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Submission + - Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! Now Support GeoRSS

Submitted by
Lord Satri
Lord Satri writes: "This week, Microsoft announced their new Live Maps, in addition to supporting Firefox on Windows for 3D, now supports the GeoRSS standard. They join Google which recently announced the support of GeoRSS and KML mapping in their Google Maps API. In short, GeoRSS is a standard supported by the Open Geospatial Consortium that incorporates geolocation in an interoperable manner to RSS feeds. The applications are numerous. With Yahoo!'s support of GeoRSS, all the major players are in and the future looks bright for this emerging standard. As for KML, Google Earth's file format, this new Google Maps integration is not unrelated to the recent announcement of internet-wide KML search capabilities within Google Earth. From the GeoRSS website: "This site describes a number of ways to encode location in RSS feeds. As RSS becomes more and more prevalent as a way to publish and share information, it becomes increasingly important that location is described in an interoperable manner so that applications can request, aggregate, share and map geographically tagged feeds. To avoid the fragmentation of language that has occurred in RSS and other Web information encoding efforts, we have created this site to promote a relatively small number of encodings that meet the needs of a wide range of communities. By building these encodings on a common information model, we hope to promote interoperability and "upwards-compatibility" across encodings.""

Feed BlackBerry 8830 "Cyclone" peeped with Verizon branding (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Cellphones


As mentioned a few days ago, Verizon Wireless seems to be prepping for the release of a new dual band version of the venerable Blackberry 8800, christened the 8830. With this handy bit of tech you will be able to use CDMA radio while in the States (and maybe Canada?) and switch over to that good old fashioned GSM love while abroad. The pic above clearly shows the 8830 in silver, while the images in our last article seem to show it in black. No other solid info is available, but you can be sure we will be updating as the news and details trickle in.

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Games

Gaming on a Universal Platform? 99

Posted by Zonk from the all-together-now dept.
Riffing off of David Jaffe's earlier comments, an article up on the Next Generation site theorizes about a single unified gaming platform, ala the music and movie businesses. He proposes a 'videogame standards commission', which could look out for the future of the industry as a whole. They might, he says, not even agree with his conclusion that a global platform would be a good idea. The point, he says, would be to maintain "a detailed yet flexible long-term plan for progressive development of the medium. The board would assay in accordance with a constitution of irrefutable primary standards and ideals ... From what I can see the only way such a body could conceivably be formed is by appealing to the idealism of visionary designers and executives across the spectrum - your Satoru Iwatas and Ken Kutaragis, and Will Wrights and David Jaffes. The Game Developers Conference and other gatherings already embody some of the spirit of this proposal." Curmudgeon Gamer has extensive commentary on Eric-Jon Rossel Waugh's piece.

PMD Applied 108

Posted by samzenpus from the reduce-the-redundancy dept.
Simon P. Chappell writes "It's a fundamentally agreed fact within our industry that code reviews are good. Really good. Sliced bread good. But have you actually tried organizing one? If you can get everyone together that needs to be there at the same time in the same meeting room, then you still have the challenge of trying to keep a roomful of geeks from getting trapped in minutiae and squabbling over details like formatting conventions. Well, what if I told you that you could get your code reviews done in less than five minutes and that there would be no arguing? Enter PMD, an open-source Java static analyzer. Think of it as a code review in a box. As if that weren't wonderful enough, there's even a book, PMD Applied, written by Tom Copeland, the author of PMD." Read on for the rest of Simon's review.

Feed Water on Mars: New Evidence (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed
Photographs sent by a NASA orbiter suggests that water may indeed be flowing on Mars. And where there's water, there's at least a chance of life. By the Associated Press.


Patents

Submission + - Congress Tackles Patent Reform

Submitted by nadamsieee
nadamsieee writes: Wired's Luke O'Brian recently reported about Congress' latest attempt to reform the patent system. In the article O'Brian tells of how "[w]itnesses at Thursday's hearing painted a bleak picture of that system. Adam Jaffe, a Brandeis University professor and author of a book on the subject, described the system as "out of whack." Instead of "the engine of innovation," the patent has become "the sand in the gears," he said, citing widespread fears of litigation." The House Oversight Committee website has more details. How would you fix the patent system?

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