Media Watch: Chinese base investigated; SciFoo trends

Two noteworthy articles well worth a read, and not just because Ogle Earth is mentioned:-)

  • In the San Jose Mercury News, China correspondent Tim Johnson writes up the new phenomenon of social spying — Exhibit A is the discovery of accurate miniaturized terrain on a remote Chinese base by a Google Earth user. Why is this article so great? They actually sent somebody all the way out there to investigate the base. It leads to some great quotes, though the mystery remains unsolved for now. (I’m not quite Swedish, though:-)
  • Over on Forbes.com, Elizabeth Corcoran writes a Letter From Silicon Valley about last month’s O’Reilly’s Science Foo Camp. (Was that only a month ago? Time flies.) Many of the presentations that impressed her have a clear geospatial/sensor web component to them — in this she echoes Nature’s special issue about sensor webs back in February.