technology

COG—Huh! What is it good for?

Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COG) are geotiff files, like satellite imagery, that have been processed in a manner that makes it easy to consume for internet processing applications (read cloud). It is the brainchild of some very smart people at very smart organizations (Amazon, Planet, MapBox, ESRI, USGS and the landsat-pds mailing list) and is supported by major processing software such as ESRI, Rasterio, Geoserver, QGIS and GDAL.

Disruption in the Geospatial Age (Part 1 of 2)

How grand I am to throw around terms like ‘the geospatial age’ as if I’m some kind of luminary. It sounds wonderful that we might be in some kind of ‘age’, but really, what on Earth does that mean? Well, what I mean is we as a technology community we are closer to geospatial technology […]

Git for the World

I had another good long discussion with @bmann this morning. We talked about automated vehicles, augmented reality and the implications on the gesopatial industry. Which, FYI, will be profound.

Data is Opinionated

Geospatial data in particular is opinionated. Now, opinion isn’t always a great thing. Opinion doesn’t mean you know better, it just means you have a particular view of the world and feel comfortable in maintaining that perspective.

Apple Maps API

How Exciting! I’m not sure if this was a deliberate Easter Egg in Apple’s WWDC website, I have a sneaking suspicion it might be, but we’ve just had a glimpse of an Apple Maps web API. Traditionally, Apple Maps have been available only in native iOS apps. It seems that might be about to change. […]

Maptiks Map Analytics Demo

As we all know, a demo is worth at least a thousand words. earlier this week I put together this client side demo to help our clients get the feel of the kind of things we can do with Maptiks. I wanted to share it with all our Sparkgeo friends too. Welcome to the future […]

The Great Space Race (Part 2 of 2)

This is the 2nd part in a series on the commercial satellite imagery sector. It’s a wild ride, but you can catch part 1 here. Some might argue that no one ever wanted the image; it is more of a by-product, a means to an end. Imagery consumers want to

The Great Space Race (Part 1 of 2)

TerraBella just arrived. Google’s rebranded (previously Skybox) remote sensing constellation is still in very active development with planned launches over the next few years. Their focus is on platform and information delivery rather than delivery of imagery. That’s amazing, but not because of the enormity of the problem, but […]