In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

Here's the recent Google-related geonews in batch mode.

From the official sources:

• Google introduced 'Google Maps Coordinate': "That’s where Google Maps Coordinate comes in, a new tool designed to improve communication between businesses and their employees in the field.  As the number of mobile employees continues to grow, so does the need for a location sharing solution that works in real-time.  Research firm IDC estimates that there will be over 1.3 billion mobile workers by 2015 (37.2% of the total workforce). Google Maps Coordinate combines the power of Google’s mapping technologies with modern smartphones to help organizations assign jobs and deploy staff more efficiently." See introduction video below.
• There is traffic conditions in 7 new countries and updates in 19 existing ones: "Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Mexico, Peru, Romania and South Africa"
• Google Map Maker (which always makes me think of OpenStreetMap...) is now available in 8 new countries: "Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, and Switzerland"
• Street View is now available in Hawaii

From other sources:

• DM shares an article named A Use Case: Google’s Cloud-based Earth Builder: "Rod Erickson of Next Tier Concepts provides provides a solution using Software-as-a Service (SaaS)."

• APB mentions Google’s Peer to Peer Location Determination Patent Application

Catching up geonews, here's the recent Google-related geonews.

From official sources:

• The latest Google Maps 6.7 for Android introduces Google Offers and Indoor walking directions
• We mentioned Speadsheet Mapper in 2008, and now Spreadsheet Mapper 3 is available, in short, "Spreadsheet Mapper is a tool that enables anyone to easily create a well-designed  KML file  to show off their data in Google Earth and Maps"
• The Baltic nations of Estonia and Latvia are now in Street View
• Here's the 2012 'Model your Town' winner, Getaria, Spain
• In Google Maps, 'work' and 'home' made their way to My Places
• Regarding Google Earth Builder that was renamed Google Maps Engine, nonprofits can have it for free
• Here's the latest improvements of the Google Places API searches
• And of course there was an imagery update on May 14th, and on May 4th too

From other sources:

• Slashdot mentioned Google Gets Driverless License For Nevada Roads
• At the beginning of the month, the GEB showed the One World Trade Center building model in Google Earth, and later, Saint Basil's Cathedral
• Using Google's Fusion Table on mobile devices? Look at My Fusion Tables
• Slashdot discussed a story named Google Releases Key Part of Street View Pipeline

Here's the recent Google geonews.

From the official sources:

• Here's the 3-minutes launch video of Google Earth Builder at the Google Geo summit, I like it when Ed Parsons says "Geospatial technologies is moving away from [...] the specialist, it's now available to everyone", since you're reading Slashgeo, you probably are a specialist, should we be afraid or is this just our jobs' natural evolution?
• There's new 45° imagery available for 16 cities: "Europe: Caceres, Spain; Graz, Austria; Montreux, Switzerland; Zurich, Switzerland; US: Bakersfield, CA; Boise, ID; Canton, OH; Centennial, CO; Columbia, SC; Davenport, IA; Des Moines, IA; Enumclaw, WA; Grand Rapids, MI; Kansas City, KS/MO; Lawrence, KS; Los Angeles, CA; Merced, CA; New Orleans, LA; Omaha, NE; Payson, UT; Portland, OR; Springfield, MO; St. Louis, MO; The Woodlands, TX;"
• There's new StreetView imagery of the Swiss Alps, taken from railways
• The tool that allows you to get notified when new imagery is available, Follow Your World, is now available in 43 new languages
• We've been invited to Explore the history of Mexico with Google Earth

From other sources:

• The GEB shares the location of the Turkey earthquake and Gaddafi's death
• The GEB also describe YoubeQ, a 3D social network using the Google Earth plugin: "YoubeQ puts you on a Segway to drive around the globe, with the option to quickly teleport to any location that you wish to visit. You can click on other users to chat with them, collect stamps as you travel the globe, and it has a variety of other features (with many more coming)."
• A week ago the same site offered an entry on what Google Earth can do for responding to the Thailand Floods
• Here's a round-up of the great (American) Football resources in Google Earth
• If you have interest in it, here's how to tweak the Google Earth Flight Simulator
• Last Wednesday, there was new imagery released to Google Maps / Earth

Thanks to Andrew who found out that the poll engine was strangely behaving, it gave me an excuse to offer you a new poll on 'cloud GIS'.

The previous poll on Esri ArcGIS Online vs Google Earth Builder generated 213 votes. 42% of users anticipate that both will be successes in their own way, and funnily enough, two distinct groups made of 24% of users believe that one will prevail on the other. For what's left, 7% think neither will gain momentum and there's even 2% of users that wish that Bing Maps will prevail over the two front runners.

Please allow the few posts the last two weeks, I've been overly busy (hey, it's summer time after all! ;-). Here's the recent Google-related geonews.

First is the news that Frank Warmerdam is joining Google. If you don't know Frank, he's behind the open source GDAL and Proj.4 tools that almost everyone in the industry uses, including Google, ESRI, and tons of geospatial open source projects. Frank Warmerdam is also the very first recipient of the Sol Katz Award. I found Daniel Morissette's comment insightful: "If you [Frank] make a difference at Google (with the resources available there) as much as you did in the OSGeo community then we should be prepared for some amazing stuff to happen." In his announcement, Frank reassures us that he wants to continue his work on GDAL/OGR while at Google. Good luck Frank!

Other Google news, from official sources:

• Today Google announced the Google+ project, and of course it includes location-related capabilities
• Google redesigned their "Your World in 3D" website
• There's new Google Building Maker cities available, four in Argentina and Ottawa, in Canada
• City names are now in your preferred language in Google Earth

From other sources:

• Here's James Fee interesting summary of Google Earth Builder's webinar, and he believes Google Earth Builder will be a huge success
• The GEB mentioned Junctions, an app that maps your social interactions in Google Earth
• GMap3 JQuery Plugin for Google Maps has been released
• The FGT blog mentioned how to convert a Shapefile into a Google Fusion Table, using shpescape, an open source tool
• Here's a Ogle Earth entry on marine predator-prey behavior using Google Imagery as the primary source of evidence
• SS shares an entry named Google Mapping and Modeling Tools Featured in Japan Redevelopment

Last time I aggregated articles from Directions Magazine was early March. Here's selected articles published on DM since then.

• While we have already published quite a lot on the upcoming Google Earth Builder product, you might be interested in this additional generic article named Google Earth Builder Launched: Cloud Platform for Geospatial Data Storage and Processing
• DM shared their interesting geojargon survey results, letting us know, out of 538 respondents, which geospatial terms are well known and which ones aren't
• Here's a article named How Much Do GIS Consultants Charge in 2011?, from the tables provided (generated out of only 23 survey responses), the average for all types of GIS work seems to be between 86$ to 111$ an hour
• DM continued to provide regular coverage of GIS certification, this time with these articles: The Great Debate: To Certify or not to Certify, That Is an Absurd Question, Special Session on GIS Certification with David DiBiase, GISCI President, and Sheila Wilson, GISCI Executive Director and a last article on the GISP’s Code of Ethics and Rules of Conduct
• Here's an article on the Couchbase company and the CouchDB database system. The article is named Couchbase: Taking NoSQL and Geo to the Next Level. We mentioned GeoCouch in the past.
• Here's an article named Keeping the Patent Trolls at Bay - Defending Your Location-based Patents and Your Business and a related one named Microsoft and Google Fight Back Against Store-locator Patent Suits
• DM shared an article named The Case for Real Estate GIS in China
• In a praise for cloud GIS, here's an article named It’s Time to Change: How SaaS Will Enable the GIS Industry to Move Forward and Engage With New Market Opportunities
• Here's a article on Five Ways GPS Vehicle Tracking Can Reduce Fuel Costs

Here's the recent Google-related geonews.

From the official sources:

• Today's Prince William and Catherine Middleton Royal Wedding was featured in the Google Earth Plugin.
• Google offers post Japan earthquake panoramas in Google Earth
• There was an entry on celebrating Earth Day (that was a week ago) and an invitation to celebrate Arbor Day with Save the Redwoods League and Google Earth
• Google also have an entry this week's imagery update, with plenty of countries getting fresh imagery

From other sources:

• Ogle Earth offers an article named Google Earth Builder: A potential solution to the map censorship conundrum in China, India
• The GEB mentions the launch of the Earth Knowledge Portal which uses the Google Earth Plugin
• Here's an entry on tracking tornadoes in Google Earth
• The GEB forecasts updates to all versions of Google Earth coming this summer
• Here two entries on how beautiful 3D models can be in Google Earth
• And if you're more into gaming, Ships version 1.5 has been released, a ship game in Google Earth

With the Easter break at the door, here's the recent geonews in batch mode.

From the Google front:

• The GEB offers an entry providing more information on Google Earth Builder announced yesterday but to be available in Q3 and APB sums up how the media views Google Earth Builder
• Google updated the photo clusters interface in Google Earth
• You can see the real-time edits done by contributors to Google Map Maker
• And there's new imagery available in Google Maps/Earth

From the open source/data front:

• APB informed of WorldMap (alpha), an open source experimental platform designed for viewing and interpreting maps collaboratively
• A U.S. national biomass dataset is now available
• The FOSS4G 2011 conference preparation is doing well, with almost 300 abstracts submitted. I can also confirm now that Slashgeo.org is a media partner of the FOSS4G 2011 conference

From the Microsoft front:

• Microsoft launched the free Photosynth iOS app to capture and share panoramas
• Seattle's SoundTransit now offer transit directions in Bing  Maps

In the miscellaneous category:

• The GEB offers two excellent summaries: Where 2.0 2011 -- Day One and Where 2.0 2011 -- Day Two
• Also from Where 2.0, SS shares a summary of Jack Dangermond's talk on the cloud enabling intelligent web maps
• MapQuest added a few new features detailed in this entry named Cycle Route Planner, Aerial and Languages
• VerySpatial mentions the 'Where on Earth' landmark-association game
• Slashdot discussed a story named Scientist Creates 3D Scanner App For iPhone
• and another one named Michigan Police Could Search Cell Phones During Traffic Stops

From cnet news:

On Wednesday, Google announced a new enterprise product called Google Earth Builder, which it says will help businesses process and handle geographic data so that they don't have to do it on their own servers.

"It lets you upload, process, and store your geospatial data in our cloud," a post on the Google Enterprise Blog explained. "Your employees can use familiar tools--Google Maps and Google Earth--to easily and securely share and publish mapping data. No technical expertise or GIS training is required."