In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

It's this entry from VerySpatial that made me aware of the release of FME 2013 by Safe Software, a popular ETL (extract, transform and load) geospatial tool.

From the official website, with the header 'FME 2013: Explore the Next Frontier of Data Interoperability': "FME 2013 features enhancements and new additions to the FME Platform - the technology powering FME Desktop and FME Server. This version of FME pushes data into new territory with support for more than 300 formats, new and revamped transformation capabilities, greater support for visually informative point cloud and 3D data, and many more features that help you boldly take your data where it hasn’t gone before. Also take it there faster with performance improvements that speed things up and allow you to complete tasks more quickly."

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode.

From the open source / open data front:

• This interesting entry by Paul Ramsey on the challenges of polygon intersections when the polygons are huge and involve multiple cartographic projections, a case study in PostGIS
• Via Geonames, I found out that SRTM-DEM CGIAR-CSI is now at version 4.1, but I failed to find what's changed since version 4
• Geopaparazzi 2.6.0 has been released
• APB shares a few interesting OpenStreetMap news, including raising $800k to build maps for pedestrians

From the Google front:

• Here's an entry on the jQuery UI module for the Google Maps API
• In Google Maps, links to directions have been added to the saved locations in My Places
• There's the first Map your University competition with Google Map Maker
• Here's realistic SketchUp renderings using Maxwell
• And there was new Google Earth imagery released last Friday

In the everything-else category:

• Here's a pertinent O'Reilly article on the NoSQL movement
• mattwynn shared an entry named Why ESRI (as is) can’t be part of the open government movement
• The OGC mentions the Geospatial World Forum 2012 to be held in Amsterdam in April
• Here's a link to an article on the need of location standards for business intelligence, there's an OGC GeoBI DWG too
• Directions Mag offers an article named Safe Software Execs Address the State of GIS and FME 2012 and another one named Business models for LBS shift to freemium and advertising
• Slashdot reports that LightSquared will try using lawyers to save their plan to mess with the GPS spectrum
• Via O'Reilly Where, I found this infographic on the local and location-based advertisement ecosystem
• Are you ready? China’s Geographic Information Industry Takes the Lead Globally
• Here's a 5-minutes video on Microsoft Layerscape, I wasn't impressed - should I be? Spatial Sustain has an entry about it
• APB shared an entry named Pitney Bowes Software CEO O’Hara Discusses Autodesk Relationship and Software Strategy
• Slashdot shared a story named Scientists Print Cheap RFID Tags On Paper
• And another one from the same source named Australian Police Spying On Web, Phone Usage [including location data] With No Warrants

In the maps category:

• SS mentions the NASA release of a New Global Forest Height Map
• Slashdot ran a story named FCC Maps the 3G Wasteland Of the Western US
• APB shares a crowdsourced map of Iranian nuclear sites

​This batch mode edition is unusually long. It covers the past month and a bit more. Yes, that's way too much and I won't try to repeat the experience ;-) Here's what I considered pertinent enough to share with you. Exceptionally, in some cases I haven't gave attribution to the source of the news, thank you for your comprehension.

On the geospatial open source front:

• I just recently became aware of PostGISonline, a site for testing and learning spatial SQL
• You can now create and manipulate SLD (the OGC Styled Layer Descriptor standard) in Python with python-sld
• Via the AGISRS list, I learned about OpenQuake.org, for calculating seismic hazard and risk at any scale, which of course ingest geospatial data and outputs maps
• Here's WherePost.ca, which crowdsources the location of mailboxes and post offices for Canada
• Here's the Switch2OSM website promoting OpenStreetMap, OpenStreetMap might go indoor too
• Still on the OSM topic, V1 shares an entry on the use of OpenStreetMap data in agriculture
• Here's an entry on the future of GeoCouch and CouchDB
• GeoServer gets database-level security
• There's now a plugin to run Python scripts in QGIS
• Here's about improvements to the QGIS rule-based rendering
• On a similar topic, here's a guide to beautiful reliefs in QGIS
• Did you know you can add Google Maps, OSM, and Bing Maps directly in QGIS? You can via the OpenLayers plugin - hey, there's even a Profile plugin
• There's an updated book published by Gary Sherman, now named The Geospatial Desktop , subtitled Open source GIS and mapping
• GEOS 3.3.2 has been released

On the Esri front:

• Mandown shares how to convert GPX files to Features using ArcGIS 10
• From the same source, Learn The Basics Of Working With The ArcGIS Runtime SDK For Android
• There were updates to ArcGIS for SharePoint, ArcGIS Mobile and to the ArcGIS API for Windows Phone
• James and SS talks about ArcGIS Online as the Esri Content Management System

On the Microsoft front:

• Microsoft announced a few new Bing Maps features, such as traffic incidents and find near route
• They announced the Bing Maps Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Control v1
• There's new Bing Maps V7 modules too along with a new routing engine
• James Fee shares an interesting entry named Bing Maps gets Nokia Brand and Possibly the Boot

On the remote sensing front:

• This is pretty interesting to many: SS shares an entry named USGS Now Offers OrbView-3 High-Resolution Images for Free, 180,000 scenes at 1m spatial resolution available
• China launched their first high-resolution remote sensing satellite, Ziyuan I-02C
• Slashdot discussed the newly released version of Blue Marble high definition (and beautiful) satellite image of the Earth from the Suomi NPP satellite
• Slashdot is running a story named Who's Flying Those Drones? FAA Won't Say and related, O'Reilly mentions OpenPilot, open source UAV with cameras
• And another named Launch Your Own Nanosatellite Into Space

On the GNSS / GPS front:

• It's coming, car makers are preparing for augmented reality driving
• Not exactly GPS but via radio-tagging, see the nice and short video of whale 3D paths in the ocean
• Slashdot is also discussing a story named New Mexico Is Stretching, GPS Reveals
• MapQuest launched an html5 app-like site for Android and iPhone for using MapQuest

In the miscellaneous category:

• The 7 geo predictions for 2012 of Cédric are interesting 
• Microsoft's Flight Simulator, renamed Flight, will be available for free next Spring, with paid extra content
• We never mentioned it before, but now Indiemapper is free, it "helps you make static, thematic maps from geographic data by bringing the best of traditional cartographic design to internet map-making."
• SS mentions the new alliance between Autodesk and Pitney Bowes, APB also discuss this new relationship
• SS also shares an entry named Safe Software’s Expanded Role as a Conduit Between Sensors and Systems
• The U.S. EPA in their Locations Challenge introduced a crowdsourcing project of georeferenced photos of environmental problems
• Slashdot ran a discussion on assembling your own 3D printer
• The OGC shared a summary of the Eye on Earth Summit held in December
• Another OGC entry was named Status of the OGC's Water Resource Activities
• DM shares an article named GIS Adoption and Use on College Campuses: An End-of-Year Review and Look Ahead to 2012
• The GEB mentions a new 3D San Francisco website
• I found interesting the possibility of a .data TLD
• A new free iPad app: GeoViewer from LizardTech, supports MrSID format and more
• It's been a while since we mentioned them, GISCorps were recently in 7 countries, including Libya

In the maps category:

• APB summarizes this: Comparing Maps of Obesity and Car Travel
• Here's an entry on cleanly using symbols on maps
• Here's U.S. routes as a subway map and the U.S. National Wind Energy Map
• Fox News shared a map with missing or wrongly placed countries
• TMR shares an obligatory animated map of rising global temperatures since 1880

I am extremely happy to report that Safe Software, the makers of the popular FME spatial ETL tool, have made a big donation to Slashgeo.org - thank you Safe Software! They're taking the sweet spot of being #1 on our top donors list (on the right-hand column).

Here's what might interest you regarding FME 2012:

• Contest called "Geography Jones and the Temple of Data", open until Friday which has prizes like an iPad2 and $1500 in travel up for grabs
• Webinar that will describe what's new and great in FME 2012, offered three times on January 26
• Details on what's new in FME Desktop and FME Server
• Blog posts on FME 2012, LiDAR, Google Fusion Tables and more to come later this week

We mentioned FME several times since 2006. In addition to this donation, Safe Software also paid for advertising exclusivity on Slashgeo.org for a few months (the top banner). Slashgeo is managed by a registered non-profit organization. You can learn more about getting exposure on Slashgeo.

Don't worry, we're not filthy rich now ;-) Despite this welcomed donation, our budget is still far in the red because of hosting and maintenance fees accumulated since 2005 (this doesn't count hundreds of hours spent by our team of volunteers). You can peak at our open budget while it's still there. I'll have to remove it in order to respect the Google terms of service (we already got trouble with them in the past).

- Newest MAPublisher® release connects with Safe Software’s FME -

Toronto, ON, January 3, 2012 - Avenza Systems Inc., producers of the PDF Maps app for iOS and geospatial plugins for Adobe Creative Suite, including Geographic Imager for Adobe Photoshop, is pleased to announce that with the release of MAPublisher 8.6 for Adobe Illustrator, support for FME Desktop by Safe Software is now available.

"We're delighted to have worked with Safe Software to create the MAPublisher FME Auto add-on to bring support for both FME and the FFS file format into the MAPublisher and Illustrator environment,” said Ted Florence, President of Avenza. “The fact that FME users can now easily and effortlessly move their data into the MAPublisher design environment is an extremely powerful innovation and will greatly improve workflow efficiencies for our mutual users,” he added.

With the new MAPublisher® FME Auto™ add-on, users of MAPublisher and FME Desktop can automatically transfer the results of an FME workflow directly to the MAPublisher and Adobe Illustrator environment complete with styling and layout. In addition MAPublisher users can now import the FME FFS file format. The bridge between the data processing environment of FME and the design and publishing environment of Adobe Illustrator and MAPublisher has finally been built.

"We are very pleased to have worked with Avenza to integrate FME support for their powerful and widely used MAPublisher product and to build the bridge between our two very important parts of the mapping and GIS workflow,” said Dale Lutz, Co-Founder and Vice-President of Development, Safe Software. “We look forward to seeing the efficiencies and enhanced workflow capabilities that our mutual users will undoubtedly enjoy," he added.

More about MAPublisher FME Auto
MAPublisher FME Auto is a new add-on that connects the GIS data processing environment of FME Desktop to the cartographic design and publishing environment MAPublisher and Adobe Illustrator. MAPublisher FME Auto provides FME Desktop with an Adobe Illustrator - MAPublisher writer. In FME Desktop, the writer may be used to translate GIS data formats for use with MAPublisher. It is now possible to create workflows in FME and then use pre-designed Adobe Illustrator templates, auto-assigned layers, and prepared MAP Themes to generate maps with much improved efficiency and ease.

MAPublisher FME Auto is available as an add-on to MAPublisher 8.6 at prices starting at US$399 per license. Academic, floating and volume pricing is also available. Prices include one year of full maintenance. Visit www.avenza.com/mapublisher/fme-auto for more details.

More about MAPublisher 8.6 for Adobe Illustrator
MAPublisher for Illustrator is powerful map production software for creating cartographic-quality maps from GIS data. Developed as a suite of plug-ins for Adobe Illustrator, MAPublisher leverages the superior graphics capabilities of this graphics design software for working with GIS data and producing high-quality maps with efficiency.

MAPublisher 8.6 for Illustrator is available free of charge to all MAPublisher customers with an active maintenance subscription and as an upgrade for non-maintenance users at US$599. New licenses are US$1399. Visit www.avenza.com/mapublisher for more details.

More about Avenza Systems Inc.
Avenza Systems Inc. is an award-winning, privately held corporation that provides cartographers and GIS professionals with powerful software tools for making better maps. In addition to software offerings for Mac and Windows users, Avenza offers value-added data sets, product training and consulting services as well as the PDF Maps app for purchasing and using maps on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices, including GeoPDF and geospatial PDF files. Visit www.avenza.com for more details.

For further information contact:
Tel: 416-487-5116
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.avenza.com

(I've been sick this week, thus the unusual low amount of stories published... will catch up in the coming days)

Last Tuesday Safe Software announced version 2011 of FME, their popular spatial data transformation platform software.

Several geoblogs offers reactions. Of note, there is:

• James Fee points to the official guide to what’s new
• Directions Mag's informative Q&A with Safe's vice-president of development and co-founder Dale Lutz
• Spatial Sustain offers a long discussion on the point clouds and LiDAR support in the new version: "The 2011 toolbox gives users the ability to reproject point clouds, changing between coordinate systems and vertical datums. There is the ability to reduce the point density of a dataset. You can split out and filter point clouds by flight line, source, classification or return. You can clip out specific polygons (regular or irregular). You can merge point clouds together. You can both tile and mosaic point clouds. You can create surface models, draping raster and vector data. You can also inspect attributes of the point cloud."
• If you're fond of numbers, Mapperz offers an FME 2011 story through numbers

Here's the Friday geonews in batch mode, or more precisely, the geonews that were not already shared earlier this week.

On the ESRI front:

• After ArcGIS API for iOS, it's not surprising to learn about ArcGIS For Android And ArcGIS API For Android Coming Soon
• V1 reviews Michael Zeiler's new book named "Modeling Our World: The ESRI Guide to Geodatabase Concepts"

In the miscellaneous category:

• Bing Maps is now a component of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency
• V1 sums up various news regarding Bentley (think Microstation) products
• Here's a Safe Software User Meeting Recap
• In the U.S., there's a new National TOD (Transit-Oriented Development) Database
• APB has an entry on Garmin's attempt to monetize geocaching

In the map category:

• Here's a map of U.S. foreign military bases
• TMR has an entry on the true size of Africa, since most of us are often mislead by the Mercator projection
• Here's an entry on ProtectedPlanet.net, mapping 150,000 of the world's protected areas
• Like in some other countries, you will need to register to do mapping activities in Pakistan