Slashgeo

The Virtual Earth blog links to an article about the U.S. National Earth-Information Initiative. From the article: "The initiative is not an ongoing program or organization. It is a one-time activity chartered with defining the roles, responsibilities and processes by which the efforts of multiple agencies and nongovernment organizations can be coordinated and led more effectively during the coming decade and beyond. It is, in short, an effort to step back and take a methodical look at how the nation’s Earth information needs can be better met." Vector One wonders: "The ‘National Earth- Information Initiative’ has come to fruition, which aligns NASA, NOAA and the USGS together with Microsoft. It sounds interesting. I wonder if these folks know these folks at the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI), they too are doing similar stuff." Somewhat related and interesting, the VE4Gov blog explains why Virtual Earth is better than the competition from his view, which links to this short Virtual Earth article.

The Map Room asks why Microsoft mapping efforts are low profile. All Points Blog participates in the discussion. From the former blog: "Why does Microsoft’s online mapping service get so little attention compared with Google’s? Peter Laudati thinks it’s because it’s gone through so many name changes [...] Scoble thinks it comes down to ease of use: Google’s typically simple, uncluttered, non-redundant user interface. [...] Me, I suspect that cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility might play a factor: a lot of the people who write the stories that generate the buzz use Macs. [from a comment:] Does that mean that everything MS touches is gold? Far from it. But we should be evaluating their products without bias and noting when they actually do something right."

Slashdot currently has a discussion going on about which API to use. It's nice to see alot of different opinions on which API is better and the reasoning behind it. Here is their summary : "The organization that I work for is going to be redoing our website in .Net/AJAX. On the site, our members will have profile pages listing where their organizations are located (our members are scattered throughout the world) as well as other pertinent information for the general public. It is a non-profit organization, so funds are tight. My question to you: If we include maps, which API do we go with: Google or Microsoft? We're in a Microsoft environment (we're non-profit and Microsoft basically gives us everything for free) but the ubiquity of Google may be enough to sway us. Has anyone used either extensively? Used them in conjunction with .Net?"

Google's Lat Long blog informs us the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's is using Google Earth's KML format to publish air quality data. From the EPA Air Quality page: " State and county summaries grouped by major source sectors are available for each of these pollutants: * Carbon Monoxide * Lead * Nitrogen Oxides * Volatile Organic Compounds * Particulate Matter * Sulfur Dioxide [...] It contains facility-level information for the seven major point-source sectors listed below. [...] * Cement Facilities * Chemical Manufacturing * Electric Generating Units * Natural Gas Pipelines * Oil and Gas Production * Petroleum Refineries * Pulp & Paper Industries" Some related previous stories below. Update: 11/30 15:05 GMT by S : It seems Canada also offers that kind of data for the public, see comment below.