You're listening to a very spatial podcast, episode 772, October 26th, 2025.
Hello, welcome to a very spatial podcast.
I'm Jesse.
I'm Sue.
I'm Barb.
And this is Frank.
And this week we are going to be talking about things that are ai, ar XR related.
As the news items and the topic.
So let's get kicked off by saying that grounding which is with
Google Maps, is, is now available.
This is one of the many things that have been recently announced in terms of the
integration of Gemini and Google Maps.
So, grounding with Google Maps is now gonna be in Vertex ai.
Through general availability.
I, I have to say that the, they said through GA and I was like, Georgia?
Yeah.
What the, I was like, oh, general availability.
Okay, that makes more sense.
I was like, I don't understand why I need to know what state it's out of.
But anyway,
so it, it, it, you know, let's see.
They list four things.
Timely details reviews, business data, full picture on their
queries by combining grounding.
And Google Maps.
Google search and Maps.
Yeah.
Right.
And I think by grounding they just mean like adding in
local sources were available.
Right.
Verifiable local sources to ground it in the, in the locality.
Right.
But basically the way to think about it is allows you to ask,
you know, questions that may not necessarily be like on the website.
Like the example to give is, can I bring my kids to tonight's venue and
they'll look and see who's playing and then go, oh yeah, that's appropriate
for kids, or not appropriate for kids.
It's sort of this kind of more subjective questions and, and queries
that you may ask, and it's gonna go and look at all the associated
information and make a determination.
It, I, I, I kind of think of it as like the thing you might ask a friend who
knows a little bit about what's going on I first, that you don't really trust.
That you don't really trust.
Yeah.
See, when I first read it, because it said your AI is now a local
expert, and it had, you know, the term grounding, I was expecting it
to be a ground true thing type tool.
That is where I went initially as well, which is why I just mentioned
kind of, you know, what they're, what they're meaning by it, because.
Obviously we're a specialized audience, so.
That's how initially I read it.
But yes,
I, on the other hand, went with the Groundlings and I was like, okay,
this, that doesn't make sense that there are an improv comedy troupe.
Yeah.
It was like, doesn't make any sense.
And then when I read more about it, I was like, well, it's
not too far from the truth.
It's
we, we will treat it as comedic.
As it gives us funny answers,
actually, the way I think about it, if you're used to using Amazon and
you look for a particular product and at the top of Amazon on the, on the,
you know, people's comments and, and ratings and stuff like that, they're
now giving summaries that say, people are saying this about the product or
that about the product, but they do know this other thing about the product.
It kind of feels not a thousand yards different from that.
That is going, oh, this is what people are kind of saying about the
thing, which is useful, but also.
Again, a friend, you have questions for, trusts in their opinions,
kind of connected to this.
The next one takes us continuing again into Google with their connecting
the dots with geospatial reasoning.
Where here, we'll just read it as a framework powered by Gemini that
now lets AI automatically connect different earth AI models to answer
complex questions and models like.
Weather forecasts, population maps, satellite imagery.
And this of course, is where I think some of the conversation separations
between what I occasionally try to poke at and other people are focusing
on, on more of the generative stuff.
You know, they're calling these AI models their data sets.
So it's, yeah, it's, it's a, a long-term thing I think.
To figure out how to talk about these as not all the same, even though people
are kind of bunching them into baskets.
Yeah.
I mean, they are technically ai, but only in the same sense that, you know, a
cell phone is a computer and Apple Watch is a computer, and yet that's all true.
But also they're vastly different than a desktop computer or a server
or a cloud or anything like that.
Is a pixel a token?
Yes.
I, I don't disagree with that.
Right.
So, I mean, you have to, I, I think that we have to figure out how to, to
meaningfully as a culture, meaningfully separate AI as a marketing label versus
as a, I'm gonna say body of literature, just 'cause we're all academics.
But, you know, that's, that's the least terrible thing I can
think of to call it in terms of.
A basket phrase.
Yes.
If we wanted to take that as our, our kind of starting point, it'd be
saying that, okay, everything's ai.
Okay.
Everything is the same in phenomenology.
There are so many different phenomenologies and things
that came out of phenomenology.
There are so many different things whenever we're talking
about AI or the word model, that they are not the same thing.
So yeah, these are again, the long term questions.
Yeah.
Jesse, when I was reading through it and I was thinking like you, that,
you know what this is, is identifying.
Data sets to create layers to, and they're saying it can answer questions like, for
example, about flooding within a specific community that might be in danger.
I'm like, well, good, but it depends.
Where are you?
What are you drawing it from?
And again, better than nothing, but you know.
How useful and are you gonna, are people gonna think that this is it, you know
this, it's drawn from these baskets and that's all I've got available to me
and I don't need to look any further.
So, geospatial reasoning to go along with our other things
that we talked about before.
And of course.
Earth ai, which is now in Google Earth as well as cloud-based.
These are all things in the news.
Well, I still continue
to spin my wheels on geospatial reasoning capitalized after 20 so years
working in GIS at geography and stuff, and I'm like, I just wanna know like.
Like, why was my geospatial reasoning all those years not capitalized?
What?
Because you did not productize it.
That's it.
Right?
That's where I'm at right now.
It was just a service you were providing, not a product.
Yeah.
There's no tm.
You got no tm.
There you go.
Also, imagery insights, that's capitalized as well.
I think it's, I saw somewhere.
Yeah.
Again, he cool.
Loves to.
Make a product and then just so they can get rid of it later.
Yeah, that's also true.
Now, a lot of the this came out now because the first Google xr,
XR ar, Google AR one of the two.
It's,
it's Google ar, but Samsung's doing an xr.
There you go.
The first one of those devices.
Has been basically announced and I guess released for, for order, if not
actually out in the store shelf yet.
And that is, as Frank was saying, galaxy XR from Samsung.
And so a lot of the examples they gave for.
Galaxy xr were Google Maps related.
So if you go and look at some of the Google X, sorry, galaxy XR videos
on YouTube, they're essentially, Hey, this is a Cole Hardware device.
Use Google Maps, use Google Earth.
Inside of this virtual headset?
Well, that's because early on, right, there's some of the things that you can
show and in a bit when we talk about the, the meta dis, the meta display,
it's a similar thing like the con that I think we're still at the point where
a lot of these types of devices are limited because they're limited with
what people can make for them, thus limited in their broader appeal, right?
Because so, so early on, right?
Something that grabs it and shows it.
Is something like Google Maps.
I, I think this comes down to one symbol and only one symbol.
The, the headline link here said the, the Samsung Android xr, whatever the
heck it's called, is Could Succeed.
Where the Apple, what's it called?
Vision.
Vision Pro.
Vision
Pro, yeah.
Has failed and.
That's a, you know, kudos for having a good Click Beatty headline
and all that sort of stuff.
When you start digging into it and you're like, okay, well the reason
they're making that argument is because it's half the price of the pro.
So the pro is like $3,600 or something like that, depending on
how much storage you get in it.
And then this thing's $1,800.
Well.
My argument would be that what do to Sue's point, what are you bringing to
the table that my $500 meta doesn't?
I think that's the big problem, just
to
keep
it in the things that are called pro, the $300 cheaper.
Meta Pro, whatever it was.
Yeah.
Or CC Vibe, I think is like 1200 or something.
Yeah.
So it's, to me, this is coming down to value for Dollar.
And I think that this is again, to Sue's point, the use case, is it been made,
certainly not for the price of a new freaking computer or double the price
of a new computer in the case of Apples.
Now, I do feel that, and this kind of reflects on both
of your responses, is that.
Whenever we look at the Android AR environment, it is building on
over a decade of virtual reality.
Even though we don't think about the fact that cardboard is the
basis of this cardboard, that they more or less let go, what?
Five years ago?
Oh, I think longer than that.
Yeah.
And so.
All these apps that were built for cardboard will work in
these if they've been updated in the last, you know, decade.
So they do have a step up on what Apple had, which is people had
to start from scratch building VR applications for the the Vision Pro.
And so, you know, that's limitation one right there.
But you do also have on the other end meta with the massive.
Number of, of headsets that there, that people have been
building for, for over a decade.
For the, the quest.
Yeah.
And I just think like some things like this just aren't
learning the lessons, right.
In the, the gaming world with the headsets that came out the same thing, right?
Is that the broad, the broad number of things that you
could do in, it wasn't there.
Like you had limited number of games.
You do certain things and.
It, it still never ha hasn't really done that.
And the same thing with some of the other like headsets, his combo use case.
So here's the thing, right?
To get, I think the money making that they're looking for, you have to have, say
a bus business use cases, which they try.
Microsoft tried with the HoloLens, which others have tried.
And it's just not, it's just not there yet, but.
But yeah, also for, I have to say, when I saw the price of this, I just,
'cause I was all excited a little bit when I'm scrolling down Right.
You know, it's Android, so it'll probably be cheaper.
Yeah, okay.
So it's cheaper, but literally like, you know, it's just, I just looked
at the price and went, yeah, okay.
And then I looked at the headset and I'm like, what?
What in that design is 1799 or whatever it is.
Yeah.
So the thing, I
don't know the answer to, which actually Sue might, how much is a galaxy fold?
Original base price
of a fold.
Oh, that's like over a thousand dollars.
That's no's My beat's close to two.
I was gonna say.
Yeah.
A flip is over a thousand dollars.
Yeah.
So yeah.
Okay.
So Samsungs aren't cheap for fair.
Yeah.
I mean, we're, we're
talking about this, we're talking about something that is about the
same price as they're flagship phone.
Yeah.
And so,
yeah.
But it's got the same problem as it, the headsets had the exact same issue.
Well.
Has two issues, one of which is very similar to a phone.
It's gonna come down to why, why is everyone buying that stupid thin?
I don't mean the phone's stupid.
I mean, it's, it's stupid thin.
Yeah.
The air apple 17.
Now I forget the air because it's so freaking light and it's so thin.
That's why everyone's like, I love this thing.
It's tiny.
It's not my thing.
But, you know, weight matters.
When you look at the, the, the XR.
You gotta scroll down quite some distance to find any, I mean, they throw
around lots of numbers and X number of pixels and by y number of pixels.
And the, the total CPU clock cycle and all this other junk, they're
thrown at you like, I don't care.
I just don't care.
What I care about is how much does this stupid thing weigh and I
care about whether it's balanced.
And that's what is the defining, one of the defining points between.
Anyone bothers with this thing.
'cause if it's sitting on the front of your eyes and it weighs 14 pounds,
you're gonna not want to do it very long.
Now, when you get down to the chart, it does say it's 545 grams and being an
American, I have no idea how that is.
But what it, there's a problem with, even that is it doesn't tell me the balance.
So again, if it's all front heavy, as you would expect, looking at
the thing, it may not be very comfortable for to wear for very long.
Whereas people can play on their phone for.
Hours and hours and hours and hours without any issues.
So.
Weight is the one thing, and the other big thing that people don't talk about is
that I don't care how much developmental, whatevers you do to pixels and CPU cycles
and grams and the whole nine yards, a very large percentage of the people who
put this thing on are gonna want to throw up and inside of 10 minutes of using it.
And that's just a, nobody wants to use things that make them sick.
They just don't.
Now you can get to the point where that's not an issue, but.
It's not dissimilar to, you know callouses on playing guitar.
If you just don't do it for a while, you've gotta do the work.
Again, I haven't played around with a, with our meta in three months, and
I know when I put it on there, I'm gonna start getting nauseated whenever
I start messing around with it.
So I'm gonna have to build up my tolerance again.
Until they figure out how to just deal with those issues and figure out
a a, a good use case that that makes me want to deal with those problems.
I don't see how these things are gonna take off beyond the few hundred
dollars range, but they're not,
I don't think meant to one.
It's just over a pound.
In case you're wondering, 540 grams is what is 19 ounces, so just over pound.
How
does that, how does that compare?
I'm wondering how that compares, like the Meta Pro Apple Pro Apple is probably
a little heavier 'cause of the glass and stuff like that, I was guessing.
But the, the I think our meta quests are about a pound.
Yeah.
I can tell the difference.
I can remember back the HoloLens was like a. I mean a solid
two to two and a half pounds.
Yeah, it would like bow your neck down a little bit when you'd first put it down.
So like I have a comparison point from those and they are better and
that weight is, is much better.
But still, you're right, it's still something noticeable.
And the fact that in the VR space you have to seal off kind of the outside
input if you're in the VR mode, is always gonna be an issue for the vertigo
and those things for some people,
which is why we're moving on to the next part.
With the fact that Meta has released the Ray Band Display.
So Meta Ray Band Display is the next generation of the Meta Ray
Band series, but it has the one lens projection system in it.
So you're getting information fed to you in a glass.
Now we've talked about even realities.
There's other companies that are literally doing that right now.
There's multiple Kickstarters over the last two months.
That are, their goal is to build these type of things.
But it's, it's interesting to me that I, I kind of want the display, but I don't
really care right now because the thing I use my red met array bands for, and I have
two pair, I, I have a pair for sitting at the computer and one for driving,
and both of them are progressives.
And so they're, they're ones that if I get the display and it's gonna be that
much more expensive because I have.
A prescription on top of that.
And so the use case I have is audio and I use the AI in these
things maybe once a month.
And that's just because I'm somewhere where it's easier just to tap
the side of my glasses and ask a question then to pull out my phone.
And half the time I'm not happy with the answer because it's
laa based as opposed to other.
AI basis, but that's a whole separate AI set of conversations of which LLMs
are actually useful for you for day to day with the kind of questions you ask.
'cause there are, each one does better than others for specific things.
And most of the time I'm asking questions.
It's about, well not about official stuff, it's about what.
Was the year that X book was written or white movie came out.
And so yeah, these are the weird things I ask, but either way it's, it's not
about for me right now that display capability, but all of these headsets
which are not glasses based, our building towards these capabilities.
And so even in Google's AR original demonstration, they
want to get the glasses.
They made that very clear.
They said, you know what, whenever we're first come out with goo with Samsung, it's
not gonna be glasses, but it is Google AR is being built with that in mind.
So it's not necessarily supposed to be just xr, it is a goal of
smaller, regular glasses shaped ar
Yes, I know, but you know what?
Here's in my, in my, oh, if, if costs were no, no issue or anything like that,
what I'd love to see is a dual headset.
Where in the vr, if you wanna do VR in a VR space, it has that, that
surround whatever you need there.
And maybe it has different inputs and then you can detach the part that can
do AR and it becomes something much lighter and just carry it around.
Like I would be, so, I mean like
we have those, but most of them are driven by phone.
So you have to have the the phone attached to Yeah, but I'm just saying
like that's, they're not great.
That's how I think.
I think you have at least one pair of those.
No, no, you don't.
The the, they can only do one thing.
The ones that I have
no, you, you then had a little cover that went on the outside
that made them nevermind.
Anyway,
But yeah, these things exist and again, people have been building
towards this for quite some time.
But yeah, I don't, I don't.
If I agree with Sue, go ahead, Frank.
No, that's all right.
So I have two thoughts about this.
The first of all is the mean one, which is, if you look at the picture
in the show notes, I have to ask, does it come with a pocket protector?
Wait, which one are you
talking about?
I'm talking about the metal ones.
Oh, yeah, that's, they're just hideous.
Yes, they are.
And I'm a guy who wears thick glasses and that, that's just, but I am, I
fully acknowledge that they're gonna get better and they're gonna get into a
smaller and smaller footprint, because as much as I was ragging on the headsets
a few minutes ago, they are lighter and lighter and lighter as, as suit noted.
So that's going to happen.
I, this is a technology that I desperately want and I want to use.
I think I need, and all three of the answers to those questions are no.
And I, I'm aware of that.
It's like, I want, I want it to be a thing that I, I use and I think, like,
Jesse, I just won't really use them in the way that I, I won't, I just won't.
And, and I'm kind of curious if that's a function of.
I, I'm trying to think, I articulate this.
Is it because I'm just too old?
Like, if I started doing this when I was 14, would it become just
part of me much like, you know, the cell phone is just an extension
of a lot of people at this point.
The smartphone I should say?
Or is it just we don't, we as a species haven't quite gotten this
technology to the point where people go, oh yeah, I get it now.
I get, I get where this exists in my life.
But because you know, the, the I, I almost bought, when I bought my new glasses, I
almost got the, the meta shit glasses.
I was like, man, I think I might do that.
And then you had made a comment at some point, I remember it was on the air off,
but about the fact that you just use yours mostly for listening to music.
And I had, I was like, well, I have AirPods so I don't need that.
You know, I don't need to spend the extra money for those.
And 'cause I was like, yeah, I totally wouldn't use them either.
So I will say I use them constantly, as you say, for music.
But whenever I'm in situations, I use the camera.
I would much, I would be happier with it if it was a different camera.
'cause of course it's a vertical and I'm old, so I want, I want landscape.
Landscape, yeah.
And I, I will use the AI on occasion and I will say that the amount that I
use them, each three of those use cases.
Parallels the amount I use, those three use cases for my phone.
It's, you know, a little bit less than I use my phone because sometimes
it's easier just to use the phone to get the results you want.
But I, I will say that I will use the camera, I will use the
ai, but I don't use the AI a lot on my phone or on my computer.
So the fact that I don't use it a lot on my phone, on my
glasses isn't too surprising.
And I don't take a huge amount of pictures like most people do.
So the fact that I only take some pictures and videos with my glasses
isn't really that surprising either.
Yeah.
So it's, although I will say it's use case in general, I think
on the audio when I use mine, 'cause I have the work, sorry, just real quick,
the workspace, progressives as well.
It is, I cannot wear earbuds 'cause the shape of my ears.
I, they're painful and I can't situate 'em such that I can
actually hear very well out of them.
So I've never really used ear budds.
But the glasses and the phone thing, like on Zoom call, like on all use cases on the
computer, actually they work great for me.
So, so I'll just a note that, that, that
this is not sponsored by
not No, but, but that particular function I actually do find, and I
had a. Previous set of audio glasses.
So
in the end Gadget Review, they talk about the Meta's neural band, the
basically being able to use gestures that it is, you know, pretty robust
and that it didn't misinterpret any gestures or that we're being used.
So I think that's something else that adds to the potential for it.
I, I like the idea of being able to use you like finger taps and things
like that to, to do directions.
I think that's to it.
It's nice to have that, to get around whenever you're in a
meeting or something like that.
But I do expect that the hand tracking that you do have in the
MedQuest or whatever headset you're, you're looking at nowadays, that
you'll be able to do that as well.
It's just, right now they're starting with that because they expect
people not to want to be obvious whenever they're swiping in the air.
All the, all the headsets.
I mean, like that's always what the challenge is, the interface.
Like how do you get it to do stuff?
It's always a problem.
I, I was just gonna say that, that I will admit that.
Another reason that I was like, nah, is because they're $800
for the frames and my glasses.
My per personal prescription is so.
Wonky.
I'm spending well over that.
Well, pretty close to that, just on the lenses.
So, you know, we're talking about doubling the cost and it's like, ugh,
that's a lot of money on something that I'm not convinced I'll use.
So I, I think that the combination of making them look a little less dorky
and making 'em a little more functional and making them cheaper, I think is
gonna be really the tipping point to, to, I mean, you know, with vr, the.
Apple Vision Pro doesn't make sense for most use cases for
most people at that price point.
The meta may, and, you know, there's $3,000 difference between the two.
So, yeah, but that's what I'm saying is I think when we get it
to the point where it's it's a little more, yeah, why not it, it's.
Gonna take off a bit more.
And the other piece of this is gonna make a big difference to me
is I want it to be able to slot in with the services I want to use.
So, you know, and that it's how my phone works, is I'm gonna use this for my
browser, I'm gonna use that for my maps.
That's what I want to have that capability because for whatever reasons I like that
better, as opposed to what somebody said, we've decided this is the best thing.
Which, you know, Jesse, you talked about the LAMA being less than ideal
for the types of questions you ask.
You know, it'd be better to have a. A, a, a system that is more suited to the
types of questions that I'm gonna ask.
I was gonna say, well actually the, this next news piece then speaks to some
part of that, I think because at the recent meta event, what was it called?
Connect Whatever meta announced that they're actually going to have something
called a wearables device access toolkit.
So for developers to be able to do some third party stuff.
On the meta glasses.
Yeah.
So and they, I thought this was interesting 'cause they pointed out
that it's not like a traditional SDK that we think about where you know, you
build your app and you deploy it out.
It's actually, you can't deploy things onto the glasses.
'cause of course they're not, they're just input devices with sensors.
But what you can, what you'll be able to do is access the
sensors, like the microphone.
So you can ask it things or the, the camera.
And then you'll have an app on a, on your phone, and then the app
will push out whatever results you need back to the, the device.
But they gave one example that they'd been working with Disney on an app to, like,
a lot of this is context specific, so what we would think of as, as ar right?
Looking at your surroundings and having things.
But this will allow developers to get some third party stuff
potentially on the glasses in the sense of things that you would use.
And so I think that.
That's a recognition again, that a lot of these technologies, when
they start to spread is when they have a broad range of, of appeal to
people that do different things and are interested in different things.
Yeah, so I was thinking, you know, that this is one of those inflection points
in the development of a technology or geospatial technology is when you start to
be able to have those third par party apps so that you can reach out and start to
get more usability for specific audiences.
And, you know, another example they used was for golf courses.
So, you know, I could see when this starts getting used within specific
industries especially when they're trying to do things like tours or augmented
reality type functions that one of those things is going to hopefully
really hit to, to expand the technology.
And, and that's kind of, I mean, we, we law the, the revolutionary
aspect of the original iPhone, which.
Really its revolutionary piece was the app store.
When you get down to it, it's like, yeah, we have this platform that
does a bunch of stuff and here's a way that you can make it do things
we haven't thought of doing yet.
Once that happened, that just elevated that concept to a whole nother level
from where it was even previously, because you know, apple, as brilliant
as they are, can't think of everything but allowing people to do those things.
It's just that opens up so many different facets.
It's not even funny.
Can't remember.
I do remember that.
Of course, the App store didn't exist until the second version of the iPhone.
So which came first?
Play Store or the app store?
The Play Store,
I'm pretty sure.
App Store came first.
I think I would say iTunes
because you could get early apps on iTunes before it rolled to the App Store.
So that was definitely earlier than Play Store.
Yeah, I
think Play Store came after it, I think.
I think it was very much a, oh, we can do that and evolve it a little bit.
So just curious.
Couldn't remember.
It's been a while.
Was it 13, 12 years?
No, it, it, it's been longer.
18 years.
And say it's 18.
Closer to 20 than not.
Yeah.
And then finally this week is Amazon has announced that they're going
to create delivery based glasses.
So they have cameras, they have, a signal, a display in them I assume
audio as well, but they will allow delivery drivers to more readily access
and figure out what they need to grab.
So the cameras are gonna help to read the QR codes and those type of things
that are on packages so that whenever they're looking for something, they
can easily grab the packages they need.
Now, whether or not it's the right one as they're heading up to a, a building,
i, I literally cannot think of a better use of AR glasses, period.
I mean, this, this, to me, they, they.
This is spot on the use case.
Find the package in the truck easier because it's reading a barcode or
using a QR code or something like that.
The pictures that we all get, not all, but a lot of us get from
like UPS or something like that, whenever it's delivered to your door.
They just gotta walk up and go picture, boom, done.
You know, as they're dropping it off, I don't know what the time it takes
for them to take that picture is, but you know, you're shaving that off of
however many packages you're delivering.
Every day driving directions you name it.
This to me is, you know, would be in the textbooks for great uses of ar.
That's the first comment.
The second comment is, how important is this given the fact
that Amazon's gonna just move to complete robotics for everything.
Now,
given that they can't do that in urban areas yet.
Let's hope not.
It's, it's gonna, it's gonna be long.
So it's a bridging technology,
but I mean, the move towards robotic warehousing, not to mention the, you know,
delivery of drones and things like that.
You know, you start, you start asking where is all this fit within the, you
know, the, the magic wall of strategy that they, I'm assuming they have at Amazon.
So a whole other set of conversations I think that are tied together with
this and economics 'cause of course.
Which is cheaper, I think is the real thing that Frank is asking.
The person who's driving or the AI processing power and the
person may be cheaper nowadays
in the future.
Well, but they mentioned they are looking at releasing a
consumer version too, so, yes.
Yeah.
They're also thinking about making money that way.
And also apparently you have to wear a vest and so there's gonna be a giant
button that'll do the trigger, the photo.
So yeah, I thought that was interesting.
When I was thinking about this, there were se several things that came to, to mind
if you're thinking about the materials and construction, but also how these
services are delivered logistically.
And for Amazon, everything is vertical and integrated, but for a lot of
companies, like they said, for you know, businesses or independent
people could buy them, it's.
Some point that a lot of times those end up being the cost is on the people
that are doing the, the deliver the deliveries or the companies because
that becomes a, a lease situation.
But my question is, is about the robustness in the heat and
the cold and on battery life.
You know, because I was thinking about that before.
I was thinking about like Disney, but other places where you could use it.
And I was like, well for, you know, mountain climbing tour, things
like that, it would be very useful.
But then you get into a lot of battery life and just the impact of hot cold.
And the other place for this, you could see showing up or replacing you
know, body cams for the police, right?
What if they're their.
Asked to, you know, carry these and use that as a way of documenting stops and
arrests and that sort of stuff like that.
You, and, and that's happening at some level in some places,
but, you know, you can see that becoming a much more pervasive way
for police work to use, to have accountability and that sort of thing.
So there's a lot of interesting applications here.
And so
again, news items, but also for this week, our topic.
So that's it for the news end.
So in our web corner, the.
Leventhal Map and Education Center at the Boston Public Library has
created Atlas Scope which they are pushing out to all of Massachusetts.
And it, it is a way to explore the different layers of
history in the Boston region.
It's pretty cool.
It is like a more robust.
Version of the spy scoop that you would see in a story map.
But involves a lot of work by researchers, genealogists, local historians,
archeologists, educators, and others.
And they're reaching out because if you're in that region, if
you're in Massachusetts, you can you know, get involved.
And tell your story with the Atlas scope.
It also would be neat to see if there are other things like
this elsewhere in the world.
It's a very fun tool to use
lots of Sanborn maps, which is.
You know, a great way to, to show historic back to 1870
something, I think 60 something
onto the events corner.
Of course, that'll help
go to conferences now.
First up is Geo AI 2026, which is June 3rd through the fifth
and Gent City Center, Belgium.
The call for papers or is due January 20th.
If you want to present
the 2026 International Conference on geographical information systems, theory,
applications and management or GIS Tam will be May 21st to the 23rd in Benor,
Spain and its call for papers are due
January 5th.
The 2026 GIS in Central Asia.
JI SCA conference is the 28th through 30th of May and Te Uzbekistan.
Of course, if you'd like to add your event to the podcast, send us an
email to podcast@veryspatial.com.
If you'd like to reach us individually, I can be reached at sue@veryspatial.com.
I can be reached at barb@veryspatial.com.
You can reach me atFrank@veryspatial.com.
I'm available, kind of spatial, and of course you can find all
of our contact information over at very spatial.com/contacts.
As always,
we're
the folks in very spatial.
Thanks for listening.
We'll see you in a couple weeks.
You,
I.