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The tech giant is building a team that will use drones to fly overhead and capture critical street information, including signs and traffic changes, Bloomberg is reporting, citing sources who claim to have knowledge of its plans. Apple has secured approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to use drones to capture photos, videos, and other traffic data, the report says.
Drone capture could prove important to Apple AAPL -0.85% as it works to improve its Maps application running on iOS and macOS devices. After capturing the data from streets both in the U.S. and abroad, it can then be transmitted back to Apple’s team and its information uploaded to the Apple Maps servers, according to Bloomberg. Users, then, would get far more useful and recent data. The drones would replace the minivans it currently uses to collect similar data.
Read full story at Fortune…
first published week of: 10/24/2022
Last spring, a 23-year-old woman was driving her car through the Ontario town of Tobermory. It was unfamiliar territory for her, so she was dutifully following her GPS. Indeed, she was so intent on following the device that she didn’t notice that her car was headed straight for Georgian Bay—so she drove down a boat launch and straight into the frigid water. She thankfully managed to climb out and swim to shore, as her bright red Yaris sank beneath the waves.
Accidents like this have become weirdly common. In Manhattan, one man followed his GPS into a park, where his car got stuck on a staircase. And in Europe, a 67-year-old Belgian woman was led remarkably astray by her GPS, turning what was supposed to be a 90-mile drive to Brussels into a daylong voyage into Germany and beyond. Amazingly, she just patiently followed the computer’s instructions, instead of relying on her own common sense, until she noticed the street signs were in Croatian.
You can laugh, but many of us have stopped paying attention to the world around us because we are too intent on following directions. Some observers worry that this represents a new and dangerous shift in our style of navigation. Scientists since the 1940s have argued we normally possess an internal compass, “a map-like representation within the ‘black box’ of the nervous system,” as geographer Rob Kitchin puts it. It’s how we know where we are in our neighborhoods, our cities, the world.9Is it possible that today’s global positioning systems and smartphones are affecting our basic ability to navigate? Will technology alter forever how we get around? Read full story at Smithsonian.com…
Read full story at Smithsonian.com…
first published week of: 11/28/2022
Ptolemy was a Roman who made great strides in developing some of the first geographic methods. Ptolemy is credited with creating latitude and longitude, using his method to plot over 8,000 known location in the Roman empire on different maps of his time. He was one of the first cartographers to worry about geographical accuracy not only in places relative location to each other but also to the stars, taking into account Earth’s spheroid shape and creating some of the earliest attempts at geographic projections. From Ptolemy’s initial geographic endeavours, we can see a non-linear evolution since then, with T-O maps, Micronesian Stick Charts, and many other unique chapters along the way to today’s modern satellite-based mapping.
Read full story at Geomatics Canada…
first published week of: 11/14/2022
Google is working to make Maps more immersive, and a new augmented reality feature could make it easier to find interesting things nearby.
Google revealed some initial details about Search with Live View in September, but now it’s announcing the Google Maps augmented reality feature will begin rolling out in London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, San Francisco, and Tokyo on Android and iOS beginning next week.
The feature shows you things like coffee shops and ATMs when you’re holding up your phone and pointing it at the world around you.
If you’re in a city where Search with Live View is available, just tap the camera button in the Google Maps search bar, point your phone’s camera at the buildings and places nearby, and look for the dots that pop up indicating where landmarks are.
Read full story at The Verge…
first published week of: 11/28/2022
The economic stimulus bill passed by Congress and signed into law last week by President Obama includes more than $73 billion in programs that will require geospatial data, technology, services and applications in at least 24 Federal agencies, according to an analysis by MAPPS the association of geospatial firms.
H.R. 1, the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009,” became Public Law 111-5 with President Barack Obama’s signature on Tuesday, February 17. “Regardless of one’s views on the stimulus, we want to make sure MAPPS members optimize the opportunities the legislation provides to do business, keep and hire employees, and contribute to the Nation’s spatial data infrastructure,” said MAPPS Executive Director John Palatiello. “This analysis will help our members target their business development efforts by identifying the potential geospatial demand.”
The MAPPS summary, compiled by John Byrd, the association’s government affairs manager, includes bill language, itemized funding amounts and accompanying conference report language specifying Federal agency programs and spending in the stimulus bill. The analysis is available to MAPPS members via the MAPPS website.
first published week of: 10/10/2022
Peter Batty has agreed to join Intergraph as vice president and chief technology officer. Batty, a globally recognized spatial and location-based technology expert, will report to R. Halsey Wise, Intergraph's president and chief executive officer.
As the company's chief technology officer, Batty will be responsible for helping to direct Intergraph's future technology vision. Batty brings to Intergraph more than 18 years of technology leadership experience in spatial and location-aware technologies. Before joining Intergraph, he was the co-founder and chief technology officer for Ten Sails, a company focused on building businesses in the area of spatial and location-related technologies.
[Editor's Note 07/2022: Peter is currently Chief Research Officer at SSP Innovations, LLC]
first published week of: 07/18/2022