In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

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

Here's the recent geonews that haven't made it into full stories in batch mode.

Related to the Japan 2011 earthquake and tsunami:

• The NYT shared efficient slide-over satellite imagery of several sites over Japan
• In addition to what we shared last Friday, Google posted entries on post-earthquake imagery of Japan and another on assembling resources following the earthquake in Japan
• V1 links to the UN-SPIDER SpaceAid website for the Japan earthquake
• Here's the Wikipedia entry on Nuclear power by country, where we learn Japan gets 29% of its energy from that source

From the open source / open data front:

• MapServer now has a Studio version 0.5 to edit Mapfiles in a WYSIWYG editor
• OpenStreetMap offers a video on how to add a building in OpenStreetMap
• MapQuest is now supporting OpenAerialMap too
• Mapperz mentions the OpenEcoMaps initiative based on OSM data
• There's a new version of Spatial Operations & Editing Tools for uDig 1.2.1 with its tutorial
• There will be a new interactive label placement feature in QGIS 1.7, there's also a new QGIS roadgraph plugin, On the fly raster reprojection comes to QGIS and here's a tip on opening MS SQL Server 2008 spatial tables in QGIS
• By the way, we published the press release about FOSS4G's conference workshop lineup

From the ESRI front:

• For those interested, the Plenary Session Videos For The Esri Developer Summit 2011 are now available
• There's a ArcGIS 9.3.1 Service Pack 2 Quality Improvement patch
• The ArcGIS API For iOS 1.8 Public Beta is now available
• If you like testing ESRI beta software, the Esri Beta Community has been launched
• Still from geogeek, there's an ESRI whitepaper on Estimating the cost of a GIS in the Amazon Cloud
• and three entries about a new approach to metadata with ArcGIS 10
• There's a new ArcGIS Map Drupal module that just started

In the miscellaneous category:

• MapQuest announced the launch of MapQuest Map Builder Beta while a press release focused on MapQuest tools to help drivers save money
• The UN is looking for volunteers on the Crisis Map of Libya
• For those unsure if geospatial apps will ever take off on tablets (see are running poll on the right hand side), AutoCAD WS for iOS has been downloaded 1 million times
• Slashdot discussed a story named DraftSight 2D CAD For Linux Beta Available
• A topic we discussed last week, this time it's O'Reilly that offer an article named Are we too reliant on GPS?
• The FGT blog shares an informative update on LightSquared’s GPS-Jamming proposal
• The same source offers an article named wireless sensor networks can see and shape the world
• And still from O'Reilly, an entry named Why location data is a mess, and what can be done about it and another on named Location data could let retailers entice customers in new ways

In the maps category:

• GeoCurrents offers a map of the extreme disparities of state revenue, along with an entry named The CIA World Factbook Drops Dubious Revenue Data
• TMR mentions the upcoming 'Disease Maps: Epidemics on the Ground' book by Tom Koch
• SS has an entry named China Begins Campaign to Crack Down on Unlicensed Maps

Here's the recent geonews that haven't made it into an individual story in batch mode.

From the open source / open data front:

• While we mentioned it indirectly in the past, we never specifically mentioned the existence of OpenCycleMap.org, based, of course, on OpenStreetMap
• The "open" MapQuest maps now support worldwide pedestrian and bicycle routing along with transit routes
• An article in Scientific American is using OpenStreetMap data to map the local 'food desert'
• The OpenGeo Suite Enterprise Edition 2.4.0 has been released

From the ESRI front:

• ESRI released their ArcGIS API for JavaScript version 2.2
• A third entry on useful ArcGIS Explorer add-ins III

In the everything-else category:

• GeoCurrents offers an informative serie of entries on Libyan maps: Libya’s Tribal Divisions and the Nation-State, Libya’s Geographical Divisions and the Challenge to National Unity, Libya’s Fezzan: A Bulwark of the Gaddafi Regime
  , Gaddafi’s Saharan Farming Schemes and Libyan Agricultural Hexagons. On the same topic, TMR shares an entry on the Libya Crisis Map
• Rememer that GPS positioning in the U.S. is in danger because of LightSquared? APB shares a followup including the mention of the 'Coalition to Save Our GPS'
• Following the earthquake in New Zealand, there's fresh imagery of Christchurch
• Google and Microsoft have teamed together to sue a patent troll who sued 397 companies over a geotagging patent
• Microsoft offers an entry on modular design and client side clustering with Bing Maps V7
• O'Reilly offers an article on location privacy named Privacy law needs a reboot
• A followup on a previous story, Slashdot discusses a student suing the FBI for planting a GPS tracker on his car. On this topic, SpatialLaw offers an entry named Government's Use of Tracking Technology: More Than A Constitutional Issue?
• It seems the FAA now allows iPad as an alternative to aviation charts
• TMR links to a review of Casio's geotagging camera
• APB mentions that Turtles Use Earth’s Magnetic Field to Determine Longitude
• In a perspective entry, SS asks Is it time for an impartial auditing board on spatial data accuracy?

In the maps category:

• TMR shares a map of the index of potential unrest, on this topic, some claims Google Earth as a Factor in Middle East Unrest
• TMR shares a map of internal U.S. migration flows

A colleague sent me the link to Wired's article named Google Maps Mashup Documents Libyan Protests. Here's a direct link to the map. Libya was also one of the countries getting an high resolution imagery update in Google Maps a month ago.

From the map's information: "This map has been created by compiling reports from trusted accounts on Twitter. Nonetheless, these reports are in general unconfirmed. This information should be considered in the context of there being absolutely no independent media in Libya at this time. This map is not automatically produced. Each posting is considered before it is mapped. These considerations have evolved over time as conditions on the ground have changed."