground stations. That should simplify the system and make it more accurate. it is planned to be in position by 2020 but will actually start making an appearance by as early as 2015. Engadget reports.

Kolkata Infrastructure Projects, Underground Maps

2010-05-31T20:08:00.002+05:30

According to this report Kolkata infrastructure projects are suffering badly as underground utilities maps are not available. So the engineers responsible for these infrastructure projects have to depend or guesswork and risk damaging the underground facilities. Sometimes they have to do exploratory digging to find out how these are arranged below the road surface! That obviously has a time penalty.

The civic authorities admit the problem exists. GIS maps of the underground facilities back in 2006. Whatever happened to those fund! Was there any maps made at all!! Strange are the ways of the state of West Bengal.

Dynamic Maps, Automatic Maps

2010-05-31T20:07:00.000+05:30

I have often talked about how map updates are a major problem. Recent data suggests that the map updates released by the various GPS navigator manufacturers are about every two years. In the meantime, it is possible that your GPS navigator will drive you into a lake as the day to day changes are not taken into account.

Some manufacturers no have a forum through which one can intimate others about changes on the roads. However, this kind of crowd sourcing of data is not really all that dependable if the Wikipedia experience is anything to go by. While some articles are remarkable, others are not so dependable.

I just came across a paper that takes a nice way of updating maps. It takes real time GPS tracks from vehicles traveling on a road. It derives the road width, direction etc from that data and basically maps the road. By assigning a weightage to older tracks, where the road may be changing, it is able to show changes in the map. So if there is actually a change in the lay of the road over a while the old version will disappear from the map altogether! That's like a dynamic map, showing you the roads even as they are changing. The whole process is automatic too. The approach is really interesting!

Automated Mapping and Updating CAD Files

2010-05-17T22:45:00.000+05:30

When we have such high resolution satellite images so frequently, it'd be a shame if we cannot utilize the data to It is said, it takes an average of 2 years to release updated maps. During this period it remains a distinct possibility that you may drive into a lake!

At one level automatic map making from satellite images should be very easy. All it should take are nice and clean edge detection algorithms. All we need to do is detect the building boundaries and the road boundaries to be able to create navigable road maps. Any problems that exist towards this needs to be resolved. Once we are able to generate updated maps, the problem is of updating the maps already in the field.

Updating on a large scale happens on many fronts today. For example, Microsoft updates its OS, Anti virus people update their data bases, set top box software gets updated all the time. So finding a way to do the updates should not be a problem at all. Updating CAD drawings, the maps, could be another problem to solve. Discarding the current map and downloading and using the more recent one would be simple but bandwidth intensive. It will also call for user intervention which is not very desirable. The updates should happen automatically without any active intervention by the user.

Getting the drawings updated, we may need to develop a description of changes to be done and create capability locally, all the navigation devices have processing power, to make changes to the drawings based on these descriptions!

Automatic map Generation

2010-05-12T12:28:00.001+05:30

We get high resolution satellite images of any spot every few days. On the other hand the maps that are used for navigation gets updated on nearly a two year cycle. It would be really nice if we could generate maps automatically from the sat images and then update the devices with the change. The updates could be in the style anti virus or OS software gets updated automatically. That probably could be arranged if update data is available. Though the problem of updating CAD files, that the maps really are, may not be as simple. But this would certainly be possible.

The real problem is generating maps automatically. Though I have been with the map making industry for couple of decades and such a tool would have helped immensely, there is nothing available still that produces acceptable results. Sat image to maps will necessarily have to be navigation maps. Sat images do not have height data unless, specifically stereoscopic sat images are used. Though edge enhancement should be the main tool, there are a lot of problems still. What heuristics to use in case of ambiguity is a major issue. Other problem would be how to automatically integrate identification data!

iPhone App turns it into a GPS Navigator!

2010-05-05T22:11:00.000+05:30

Viewranger GPS software is now available from Augmentra in the form of an application for the iPhone. This is going to be available from the iTunes app store. The Viewranger is an off road GPS application that helps people looking to optimise their time outdoors. It is already a favourite of walkers, cyclists, and other outdoors enthusiasts. The application is backed by quality maps for something like 13 countries including USA, UK, Germany and so on. Users are able to create tracks for sharing with others.

This , of course, is of interest that the favourite device can now play the role of another interesting device. But, what is really interesting is that how applications are getting created that turns any device capable of computing to a regular computing device. This is an example of smart-phones turning into application processors. What is even more interesting is to determine where exactly this evolution is going. This is one stream where smart phones, that have powerful processing on-board, is turning into an personal computing avatar. We have another avatar, the tablets, creeping into the general purpose computing space. Will the tablets become the preferred device we all carry around or will the smart phones get even smarter and become the preferred computing device that also lets us stay in touch through the phone! This certainly is interesting times!!

Resources:

VIEWRANGER GPS NOW LIVE ON iPhone

Viewranger GPS

Augmentra

Not Micro, Not Nano but Pico satellite!!

2010-04-29T22:08:00.000+05:30

The smallest satellite; 10 cm x 10 cm x 13.5 cm is scheduled to go up with the PSLV launch scheduled for May 9. The StudSat is designed by NMIT of Bangalore. It is destined for a 700 km, sun synchronous orbit and a mission life of 6 months to a couple of years. High resolution photographic data acquisition is the stated mission for the satellite.

What is remarkable is that this is designed by students of engineering colleges in Bangalore and Hyderabad. I really hope, unlike the GSLV mission earlier, this PSLV actually goes up and deploys the satellite successfully.

GPS Navigation & Real-time Road Traffic Information

2010-04-28T11:14:00.000+05:30

GPS navigation and the traffic information must work together. Without the traffic information whatever shortest route driving directions your smart navigator might provide is no good if those directions lead you to a bumper to bumper situation. Hence you see this scramble to provide traffic information on GPS devices. One such example is the Tom Tom Go Live 1000 that is coming out now for distribution in Europe. Tom Tom will provide a traffic information service to make things easy for you. the service will provide, traffic, weather and fuel availability information over 33 countries of Europe. For a $67 fee over a year, this should be a good deal for you on any road trip on the continent!

Yesterday was Earth Day!

2010-04-23T10:26:00.000+05:30

Apr 22 has come to be celebrated as the earth day now. GISUser.com an influential magazine in GIS and LBS
had this remarkable picture in a blog post by the editor. I agree with him, it is good to remember how beautiful our planet looks. Until recently we did not have any means of knowing how exactly our planet really looks. It is beautiful! I remember when this famous picture, I reproduce below, was published. It was one of those breath stopping moments. It looked so beautiful! read the background story here.

GAGAN did not Go!

2010-04-18T11:52:00.002+05:30

As I had said in my post on the 14th the first satellite of the GAGAN, the satellite based augmentation system for GPS was ready to go! Unfortunately the launch of the GSLV-D3 rocket fails after a while after it was launched. Space officials are saying that the GSLV will be launched again within a year. i guess, GAGAn also get delayed by the same amount unless they arrange to launch it on some other vehicle!

Location based Advertising

2010-04-15T07:38:00.000+05:30

Location based advertising is about advertising products and services when the consumer is in the locality of the provider. Navteq LocationPoint is a service that serves ads to mobile devices when the user is in the locality. McDonald's adopted this service for their 82 outlets in Finland. Ads are served when a potential consumer is in the vicinity of one of their restaurants. If the user clicks through then "drive to" or "walk to" navigation assistance is provided. A 1 Euro cheeseburger ad was served through this service.

The results so far says, 7% of people viewing the ad clicks through and 39% of them actually wanted to get to the nearest restaurant. That rate is pretty high since these are so targeted ads. Indication of things to come!

RESOURCES
The news
Navteq
e

GAGAN is ready to go!

2010-04-14T07:38:00.000+05:30

The first satellite of India's own GPS system is going up on Apr 15. Three more satellites are going to be launched soon to get the GPS Aided Geo Augmented Navigation System. It is a satellite based augmentation system that will improve the positional accuracy of GPS signals. It is expected to have an accuracy of 7.5 meters on the ground. The system is supposed to become operational by 2014 and should help better navigation in the India air space. The system may eventually become a complete GPS system.

Tallest Building in Riyadh, from the Sky!

2010-04-09T17:52:00.000+05:30

This is amazing! This is how the Kingdom Centre, also called Burj Al-Mamlaka, a supertall skyscraper located in the city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia looks in satellite images of the current generation. it looks as detailed as aerial pictures!! . It is the tallest skyscraper in Saudi Arabia and the 45th tallest building in the world with a height of 311 m (1,020 ft). Besides a shopping mall, the Centre includes the Four Seasons Hotel Riyadh and state-of-the-art apartments. The 100 meter long skybridge atop the skyscraper, at a height of 297 meters, contains a public observation deck and a view of the entire city of Riyadh. I keep being reminded of Alvin Tofffler's Future Shock! How technology is changing and fast!

Crowd sourcing in GIS- Is it really effective!!

2010-03-19T16:13:00.000+05:30

I am really ambivalent towards it. There is a lot of buzz going round about crowd sourcing of map data. usually it takes a lot of time to get a update done on a specific map. Usually professionals would have to create such an update from satellite images, or aerial photos or actual survey by professionals on the ground. So it is tempting if someone actually using that area of the map feeding an update.

If one were to look at the Wikipedia, the earliest manifestation of crowd knowledge, the ambivalence towards effectiveness is bound to grow. While some coverage is really good and can compete with the best encyclopedias, much of it is very simply useless. Where people depend on such maps to navigate to a destination and not land in a lake, that kind of uneven quality can be very problematic. In general the information content on the net, contributed by everybody and his brother who has discovered that the Internet is for information really sucks. It has gotten so bad that you got to know something about the topic you are searching for, just to separate the garbage from good information!! What would happen with map information would be interesting to see!!

GeoDesign-Integrating GIS into Design

2010-02-27T12:04:00.000+05:30

That integration of GIS/geography into design of our environment is useful is increasingly being recognized. This has led to the creation of a new discipline and as with any recognized technology, this has its own conference now. Geo Design has the following definition

What is GeoDesign?
Geodesign is a set of techniques and enabling technologies for planning built and natural environments in an integrated process, including project conceptualization, analysis, design specification, stakeholder participation and collaboration, design creation, simulation, and evaluation (among other stages). "Geodesign is a design and planning method which tightly couples the creation of design proposals with impact simulations informed by geographic contexts." [1] Nascent geodesign technology extends geographic information systems so that in addition to analyzing existing environments and geodata, users can synthesize new environments and modify geodata.
1. Flaxman, Michael. Geodesign: Fundamental Principles and Routes Forward. Talk at GeoDesign Summit 2010
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Learn more about GeoDesign on Wikipedia.

The latest conference, the very first took place in California recently.

It'd be really interesting to follow the developments here.

GIS Services on Smartphones

2010-02-17T23:29:00.000+05:30

GIS applications are arriving everywhere. Smartphones are truly powerful devices. Evidence to that is very clear to see. Look at the applications stores coming up around these smartphones. What started as a phenomenon with the iPhone now is an essential part of more significant smartphones. The latest is the Freeance applications on the Balckberry. This Freeance application provides access to ArcGIS and gives the user a lot of analysis power. Would smartphones become a convenient computing device! Will it win over netbooks! Who knows!! But, it'd be reall interesting to see what is the final form of the ONE device we carry around with us!

Near Me Now - By Google

2010-01-18T20:05:00.001+05:30

That's a new location based service released by Google recently. This is for the US for now. What happens is this service gives you the capability to find our what interesting things are available near the place you are at presently. The service operates with iPhone and Android based phones right now and the things you can find out comes in just five categories for now. These are restaurants, coffee shops, bars, ATMs and banks. This will certainly expand as time goes. This is glimpse of an interesting service. Google will have to locate you first and then it can list out what's available near you. There is an option of browse more categories and you are able to search local shopping centers, hotels, movie theaters and gas stations. It is possible to access restaurant reviews, working hors of establishments etc.

There is a "explore right here" feature which is interesting. Google would then produce the most popular locations around the place you are at. Read a detailed report here.

Mumbai Corporate Body to Map Underground Utilities

2010-01-15T16:52:00.003+05:30

Mumbai corporate body is going to map all the underground utilities on a base map. The base map is already set up.The base map has 3D images and low angle images of surface structures. Water, electricity, sewage and storm water drainage are the facilities to be mapped. This should prevent the damage to these facilities when any agency digs into the innards for some reason. The plan is to collect information about facilities owned by the civic body and the information will be integrated as images on the base map.

What sets me thinking though is this. The underground pipelines and facilities are in such a jumble that to avoid damaging these, needs highly accurate dimensions of the facilities and spaces between them. Deriving such accurate information may not be very easy. Will the project be able to capture this kind of accurate information? Knowing how these civic bodies work I am not sure the project could deliver what is required. Besides, a project for organizing these facilities underground is a crying need. Read details here.

Mash up of Twitter and Location data

2010-01-04T21:43:00.003+05:30

Twitter revealed expanded development support for location based developers in Aug 09. Now comes the news of their acquiring Mixer Labs. They are the people who developed the GeoAPI. What this is going t do to location based applications are illustrated at the Twitter blog here. To quote,

"The Mixer Labs crew has been working on harnessing the power of local information for a couple years and just recently launched GeoAPI, a comprehensive service for helping developers build geolocation-aware applications. As of today, they're part of Twitter and will be working to combine the contextual relevance of location to tweets. We want to know What's happening?, and more precisely, Where is it happening? As a dramatic example, twittering "Earthquake!" alone is not as informative as "Earthquake!" coupled with your current location.

We will be looking at how to integrate the work Mixer Labs has done with the Twitter API in useful ways that give developers behind geo-enabled apps like Birdfeed, SeesmicWeb, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twidroid, Twittelator Pro and others powerful new possibilities."

Besides the top 10 applications I referred to yesterday, we could be looking at an explosion of such location aware applications in the near future.

Social Media, Mobile Phones, GIS

2010-01-04T08:36:00.003+05:30

So what do tie all these together and provide something useful! There are a host of applications coming up that provide location information via, typically, the GPS coordinates from the mobile devices to social media posts. You get the additional value of the location information and it is interesting how applications are using that.

What seems to be happening is you get to see the location information to tweets or the writing on the facebook wall or simply an application for finding out who's where. As a logical extension many apps provide a means of recording a trip. A business trip, holiday, trek, mountain bike trip or whatever. Depending on the application, not only you can record waypoints but related data, photos, videos etc. You can then share them to others of course in the spirit of social media. Brightkite, Foursquare, Schmap GeoTweeter, Loopt, Dopplr, Flook, GoWalla, Waze, iMapMyrun, EverLater are the top 10 applications reviewed in GISUser. This article is a review of such applications.

Handheld GPS products

2009-11-21T21:30:00.002+05:30

Handheld GPS products have become very popular. They now have a large screes in the range of 3.5 to 4.3 inches. Quite often it is a touch screen. Rest of the functionalities are like what you would find in products targeted as car navigation systems.

I can then attach it to my windshield or on the dashboard and navigate in my car. Having reached the destination, I simply pull it out and carry it with me and let it become the true handheld. If the device is actually a smartphone, then I'll pull it out anyway. This then fulfills two of my immediate needs. I navigate safely and have my communication link with rest of the world with me. Then, as my pet dream, if the gadget can also act as a "Lonely Planet" travel guide then I have just about everything I need to travel somewhere.

Only problem is to have accurate and current maps availably on that dinky thing. According to studies that may be couple of years outdated!

Peters Maps

2009-11-07T07:45:00.002+05:30

We are so used to the maps in Mercator projection that we do not even question if the land areas are represented realistically. Arno Peters tried to bring a fresh angle to the issue. he says that the Mercator is west centric and thus tend to show European areas comaparatively larger that say Africa or the regions in Asia.

He created a projection that is more equitable, some distortion is bound to creep in any projection, and has published maps through this ODT Map company.

The web site of the ODT maps do not have enough samples/examples though. That would be interesting and help illustrate the point. It is really interesting to know that somebody actually addressed this issue. Some disparities in the Mercator world view is really annoying.

Buying a Computer is no more Difficult than Buying a Pair of Shoes!

2009-11-03T21:40:00.003+05:30

Who's better qualified to select a computer to use with the Pro/ENGINEER! Guys from the computer department or the mechanical engineering people who would use it! According to an earlier diktat the computer guys were required to look at all computer purchases. Users got comfortable with that arrangement. Besides, it is like the arranged marriages in our country. If something goes wrong, you could always blame the parents!

But truly speaking, if you buy a good brand, it is no more difficult than buying a pair of shoes! Users should be aware of how much memory he is going to need or the HDD space required. If users are lazy and do not want to do even that, then they need to be forced anyway! Rather than being the purchase department of the organization the computer department get to utilize their time on much better functions.

Is Crowd sourcing Good!

2009-10-20T11:55:00.003+05:30

Google has added crowd sourcing to its maps database to help correct take care of changes that would have happened after the maps were updated last. It should cover any missed data too. Google also has people sending feedbacks on traffic conditions.

Crowd sourcing is a tricky thing! The most famous example, the Wikipedia leaves much to be desired on many topics. Content is non-uniform as authors cover topics in their own ways. Many a times you are not sure of the authoritativeness of information. The depth of coverage may not be adequate.

So what does one do! This is really a trade off between getting the data updated reasonably or wait for the update cycle, which is about 2 year, and many details may still get missed. Will this data update issue ever get resolved satisfactorily!

Oceansat Operating Fine

2009-10-15T10:34:00.003+05:30

ISRO, the Indian Space agency reported that the Oceansat-2 launched on Se 23 has started beaming good quality images. It is aimed at monitoring sea surface wind speed and direction.It has Ocean Colour Monitor (OCM), the Scatterometer and the Radio Occultation Sounder for atmospheric studies. All three sensors are reportedly operating well. The OCM payload, a multi-spectral imaging radiometer monitors chlorophyll concentration and would help locate potential fishery zones, sea-state forecasting and climate studies. The Ku band scatterometer facilitates retrieval of sea-surface wind speed and direction, and monitoring polar sea-ice.The radio occultation sounder measures parameters pertaining to lower atmosphere and ionosphere.

Mobile Navigation Users 28 million today, 160 million in 2015

2009-10-14T10:18:00.002+05:30

Berg Insight in a forecast on 7 Oct 2009 said 28 million people were using navigation aids via mobile by first half of this year. This is the segment that were downloading navigation maps and turn by turn driving instructions. According to their analysis this is going to grow at a CAGR of 33.7% and hit 160 million by 2015. Increasing number of handsets have GPS on them and service providers are supplying applications that enable navigation.

That mobile usage is going to grow is a given. But the highest growths are at China and India. I am not sure about China but state of maps and their availability in electronic versions leaves much to be desired. Without them, navigation would be difficult. That is certainly one of the most important applications for hand-held devices. What that will do to the advancement of navigation applications is not clear. The study seems to have taken into account countries like America, countries in Europe and Japan etc.

That mobile usage will grow is a given

CAD vs. Gaming Graphics Handling

2009-10-13T10:50:00.002+05:30

I had a hard time convincing an editor, of an article I was writing then, that the graphics card required for CAD need different optimization that a card handling games. Basically the card for CAD has to have a capability to render very complex models of not only individual parts but also a sub-assembly. The model typically would have a huge number of vertices and shading would be complex. Ideal would be a real time capability in rendering so that one can turn the model around and be able to visualize as the model turns/rotates. But that is not as crucial. It is good to have.

On the other hand short turn around, real-tine rendering is crucial for gaming. It has not only to render one character but a whole scene, definitely in real time. The elements in the scene are far simpler that a CAD model. Thus the computing load is easier compared to CAD modelling and rendering.

Navigation with Stale Data

2009-09-09T20:23:00.002+05:30

With car navigators you can get up to the minute traffic information. Yet, you can actually drive into a lake. This is because the maps you use are never very current. If you have to keep up with the changes, get the changes verified by professional and upgrade your maps it takes quite a while. Current wisdom is that it takes at least two years to get an updated map published and into the hands of users. So, even if you have bought the latest map for your navigator, it has information that is two year old!!!!

Crowd sourcing of the change information has been suggested as a solution. But, that too does not really work. If wijkipedia is an example, there can be quite a few problems. Until the time the whole process of high quality information to map updation could be automated, this kind of problem is bound to remain. For example am automatic raster to vector solution could ease the map making quite a bit. If say satellite images, as accurate as sub meter resolution that is available today, can be turned into vector maps instantly; one could have grip on this problem. Otherwise the accurate data will keep piling up and beyond a point one woulf give up on clearing this data pile up.

Bhuvan- Our own Digital Globe

2009-08-18T08:16:00.004+05:30

The Indian Space Research Organization have launched our own version of the 3D world like the Digital Globe and other 3D staellite data portals. The stated purpose is "Geoportal of Indian Space Research Organisation showcasing Indian Imaging Capabilities in Multi-sensor, Multi-platform and Multi-temporal domain. The portal gives a gateway to explore and discover virtual earth in 3D space with specific emphasis on Indian region."

ISRO has done a lot of work in using remotely sensed data and this is another stepin that direction. If the emphasis is really on the Indian region and one could get more and more land use and other data from it, it could prove to be very useful indeed. Without this value add however, it would not make sense in creating yet another source beyond Google or the Microsoft site where you can get data at sub-meter resolution.

Indian Image Processing & GIS software

2009-07-31T11:40:00.002+05:30

Strangely, even though we have launched several generations of satellites that acquire earth imagery, we did not have software that could process these images. The images were quite good, ISRO earned quite a bit of money out of them. IRS-C seems to have beenthe most popular so far.

Now comes this software developed in collaboration with ISRO. It has feature so image processing and GIS packages in it. This should be able to provide researchers, educationists a low cost option of doing image processing and GIS as well as teach them to a lot of people.

Affordable CAD Tools

2009-07-20T14:45:00.002+05:30

I have been doing reviews for one download center that lets you download freeware and shareware tools. There are all kinds of tools that you can get it for free and for a try before you buy period. When you deside to buy theser applications theyare very affordable. During part of my working life I have managed off-shore drawing offices. These were for mapmaking as wll as for regular drawing. One fact that was a given was theat the industry standard tools were quite costly. AutoCAD and Microstation were not that easily afordable. We used to work in shift to be ablke to utilize these tools for more than eight hours a day!

This shareware space is now full of compatible software that can work with the drawing formats natively. They even offer similar interface so that there is not much learning involved, if you do decide to switch over. Though there can never be 100% compatibility, these are useable alternatives. There are quite a few of these. Though not many for microstation, AutoCAD clones are quite easily affordable. A good thing too!

Geospatial Technology Report, 2009 by GITA

2009-07-01T22:26:00.003+05:30

What used to be know as AM/FM International is now known as the GITA or the geospatial information & technology association. I must have attended the my first AM FM International expo and symposium back in 1996, somewhere in Mar/Apr. James Black was our consultant and it was he who introduced to Bob or Robert Samborski. We met Bob in his office sometime too.

Bob has been associated with this organization ecven then. His report is kind of the state of the art of geospatial technology. The 2009 report was published recently. It reports on GIS projects being implemented in some more than 500 organizations. That is a 9% increase over the organizations of last report. This report aims to indicate the complexity, direction and completeness of GIS projects.

Industry verticals considered are electric, gas, water, pipeline and telecom utilities and the public sector. Top 10 technologies used in each segment and the landbase accuracy, sophistication, maintenance cycles,application usage, interfaces are the parameters considerd. Bob is quoted in the release to be saying "In many ways, we see this Report as the answer to a call for help for our infrastructure. These are real application examples from electric utilities, communications companies, public sector agencies – just to name a few – that are putting geospatial technologies to work to help own, operate, maintain and protect the infrastructure,"

WBUT, GIS and Remote Sensing

2009-06-22T21:04:00.003+05:30

It was gladdening to see GIS and remote sensing has been added to the technical curriculum of all engineering colleges in West bengal, those goverened by the WB technical university. GIS is everywhere and it is time that is recognized and a regular course deals with that. Students at bachelor level will get a grounding on GIS and remote sensing in these specific engineering disciplines.

The editor of GIS Development mourns the difficulty part of it. The lack of trained facultty members to deal with the subjects effectively. While that is true today, hopefully, it'll get resolved over time. Though it is part of the general problem of not enough faculty members in most of the disciplnes in engineering colleges. This is particularly acute for the new fangled disciplines like CSE and IT etc. that include the GIS & remote sensing speciallizations.

Multiple Fleet Management

2009-06-16T11:45:00.003+05:30

Veicle fleet management via GPS is old hat. But here comes a software that can manage multiple fleets. CompassCom Software Corp has announced on 9 Jun, a solution at the 2009 Govt Fleet Expo & Conference at Denver. The solution can manage more than 100,000 mobile assets, enabling customers to get the right resource to the right place at the right time. This works with GIS/Mapping software from ESRI. According to their news release "CompassLDE is a universal mobile resource management server receives wireless GPS-based location and status

information from vehicles in multiple fleets over different communications networks simultaneously. Compatible with CompassTrac ( Compass Trac allows data to be received at a mobile command center, such as the commander of a disaster management team) and ESRI-based GIS software, CompassLDE serves location-based data in real time via the Internet or intranet for display on computer-aided dispatch, mobile data terminals or third party software.

Location based features on the New iPhone 3G S

2009-06-11T11:45:00.003+05:30

There's a built in digital compass. It'll show you which way you are moving and it'll keep showing you the changing directions as you travel. You can orient yourself with the true or the magnetic North and get a GPS reading of your position. The compass is also integrated with Maps. So that when you consult a map, it'll orient toward the direction you are facing automatically.

You have the connection to the app store, of course. The stiore provides you a new Maps API and you can innovate apps to your heart's content. The store has 50,000 applications and something something like 1,000 API's being available with the iPhone SDK.

Handy GPS devices

2009-06-02T21:46:00.007+05:30

GPS has definitiely gone mainstream! I have been mentioning this for sometime. But this is a clear indication that they have. I saw some recommendations of GPS devices as Fathers' day gift. Some sample pictures of such devices indicated below. For details look up the manufacturer's site. These are in no particular oredr of capability or any other recommendation. Just that they very representative sample of what's available in the market today and at affordable range of prices.

ikeGPS an Interesting Combo Instrument

2009-05-06T08:09:00.004+05:30

That's a terrific combination instrument you can se there in the picture. The picture is from ikeGPS website and contains a quote from GPS World, which I agree with completely of course. It is a laser rangefiner, a digital camera and a GPS of course. It also has a compass and an inclinometer and a sound recorder. Can take in a storage card is WiFi and Bluetooth enabled. It comes in four different models and the rangefinder covers 100, 300, 1000 and 1000m. Camera resolution varies from 1.3 MP to 3.2 MP. It is like a one instrument toolkit for survey work. If you have a need, you should lookup the GPS World review. It is built by SurveyLab of New Zealand.

RISAT-2, Remote Sensing or a Spy Satellite

2009-04-23T23:25:00.004+05:30

NDTV news item calls it a spy satellite. many people would hesitate to call it that. they would much rather prefer the euphemism "remote sensing". Being a synthetic aperture radar sensor based imaging satellite it gives ISRO the capacity to do all weather imaging. There are obvious intelligence/security application. Cloud cover cannot stop an area being photographed by this toy!

remote sensing has always been dual use technology. i still remember the headlines about the first Indian remote snesing satellites being called India's spy satellite. well it was that but also helped find out what's on the ground.ISRO earbned a lot of money by selling data products from the IRS series satellites. In fact IRS-C data products were quite popular at one time.

It is not clear if Defence ministry will own the data. There has been talk of such satellites for a long time. May be they finally have a satellite of their own now. There was another mini satellite that was launched and it is interesting. It is the ANUSAT created by the Anna University to experiment with store and forward data technology.

CAD Converters

2009-04-12T11:12:00.004+05:30

I have been doing shareware reviews for more than a year at a popular site, on behalf of the editors. One section that is very active is that of converters that do all kinds of conversions but does not need the main platform. AutoCAD related conversions sees a lot of activity in terms of new submissions every so often usually this is very expensive. Conversions that are available are conversions between DWG and DXF file formats, conversions between several release of AutoCAD and corresponding chnges in these file formats and conversion of these files into PDF documents are the active areas.

I can imagine these software pieces fulfillig a need in design shops where the conversions between the DWG and the DXF and the several release versions are required quite so often. Instead of installing a full-fledged seat of AutoCAD at stations that do these conversions, one can get away with this mus more cost-effective solutions. The PDF converters & viewers can be used by all your collaborators and suppliers, who do need to look at the drawing but do not need to modify anything. They can simply get away by installing these viewers and at the generation side one can use a cheap seat to converts drawings to PDF. Usually these are batch converters, fitting easily in a production mode easily.

Real CAD on the Cloud!

2009-04-01T21:15:00.003+05:30

Just two days back I was thinking aloud on my blog about how nice it'd be if CAD software was available on a subscription basis. Trough an Anonymous comment I came to know about an actual product that's on the cloud already! In fact it is version 2.0 now. My anonymous friend suggested I take a look at www.siteops.com . So I hopped over and true enough Siteops design SP is offered on subscription basis.

It can use GIS maps, backdrop imagery etc to evaluate siting of a building and estimates of developing the land for the project planned. It will let you try alternatives too. Thus in a matter of few hours you know if a site is good for the project or which out of a few potential sites is the best choice for the project. Looks like these kind of evaluations used to take months!

At $1000 per acre it is much better choice than actually buying the CAD software. It is not just the upfront cost. You'll possible need to enhance your servers, may be hire a specialist to manage and maintain it and then worry about update/upgrades and so on. This one subscription takes care of everything for you. You need a PC with a browser and access the resources on the net.

I am not really qualified to evaluate how well the software does its job. But just the advantages I talked about above are sure issues for you to g8ive this a serious consideration. There's one issue many are worried about SaaS in general. It is how private is your data that you give out to somebody out there! I guess if a private builder can build the latest fighter aircrafts, the missiles that guard your country then there are ways to ensuring that your data stays private!

CAD Software on the Cloud/SaaS

2009-03-30T21:11:00.002+05:30

CAD software, be it mechanical, Electrical or whatever are very espensive. One sure indication is how many free or low cost viewer for the same software is floating around in the freeware/shareware world so that you do not need the expensive main software. That does not work very well always. For mechanical CAD software that works well. That's because there are many people in the product life cycle chain. Not so for ECAD though.

Question is why are they so expensive? Is it because of the high development cost and not a very large base to recover from?

This class of software will be ideal candidates for subscription based availability. Call it located on the cloud or software as a service but at let some one come out and actually host such software and offer it for use. Is anyone listening!!!

Vancouver, BC, Canada Third Digital City

2009-03-23T23:27:00.004+05:30

Town planners need a 3D model that not only has a map base but details of buildings and other infrastructure too. You can then use this model to simultae future scenarios and plan the future better. To quote from the press release of 18 th Mar 2009; "a Digital City provides a way for the public, city government, construction and business communities to combine mapping, building, civil engineering, and utility information into an accurate city model that can be used to simulate the future impact of decisions at a city-wide scale". That is the basis of AutoDesk's Digital City initiative. Vancover comes after Salzburg, Austria and Incheon, S Korea.

"Urban design at a city-wide scale is the next great design challenge. Our Digital City technology provides cities like Vancouver with a comprehensive approach to create a sustainable city that balances economic and engineering demands with environmental and social needs," said Jay Bhatt, senior vice president, AEC solutions, Autodesk. "Autodesk is uniquely positioned to help cities meet and overcome the challenges to visualize and simulate their future growth. While Salzburg plans to use Digital Cities technology for helping manage an aged and prized infrastructure and the city of Incheon will focus on how to build -- from the ground up -- a city of the future, the City of Vancouver will use Autodesk technology to extend its leadership role as one of the most liveable and progressive cities in the world."

Three different ways of using the same tools provided by AutoDesk. While it is easy to guess these are going to be useful tools, it is difficult to say hoe useful! We'll be watching!

GeoEye Images on Google Earth

2009-03-21T10:03:00.005+05:30

GeoEye images are at 50 cm resolution. They are amazing! Just look at one of the samples that has appeared on Google already. Soon you should be getting these images instead of the Ikonos based 1 meter resolution picyures that you currently get. You can identify the pyramid in black and white on the right of the image. Now you would not only be able to map your house but the sub compact parked in the front porch too!

Soil Mapping, Ground Water Too!

2009-03-17T23:21:00.004+05:30

University of Sydney announced recently(13 Mar 2009) it has taken up a project to create a soil map of the globe with details at every 100 meters. This'll be on the scale of Google Earth and you can look at the soil type map of ice-free landmass. This is going to be made avaialble over the next five years. This'll be a huge additional tool resorce scientists can put to effective use.

Meanwhile Reuters announce in a news item on 10 Mar 2009 that Bhuvan is being launched that'll provide soil type, landuse and groundwater data. Bhuvan is India's own version of the Google Earth. Except that the resoulution is going to be 2.5 m compared to 1 m or sub-meter resolution of Google earth.

Yet, somehow, there seems to be a lot of security concern. Particularly after the Mumbai terror attacks everybody is becoming a little paranoid. When Google Earth level of details are available why the 2.5 m resolution of satellite images should worry any one? My only worry is the project should not get derailed because of these misplaced concerns!

Tom Clancey, H.A. W. X, Geoeye Ikonos

2009-03-12T19:39:00.002+05:30

What's the unifying thread in all that. They look like as diverse as so called chalk & cheese. But not really! I have been discussing here how GIS is getting mainstream more and more. It can't get any closer than this! HAWX is a realistic jet fight game over real world locations. And those locations are 3D modeled from the Geo Eye's Ikonos satellite imagery. Ikonos is able to resolve things that are 16 inches in length on the ground.

If you are not in a aggressive mood particularly, you could take look at any location you like in 3 dimensions and explore a little.

Google Latitude

2009-02-10T10:49:00.002+05:30

Would'nt it be nice to where you kids are, or if your wife is on her way back from work! Google has launched a service a few days back called latitude that lets you do that with anyone that is carrying a mobile phone. The person whom you want to track must permit you to do so. Even when he permits you to track him, he can still say he is in Atarctica or some such place. So privacy invasion can be prevented while allowing the situations where it is good to know where everybody is!

The services uses A-GPS, GPS and acess points of WiFi to triangulate and locate you fairly closely. All such known APs are in the database as are the mobile tower locations that are used for the assisted GPS technology to locate you inside a building where GPS does not work so well. GPS does not work in the urban canyons either.

World GPS market report

2009-01-28T11:38:00.004+05:30

The World GPS market report was released recently. The report is titled "World GPS Market Forecast To 2012" and was released on 12th January. This is a market study across the world and looks at in-vehicle navigation, mapping/survey, machine control and other areas in the Asian, European and American markets.

Key findings(According to the press release) of the report are as follows. My comments are in brackets.

Currently, Japan has the highest in-vehicle navigation system penetration followed by North American and European countries. (really not very surprising, considering Japaneses consumers are always and have been early adopters).
The 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and Shanghai World Expo in 2010 are expected to trigger an explosion in the commercial telematics market in China. (This is yet to be seen)
With the rapid development of GPS market in countries like China and India, majority of navigation systems are anticipated to be shipped in Asia-Pacific by 2012. (This is really interesting. Same thing happened with mobile phones).
Taiwan has emerged as a manufacturing destination for GPS products on the global map, attracting major players to set up their production facilities in the country.( Not very surprising, as the infrastructure for sophisticated electronics manufacture already exists ther already).
With the growing demand for navigational services, the global market for Location Based Services (LBS) is likely to grow at a CAGR of more than 104%. ( That is a interesting growth rate alright!).
As of 2007, PNDs dominated the GPS device market with more than 90% market share. However, this share is expected to get disturbed by the availability of GPS-enabled handsets that will account for an estimated 78% market share by 2012 end. ( The fact that mobile handsets are everywhere and many useful applications have already come out that makes handsets and GPS a good fit, this certainly is a likely out come).
Opportunities remain untapped for various vertical segments of GPS market, like in new advanced access devices, chipset availability, and PND market.(Let's wait and see what else comes out of this churning!).

On Our Way To The Moon

2008-09-23T21:47:00.001+05:30

Looks like our own lunar mission Chandrayan-1 is on course. It is all set to move to the launch pad at Shriharikota by the month end. 5 of our own experiments and six from other nations have been integrated and have gone through some crucial tests. That include temparature extremes and temarature shosk. Aucoustic & other shock and vibration tests are yet to be completed but are expected to be completed very soon.

Our space technology has obviously come a long way. The launch vehicle PSLV took a long time in developing. There were quite a few failures on the way, yet that has turned into a cash cow. We are able to launch satellites for others. There were ten of them launched in one sortie sometime back.

Satellite images produced by our satellites are coveted by the iamgery market. So this technology is something we have a good grip on. I wish we had such a grip on power generation too. Things would have moved so much faster!

GAGAN Makes the Skies Safe!

2008-09-15T20:37:00.000+05:30

Very few airports in India have the ILS systems. Aircraft flights across the country is growing quickly as are the flight going across this country. Accurate navigation, over the water bodies is a particular need too. GPS aided Geo augmented Navigation system being launched is aimed at providing this accurate navigation to all these aircraft routes. The system should be operational by 2011 year. ISRO and Airports authority is jointly developing this and is expected to provide ILS like precision in airports where such systems are not available. Navigation guidance over the large water areas are not possible by any ground based systems whereas this system can provide that easily.

GeoEye-1 Launched!

2008-09-08T16:50:00.000+05:30

GeoEye-1 satellite was launched on the 6th Sep. Claimed to be source of best resolution images these satellites will capture images, monochrome, at ).41 m or 16 " resolution. Unless you have specific waiver from the NOAA agaency the best you can see is the resmpled images at 0.5 m. That is really better than anything up there yet commercially. Color resolution is 1.65 m and the pixels can be located within about 3m on the true location on the ground surface. The staellite visits the same location every three days. That is a lot of fine imagery that can be used for a lot of useful purpose, some not so nice ones too. These include national defense and intelligence, online mapping, state and local governments, environmental monitoring and land use management, oil and gas, utilities, disaster management, insurance and others.

Google Earth & Applications

2008-09-05T12:10:00.000+05:30

CIO.com in a recent article talks about some unusual and interesting applications based on Google Earth Data. Most interesting ones among them include some unusal patterns on the face of the earth. See the photo below. Though difficult to belive looking at the details the formation has, it is completely natural. Application include one created by an user of something like 150,000 maps that help you go back to the maps in the 1600s and 1700s. Applications that track aircrafts in flight, let you look through the webcams mounted on cruise ships and let you enjoy a virtual cruise. You could do a bit of virtual sightseeing too and actually see some of the well known landmarks of this planet. These applications clearly show that imagination really is the limit inwhat can be done with a given set of images.

A Different COGO

2008-08-19T12:29:00.000+05:30

COGO a very important part of geospatial techniques available is the co-ordinate geometry science that's used in surveying and other areas. Now comes news of an organization that'll be known as COGO or the coalition of Geospatial Organizations. The organization comes into being on the 4 August this year and was announced at the ESRI users' conference at San Diego, CA, US. The founding members came together to present a common voice for their concerns as well as suggestion towards better use of the geospatial technology all over the nation of US of A. The organizations that are the founding members are American Congress on Surveying and Mapping (ACSM, American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS, Association of American Geographers (AAG), Cartography and Geographic Information Society (CAGIS), Geospatial Information Technology Association (GITA, GIS Certification Institute (GISCI), International Association of Assessing Officers (IAAO), Management Association for Private Photogrammetric Surveyors (MAPPS), National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC), University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) and the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA).

How Does Pixar Remain On Top!

2008-08-12T22:13:00.000+05:30

I don't remember where I read the article about Pixar, the 3D animation people. They have a record of sorts in back to back blockbuster animation movies. This includes the recent one and that obviously raised curiosity all round. Such predictable successes are so rare that there has to be something they do entirely differently than many well known creative outfits.

Apparently Pixar has a university that runs courses on aspects of 3D animation movie making and employees are welcome to attend these courses and later participate in the creative process. probbaly it is this that makes everyone participate and participate knowledgably that keeps the creative giant rolling along!!

Sharper Eyes In The Sky

2008-07-23T10:59:00.000+05:30

Sometime next month GeoEye-1 is going up into space. This'll provide some improvement even on IKONOS in that the panchromatic resolution is going to be 0.41 m(16 inches!!!) though for civilian use only half meter resolution will be available. In color the resolution is 1.65 m. This is coupled with ground placement accuracy of 3 m, is something amazing on offer! Even without ground truth one would be able to place item on the ground to withing 3 m or 10 ft of the actual location on the face of this planet! Just stop and think about it for a sec! The satellite will also be delivering data 40 times a day to a given ground station. There's going to be four of them. Beside the main command & control er at Thornton, Colorado, US the other three would be located at Alaska, Norway and Antarctica.

Launch date is set for 22 Aug this year.

Dreamworks & Intel

2008-07-11T15:18:00.000+05:30

Dreamworks needs heavy duty computing power all the time for their animation efforts. Now that they have decided to do only 3D stuff the need is going to be even more computing power. That's not surprising. What they did to make computing power available is also not so very surprising. They have gotten into an alliance with Intel. What this indicates is the see-saw between the computer chip suppliers. AMD and Intel. It was AMD earlier who was a partner to Dreamworks. They had a 3 year alliance starting 2005.

A-GPS Service Deployment In India

2008-07-04T10:46:00.000+05:30

Tata Indicom a CDMA based mobile services provider in India is bringing in the assisted GPS services into the country and they plan to have it deployed by end 2008. Based on Qualcomm's QPoint solution and gpsOne chipset along with hosting provided by TCS this will enable accurate positioning even within buildings. Location based on proximity to cell towers was not accurate enough for most application while classic GPS signals are difficult to get inside buildings. This should provide a boost to LBS applications developments in the country.

GPS Saves Money!

2008-07-04T10:30:00.001+05:30

GPS technology is apparently saving quite a bit of money in the transportation/warehousing, trucking and the mobility services industries according to a recent survey. Some numbers quoted in the survey is impressive. Almost 50% of the organizations surveyed cited savings in fuel costs due to optimized traveling. This reduced an average of 231.2 miles per week and an annualized savings of $51,582. With several million trucking carriers in the US alone this could mean a saving of up to $53 billion. Other benefits that arise are again from optimized travelling and hence on-time performance and shorter response time in talking to prospects and customers. Apparently something like 54 minutes per day savings saving labor costs to the tune of $5000 odd per employee and millions to the organizations. That's concrete enough money saving data that should propel the growth of GPS enabled applications.

GIS and Human Rights

2008-07-02T15:07:00.000+05:30

GIS has come to the rescue of exposing human rights violations by the Ethiopian government in remote and inaccessible areas of that country. An analysis of high-resolution satellite imagery by AAAS(American Association for the Advancement of Science) has helped confirm evidence that the Ethiopian military has attacked civilians and burned towns and villages in eight locations across the remote Ogaden region of eastern Ethiopia. there has been sporadic reports from refugees and other sources but hard evidence was difficult to come by. Images taken of the same area at different times confirmed the destruction wreaked by government agencies in the reagion. Though it is a kind of snooping but the technology has been useful here to expose destruction and violation of human rights in normally inaccessible areas. Long live GIS!

Where 2.0 2008

2008-05-13T20:55:00.000+05:30

Where 2.0 is one of the newest conferences that talks about location based information and its uses. Started only a few years back this has become quite popular and this year it is happening at Burlingame, CA, USA May12 to May 14.

As the announcement rightly says location intelligence is everywhere now. Their blurb says,

GIS has been around for decades, but is no longer only the realm of specialists. The Web is now flush with geographic data, being harnessed in a usable and searchable format. The right tools to easily create geo content have finally emerged and the outcome is the ability to represent and search the physical world online. Virtual representations of the physical world are becoming more realistic and important. As this happens, their geographic location becomes relevant and the scope becomes larger and problematic. Companies feel the need to have quality data across the globe—inside buildings and out—and are increasingly turning to their users to collect this data. In addition, the wide availability of geo-data has caused maps to become a required component of many online applications, creating a new market for companies like WeoGeo and GeoCommons to aggregate and generate revenue with geo-data and maps online.

The applications/mash ups appearing around the web is really getting interesting. More and more useful stuff should start coming up regularly now. These kind of conferences are sure indicators of the amount of interest all round.

Fuel Cells For GPS Navigation Devices- So What!!

2008-05-02T19:58:00.000+05:30

Well, you could navigate a lot longer away from a power source or the duration of navigation on "a single charge" goes up tremendously. For example, the spec for car navigation devices are of the order of 3 hours or so. Where this announcement says this spec can go up to 60 hours easily.

The announcement says, " Fuel cell manufacturer MTI Micro announced on Friday that it has created a prototype for an embedded fuel cell for hand-held GPS devices.

The company said it will provide three times as much power as a set of four AA batteries would, keeping the GPS gadget in question powered for up to 60 hours of continuous use. That's crucial for many users of hand-held GPS devices, who are often navigating territory far away from traditional power sources."

Recharging simply means putting in some more methanol into the device. Other interesting aspect is that the cell would come with a USB connector so that other devices too can be charged from it, such as a digital camera or phones. When are the prototypes going to become production devices? No fix yet on the time line!

LANDSAT Data To Be Available Free!!

2008-05-01T21:41:00.000+05:30

I grew up with Landsat. When I came in touch with satellite remote sensing back in early eighties it was this granddaddy of remote sensing satellites that was the predominant source of data. I remember I had wondered, given the computing capabilities those days, if the data acquired will ever get processed completely. The end is in sight now!

Comes news that soon all the data products, a particularly the scenes with less than 20% cloud cover will soon be available.

By the end of December of 2008, both incoming Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) data and all Landsat 5 TM data acquired by the USGS since launch (1984) will become available, with all Landsat 4 TM (1982-1985) and Landsat 1-5 Multi-Spectral Scanner (MSS) (1972-1994) data becoming available by the end of January 2009. All Landsat data purchasing options from the USGS will be discontinued by February 2009, once the entire Landsat archive can be accessed at no charge.

OGC Approves KML as Open Standard

2008-04-22T23:18:00.002+05:30

KML was introduced some time back by Google. Now it's a open standard. On the 15 th Apr members of Open geospatial consortium adopted the Open GIS KML encoding standard. The standard no would be maintained by the consortium.

Developers will now be able to use the KML in a standardized way for coding and sharing visual geographic content. All such future work that combines online maps and the 3D geospatial browsers like the Google Earth will be asured of compatible across developers groups. KML 2.2 is the one now adopted into the standard.

The standard defines the KML 2.2 geometry encoding and interpolation model, an extension model in support of application profiles and conformance requirements and test cases.

Zoombak And Tracking

2008-04-15T21:06:00.001+05:30

Zoombak is a device based on GPS that help track your car, you pet or the teen aged driver you worry about or may be even the senor member of the family your elderly dad or mom behind the wheel. With this GPS has truly become the consumer device. It is available for $250 from BestBuy.com.

Coupled with cellular technology, what the company call assisted GPS or the A-GPS it helps you track the unit with ease on your computer or the mobile phone. Either when the unit moves out of a defined zone or on demand one can find out the location.

What else will the GPS technology be put to use next! Let's wait and watch, I'm sure there will be many more use people will come up with.

WaterWatch By USGS

2008-04-09T06:38:00.000+05:30

WaterWatch -- Current water resources conditions is a really useful application of mapping. This new servuice of the US Geographical service shows water flow conditions of rivers some time updated as frequently as every 15 minutes. Symbols represent three conditions; one where the flow is in the 95-98 percent of normal, the second one shows if it is more than 99 percent and a third symbol indicating if the river is in flood condition already.

The map can be zoomed to a specific state and more detailed data about each monitoring point could be viewed by mouse over on the monitoring point.

Maps & Walking Directions In Local Languages!!

2008-04-08T16:21:00.000+05:30

GIS Developments says in a news item that Yahoo! India has started a service of providing maps for walking directions. Best part is the maps could be in one of several Indian languages. The service will be available through the existing mapping service of Yahoo!

Localized Indian maps are going to be useful for a large number of consumers from the middle India to use these services. No doubt Yahoo! has its eyes on increasing numbers of consumers coming on-line from the middle tier towns of India. The points of interest shown on these mapd would be ATMs, hotels, restaurants, petrol pumps etc. Initially it is going to be available in Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Malayam, Telegu and Punjabi. 179 cities, 4767 towns and 226,114 villages are on the maps already.

SiRFInstantFix Acquires GPS Satellites Quick!

2008-04-01T23:40:00.000+05:30

I mentioned this chip-set in my last post. It acquires the satellites in the GOS system in about 5 seconds, meaning navigational readings start practically right away. That gives an advantage to navigation devices built on these chipsets, like the Mio devices in the last post.

One of the most important things in the position measurements is where in the orbit a satellite is or the ephemeris. This data is obtained by most chips from the data transmitted form satellites giving out the ephemeris data and it take finite time to acquire this data.

The way SiRF, the manufacturers of the chipset takes care of this is to create predicted ephemeris data and pass it on to the devices though the net. That way the chipset does not have to wait for getting the ephemeris data to calculate position but use the local data.

The predicted data obviously deteriorates over time. While the data once downloaded is good for about 7 days, accuracy keeps going down by the day which reflects in the position calculations. But then, it'd be a very rare situation where ephemeris data could not be updated for a week alrogetehr. It'll normally be updated quite often, maintaining the accuracy.

Mio Technology's Moov

2008-03-25T20:20:00.000+05:30

Mio Technology introduced 4 new models of GPS car navigation products to US. They are the models 200, 210, 300 and the 310. Main distinctive feature of the two sets of devices 200+210 and 300+310 are the screens. The 200 models have a 3.5" screen while the 300 one's have 4.3" screen. The GPS chip used in all of them is the kind of real distinctive feature of this generation of devices. It is the SiRFInstantFixII GPS receivers that lets the acquisition be really fast, about 5 seconds on start up and that's about half a minute faster than many other navigation devices.

So not only you are ready as soon as you fire up the car, you are quite safe in the urban hi-rise caused "urban canyon" effect where GPS signals may be lost in parts of your route. Yet with fast acquisition as soon as the signals are found will probably not let you miss any turn. The other thing that helps in that is the text to speech technology calling out the street name at every turn. Add the preloaded maps and you are as ready as you can be.

Traffic messaging channel subscriptions included for a year helps you choose to decide to drive around the congestion areas. Add to all this the 3.5 million points of interest data and driving could not have been more pleasurable!

Other pleasurable thing about these devices are the prices, they are really affordable. Suggested max retail prices are $179.95, $199.95, $229.95 and $249.95 for Mio Moov 200, 210, 300 and 310 respectively. Mio Moov GPS navigators will be available at Radio Shack, Circuit City and other participating retailers from April 1.

Satellite Navigation & MapMyIndia

2008-03-12T23:38:00.000+05:30

I have been watching the ads about car navigation systems being available in India. This company seems to have been selling a system uniquely suited to Indian conditions. Those being many roads & streets not being named, lack of road signs and any consistent system of addresses.

They are selling a system for Rs. 21/22 thousand. That seems reasonable. CE Infosystems the promoters of MapMyIndia claim to have worked out the kinks in mapping and are constantly at it with 2 yearly update every year. The system, like most such systems, has voice prompts guiding the driver and the base maps provided by CE Info. The device could be dashboard mount or windshield mount or carried by a back seat navigator. If everything works as promised, this could be quite an useful device. The map issue can easily be a handicap. Two models available are Delphi Nav 200 and AMAX 06GP5A, both with 3.5" touch screen. Like most such devices they can play music, video and show photos.

Those are quite good specs. But there's something really curious! When I tried to look up their website there was a lone news page and every other tab gave me page not found error. May be the site is under construction, but a notice would have been useful. I would expect a full fledged site to be up before a company starts using it for business promotion!!

GPS leading to a Road Block!!

2008-03-03T23:28:00.000+05:30

myway reports in a story on the 25 Feb 2008 how use of GPS leads truckers into a dead end. To quote part of the story,

"SECAUCUS, N.J. (AP) - Modern technology is leading some drivers in Secaucus, N.J. straight into a dead end. Truck drivers relying on GPS devices and online map to show them the route to an industrial area are instead running into a road block.

The electronic maps don't show a gate that separates residential and industrial areas. It's only opened for a couple hours on weekdays in the northern New Jersey city."

This seems to have increased over the last year or so as the use of GPS navigation devices increased. While this may gladden the heart of Luddites amongst us, is it the use of a machine the culptit here? The reason there's a hold up happens is because even though there's a road, that is open only for couple of hours a day! Now, maps can show there is a road or not, which it does. Hoe do we capture the issue of the road being available for only 2 hours on weekdays! May congestion information can be a way around!

GPS is becoming a standard accessory in Cars

2008-01-21T20:37:00.000+05:30

recently concluded CES show in Las Vegas awarded a best product honour to a in car PC. This does GPS navigation of course. Integrates other functions too; such as Blue tooth phone integration, Fm radio, audio playback and even meshing with satellite radios. Of all these devices GPS had a place in the car for a long time now.

There's another check. I have been working with a US team for a while now that offers it's readers news about technical gadget deals in the US. Most often, particularly during the holiday season GPS deals had a prominent place in the announcements, both in terms of number of offers by different manufacturers and by the frequency with which such deals were being announced. GPS navigation has arrived.

GPS/Navigation Everywhere!

2007-11-25T22:06:00.000+05:30

I have written a few times in the past about these devices. But I realized the extent of these devices in a very interesting way. There's a project in my consultancy practice about posting interesting shopping deals in a blog. I realized there are at least one or two deals related to these navigator devices. These are mainly hand-held navigation devices but are equally adept at being used inside a car.

While some high end cars have started coming out with factory fitted navigation devices, the trend, as above, clearly shows these navigation devices are being used with common vanilla cars to a large extent. Automobile manufacturers have no choice but to start fitting them at the manufacture time. Very soon they should become standard equipment in most cars.

Technology Vs. Security

2007-10-15T20:57:00.000+05:30

G Madhavan Nair, expressed concern recently about hires pictures being available through Google, in so far as security of many important installations are concerned. Contrast that with the news that Indian scientists effectively fooled the same kind of high resolution US defence satellite systems prior to the last nuclear testing done.

I would think that's how things progress. As finer technology is developed, people develop better methods of hiding things. I am absolutely certain everybody must have screamed their heads off when the lowly(by today's standards) binoculars were invented. Today you work assuming it is available and try and fool the opponent. That's how this game has been played all along and that's how it is going to be played, I guess!!

Navteq+Nokia=personal navigation!

2007-10-11T22:46:00.000+05:30

One of the big news in GIS circuit this past week is the acquisition of navteq by Nokia. Nokia paid a large amount of money to buy the map making company. So where's the synergy! Obviously those maps are going to be available on the handsets Nokia makes. Would that make the personal navigator( I have been talking about at times here at this site) available on everybody's hands! Quite possibly.

WorldView-1 Launched

2007-09-30T11:34:00.000+05:30

Digtal Globe successfully launched the WorldView-1 staellite on 18 Sep. The bird was deployed successfully and the iamges captured will be available to the user community in a month's time. This is a half meter resolution panchromatic sensor based system.

The need for color imagery will get addressed by 2008 when WorldView-2 gets launched with its 8 band multispectral scanner data. Meanwhile the higest resolution data avilable through the WorldView-1 bird should find a lot of applications.

When the early birs was launched a few years back with about a meter resolution, it almost started a revolution.