Tuesday, November 28, 2006

CarbonCloud "wickedly cool"

Image Courtesy of Fantom Planet

Posts like this one inspire us -

“On Friday I saw a demonstration by The Carbon Project about CarbonCloud...Talk about some wickedly cool apps."

Read more at Fantom Planet


Wednesday, November 22, 2006

CarbonCloud in Geospatial Solutions Magazine

Logo courtesy of Geospatial Solutions

Geospatial Solutions magazine recently did an article highlighting CarbonCloud. Read more

Some quotable quips -

"Unlike standard data-sharing techniques by which users exchange information via the Web or a server, CarbonCloud employs network connectivity inherent in computers — WiFi cards, for example — to allow them to acquire, annotate, and share data directly with another person’s computer in real time. There is no server or Web site involved."

[talking about responding to an emergency] “It’s instant situational awareness and it evolves as their response progresses. And if there is a really bad incident and the Internet goes down, CarbonCloud will still enable them to form an ad hoc network through their mobile computers using their wireless cards. Right now, a standard laptop or ultra-mobile PC Wi-Fi card provides a range of about 50 yards between connection points. In the near future, improved antennas that boost the Wi-Fi range will provide almost unlimited coverage potential. So as they roll up on the scene, they’ll all establish their secure network and communicate in real time even with the Internet down.”

And, of course, another example of my ability to say silly things [on the importance of geospatial information] -

“If you have no maps or imagery...You’ll just stare at white space.”

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Carbon Project Joins Microsoft & Other Industry Leaders in Interoperability Alliance

The Carbon Project, the world leader in geosocial networking and interoperability, today announced that it has joined the Interop Vendor Alliance, a global community of partners working to connect people, data and diverse systems through better interoperability with Microsoft systems.

The formation of the Alliance was announced yesterday at the Microsoft Tech-Ed IT Forum in Barcelona, Spain.

Working with the Alliance compliments our mission to make location-based content accessible and usable to everyone, everywhere. Our flagship product, CarbonTools PRO, is a true geospatial interoperability enhancement to the .NET framework, so joining the Alliance makes sense from all angles and will help us apply CarbonTools to connect people, data and systems.

Sam Rosenbalm, Business Development Manager, Microsoft, said, “The Alliance is committed to interoperability for its customers and vendors. The Carbon Project’s participation will help strengthen the Alliance’s effort to advance interoperability, especially for location-based content.”

For more information on how The Carbon Project is helping to make location content accessible and usable to everyone, everywhere, please visit www.TheCarbonProject.com. Additional information about the Interop Vendor Alliance can be found on the Interop Vendor Alliance Web site at www.interopvendoralliance.org.


Saturday, November 11, 2006

New Twist on "Open" Source?


There's alot of open sourcing in the mapping world, but here's a twist on traditional (boring ;) source code release models - The Carbon Project has included the source code for its powerful Gaia 3 viewer as part of the new CarbonTools PRO software development toolkit.

Under this model when folks acquire the software toolkit (CarbonTools) you get the source code for a nice application too (Gaia 3). Now, you can't turn around and give the source code away to the closest open source community - but you can take it and bake your own new mapping application (probably saving alot of time in the process).

I think this model will help bridge the gap between pure proprietary and open source software approaches - providing a good blend of both source code access and the professional support you get with commercial software.

Gaia 3 itself is pretty interesting stuff - allowing democratic access to Microsoft Virtual Earth, Yahoo! Maps, OGC WMS/WFS/WCS, Google Earth KML/KMZ, Geography Markup Language (GML), ESRI Shapefiles, Autodesk and MapInfo formats and more. Gaia 3 also supports geospatial-notes with digital pictures and custom map symbols that can be embedded in the content.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative 2.5 License and is copyrighted (c) 2006 by The Carbon Project.