I’ll be travelling the coming week, spending a very long weekend in the Stockholm Archipelago with barely a television and certainly no broadband, so if ESRI ArcGIS Explorer were to go public beta by Friday June 30, as promised, then you’ll read about it here last, as I’ll probably be in a hammock. I’m very curious to finally see it in action, however.
- Had enough of Géoportail yet? Of course not. A quick synopsys from French blogs:
Louis Naugès reports that IGN’s base imagery of France is not actually new or fresh for Géoportail, and that hence the ‚Ǩ6-8 million rumored to have been spent on Géoportail’s development was only for the web and (upcoming) 3D application. He also points to a quote from an IGN official to 01net to the effect that they “couldn’t really justify spending money on infrastructure capacity, as it is public money” they are spending. Louis Naugès quite rightly finds that to be a remarkable statement, and proof, if any more was needed, that IGN’s priorities are skewed away from providing an actual service to consumers, preferring instead to focus on acquiring fun bits of technology. Scalability is too vulgar, presumably, for state enterprise.
One blogger would like to see accountability at IGN, with an explanation for the rationale behind the resource distribution decisions for the Géoportail project. After all, it’s his money IGN spent.
(All French blogs covering Géoportail report huge spikes in their readership. This “launch” has turned into a big discussion topic in the French blogosphere, and quite the viral marketing success for Google Earth.)
- Noel Jenkins at Juicy Geography comes out with a new education resource for Google Earth — this one is on the global diamond trade.
- World Wind Science Suite is a collection of science add-ons, for NASA World Wind. Sources include NASA, NOAA, USGS and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Science visualizations are a Good Thing.
- James Fee and All Points Blog pick up the story of Dell giving its large customers Google Earth Pro for tracking service calls. Makes sense too — send your business intelligence all the way back to the customer, so that they can make better informed decisions, and you don’t have to become a clearing house for such information, with all the costs that implies.
About GéoPortal.France:
Don’t give me my very own French Nausée back again;-)
Being french and loving French Geography;-) and good living, Camembert and of course the most beautiful micro-landscapes on Earth (after New-Zealand and so many other countries), I really do feel bad about the way the French state ‘messes with the masses’ – yet again the people are being taught French ‘techie pidgin’ and make to believe that Technologie is a French word. This is a French demon from last century, hell no: two centuries ago!
I do feel bad about France not coping with its subliminal inferioity complex – for nearly 43 young years. It’s ok to launch Arianne, to sell the TGV to China, to create and build Airbus with others Powerfull Europeans.
So what’s wrong, France? What is it you are trying to proove? No one (who can read) will argue French is an ugly language..
Homing is becoming a important issue as Locations seem to be virtualiszed and loose their tangible reality..
Have good real fun in the Archipel. Guess the French won’t cover that.
French!!!!! is the must ugly language in the univers, Yakkieee
The geoportail site is more or less working (with bugs) since yesterday
– most of what has been written in the press and blogs is wrong or amazingly distorted, esp. the supposedly huge price of the project
– the fact thay you cannot zoom in beyond 1:3000 can be easily fixed; just a GUI problem, not a data issue
– too many blogosphere comments are plagued with ideology about “France”, “public sector” …
insider