It looks like Sydney Startup Zookal isn’t the only company with UAV deliveries on its mind, as Amazon recently showed off its intentions to use UAVs to provide 30-minute deliveries of items. This is only a concept at the moment, however (although, they have the technology already), as it still requires federal approval. Certainly a sign of things to come.
News.com.au has a piece on a US law enforcement agency that has installed a GPS-firing canon into the front of a patrol vehicle, so that it can target and shoot suspect’s cars, then track them safely, rather than engaging in a high-speed pursuit. This quote seems like something from a comic book: “All police have to do is hit a button inside their vehicle and a lid pops up from the car’s grille and a tracking bullet shoots out and sticks to the car in front.”
Google Maps Mania has an update on UrtheCast – which hopes to offer the world’s first HD, near real-time video stream from space. The company has had its two cameras sent off to the International Space Station aboard a Soyuz rocket, where they are currently being installed.
Very Spatial has a neat little post on not only 3D printing’s rocketing rise to fame, but also how 3D printing fits in with GIS.
For the cartographers in the audience, slashgeo has a post alerting us to the new OGC-released meteorological map symbols, released for free in SVG and PNG. It also mentions a few other free map-symbol resources worth checking out, too.
GIS Lounge has a great post that highlights some recently developed maps that aim to show the amount of deforestation on Earth, using Landsat data. Quite sobering.
GeoAwesomness tells us of an staggeringly detailed ‘Google Maps for Ancient Rome’ – where you can select destinations in the ancient empire to travel between, and it will tailor (and cost!) the route, depending on how you wish to travel, the weather that time of year, and many other considerations that I would never have thought about. It’s a history nerd’s dream, and an amazing use of routed networks.
Finally, Stefano Costa has a thorough overview of the new Creative Commons v4.0 license, including a link to a page comparing the older versions to this new-and-improved one.
