Links List 12.5.08

Vector One’s Jeff Thurston wrote two posts focusing on the systems and monitoring parts of GIS. Thurston says the systems aspect of GIS is the ‘most interesting’ because of the integration of information. He also expressed that the relationship between GIS and other technologies requires monitoring due to the constant changes in technology.

Online publication Geospatial Solutions launched a new e-newsletter, Trailblazer. Intended for executives and other decision makers, Trailblazer uses an assortment of media (articles, interviews, tutorials, etc.) to explain the benefits and pitfalls of geospatial technology.

Researching data, especially for mapping, just got easy. Amazon launched their public data sets yesterday. ‘The project encourages developers, researchers, universities and business to upload large (non-confidential) data sets to Amazon and let others integrate that data into their own AWS applications.’ What use to take an extreme amount of time to gather data, can now be accessed within a minutes. The data is hosted for free.

Good news Mac Users! Google Earth released their plugin for Mac OS X. The new plugin should result in more ‘widespread support of the plug in for some serious applications.’

VerySpatial called GIS Pathway.com a ‘Learning Solutions Blog”. Run by a student (Timothy) at Central Piedmont Community College in NC, the site offers tips on using ArcGIS. VerySpatial recommends the site for its descriptions and “smattering videos.” They even say it’s a great model for the NGTC to review.