Don’t know how many PowerPoint presentations I’ve seen today, definitely too many, I hope after that PowerPoint overdose I can keep it out of my dreams tonight.
Anyways, one talk ended with some interesting conspiring thoughts about the recent Google – Spot Image deal (without knowing any details of course): What if Google bought multi-annual exclusive rights on Spot’s high resolution imagery?
Not only they would have excluded their direct competitors like Microsoft or Yahoo! from using the same imagery, no, such a deal would have impacts on the work of some European agencies (e.g. EEA) too. High resolution imagery data is also used as basis in research projects on environmental security (e.g. GMES). So, on the one hand Google would deliver the data to any Google Earth user for free, but at the same time such a deal would possibly constrain development of EO based products, often used as basis for decision-making in spatial and environmental policies for instance.
That was indeed a very interesting point brought up today. If I had to choose either view exciting backround layers and bird views in Google Earth or enable scientific projects in order to improve environmental security, I would vote for the latter…
Another interesting news today was the freely (open source principle) available and revised SRTM data at the JRC Soil Portal.