Link – Visiting the Mothership – despite Microsoft !!
Ed was lucky enough to make it by Apple’s Campus and confirm that they are still around. If you remember last week there was some “discussion” about the digital imagery that Microsoft was using for their Virtual Earth web mapping program. Ed makes the point that using “free” imagery from USGS can result in problems such as this. I agree with that, but I also think they could have done more to mitigate the problem. We’ve all used “dated” imagery in our cartographic maps before and usually we usually put a note somewhere on the map letting the reader know the source and date of that imagery. Google Maps does this and I think Microsoft should start doing it also. DOQQs aren’t bad, but we all know they are outdated compared to most satellite imagery. It might have been a good idea for Microsoft to send some of their programmers to “GIS Camp” at the ESRI User Conference to learn more about GIS.