Lightsquared is not prepared to go gently into the night. They have hired Theodore Olson (among others) to help argue their case. Olson is most famous for having successfully argued for Bush in the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court case that settled the 2000 US Presidential election. In other words, Lightsquared brought out the big guns. Olson argues that [...]
A big part of my research for about a decade now has been exploring the development of immersive virtual landscapes, and how evolving technologies continue to make impressive strides toward creating compelling and believable virtual worlds. One of the issues that has always been at the forefront is the cost of virtual reality hardware, whether [...]
Lightsquared, who last month received a conditional waiver from the FCC on its products, looks like it might be in trouble as the FCC has withdrawn that waiver. Obviously the FCC acted in response to concerns over GPS interference. This officially ‘kills’ Lightsquared’s proposed solution to rolling out a 4G-LTE network over the spectrum it owns, baring [...]
Based on a syllabus from the Supreme Court released on January 23, the use of GPS tracking outside of a warrant is a breach of the Fourth Amendment. As stated in the syllabus: the Government’s physical intrusion on an “effect” for the purpose of obtaining information constitutes a “search.” There seem to be quite a [...]
I’m going to cop to this not being an overtly geographic post… but it’s Lego. And augmented reality. If I may indulge to my inner child for a moment… SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! In all seriousness, it’s a pretty need implementation of augmented reality in that it doesn’t require any special printing on the box. They simply take [...]
In the mad scramble to finish editing my PhD dissertation and graduate, I haven’t been following the latest and greatest tech in the geospatial realm as much as I should be, but I am definitely intrigued by the launch of Layar Vision. It’s an extension to the mobile augmented reality Layar platform that allows a [...]
On this memorial day weekend the History Channel is kicking off a week of Civil War themed shows. While watching I thought I’d see if there were any interesting maps available on the intertubes. What did I find? Some wonderful animated maps from the Civil War Trust ! The maps are flash based and progress [...]
Augmented reality is one of those technologies that has seemed like it would be next big thing for the last couple of years, but it has proven pretty difficult to translate from WOW factor proof-of-concept prototypes to actual commercial implementations. When I saw this demo video of Sony’s Smart AR, though, I have to say [...]
It makes sense that emergency response can be quicker and more efficient if they know exactly where to go. GPS is ok, but being off even 10m can be too much. Australia’s Ergon Energy has teamed with Nokia and Samsung to create a system that’s cheap and versatile enough to find callers down to the [...]
In a world where GPS enabled smartphones are as passe as intermittent wipers on cars and coffee makers with clocks in them, it’s neat to read some exciting new location based technology news. It’s inevitable that phones would begin to launch with alternative location infrastructures than GPS, but I have to say I’m slightly shocked [...]
