In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode.

From the open source front:

• MapBox acquired the MeatText mobile social mapping app and is open sourcing the app with MapBox code
• You can now even publish any map you have in ArcMap directly to MapBox from the main ArcMap UI by using the latest Arc2Earth
• James shares an entry named CartoDB and MapBox Fight On
• If you missed the press release, pycsw Receives OGC Compliance Certification and Reference Implementation Status‏
• There's also a new Open Source Geospatial Lab established at University of Newcastle, United Kingdom

From the Esri front:

• Here's the announcement of the Operations Dashboard and Collector for ArcGIS: "Operations Dashboard provides a common operating picture for monitoring events. Operations Dashboard integrates maps and a variety of data sources to create comprehensive operational views that can include charts, lists, gauges, and indicators which update automatically as underlying data changes."
• Here's an excellent summary of what are Esri GeoDatabases, trying to reduce confusion about it

From the Google front:

• Google invites us to Discover Israel on Google Maps with new panoramic imagery
• Funny, Google felt obliged to explain that a donkey found on StreetView was not hurt by Google's car
• And Google released new imagery to Google Earth today

In the miscellaneous category:

• DM shares an article named Attention Shoppers! aisle411’s Indoor Location App is a Hit with Top Retailers, where you'll learn that "Routing applications are no longer limited to streets. It’s now possible to route customers within malls and other shopping centers, and even within individual stores."
• APB informs us that China Mandates Swapping out other GNSS for Beidou in Commercial Vehicles
• A Microsoft patent for silencing your phone based on where you are, such as in a movie theater
• Bing Maps also added the Elevations API to their REST Services

In the maps category:

• A nice graph and overview maps of which cities will be impacted by sea level rising, Los Angeles and Amsterdam comes next

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode.

From the open source front:

• Here's a DM summary entry on FOSS4G-NA 2012 that I haven't shared yet, and it's pretty informative
• There's a new video showing us uDig features
• Here's examples of using QGIS in local government, related to QGIS, here's an entry on What's New in QGIS Plugins
• A technical entry on dynamic WMS styling with GeoServer with SLD
• Here's an interesting web browser memory usage experiment for OpenLayers

From the Google front:

• Google announce new StreetView imagery for Israel in an entry named Exploring Jerusalem’s Old City streets with Street View
• There's also an update to the Google Maps API deprecation policy and Terms of Service
• The GEB reminds us the options we have for Sharing your favorite locations in Google Earth

On the Microsoft front:

• You can now Find Venue Maps, Businesses and Buildings Faster on Bing Maps
• Bing Maps is Reducing the Complexity of Rendering Shapes

Discussed over Slashdot:

• A "Big Brother Chip", the Broadcom 4752, that acts as a ubiquitous location chip using everything available: "global navigation satellites, cell phone towers, and Wi-Fi hot spots, coupled with input from gyroscopes, accelerometers, step counters, and altimeters"
• A GPS system that will speed up tsunami warnings
• The Physical Travelling Salesman Challenge
• Using satellite imagery to counting Emperor Penguins from space

Directions Mag articles of note:

• The Top 10 Things You Should Know about GIS Certification, including "In 2012, more than 5,000 people are active GISPs." and "Eight states have recognized and endorsed the GISP"
• A Q&A entry about Is Intergraph’s New GeoMedia Smart Client for You?

In the everything else category:

• The ESA mentions Envisat's mapping of ice shelf disintegration in Antarctic and update on the investigation of Envisat woes, being offline since early April
• @Thierry_G links to interesting impressions on the Where 2012 conference titled From Where 2.0 To Just Where; With Meh 2.0 Somewhere In The Middle, asking where is the geospatial excitement today?
• Via Paul I found this extreme video example of augmented reality
• APB has an entry on TomTom’s New Global Geocoder Targets Power Users
• SS shares a perspective named Have the geospatial technology frontiers changed much in three years?
• SS also shares an interesting summary of a session on capacity building and the expansion of the global geospatial marketplace to a billion plus people

In the maps category:

• O'Reilly shares two visualizations, one on The history of shipping routes and the other on Mapping the Titanic's passengers

I'm back in front of the keyboard after a 3 weeks break with my wife and daughters. I'll catchup and share the recent geonews in the coming days. Thank you for your patience. Let's start with Google geonews (because they're easier to aggregate).

From the official sources:

• There's new 45° imagery in 24 citites: Augusta, GA; Badajoz, Spain; Boise, ID; Boston, MA; Fairfield, CA; Girona, Spain; Knoxville, TN; Lausanne, Switzerland; Little Rock, AR; Lodi, CA; Merida, Spain; Modesto, CA; Montgomery, AL; Murrieta Hot Springs, CA; Provo, UT; Reno, NV; Salem, OR; Sebastopol, CA; Spokane, WA; Tallahassee, FL; Vacaville , CA; Vallejo, CA; Victorville, CA; Wichita, KS; Yucaipa, CA
• Weather forecasts is a new layer in Google Maps, along with cloud coverage, data from third-party sources
• Google Maps gets voice recognition and you can now say your map queries out loud, if you use Google Chrome
• The new GTFS-realtime, extending the original 'General Transit Feed Specification', has been released to the public by Google, it includes: Trip Updates, Service Alerts and Vehicle Position updates
• Here's the announcement of the deprecation of the Maps API for Flash
• StreetView news;
  • New in StreetView is a 30-mile section of the Rio Negro River tributary in the Amazonian bassin, also discussed over Slashdot
  • Slashdot reports that StreetView has finally been approved by the Israeli government
  • Irak's National Museum corridors can be walked in StreetView
• Using short URLs to share links is now a permanent feature of Google Maps
• Google added a round of 3D trees Los Angeles, Denver and Boulder
• Ancient and modern Rome have updated 3D content (remember 2008?)
• Google announced Map Makerpedia, a crowdsourced guide for Google Map Maker (you mean similar goals to wiki.openstreetmap.org? ;-)
• The Static Maps API's new feature is the ability to scale the display of maps
• There was an imagey update to Google Earth and Maps for the week of the 15th, and another one on the week of August 29th, with several tens of countries getting new imagery
• Google Maps is now available in 40+ new country domain names, and more languages have been added to "Your World in 3D"
• Paronamio users and contributors can now join groups of interests
• Google mentioned a new book named The Great Global Treasure Hunt on Google Earth, and informed us that they are now at over 700 million activations of Google Earth, which made me though of our current poll

From other sources:

• In a series of generic but useful entries, the GE Blog is offering an entry named Ten easy steps to learn about a place with Google Earth, another one named Measuring distances with the Google Earth Ruler and yet another one named Running Google Earth offline from a portable server
• Ogle Earth analized Sweden imagery update and reminds us of being cautious of imagery tagged January 1st
• Google and OpenDNS are working on global Internet sppedup, and unsurprisingly, they use location data

Here's the geonews in batch mode, covering a bit more than a week (exception made of a few minor geonews I forgot to mention in our last 'batch mode' edition).

On the open source / data front:

• A new MapGuide Instant Setup utility has been introduced
• Here's a detailed entry on scale-dependent generalization in PostGIS and QGIS
• Here's an entry on time and elevation support in GeoServer
• If you're new to OpenStreetMap or want to introduce new people, here's OpenStreetMap editing for beginners videos
• Plenty geoblogs mentioned the Magicshop Frontdoor (Beta) tool, with which you can easily improve address search results for Bing Maps and OpenStreetMap

On the Google front:

• Ogle Earth mentions Google JV applied for online mapping license in China
• Ogle Earth also mentions the constraints on high-resolution satellite imagery of Israel in Google Earth/Maps
• There's New Building Maker cities available in Argentina and Canada
• Google unveiled the new My Places tab on Google Maps, "which helps you quickly view and interact with your saved maps, starred locations, and rated businesses"
• ​They also introduced descriptive terms in Local Search results
• The GEB mentions the Touristo and Skydiver games for Google Earth
• Some readers like to know when there's new imagery available in Google Earth, well, there is 

On the Microsoft front:

• An entry on The Value of Bing Maps Spatial Data Services

In the miscellaneous category:

• Mapperz informs us of the Yahoo! Maps APIs Service Closure, due 13th September 2011     
• James Fee summarizes What Was Up at the Pitney Bowes Business Insights Conference, with news of MapInfo 11, and APB has more on MapInfo Spatial Server
• APB shares a long article named Intergraph and ERDAS: From GeoMedia to IMAGINE-The Big and Little Picture for this Geospatial Marriage, Spatial Sustain also shares an entry on the same topic, named Intergraph ‘Reinforces the House’ Under Hexagon
• A study concludes that Schematic Transit Maps Affect Passengers' Travel Choices
• Slashdot discussed a story named New Projects Use Phone Data To Track Big Cities' Mass Transit Use
• Slashdot also offers a story named NASA's Aquarius Launched To Help Map the Oceans' Salt
• Still from the same site, we learn the Nissan LEAF Leaks Speed & Location To RSS Feed
• And last story from that site, if you're interested in tools to map wifi networks, this discussion named What's Killing Your Wi-Fi? will interest you

In the maps category:

• The Strange Maps blog offers maps of the U.S. States, with what they do best and worse, worth a quick look of you're American
• Slashdot mentions a map of the Universe called the 2MASS Redshift Survey
• Not a geographic map, but O'Reilly has an article on generating a map of your LinkedIn contacts with InMaps, I found the result pretty interesting

Here's the recent Google-related geonews.

From official sources:

• Google added new StreetView images taken from their Trike (bicycle) from places inaccessible by motorized means
• There's an entry named KML and Google Earth API: Recent updates and resources
• There's a new Protected Layer Map to keep Google Fusion Tables tables private when used with the Google Maps API Premier
• There's an entry on ski slopes in Google Earth
• You can now tweet your Hotpot ratings in Google Maps for Android

From other sources:

• Ogle Earth offers an informative entry on Google Earth and the Middle East
• Ogle Earth also offers an entry on the Dutch-German border dispute and Israel Street View
• The GEB offers news of running Google Earth on the Motorola Xoom
• The GEB has another entry on Shaderlight, which generates beautiful photorealistic 3D models from Google's SketchUp. There's a MacOS version now.