In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

That's the name of a story discussed over Slashdot, Starting Next Year, Brazil Wants To Track All Cars Electronically.

Their summary: "As of January, Brazil intends to put into action a new system that will track vehicles of all kinds via radio frequency chips. It will take a few years to accomplish, but authorities will eventually require all vehicles to have an electronic chip installed, which will match every car to its rightful owner. The chip will send the car's identification to antennas on highways and streets, soon to be spread all over the country. Eventually, it will be illegal to own a car without one. Besides real time monitoring of traffic conditions, authorities will be able to integrate all kinds of services, such as traffic tickets, licensing and annual taxes, automatic toll charge, and much more. Benefits also include more security, since the system will make it harder for thieves to run far away with stolen vehicles, much less leave the country with one."

Car tracking is a topic regularly discussed, even in a 2008 story about National Car Tracking System Proposed For US.

We are very proud to announce the release of the 4th edition of FOSSGIS Brasil Magazine.

In this 2012 1st issue, the cover section addresses Medatada theme, which deserves special attention of any professional who works with geospatial data.

This 4th edition of FOSSGIS Brasil was built with the effort of the GIS community, including international contributions. Consering this, be sure to check the interview with Jeroen Ticheler, founder and CEO at Geonetwork project, and also the text written for three of the most important contributors of the gvSIG association, talking about the new development model for the project of the robust gvSIG GIS suite.

This year, greatest desire for us at FOSSGIS Brasil team is to continue doing what we have been doing in 2011: To georreference knownledgment

Link to download: http://bit.ly/zFKS3b

Sincerely,
The FOSSGIS Brasil team
http://www.fossgisbrasil.com.br

After the buzz generated by the publication of the first edition of FOSSGIS Brasil magazine, we will treat a very important subject that has everything to do with opensource geospatial technology: education.

It is known that formal education in Brazil is not in it's best shape, nevertheless, many teaching and research institutions have been searching for alternatives to provide quality educational support and improve instruction for students and citizens.

Within this context, many institutions have seen in open source software, an option, since this kind of software is free of licesing fees and helps students to understand better the word "cooperation".

Following this line of thougth, this edition will address the use of open source GIS softwares in schools and universities, showing that it is possible to provide quality teaching with this type of software, as it is done in IFPB Geoprocessamento major.

We had the pleasure to interview in this edition Prof. Jorge Xavier da Silva, emeritus teacher of UFRJ and mentor of the the first 100% brazilian GIS: SAGA-UFRJ.

Still in this edition you will be able to check out articles about WKT Raster, a PostGIS alternative to storing and manipulating rasters, Quantum GIS, Kosmo GIS and the second art of the Mobile GIS article, presentend in the first edition, amongst others.

We all hope that you like this new edition, and leave out your comments on our website. To download the second edition of FOSSGIS-Brasil, just go to the following link:

http://fossgisbrasil.com.br/wp-content/plugins/download-monitor/download.php?id=2

Sincerely,
FOSSGIS Brasil Team
http://www.fossgisbrasil.com.br/

Here's a few recent Google-related geonews:

• Today Google announced that StreetView is now available on all continents: "[...] with the addition today of Brazil, Ireland and Antarctica. You can now see images from around the world spanning from the beaches of Brazil, to the moors of Ireland, to the icy terrain in Antarctica."
• The Photo layer in Google Maps has been revamped, it's much nicer now (link includes a before-after screenshot).
• The GEB explains how historical imagery works in Google Earth 5, nothing that "the newest imagery in Google Earth can often be found in this historical imagery feature."
• The GEB also mention that there's new imagery for Washington DC.
• APB informs us that in a test, half of Google's Android apps shared location data without user consent.

Amazon Watch and International Rivers, two non-profit environmental groups, have been advocating against the construction of the Belo Monte hydro-electric dam in the Brazilian Amazon, what would be the third-largest in the world. To make its threats palpable, the two organizations used Google Earth to map how the dam would flood cities and make stagnant pools out of the Xingu River, a vital tributary of the Amazon and the lifeblood of the riverine and indigenous peoples who live there.

To view the animation, go to http://amazonwatch.org/tour-belo-monte.php.

Still having quite a lot of geonews catching up to do, here's the geospatial-related stories discussed over Slashdot during the past week.

• GPS Tracking Without a Warrant Declared Legal in the U.S.
• Can an Open Source Map Project Make Money?, discussing the relation between Bing Maps, MapQuest and OpenStreetMap
• Garmin Recalls 1.25M 'Fire Risk' Satnavs
• Brazil Using Smartphones For Planning the Future, their summary: "Brazil has bought 150,000 LG smartphones and has embarked on the world's first fully digital national census. Can they succeed when the US recently failed to go digital? The Brazilians say that the digital census has several advantages over paper and pen methods. They say that the data is more accurate since GPS data will pinpoint the exact location of a household. The GPS data is cross-referenced with satellite images to ensure that responses are correctly geo-tagged. The recently begun census will underpin future publicy-making decisions."