Slashgeo

This whole story stolen from slashdot: a CNN article wherein Indian President Abdul Kalam stated his concerns that Google Maps could be used to aid terrorists. From the article: "The Google site contains clear aerial photos of India's parliament building, the president's house and surrounding government offices in New Delhi. There are also some clear shots of Indian defense establishments. Debbie Frost, spokewoman for Mountain View, California-based Google, noted that the software uses information already available from public sources and the images displayed are about one to two years old, not shown in real time."

The Cartography blog introduces MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base interactive maps. From the blog: "Users can zoom in to an area of the world or a country and display terrorism activity along with population densities, transportation densities, satellite imagery, location of power plants, factories and mineral resources."

The Ubikcan blog made a good work to analyse and document the geography of so-named terrorist countries, including a link to the Pentagon's New Map document (map). From the blog: "Barnett has dusted off these old geopolitical ideas and given them a new look for the 21st century. For example, what is to say that the "core" needs a periphery in order to sustain itself and exploit disparities in income (outsourcing or immigration as labor)? What we have observed is actually an increase in the concentration of power and wealth in the "core" rather than a decrease."

Ogle Earth details a terrorist propaganda video showing Google Earth imagery. From the blog: "About one third of the way through, you see a screen that clearly shows images taken from Google Earth, with somebody scoping the scene of the attack. Interestingly, what the propaganda video shows is stitched screenshots, rather than Google Earth running [...]"

The official Google LatLong blog informs us of today's major imagery update for Google Maps and Google Earth. If you don't want to answer the riddles to find where the updates are, see this GEB entry on the areas updated. From the official blog: "Today we've published a significant amount of new or updated 60cm satellite imagery for Google Earth, with the Google Maps update to follow shortly. Much of this imagery is concentrated in the U.S., Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, India, China, Australia and New Zealand. I encourage everyone to go exploring -- you never know what you might find. [...] The imagery we're publishing today touches approximately 130 different countries, so there's plenty out there to discover!"

Ogle Earth discuss and links the quick demolition of a potential Syrian nuclear facility after the Israel September 6th attack shown through satellite imagery (with screenshots). There's a link to a BBC News article and a New York Times article. While the geospatial content of this story is rather low, it clearly shows how satellite imagery is more than ever before a effective detective tool for the military and the general public. From the NYT article: "David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that this week released a report on the Syrian site, said Thursday that the building’s removal was inherently suspicious. “It looks like Syria is trying to hide something and destroy the evidence of some activity,” Mr. Albright, a former United Nations weapons inspector, said in an interview. “But it won’t work. Syria has got to answer questions about what it was doing.”" See other interesting related previous stories below. And if you wonder, high resolution satellite imagery for this area is available in Google Earth but not Google Maps at the moment.