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Google Terms of Service: Is This a Problem to You Poll & Poll Results For Drupal
posted by Satri
on Tuesday September 22, @12:34PM
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from the care-and-dare dept.
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from the care-and-dare dept.
A discussion at the higher management level of my organization is bound to change how our thousands of employees can use Google Earth at work. The reason? The Terms of Service. The discussion focused on section 11 of the general Google Terms of Service which basically say that by displaying content in Google Earth, you give Google rights regarding that content. This is obviously problematic for protected and classified geospatial content. To make it worse, we don't have control over clients and partners that may display our data in Google Earth and thus giving rights to Google. That said: don't panic. I'm not aware of any previous situation where Google exercised their Terms of Services rights at the opposition of a Google Earth user. Still, to our higher management, it has been judged serious enough to study the question and the potential solutions (there are several). That's a long introduction to tell you I finally updated our new main page poll specifically asks you about your attitude regarding the Google Terms of Service. It's not that long ago that Google wasn't allowing the use of Google Earth (free) in a work environment, luckily, it changed and no evil was done.
As for the results of our previous poll, asking you if Slashgeo should move to Drupal instead of Slashcode, out of 126 answers, the results show that 67% say yes (with 13% claiming it's urgent) or don't care, as long as they get their geonews, about 17% say we shouldn't spend energy on that, probably meaning these people are satisfied with how it works at the moment or simply prefer Slashcode, and finally, 13% don't know what's Slashcode and Drupal anyway, indicating they're here for the news, not the underlying system.
As for the results of our previous poll, asking you if Slashgeo should move to Drupal instead of Slashcode, out of 126 answers, the results show that 67% say yes (with 13% claiming it's urgent) or don't care, as long as they get their geonews, about 17% say we shouldn't spend energy on that, probably meaning these people are satisfied with how it works at the moment or simply prefer Slashcode, and finally, 13% don't know what's Slashcode and Drupal anyway, indicating they're here for the news, not the underlying system.
Related Stories
You Can't Use Google Earth (free) at Work 11 comments
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The Ogle Earth blog indicates that if you use Google Earth at work (the free version), you're in illegality. From the site: "1. USE OF SOFTWARE The Software is made available to you for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may not use the Software or the geographical information made available for display using the Software, or any prints or screen outputs generated with the Software in any commercial or business environment or for any commercial or business purposes for yourself or any third parties."
Can a Third Party Enforce Google Earth's License? 3 comments
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I'm still surprised at how many people don't know they can't legally install Google Earth Free or Plus in a work environment. This made me wonder, can someone or a competing organization (choose the one you want, there's plenty of competitors to Google Earth!) could enforce Google Earth's license? Update: 09/06 11:02 GMT by S : Great news, The Google Earth blog (see comment below) informs us anybody can now use the new Google Earth Free in a work environment for internal use.
Slashgeo: [Off-topic] The Future of Slashgeo's Engine, Slashcode 6 comments
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This post is not about geospatial news, but rather about Slashgeo.org's open source engine named Slashcode. I've been wanting to update our site to use Slashdot's AJAX code, but found myself not able to do so, partly because we don't have access to the code. The challenges are far bigger, as I explain below, than code access.
Here's a copy of a post published in my Slashdot journal. You'll also find several reactions from other Slashcode users directly in the Slashcode-general mailing list archives.
It matters to Slashgeo's future because I don't want us to be stucked and die out of technological obsolescence.
"Slashcode is dead, long live Slashcode?
The good news is Slashdot is still an interesting site to me, continues to evolve and is in active development. But the good news about Slashdot do not apply to Slashcode, Slashdot's open source engine. I'm the main manager of a small Slashcode-based website. Despite my enthusiasm, the truth is Slashcode is dead. It has been dead for quite some time and I wonder if it can be resurrected. How can Slashcode be dead? There is no community behind it anymore. There has been no official release since 2002, granted you can and should use the CVS tags, but it has not been updated with anything recent such as the AJAX code used on Slashdot for the last few years.
Rebuilding the community? Maybe, but enthusiasts quickly hit a wall. Slashcode's own main page is not up to date, there's a lot of missing information and my previous efforts at helping updating it got no answers from the site admins. How can you build a community when there's no way to learn who's in the boat with you? Ah! The mailing lists, of course! There are two main Slashcode mailing lists. On the Slashcode-general list, there was only 8 threads in 2008, 3 so far for 2009. For the Slashcode-development, it's worse: 2 posts since May 2007, both from our small team. You can ask questions, but you never know if someone will answer the phone.
A few years ago our small team developed a plugin that adds webmaps to stories and GeoRSS to the feed but failed to get much feedback from anyone. We're far from the community and the development workforce than, to name just one, the one behind Drupal, which has its own conference and 2000 developer accounts. Slashdot's responsibility? None directly, Slashcode is open source software, they rightfully have no obligation to contribute to a community.
Slashcode still has some attracting features and an excellent auto-moderation system. So, what's Slashcode future? I'm interested in the insights you have to share. I fear my own Slashsite will die out of technological obsolescence and that other Slashsites have no future. A Slashcode community won't spring out of the digital blue overnight, but it all has to start somewhere. Is it too late to try to build a vibrant Slashcode community"
"Slashcode is dead, long live Slashcode?
The good news is Slashdot is still an interesting site to me, continues to evolve and is in active development. But the good news about Slashdot do not apply to Slashcode, Slashdot's open source engine. I'm the main manager of a small Slashcode-based website. Despite my enthusiasm, the truth is Slashcode is dead. It has been dead for quite some time and I wonder if it can be resurrected. How can Slashcode be dead? There is no community behind it anymore. There has been no official release since 2002, granted you can and should use the CVS tags, but it has not been updated with anything recent such as the AJAX code used on Slashdot for the last few years.
Rebuilding the community? Maybe, but enthusiasts quickly hit a wall. Slashcode's own main page is not up to date, there's a lot of missing information and my previous efforts at helping updating it got no answers from the site admins. How can you build a community when there's no way to learn who's in the boat with you? Ah! The mailing lists, of course! There are two main Slashcode mailing lists. On the Slashcode-general list, there was only 8 threads in 2008, 3 so far for 2009. For the Slashcode-development, it's worse: 2 posts since May 2007, both from our small team. You can ask questions, but you never know if someone will answer the phone.
A few years ago our small team developed a plugin that adds webmaps to stories and GeoRSS to the feed but failed to get much feedback from anyone. We're far from the community and the development workforce than, to name just one, the one behind Drupal, which has its own conference and 2000 developer accounts. Slashdot's responsibility? None directly, Slashcode is open source software, they rightfully have no obligation to contribute to a community.
Slashcode still has some attracting features and an excellent auto-moderation system. So, what's Slashcode future? I'm interested in the insights you have to share. I fear my own Slashsite will die out of technological obsolescence and that other Slashsites have no future. A Slashcode community won't spring out of the digital blue overnight, but it all has to start somewhere. Is it too late to try to build a vibrant Slashcode community"
Slashgeo: Sharing Location Poll Results and New Poll on Moving Slashgeo to Drupal 13 comments
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I'm back from 2-weeks holidays but judging from the hundreds of geonews items to catch up, it may take me several days to be up-to-date.
Our last poll asked you about whether or not you would share your location thought the Internet. Out of 128 answers, the results are: 32% scream "Hell no, never", 11% are simply not interested, 8% yes but to specified people, 4% yes but only at specified times and 27% yes but both at specified persons at certain times, and finally, 10% are ready to share their location because privacy is a myth anyway.
The new poll asks you about what you think of Slashgeo.org leaving behind Slashcode and moving to another engine, such as Drupal. The Slashcode probable dead end was discussed in this recent previous story. Don't hesitate to share comments!
The new poll asks you about what you think of Slashgeo.org leaving behind Slashcode and moving to another engine, such as Drupal. The Slashcode probable dead end was discussed in this recent previous story. Don't hesitate to share comments!
Google's My Location Comes To Windows phones
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From cnet downloads : "Google has slowly been adding its location feature to Google's mobile applications. Last week, Windows Mobile phones were the latest to get the handy localization feature.
In Google's mobile maps apps, My Location appears as a blinking blue dot that shows either your approximate location, based on cell tower triangulation, or a more precise reading based on your phone's built-in GPS. The same principle now applies to search in the Google Mobile App. The blue dot will list your current location below the search box. Instead of specifying a city or zip code, you just type in your query, and Google will deliver the results closest to you."
Google Terms of Service: Is This a Problem to You Poll & Poll Results For Drupal
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