by Matt Ball on May 23, 2012
Today, the Trust for Public Lands has launched a rigorous ranking of the top city park systems among the 40 largest U.S. cities. The park rating system uses GIS to create digital maps that evaluate accessibility beyond simply a measurement of distance, as well as park size, services and investment. For these measurements, the ranking [...]
by Matt Ball on May 23, 2012
This content first appeared in Informed Infrastructure. Hexagon AB today announced the acquisition of myVR, provider of software for photorealistic 2D, 3D, and 360-degree visualization of interactive maps over low-bandwidth connections. The Norwegian company compresses large 3D models for viewing on many platforms, including mobile phones and tablets. The 3D city model viewing and 3D [...]
by Matt Ball on May 14, 2012
Today, Trimble broke ground on a new operations center in Westminster, Colo., with Gov. John Hickenlooper one of many to turn a shovel. The event was presided over by Steven Berglund, president and CEO of the company, who asserted that while the company is headquartered in Silicon Valley, Calif., most of their organic growth would [...]
by Matt Ball on April 26, 2012
It’s funny, my first reaction to the Trimble buys SketchUp news was that it was some kind of spoof, and I checked the link and site closely. It was surprising, because who knew that Google was selling anything, and while very strategic for both Trimble and Google, it’s hard to imagine how this went down. [...]
by Matt Ball on April 26, 2012
Trimble has announced today the agreement to acquire SketchUp from Google. This is very interesting news for the advancement of 3D modeling, with potential to tie more directly to data capture tools through the many handheld and scanning technologies that the company provides. Trimble will partner with Google on running and developing SketchUp’s 3D Warehouse. [...]
by Matt Ball on April 26, 2012
There was a presentation today at the Geospatial World Forum in Amsterdam by Eduardo Dias, with the SPIN spatial information laboratory also with Geodan, developers of tools to support crisis assessment, reconstruction and recovery. The company developed tools for Deforest Action, to incorporate satellite imagery, citizen sensors, collective intelligence and distributed computing to help keep track [...]
by Matt Ball on April 26, 2012
An Eye on Earth mobile-based application from the European Environment Agency (EEA) gives individuals an opportunity to sense the noise level around them, and aggregates all the citizens as sensors to derive broader noise maps of specific geographies. This addition of noise to existing Water Watch and Air Watch, gives citizens a suite of pollution [...]
by Matt Ball on April 25, 2012
Wubbo Ockels, former astronaut and professor of Aerospace for Sustainable Engineering and Technology at the Delft University, Netherlands spoke this morning at the Geospatial World Forum in Amsterdam. As a former astronaut for The Netherlands, he has a unique perspective regarding the responsibility that we have for our planet, having gone beyond the bounds of [...]
by Matt Ball on April 24, 2012
Ingrid Vanden Berghen, administrator general, National Geographic, Institute of Belgium and President Eurogeographics, Belgium presided over a session on capacity building and the expansion of the global geospatial marketplace to a billion plus people. Leading off this session was an address by Jack Dangermond, founder and president of Esri. The fact that our world is [...]
by Matt Ball on April 24, 2012
APJ Abdul Kalam, the 11th president of the Republic of India, gave a keynote this morning at the Geospatial World Forum in Amsterdam. The address related a wide number of applications of the technology across all sectors of society, yet lamented that the technology still does not reach all citizens. With that goal in mind, [...]