Sci/Tech 101

Remote Sensing-Some Interesting Links

For this entry, I thought I would just provide a few cool links to sites about Remote Sensing.  I thought these were interesting and I hope you do, as well:

Remote Sensing:  The Online Guides (http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/rs/home.rxml), from the University of Illinois.  Focused on meterology, this site provides "two web-based instructional modules that use multimedia technology and the dynamic capabilities of the web. These resources incorporate text, colorful diagrams, and animations to introduce selected topics in the field of remote sensing."  Check it out!

National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center (http://www.nohrsc.nws.gov/) provides "comprehensive snow observations, analyses, data sets and map products for the Nation. "

What the USDA has to say about Remote Sensing (http://www.usda.gov/oce/remote_sensing/index.htm).

And, just because of the high level of coolness, you have gotta check out the page of the Director for the Boston University Center for Remote Sensing (http://www.bu.edu/remotesensing/faculty/el-baz/).  Dr. Farouk El-Baz has many accomplishments in his career, but the neatest has to be having a shuttlecraft named after him on "Star Trek:  The Next Generation."  Sweet!-JEM

SimpleGeo and Please Rob Me

For this entry, I posted a status asking for requests to Twitter and Facebook.  I received a couple that I'll briefly touch today.

Thanks to Marcia Rodney, for suggesting the first topic for this blog entry.

SimpleGeo, founded by Matt Galligan and Joe Stump, is a new start-up company that is devoted to providing software to help developers of web and mobile applications.  This company, based in Bouder, Colorado (great town, by the way, first place I experienced the peculiar bouncy-rubber-asphalty stuff they use for playgrounds...but I digress), grew out of the founders frustration at the lack of a reliable infrastructure for geographic information.

An article about the company is available at http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/start-up-aims-to-be-a-hub-for-location-data/

and the company's website can be found here http://simplegeo.com/

Also, thanks to Steve Stone from Bluegrass Community and Technical College in Lexington, Kentucky (where, many moons ago, I taught Introduction to the Internet as an adjunct.  That was when we still covered gopher and archie, among other things) for pointing out Please Rob Me (http://pleaserobme.com) a site which is dedicated to the danger of too much sharing of information, especially when folks post that they are away on vacation and such via Twitter and Foursquare, etc.  Great heads up for us to remember to be careful out there...even when we're being social.  The owners of the site are currently evaluating its future, due to all the attention they've received.-JEM