There's an interesting article by Neil Brooker about how different technologies including model-driven design, GIS, and 3D visualization developed in the gaming world in coalescing to create a more holistic view of the cities where more than 50% of the World's population now lives.   Neil's point is that althought the integration of building, infrastructure and geographic models won’t solve every global challenge we face today, "it could help create more appealing, practical and safer cities for the future. In short, the type of city we’d all like to live and work in rather than spend our time trying to escape from."

According to an Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA) study The Substantial Consumer Benefits of Broadband Connectivity for U.S. Households, approximately 66.6 million households used broadband in 2008.  Dial-up users have decreased to 10.5 million households in 2008.   Households with no internet access decreased to 39.7 million.   

I blogged recently about the W3C Geolocation API which is progressing through the W3C standards process.  

Google Maps is using this API as of last week to identify your location.  When you bring up Google Maps, you'll see a button in the navigation widget.  The first time you click on it, you will have the option to enable the Google Maps My Location feature.  If you do enable it, then by simply clicking on the button, Google will centre the map on what it thinks your location is.  

As Adena Schutzberg point out in a blog, the API is not computing your location but using the preferred "location provider" set by the platform, which could be a GPS, wi-fi interpolation or some other method of estimating your location.  This is the location returned by the API to the calling application.  Apparently Firefox, Chrome and Gears use Google Location Services as the default geolocation provider.

So in my case, I am in the Autodesk office in Ottawa, Canada, but the Geolocation API appears to be returning the location of the Autodesk server in Manchester, NH.

GeoWeb 2009 is taking place July 27-31, 2009 in downtown Vancouver, BC Canada at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue and will focus on Urban Environments.  This year it includes an academic track on 3D Cityscapes.

Keynote and invited speakers include

• Michael T. Jones is Google’s Chief Technology Advocate and former CTO of Keyhole Corporation, the company that developed the technology used in Google Earth.
• Ken Greenberg is an architect and urban designer who has played a leading role in the rejuvenation of downtowns, waterfronts, neighborhoods, and campus master planning.

Some selected labs include

• GeoWeb 101 – An Overview of GeoWeb - the What, Why & Where of GeoWeb - Ron Lake, Carl Reed, & Michael Gerlek
• Digital Cities Modeling Workshop - Neal Niemiec, Autodesk
• Google Earth 5.0 KML Extensions -  Michael Ashbridge, Google
• 3D Geospatial: Project Implementation Methods and Best Practices - Tim Case, Parsons Brinkerhoff

Selected technical sessions include

• The gap between SDIs and the GeoWeb - Clemens Portal, Interactive Instruments
• Simple Relational Model for Temporally Diverse City Models - Paul Cote, Harvard University
• Address Management: The Secret Ingredient for Geospatial Success - Boris Gutkin, DMTI Spatial Inc.
• In My Backyard (IMBY): Renewable Energy for Everyone - Christopher Helm, NREL
• How good is your information architecture? - Carsten Roensdorf, Ordnance Survey
• Advances in Virtual City Data Management - Xavier Lopez, Oracle Corporation
• Building a new location-aware infrastructure for calendaring and scheduling - Peter Batty, Spatial Networking
• Integrating GIS, CAD, Raster, 3D and BIM Data - Dale Lutz, Safe Software Inc.
• Building a Virtual World: 3D Buildings in Google Earth - Mike Springer, Google
• Digital Cities Experts Panel - Doug Eberhard, Autodesk
• Open Access to Geospatial Data Using Open RESTful Web Services - Haris Kurtagic, SL-King
• Providing a Higher Level of Service through Web Architecture: City of Nanaimo and the MapGuide REST Extension - Jason Birch, City of Nanaimo
• Using Spatial ETL for Web Services-Based Data Sharing - Don Murray, Safe Software Inc.

At SOTM09 in Amsterdam Andrew Turner announced that his company GeoCommons was open-sourcing their geocoder. You can get the LGPL-licensed code on GitHub and also see Andrew's lightning talk presentation announcement on Slideshare.

The Razaksat satellite was successfully separated from the SpaceX Falcon 1 lauch vehicle about 48 minutes after liftoff at Kwajalein at 3:35 GMT (11:35 pm EDT).   This is the first succesful launch of a satellite on a Falcon rocket.   Falcon 1 is a two stage, liquid oxygen and kerosene powered rocket designed for commercial transport of satellites to low Earth orbit.  The Falcon 1 is powered by a Merlin 1C engine,  developed by SpaceX and delivering about the same thrust as the Saturn V F-1. 

The RazakSat satellite is a joint development program between Astronautic Technology (M) Sdn.Bhd. of Malaysia and SaTReCi to develop technologies for a Near Equatorial Orbit remote sensing mini-satellite system for medium high-resolution images.  Two other satellites are on board, InnoSat and CubeSat.

This was the fifth flight of the Falcon 1 rocket, with the last two flights being successful. Later this year the first flight of the larger Falcon 9 rocket is planned from Cape Canaveral.   The Falcon-9 first stage is powered by nine Merlin engines.

If you're working in a building information modeling (BIM) environment and want to analyze the structure for sustainability during the conceptual design phase, there is a Solar Radiation Technology Preview at Autodesk Labs that you might want to take a look at. The Solar Radiation Technology Preview allows users to study incident solar radiation on a building. There's a video that shows you how.

I blogged about 3D printing earlier this year. 3D printing involves designing a 3D model in a design application such as AutoCAD, exporting an STL file and then literally printing a 3D object using a multi-pass inkjet-like process, but with a material which can be plastic or resin rather than ink.

The extent of Arctic sea ice is one of the most accessible sources of data showing the effect of global climate change.  The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) began monitoring Arctic sea ice extents in 1978 using passive microwave satellites (NSIDC Near-Real-Time DMSP SSM/I Daily Polar Gridded Sea Ice Concentrations and the Sea Ice Concentrations from Nimbus-7 SSMR and DMSP SSM/I Passive Microwave) at a resolution of 25 km.  September 2007 was the lowest summer Arctic sea ice extent observed since NSIDC began monitoring and recording sea ice extents in 1978.  To see an animation of observed sea ice extents for September from 1979 through 2008, go to this site and select 

• Northern hemisphere, 
• 1979
• September 
• Sea Ice Extent
• check Fixed Month Animations.

A recent article, which extrapolated Arctic sea ice extents back to 1200 CE using a combination of regional tree-ring chronology from the timberline area in Fennoscandia and δ¹⁸O from the Lomonosovfonna ice core in Svalbard calibrated for the period 1864–1997, suggests that the present low sea ice extent is the lowest  over the last 800 years and began with a decline starting in the late-nineteenth century after the so called Little Ice Age (LIA) from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, when the largest sea ice extent values occurred.  Last year the Northwest Passage was ice free in the summer for the first time in history.  Right now the Arctic is in the midst of the summer melt season. Through June ice extent tracked below the 1979 to 2000 average, and slightly above the levels recorded during June 2007.

An article published in 2007 by Julienne Stroeve and co-workers at NSIDC has suggested that the IPCC models are too conservative in their estimates that the Arctic will become completely ice-free in the summer during the second half of this century or later.  On average, the IPCC models suggest a trend that is three times smaller than what has been observed.  The observed rate indicates that sea ice conditions for September are about thirty years ahead of where the models predict and suggest it is likely that the Arctic will be ice free in the summer during the first half of this century.