A collection of various GIS related links, information and other GIS blogs.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

FOXNews – Google Earth Accused of Aiding Mumbai Terror Attacks

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,464246,00.html 

An Indian court has been called to ban Google Earth amid suggestions the online satellite-imaging service was used to help plan the terror attacks that killed more than 170 people in Mumbai last month.

A petition entered at the Mumbai High Court alleges that the Google Earth service "aids terrorists in plotting attacks."

Advocate Amit Karkhanis has urged the court to direct Google to blur images of sensitive areas in the country until the case is decided.

There are indications that the gunmen who stormed Mumbai on Nov. 26, and the people who trained them, were technically skilled.

The group appears to have used complex GPS systems to navigate their way to Mumbai by sea. They communicated by satellite phone, used mobile phones with several different SIM cards and may have monitored events as the siege unfolded via BlackBerry Web browsers.

Police in Mumbai have said the terrorists familiarized themselves with the streets of Mumbai's financial capital using satellite images, according to the sole gunman to be captured alive.

The commandos who stormed the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai said the militants had made a beeline for the building's closed-circuit security-camera control room.

The legal petition also follows unconfirmed reports that Faheem Ahmed Ansari, a suspected militant who was arrested in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh in February, said he was shown maps of Indian locations on Google Earth by members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based terrorist faction that Indian officials are convinced was behind the Mumbai attacks.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Getting to Know ArcGIS Desktop – 9.3

Many of you have probably seen – and hopefully used! – this book over the years. It has been very popular and I hear from many folks that it is very useful to them. So it is nice to see that it is being updated for ArcGIS Desktop 9.3!

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ESRI Press Updates Getting to Know ArcGIS Desktop for the 9.3 Software Release

Redlands, California—ESRI Press has published an update to its best-selling book Getting to Know ArcGIS Desktop: Basics of ArcView, ArcEditor, and ArcInfo, Second Edition, with revisions that will make the exercises compatible with the latest software release, ArcGIS 9.3.

Getting to Know ArcGIS Desktop, an ESRI Press best seller for seven years, has schooled tens of thousands of people in the basics of how to use geographic information system (GIS) software technology.

The workbook introduces GIS concepts and capabilities and describes the features and functionality in ArcView, ArcEditor, and ArcInfo, the core products in the ArcGIS Desktop line. Step-by-step exercises, accompanied by richly detailed illustrations, teach basic GIS tasks such as how to conduct spatial analyses, make maps, and build and edit spatial databases.

Readers will learn to use the software applications that form the building blocks of ArcGIS: ArcMap, used for displaying and querying maps, and ArcCatalog, used for managing geographic data. They also will learn how to create a personal geodatabase; geocode addresses; join or relate tables; and build models using ModelBuilder, a graphical interface for diagramming and processing solutions to complex spatial analysis problems.

Instructions in Getting to Know ArcGIS Desktop have been updated to reflect ArcGIS 9.3 enhancements. To learn more about the latest version of ESRI's software, visit www.esri.com/whatsnew. The workbook includes a 180-day single-use trial version of ArcView 9.3 software on DVD and a CD of data for working through the exercises.

Getting to Know ArcGIS Desktop: Basics of ArcView, ArcEditor, and ArcInfo, Second Edition Updated for ArcGIS 9.3 (ISBN: 9781589482104, 600 pages, $79.95), is available at online retailers worldwide, at www.esri.com/esripress, or by calling 1-800-447-9778. Outside the United States, visit www.esri.com/esripressorders for complete ordering options or contact your local ESRI distributor. For a current distributor list, visit www.esri.com/distributors. Interested retailers can contact ESRI Press book distributor Ingram Publisher Services.