In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

Spring is here, time to get outside and enjoy the warm weather!  Pixeostar has released a new location based GPS mapping app, called Blipp, that is great for the outdoors! This free app allows you to mark your memorable moments on a map and share them with Facebook friends. Imagine you are hiking up a mountain and you get a notification that 3 years ago your best friend was engaged there – how cool! From big events like weddings to smaller ones like catching your first fish, if it’s important to you, you can share it with Blipp.  Sharing life’s events with friends is important, and sharing them on an interactive map makes it even more special - it’s a great way to stay connected.

Contest Information:
To help promote Blipp we decided to run a contest. Check out official rules here: http://www.blippapp.com/contest/

At the end of the contest (April 30th) we will randomly select 1 entry and that winner will receive a Garmin Handheld GPS .

Please download the app here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blipp

Open Jump 1.6.1 released on 12 April 2013!!!

Great lightweight PostGIS geom viewer. Now can write back to PostGIS too!

http://sourceforge.net/projects/jump-pilot/files/OpenJUMP/1.6.1/

Version 1.6.0 New Features

• adding support for GeoTIFF with transformation matrix georeferencing courtesy of Nicolas Ribot
• add arrange view horizontally and vertically to the view menu
• add a PostGIS writer including 5 options to create a PostGIS table, to insert rows or to update an existing table.
• add a "selection" parameter option to RunDataStoreQueryPlugIn
• add Dynamic Attributes based on beanshell snippets + persistence in openjump project files.
• add Tools > Generate > Create Point Layer from Attribute Table
• add Tools > Edit Attributes > Join Table... to attach attributes from an one layer to another layer based on a unique ID field
• add 6 plugins derived from Noder plugin available in LayerView context menu
• add Merge selected features in place in LayerView context menu (FR 3506380)
• add Offset curve plugin
• add View > Map decoration > NorthArrow plugin
• add densifier function in Tools > Analysis > Geometry functions (FR 3516240)
• add Tools > Edit Attributes > Add 3D Geometry Attributes plugin
• add Tools > Edit Attributes > Add Geometry Attributes plugin

[....]

Jump, jump everybody jump.

Here's the recent Google-related geonews.

From official sources:

• Google announced that Google Map Maker is now available in United Kingdom

From other sources:

• Slashdot discusses 2 new Google Glass stories, Google Glass Specs Hit the Web and another one named Not Even Investors Know What Google Glass Is For - from the former story: "[...] features a camera capable of snapping 5-megapixel photos and 720p video. [...] Its MyGlass app, which enables SMS messaging and GPS, requires a companion device running Android 4.0.3 [...]"
• The GEB informs us that New York City gets fresh 3D Imagery
• O'Reilly links to Converting To and From Google Map Tile Coordinates in PostGIS
• Another O'Reilly entry links to the entry on Crowdserfing, 'when a large corp uses crowd-sourced volunteering for its own financial gain, without giving back', Google Maps given as an example
• Unsurprisingly, there was new Google Earth imagery released last week and if you're inspired for some reason, you can explore corn mazes in Google Earth

The gvSIG Association announces the publishing of the gvSIG 2.0 final version [1]. The main novelty of this version is its new architecture. The way gvSIG manage the data sources has been redesigned with the objective of improving the reliability as well as the modularity, benefiting the users as well as the developers. Besides it permits an easier maintenance and evolution of the technology. Therefore it has been an investment in the future with the aim of not limiting the technological evolution and establish the bases for a quick evolution.

However this new gvSIG Desktop version includes a series of new features:

• New installer that supports typical and custom installation.
• Add-ons manager that allows to install new extensions and customize gvSIG from the same application.
• Some changes in the interface of data management tools like:
  • File import/export
  • Table operations
  • New layer
• Layer load improved
• WMTS (Web Map Tiled Service) support
• Raster data cache
• Unified geoprocessing interface
• Import symbols, making the creation of symbols libraries easy.
• Export symbols, that allows to share complete symbols libraries with other users easily.
• Scripting framework (languages: Jython, Groovy and Javascript).

Nevertheless it's the last version of gvSIG, it has to be taken into account that it's really a new gvSIG, so you will find that some of the gvSIG 1.12 functionalities are not included. These functionalities will be included in following and continuous updates according to their migration to the new architecture. The main functionalities that are not included are the following:

• Georeferencing
• Legend by proportional symbols, graduated ones, dot density, quantities by categories and by expressions.
• Extensions: Network analysis and 3D

In the same way, there are several projects based on this new architecture that will allow to include new functionalities and improvements directly in gvSIG 2.0 in the next months.

Also it has to be taken into account that the level of stability of this new version is not as high as we would have wished, considering it a final version in order to be used by the community in an official way, and mainly to tackle the new developments on it.

For that, we encourage you to test it and send us any errors in order to fix them in the following updates. The known errors of this version can be consulted in [2].

From this version, several mirrors are now available to download the packages from gvSIG. These mirrors will be available within a few days.  

We hope you enjoy the new features of this version and you help us to improve it.

[1] http://www.gvsig.org/web/projects/gvsig-desktop/official/gvsig-2.0/downloads
[2] http://gvsig.org/r?r=bugs200

A story discussed over Slashdot during the weekend, named DARPA Develops Non-GPS Navigation Chip.

Their summary: "The Global Positioning System (GPS) has proved a boon for those with a bad sense of direction, but the satellite-based system isn't without its shortcomings. Something as simple as going indoors or entering a tunnel can render the system useless. That might be inconvenient for civilians, but it's potentially disastrous to military users, for whom the system was originally built. DARPA is addressing such concerns with the development of a self-sufficient navigation system that can aid navigation when GPS is temporarily unavailable."

That's the name of a story discussed over Slashdot, Iran Plans To Launch an 'Islamic Google Earth'. This is nothing new to our readers, we mentioned Iran's Basir initiative in 2011. Iran is also not alone, with China and India amongst others that built or wanted to build Google Earth alternatives.

Their summary: "The Iranian authorities have long accused Google Earth of being a tool for western spy agencies, but now they have taken their attacks on the 3D mapping service one step further — by planning the launch of an 'Islamic' competitor. ... The minister, however, gave little information on what he meant by an Islamic 3D map. 'We are developing this service with the Islamic views we have in Iran and we will put a kind of information on our website that would take people of the world towards reality Our values in Iran are the values of God and this would be the difference between Basir and the Google Earth, which belongs to the ominous triangle of the U.S., England and the Zionists [a reference to Israel].' Experts, however, have serious doubts about the project. An IT consultant who has worked on Iran's national internet project in the past said the announcement was merely an excuse to obtain funds and secure working contracts for the future. 'They have claimed to run their service in four months and said their data centre capacity will reach Google's size in three years,' he said. 'Three-year project, no business model and only relying on government funding, a piece of cake indeed To have a data centre with such capacity and security level they need power stations, cooler systems, bandwidth, etc, which will require billions of dollars of investment that doesn't fit with Iran's sanctions-hit economy.'"

Slashdot discusses a story named OpenWLANMap: Free WLAN-Based GPS Replacement. I don't think we mentioned OpenWLANMap.org before, but we did mention MAC address mapping. Here's the OpenWLANMap.org website.

The Slashdot summary: "There are a couple of commercial products which can tell you where you are by the MAC addresses of access points in your neighbourhood. E.g. the iphone uses a system like this. There's now an open offering for this: OpenWLANMap. With this website, you can enter your access point mac address with your GPS location and then others can use that to navigate. There is also an app for your mobile which automatically enters this data, and you can upload data from e.g. Airomap and other wardriving applications."

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode.

On the Apple front:

• iOS's Find My Friends Gains Customizable Geofences, letting you know when friends are nearby or warning you when kids arrive at home
• Catching up, Apple Expands 'Maps Ground Truth' Hiring to Rest of the World
• Japan? Apple Releases iOS 6.1.3 With Japanese Maps Enhancements

In the everything else category:

• Another interesting entry from Brian Timoney, Your Online Map Is Missing Half Its Audience: More Revealing Web Analytics From the Field
• An interesting short entry on the future of Esri, LA Times Travel Section Interview with Jack Dangermond
• Some of you will be interested in the Ten Things GIS Users Need to Know about GitHub
• Via OR, that's remote sensing, Millimetre-Accuracy 3D Imaging From 1km Away
• Here's an entry on How NASA uses Google Earth
• A new website, TeachGIS: Resources for and by GIS Instructors
• OpenStreetMap's iD editor gets drag and drop GPX support
• If you do surveying Kurt invites us to look at Trey's TrailScribe
• Interesting, Neighborhoods are Just Predefined Geofences
• To be honest, I did not know who was John Snow, Lessons from the ghost of John Snow: "demonstrating one of the first applications of spatial analysis to detect the cholera outbreak in London in 1854"
• The Economist shares an article on MapBox's web mapping offers
• A Slashdot discussion on How To Stay Ahead of Phone Tracking ?
• Another from the same source, virtual reality? USC Launches 3-D Printed VR Headset Library
• An O'Reilly article on the use of sensors for news reporting
• Stamen teams up with Nokia to show their HERE 3D data
• Bentley is doing well, summary at Bentley 2012 Annual Update
• Wonder about Autodesk? Autodesk Rebrands and Launches InfraWorks for Civil Design
• Forcing geospatial knowledge into workers, U.S. DOT To Require GPS Training for New Commercial Truckers

In the maps category:

• GeoCurrent offers many new informative maps:
  • Maps of Global alcohol consumption
  • Maps of Global Geography of Meat (and Fish) Consumption
  • Maps of cheese production and consumption
  • And why not, the Global Geography of Milk Consumption and Lactose (In)Tolerance
  • On Egypt and the World Diesel Price Map
  • A Map of The Countries That Are Most and Least Welcoming to Foreigners
• Via APB, 28,000 rivers wiped off the map of China
• Here's a funny map of all subways of North America
• As a bonus for reading up to here, you have to see this remote sensing 1-minute video of the Arctic / Beaufort Sea February-March 2013 1000-km ice fracture: "While fracturing events are common, few events sprawl across such a large area or produce cracks as long and wide as those seen here." Look at a map of North Alaska first to understand the scope of this.

Worth taking a look at Directions Mag's article named Beyond Foursquare: Geolocation Services Proliferate, Mature. There's a useful list of LBS themes and related apps.

From the article: "Now that the table has been set, what's next for geolocation? Is it all about Foursquare,Yelp, yawn and go home? I don't think so. Instead, we're seeing geolocation begin to splinter into niches and verticals. And, within a couple of years, geolocation capabilities will simply be baked into our everyday on-the-go lives. From Silicon Valley and elsewhere, startups have emerged with powerful, useful geolocation capabilities central to their business model."

After v2.4 last fall, MapGuide Open Source 2.5 has been released. Can anyone share thoughts or links regarding MapGuide's user community? Is it still vibrant as it used to be?

Major new items from the release notes: "

• PDF-based QuickPlot? for Fusion (RFC 124)
• Google Street View widget for Fusion (RFC 125)
• Support for user coordinate system dictionaries (RFC 127)
• Integrated IDE API documentation support for Java/.net (RFC 129)
• New enhanced Java wrapper API (RFC 129)
• Streamed HTTP feature/data/SQL query results (RFC 130)
• Various AJAX Viewer UI and functionality improvements
• Enhanced Redlining widget with expanded data format support  more info
• Fixes and enhancements to assorted Fusion widgets and templates  more info"