Re: [egov] Geospatially-aware search services

[Eliot Christian <echristi@usgs.gov>]

At 01:22 PM 6/30/2005, Carl Reed OGC wrote:
>Actually, for things geospatial, it sure would be nice if they also joined 
>the OGC!

Bruce Peat passed on some further details in a story at 
http://update.internetweek.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/hovr0GMByK0G4X0DVbR0E8

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Orbimage Inc. has agreed to provide satellite pictures of Earth for 
Microsoft Corp.'s upcoming MSN Virtual Earth service [...] which is 
scheduled to launch this summer [...] Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are 
focusing heavily on local search, which studies show is often used by 
consumers looking for products and services in their cities and towns. As a 
result, the service is attractive to advertisers. [...] Microsoft gets its 
photos from TerraServer USA, a research project operated by Microsoft. 
[Eliot: Terraserver is actually a partnership with USGS.]

For most consumers, the satellite photos provide a general view of the area 
around a specific location. In addition, Google and Microsoft are adding 
layers of data, such as businesses, road names, highway signs and more. 
[...] Google and MSN, however, are not alone among major Internet companies 
focusing on pictures in local search. Amazon.com's search engine A9.com, 
for example, shows street-level pictures of businesses that are taken by 
people driving around in trucks. The service currently covers about a dozen 
cities.

Pictures, however, are only as valuable as the information they contain, 
Puckorious said. For example, a realtor might be willing to pay for a 
service that would make it easy to find nearby schools, bus stops, parks 
and other places near a new listing. In addition, the service provider 
could also offer public information available on the property, such as tax 
records.

"Just think of that process evolving," Puckorious said. "There's a lot of 
data out there, and one of the key objectives of Microsoft is to bring it 
all together."

Ultimately, the data that's available with the pictures would determine the 
value of the service, Puckorious said.

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>  The OGC members have already endorsed 3950 as a profile of the OGC 
> Catalog 2.0 interface specification (we are also working an ebRIM profile 
> and an ISO 19115/19115 profile). Additionally, our members have been 
> working in a number of areas related to how to specify search patterns in 
> a standardized way. Not as easy as one might think :-)

Not easy, indeed! This is exactly why ISO 23950 uses an "abstraction 
layer"--searchers work from the concepts they know. Searchers are not 
expected to know details of the data model behind the network-facing 
service. As I've heard John Evdemon say: A principle of SOA is that 
implementation specifics should not bleed through the exposed service 
interface.