I watched the BarCamp.mil from afar and from what I’ve heard it sounded like it was a great event. Andrew Turner says that open source got quite a bit of play.
In the open-source world, a government supported promotion of its use would have dramatic effects. Looking at the current state of commercial company support for projects such as Apache, Linux, Gnome, OSGeo and more demonstrate that there is clear benefit to be gained. If the government then pushes open-source there would a huge upsurge in the support of projects and communities.
I don’t think there has to be 100% open source, but utilitzing it where it makes sense benefits the taxpayer.
ESRI today was the guest blogger on the Google Geo Developers blog. Sterling did a pretty good job of outlining the ArcGIS JavaScript Extension for Google Maps and how it can be utilized. I’m still waiting for my 9.3 to show up (long story) to actually start implementing ArcGIS Server 9.3 so I have to live through these posts for now.
Yahoo!’s Fire Eagle has left beta and is available to everyone. I don’t think there has been a killer app yet built using Fire Eagle, but the service has the potential to link LBS applications together. I think Yahoo! some really good spatial services (can’t forget about GeoPlanet) and I’d love to see them become more serious about them than their past would reflect.
