Check out Ed Parsons’, Android and LBS - in the stack at last. I agree with him that “LBS would only really make sense as an underlining infrastructure that is available to all applications, therefore allowing much higher levels of integration.” Congrats on the release Google, and good luck, Android.

Michael Goodchild makes a good point in “Citizens as Voluntary Sensors: Spatial Data Infrastructure in the World of Web 2.0” as he argues that there is a “dramatic decline in the supply of geographic information worldwide”, due in large part to the reduction in funding for national mapping efforts over the last few decades. With no change in government policy on the horizon, it’s natural to look to voluntary mapping efforts like OpenStreetMap and the KML community to fill the gap. Hopefully these “citizen scientist” communities can mature to far surpass what government agencies provided in the past. Not a lot of answers here, but some good questions, and it’s only 9 pages!

Joe Gregorio notes in The end of the AtomPub WG that the Atom Publishing Format and Protocol WG (atompub) in the Application Area has concluded. Developers can go into full programming mode knowing that the encodings and interfaces aren’t changing any time soon. Thanks AtomPub WG for a great standard.