In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

More than 500 GB (10 thousand scenes) from year 2001 to 2003 are freely distributed on gis-lab.info. Cover areas of Russia and Canada. See:

• The About (in Russian): http://gis-lab.info/projects/aster/about.html
• The download web interface: http://gis-lab.info/projects/aster/index.html

[Editor's note: you might be interested in taking a look at previous ASTER-related stories]

Via internal email I learned about the City of Toronto joining other canadian cities for opening their data, which includes a lot of geospatial data.

From the toronto.ca/open site: "The Cities of Toronto, Edmonton, Ottawa and Vancouver have joined forces to collaborate on an "Open Data Framework". The project aims to enhance current open data initiatives in the areas of data standards, terms of use agreements and open data website design." Before you ask, here's the licensing terms: "The City of Toronto (City) now grants you a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to use, modify, and distribute the datasets in all current and future media and formats for any lawful purpose."

Toronto offers a variety of data in the Shapefile format, some raster in ESDAS, and WMS services too.

We mentioned last March the federal data.gc.ca initiative, and previously, we mentioned the open data initiative of Ottawa and Edmonton, that Montreal is also heading towards open data, and arguments on why Edmonton and Vancouver open data efforts did not succeeded as expected.

Here's the Friday geonews in batch mode, exceptionally covering the last two weeks. We're now up to date regarding geospatial news!

From the open source front:

• You can influence what the OSGeo priorities should be with this quick survey, here's funding ideas partial results
• Here's an entry on Sextant, a geoportal solution from IFREMER
• In a maintenance release, GeoTools 2.7.1 is now available

From the Google front:

• Google Transit is now available in Washington DC
• Google shared an entry named Make beautiful interactive maps even faster with new additions to the Fusion Tables API
• Google Places now supports in-business 360-degree perspectives, in another entry, the new Google Places API is described
• The GEB compares Nokia's new Ovi Maps 3D vs Google Earth
• The GEB discusses using Google Earth to confront government lies about damaged rainforest in Sarawak

From the ESRI front:

• Andrew Zolnai has en entry on ESRI's Change Matters website to compare satellite imagery, and that's possible thanks to Landsat imagery dating back to 1972 now available through ArcGIS Online

From the  Microsoft front:

• While we mentioned it before, Kurt too is, as I am, enthusiastic about Microsoft's free Photosynth iPhone / iPad 2 app
• There's a New Bing Maps iOS SDK
• Microsoft invites you to See AJAX 7.0 in action with the new interactive SDK

In the miscellaneous category:

• The MapQuest for Android Navigation App got updated and improves GPS capabilities
• Slashdot discusses using credit card transaction locations to determine CO2 footprints
• Spatial Law mentions a California Bill that would regulate 'Precise Geolocation Information'
• Vector One argues on Why Now is a Good Time to Invest in Geospatial Technology Stocks, and here's entries specifically on Trimble and DigitalGlobe stocks
• SS informs us Moscow Upholds Limits on the Resolution of Satellite Imagery

In the maps category:

• TMR links to an excellent series of 12 static maps of the 2011 Canadian federal election results 
• Mapperz mentioned WeatherSpark Beta, a Google Maps mashup to visualize historical weather patterns
• The FGT blog mentions Free Marine Chart Views, Plus An Online Waypoint/Route Editor With GPS Export
• Here's a New York Times's Natural Disaster Map for the U.S.

Here's the recent geonews that we haven't already mentioned in batch mode.

In addition to last Friday's FOSS4G geonews:

• There's a new open source Microsoft Bing Maps Android SDK available
• MapFish 2.1 has been released, and it's now BSD-licensed instead of GPL
• Here's news of what's coming for OpenLayers 2.11
• Shapely 1.2.9 has been released

In the miscellaneous category:

• The FGT blog is excited about Voyager, a tool to catalog and search your local geospatial datasets (free and paid version available)
• Several sources have mentioned that the U.S. data.gov and other open sites are closing
• Kurt offers an entry on the U.S. marine cadastre
• There's a first GLONASS smartphone available in Russia
• I smiled when I read the newly introduced "NoGIS" term, remisnescent of WebGIS and neogeography, James Fee shares what he thinks of it
• Slashdot discusses ESA's GOCE satellite detailed information about the Earth's gravitational shape
• If you're that curious, the last Google imagery update included the set from the upcoming 'The Hobbit' movie shot in New Zealand
• The Geonames blog shares an update on the geolocation of Wikipedia articles and Wikipedia Web Services

In the maps category:

• TMR links to NYT day-by-day situation map of the Libyan uprising
• JF mentions a nice Census map analysis of New York City using Google Fusion Tables
• Here's a map of Canada's ridings for the national election early next month
• TMR also shares a map of the decline of ozone in the Arctic
• The prolefic TMR also mentioned the book "Railway Maps of the World"
• Ok, maybe not newsworthy, but here's 25 Mind-Blowing Aerial Photographs Around the World

 Via internal mail I learned about the launch of the Government of Canada's Open Data pilot project.

There's also a link allowing you to directly browse their 'geospatial collection', which, if I'm still able to add numbers, offers a total of 166 geospatial datasets (unless some datasets are found in multiple categories?). The main page claims that there is 260,296 geospatial datasets already available. No matter what the actual numbers are, it's still a great day for open data in Canada.

From the data.gc.ca backgrounder page: "The GC Open Data Portal is a collaborative effort amongst Government of Canada departments and agencies to provide access to data managed by the government that can be leveraged by citizens, businesses, and communities for their own purposes. The government will work towards making public data that is not sensitive in nature (i.e. data which is NOT personal, secret, or confidential) broadly available in reusable formats."

Here's the Friday geonews in batch mode.

From the open source / open data front:

• There was a recent OpenLayers Mobile Code Sprint
• The Map Room shares an interesting entry on the suboptimal state of OpenStreetMap in Canada
• OpenStreetMap now has over 30 Million building outlines worldwide
• Here's an entry on generating contour lines in QGIS

From the ESRI front:

• I'm amonst the many that got the email that informs us that ArcGIS Online map services are available at no cost regardless of use
• geogeek shares a short list of the ArcGIS Server Virtualisation … The Do’s And Don’ts
• The FGT blog has teo entries named useful ArcGIS Explorer Add-Ins I and useful ArcGIS Explorer Desktop Add-Ins II

In the miscellaneous category:

• James Fee links to a discussion on whether WMS is dying or not
• APB mentions that Samsung's planning to Use Earth’s Magnetic Field for indoor Device Locating
• MapQuest unveiled their free Android app
• The Blackberry Playbook tablet will be getting this geospatial app: Mobile OpenScales GIS
• Here's a generic presentation on neo-geopolitics
• Using Bing, there's a new Celebrity Places web map
• Mapperz made me aware of the 'Rain alarm map', to give you alerts of incoming rain or snow
• The free GeoTrans Coordinate Converter is now at version 3.1

In the maps category:

• TMR links to a map of world alcohol consumption
• Here's a link to an updated International Marine Piracy Map 2011
• SS share an entry on Mapping Threatened Coral Reefs

Here's the Friday geonews in batch mode.

On the open source / open data front:

• Here's the fourth entry in the Free Shapefiles of Countries of the World (4) series
• Via OpenGeoData, I learned about OSMTrack 3.0, an iOS app designed for contributing to OpenStreetMap (more here on version 3)
• Here's an entry on the future of Marble, the KDE virtual globe
• Here's an entry on improving GeoTools / GeoServer raster reprojection performance

On the ESRI front:

• Here's a list of ArcGIS Server Success Stories Published In 2010

In the miscellaneous category:

• Several geoblogs mentioned the ABC Australia flood maps, along with ESRI's Autralia flood maps
• Apple is adding a 'Find My Friends' feature to iOS 4.3
• An entry on the MapQuest and Ford Partnership on MyFord Mobile App for Electrified Vehicle Drivers
• Here's Andrew Turner's 3 main geospatial trends for 2011: consumer mobile and privacy, commercial data -> open data, and visualization -> analysis

In the maps category:

• Sarah Palin's Political Action Committee map which uses crosshairs to target 20 Democratic Party members to defeat, a map discussed in the controversy regarding the shooting in Tucson, Arizona
• A map of Aerosols in Earth's Atmosphere
• NRCan released hundreds of new or updated CanTopo free topographical maps for Canada
• A map of the Internet in 1972

The Canadian Space Agency announced that RADARSAT-1 mosaics are now accessible to the general public.

From the announcement: "For the last 15 years, RADARSAT-1 has observed the Earth from space. Over time, the satellite has generated an impressive collection of images, some of which were used to produce high-resolution mosaics of areas of interest. These were acquired in relatively short time spans and provide a snapshot in time that can be used for studying terrestrial geology, geomorphology, vegetation, coastal features, wetlands, urbanization and ice dynamics. In order to facilitate access to this Earth Observation data, mosaics of Canada, the United States, Africa, Australia and Antarctica are now available to the general public and can downloaded (without restriction) on the CSA web site."