[OSGeo-Discuss] NOT"geographic web" on Google Earth + poached OSGEO logo

[Allan Doyle]

I guess had I opened Google Earth before I had read this, my reaction  
would have been one of surprise at how fairly lame and useless it is  
to toss up a bunch of seemingly undifferentiated points and call them  
a geographic web.

Then I might have picked up on the Panoramio logo issue and would  
have thought it to be at best an unfortunate choice. I have been  
through some logo designs myself and know how hard it is to not bump  
into someone else's ideas yet keep some kind of an evocative theme.

I think Google Earth's stance is pretty clear. They care first and  
foremost about getting their product out there and tend to show they  
have a very introverted or at least self-centered corporate culture.  
There may well be legions of GE marketing types who know nothing  
about either open standards or open source. I see this as a result of  
GE's genesis in the "black" world of

The sad fact is that 99% of GE users will look at this and think it's  
revolutionary. But we know better. It's Red Dot Fever (thanks to  
Schuyler for that term!)

Vote with your mouse. Turn the layer off.

	Allan


On Dec 9, 2006, at 15:08, Mike Liebhold wrote:

> I clicked on google earth today, to follow my daughter & husband's  
> journey from brazil into argentina, and found an unexpected new  
> default view.
>
> I don't know which is more offensive:
>
> 1, That google would add a new default selected layer called  
> "geographic web" that is - no way -  a "geographic web"
>
> or
>
> 2. that that the prominent logo on many proprietary kml placemark  
> pages from these "geographic web"  points is so derivitive/poached  
> from the widely recognized  OSGEO logo. see panoramio.com
>
> And it's kind of counter-intuitive to see some  non-editable  
> wikipedia pages have mysteriously been imported into google's own  
> non-standard kml format.
>
> If google earth actually supported standards, starting with html  
> and georss, wfs/wms/gml I guess they could claim a "geographic  
> web". Until then it looks like a clearly blantant appropriation for  
> private advantage of  the term "geographic web" that explicitly  
> means open standard hypermedia, to most rational people.
>
> check it out.
>
> - Mike Liebhold

-- 
Allan Doyle
+1.781.433.2695
adoyle at eogeo.org