I’m so limited to time at the moment that I’m limited to quoting, but the three snippets I’ve got today resonate as much as the last ones …

Firstly, Sean is out there leading us to brave new world beyond OGC protocols, and he was the first one to bring google static maps to my attention. Interesting.

Secondly, I used to never get around to reading All Points because it seemed to be high traffic, and I was low bandwidth. Well that’s all true, but I have been making an effort lately to at least page through my feeds regularly and the signal seems to be getting pretty interesting. Joe Francica posted two things to remember today. The second, was a quote from Jim Geringer, former governor of Wyoming and ESRI’s director of policy and public sector:

Adding technology to a bad process only adds speed to a very bad process

I want to remember that one in the same context as finding is not enough.

The other thing Joe posted was a good deal longer, but poses a really interesting question: Is Google Earth a Public Trust? in the sense that public bodies are starting to rely on privately funded base map and imagery database for mission critical applications in emergency management. He makes the point that they already rely on the computing infrastructure, but that external bodies managing public information is quite a step further. It’s certainly something to think about.

comments (2)

Sean Gillies (on Friday 22 February, 2008)

I’m already seeing confusion caused by the term “static”. It’s just way to generate URLs to algorithmic image resources, just like the charting API. My point is that it doesn’t have the non-HTTP baggage of WMS.

Joe “Polar bear numbers are increasing thanks to climate change [1]” Francica? I guess he’s clawing his way back to credibility ;)

[1] http://zcologia.com/news/643

Bryan (on Friday 22 February, 2008)

I think I understand where you are coming from :-) I was just singing your praises to a colleague, particularly in the context of beyond WMS, and suggesting he should read your blog (retrospectively too).

As far as Joe goes, well, I guess it’s the message that counts. I didn’t make the connection. I had given up on All Points, but left in the opml, and like I say, I’ve been making an effort to at least actively ignore things as opposed to passively :-)