In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

Here's the recent open source / open data geonews in batch mode.

Software-related:

• On the iD Map Editor, the new OpenStreetMap editor, reached the Beta 1 state, if you want to see it in action, here's a nice 1-minute video
• It was mentioned in our press release section, but deserves additional attention, "GeoServer Beginner's Guide is a new book from Packt that teaches the readers to build custom maps using the dynamic real-time geospatial information. With the help of this book, readers will learn sharing of real-time maps quickly" Here's Jody's review of the book
• Via OR I learned about the release of Titan 0.3 which supports georeferenced data: "Titan is a highly scalable graph database optimized for storing and querying large graphs with billions of vertices and edges distributed across a multi-machine cluster. Titan is a transactional database that can support thousands of concurrent users."
• Here's about Scribe - A tool to facilitate the creation of Maps with MapServer
• Via OR, here's the code for WebGL Heatmap "a JavaScript library for high performance heatmap display"
• An open source Desktop GIS we never mentioned before, VSceneGIS Desktop v0.9.5, which seems to have only Spanish documentation
• Interested by the desktop GIS uDig? Here's a course on geographic scripting in uDig
• Amongst other updates, New final version of i3Geo available: i3Geo 4.7 and deegree 3.2.0 webservices released
• You can't wait? Here's Some cool new features in the upcoming QGIS 2.0
• And yes, OpenLayers 3 is getting closer to reality, the latest code sprint summary

Open data:

• Related to OpenStreetMap, the LearnOSM website got a major facelift and there's OSM PLUS - the OpenStreetMap Commercial Users Summit, the first meeting to occur on June 10th in San Francisco... with Garmin being another of the major companies diving into OpenStreetMap
• Geoff tells us about EuroGlobalMap, a free and open authoritative European geospatial data site
• The City of Chicago now offers its data on GitHub, most of it being georeferenced: "This is a new experiment, where we can see if it’s possible to crowdsource better data. GitHub provides the necessary functionality."
• On the topic of open data, you can read the new entry named The Flawed Economics of Closed Government Data by Brian Timoney

Everything else:

• Here's an entry on Map overlays with WebGL: affine, polynomial, TPS transformations in JavaScript with GLSL
• There's a new Open Source Geospatial Laboratory established at the University of Warwick, UK
• Here's the Keynote speakers at FOSS4G-CEE 2013

The serial winner of the FOSS4G WMS Shootout just got better, MapServer 6.2 has been released. We of course mentioned the open source web mapping server MapServer innumerable times.

The major features of 6.2:

• MapServer 6.2 is INSPIRE View Service compliant, i.e. supports the provision of an INSPIRE View Service compliant WMS Server.
• Mask Layers: Mask layers are used to “mask out” part of a given layer, to only represent data that intersect features from another layer.
• Precise Symbol Placement: Traditionally, MapServer centers a marker symbol on the point it should be rendered to. ANCHORPOINT is a new SYMBOL level keyword that describes where the given symbol should be anchored.
• Complex Multi Label/Symbol Symbology: Some cartographic representations require juxtaposing multiple symbols and/or labels in order to obtain a complex final symbol.
• Vector Fields: MapServer can render vector fields based off data from GDAL supported raster formats containing u and v bands.
• Label Leader Offsetting: For densely labelled maps, MapServer now supports offseting a label with respect to it’s original anchorpoint if the original location resulted in a collision with an already present label. An optional line can also be rendered to link the rendered text to it’s original feature location.
• Multiple Font Support: List a set of true type fonts to search for required characters.
• SVG Symbology: Along with the traditional ELLIPSE, VECTOR, PIXMAP and TRUETYPE symbols, MapServer 6.2 now supports SVG symbols directly.

MyGeoCloud.com is a new OpenSoure project and a web service. It offers geospatial storage, WMS and WFS-T services for accessing data and transactions. Besides that it offers a built-in web mapping client and online editing of data. But MyGeoCloud is also a platform on which you can build your own location based web applications using a JavaScript API.

The core component of MyGeoCloud is the PostGIS database software, which is used for storage and geospatial operations. MapServer is used for map rendering and for tile caching TileCache is used. OpenLayers is used for the web map clients. The WFS-T service is implemented in the code base.

The goal is a all-in-one solution for storage, geospatial operations, geospatial web services and web mapping.

Test the project here: http://beta.mygeocloud.com/ and get the source code here: https://github.com/mhoegh/MyGeoCloud

While at FOSS4G in Spain last year, UMN MapServer (Linux) won the annual competition WMS Shootout with Mapnik not fare behind. During this year event, for distributing vectors (PostGIS) data only : Mapnik was at its best, for vector seeding : MapServer on Linux was way much faster than the other products, for vectors and raster data : Mapnik and MapServer Linux looks better and finally for vectors, rasters and DEM data: MapServer Linux was the fastest.

At the same time, MapServer on Linux was about 3 times faster than on MapServer on Windows on some of charts! The results in details of WMS Shootout will be published soon. At the end of the conference the annual Sol Katz Award was given this year to the lead developer of the JTS Topology Suite, Martin Davis. Congratulations to the first "Java" contributor to win this FOSS4G award!

MapServer 6.0 has been officially released.  It brings a number of improvements and enhancements, outlined in the official release announcement.

Notable improvements include the implemntation of single-pass queries, and an overhaul to the rendering API and espression parser.  Some of the new features that look pertty interesting include OpenGL rendering support, KML output, combining mupltiple layers, and clustering points.

The changes do require careful migration, so be sure to refer to the 6.0 migration guide.

[Editor's note: MapServer, in addition to being open source, is one of the oldest, most stable and efficient existing web mapping server, having won most FOSS4G benchmark shootouts so far, well, at least in 2009 and 2010 ;-)]

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