In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode.

On the open source / open data front:

• Here's an excellent summary of OpenStreetMap's State Of The Map US - 2012, on Steve Coast's presentation, Dr JTS shared: "He said that the top thing OSM needs to continue to grow is addressing.  He singled out Google Mapmaker as being a clear and present danger to the growth of OSM."
• James shows us how to easily download OpenStreetMap data from WeoGeo
• There's a new Open Source Geospatial Research and Education Lab established at North Carolina State University
• MediaGoblin, an open YouTube, Flickr and the like competitor, now supports 3D models
• If you're interested by the uDig desktop GIS, there's now video tutorials
• You can publish maps direction from ArcGIS to MapBox Publishing with Arc2Earth Sync
• There's even more and updated OpenStreetMap tiles offered by MapQuest
• Here's how to create dynamic contour maps with server-side processing with WPS, GeoServer and PostGIS 2.0
• GeoServer 2.2.1 has been released

On the Esri front:

• Using ArcGIS Online? There's a the ArcGIS Online Health Dashboard, to let you know if any service is down

On the Google front:

• The GEB tells us about Tracking KMZ file usage with Google Analytics
• Here's an entry on Trekking the Grand Canyon for Google Maps, for Street View of course

On the Microsoft front:

• The ridiculous patent war continues, Microsoft Sues Motorola Over Mapping Patents
• A U.S. State identification game for MS MapPoint

Geo-related Slashdot discussions:

• I had to happen, Apple Maps Accidentally Reveals Secret Military Base In Taiwan
• Remote sensing helped monitor a Huge Geoengineering Project Violates UN Rules on Canada's west coast
• An Arctic Investigation Underway Into Solar Storm Sat-Nav Disruption
• We'll probably see this often, Texas Schools Using Electronic Chips To Track Students; Parents In Uproar
• Implementing geospatial isn't always easy, Uber [mobile app] Gives Up On New York Taxi Service
• Privacy is dead right? How Hair Can be Used To Track Where You've Been
• Reusability, NASA Working On Refueling Satellites

In the everything else category:

• Using Verizon? They sell where you are; Verizon Sells App Use, Browsing Habits, Location (via O'R)
• DM shares an article named Prepare to Get That Job: 20 Challenging GIS Interview Questions, and also related to jobs, GeoSearch Tracks U.S. Geospatial Employment in Q3 2012
• Drones for geospatial? Home-made 3D-Printed Drones (via O'R)
• The promise of WebGL, while this article isn't specifically on geospatial uses of WebGL, it's worth taking a look at the WebGL demonstration video (wait at least until colors kick in, after about one minute)
• Fearing supervolcanos? For those in South America, ESA's story on the 'sombrero uplift' seen by remote sensing, the largest active magma body in Earth's continental crust
• Geospatial brings value? A DM article on Location Intelligence unlocks the power of your data

In the maps category:

• Good timing, United Swing States of America: Presidential Election Battle Map
• Several readers might be interested by North American Cartographic Information Society's Atlas of Design, now available
• APB reports on that the UK Met Crime Map is Overwhelming for Users

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode.

From the open source / data front:

• MapBrief claim that the battle for open source in the enterprise in behind us, from the WSJ: "[...] for reasons including ease of innovation and cutting the time to get products to market"
• Interesting, announcing QMap: A simple data collection application using QGIS
• Unless I'm mistaken, we haven't mentioned yet the new 'shp.js' open source javascript Shapefile parser (via GGD)
• In case you missed it in our PR section, there's an Education version of gvSIG
• GeoTools 8.1 has been released, mostly a bug fix release
• Portable GIS version 3 has been released too
• Here's a summary of State of the Map 2012 held in Tokyo
• It's done, OpenStreetMap data license is now ODbL
• And yes, some crazy people try to sell open source geospatial code

From the Esri front:

• Here's What’s New in ArcGIS Online for September 2012

From the Microsoft front:

• New imagery to Bing Maps, a lot of it, Global Ortho & 17 Million SqKm of New Satellite Imagery

From the Google front:

• Plenty of geoblogs mentioned the Atlantic article on the secretive Ground Truth program in an article named How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything
• Google shares a breakout of Google Maps search terms by country for this Summer
• They also have an entry on the need to save the elephants and how to do it the geospatial way
• You can also Explore the Forefront of Japanese Space Science with Google Maps
• Here's the official entry on the latest imagery update in Google Maps and Google Earth, a lot of it
• The GEB shares an entry on Viewing city lights in Google Earth and why not, another entry on Google Earth Fractals

Interesting Directions Mag articles:

• Does Your Local Government Need A Drone?
• New Spatial Information Act for Australia
• Trucking Fleets Leverage Traffic Data to Work Smarter, Cut Costs
• New Resources for GIS Job Seekers

In the miscellaneous category:

• The SPOT 6 satellite is alive and well with its first images, it was successfully launched on September 9 and has a spatial resolution of 1.5m
• LizardTech (MrSID) Releases Express Server 8

In the maps category:

• Via APB, here's a Map the World’s Friendships from Facebook and Stamen
• Here's a gigantic 3D map of the deaths in Grand Canyon
• NASA wants you to help map an asteroid

DM yesterday published an article named Ten Things You Need to Know About OpenStreetMap. While you probably already know all this if you're a regular reader, it still constitutes an excellent refresher.

Follow the provided link for the details, here's the ten items:

1. OpenStreetMap's definition; "OpenStreetMap is a free worldwide map, created by people like you."
2. OSM’s Name is Singular
3. The OpenStreetMap Foundation Manages and Supports the Effort
4. OSM is Changing its License from Creative Commons to ODbL
5. Mapping Parties are Events to Expand OSM
6. Google’s Recent Decision to Charge Heavy Users of its Google Maps API is Pushing Developers to OSM
7. Where to Get OSM Tiles
8. Many Apps Offer OSM Data as an Option
9. Some Countries are Heavier OSM Contributors and Users than Others
10. OSM has an Annual Conference, The State of the Map

Also announced earlier this week is the opening of the registration for State of the Map 2012 conference, to be held in Tokyo September 6-8th, just before FOSS4G 2012 at the same location. [correction: rather same "region" of the world... FOSS4G 2012 being held in Beijing, sorry]

Here's the recent geospatial open source and open data news.

New and updated software:

• In case you don't follow our press release section, Geopaparazzi 2.4 has been released, a reminder: "Geopaparazzi is a tool developed to do very fast qualitative engineering/geologic surveys."
• And so was MXD2Map version 1.0, "MXD2map is a free converter for the generation of UMN MapServer-compatible Map files from ESRI ArcGIS MXD files."
• degree 3.1 web services have been released
• ImageI/O-Ext 1.1.2 has been released
• Here's about POIProxy, "a service that handles requests to any public POI service providing a well defined REST API"

Other open source software-related news:

• SS shares an entry on InSTEDD GeoChat - not be to confused with Esri's GeoChat or the other open source MapChat - InSTEDD's open source GeoChat "is a collaboration tool that allows anyone to chat, report and get alerts on their phone"
• All the talk videos of FOSS4G 2011 and State of the Map 2011 are now available
• Here's an entry on QGIS's pie charts for symbols

In the open data category:

• Montréal, Canada, joined the increasing number of cities opening their geospatial data to the public [French press release]
• V1 mentions the Alberta Oilsands map-based portal, which he qualifies as open and transparent
• Mapperz discusses Openptmap, an OpenStreetMap-related effort to show public transport lines

With State of the Map 2011 now behind, here's what I found on the geoblogs that we haven't mentioned yet. Thanks to Slashgeo editor Nicolas Gignac, we were able to provide on-site coverage this year.

• APB offers a State of the Map 2011 RoundUp
• And in another entry, APB mentions the USGS OpenStreetMap Collaborative Prototype, a snippet of the released report: "The OSM software proved effective in providing a usable platform for collaborative data editing."
• SS shares his account of State of the Map 2011's opening keynote by Richard Weait
• Another SS entry is named OpenStreetMap for Commercial Applications
• SS goes on with an entry named The Clever Evolution of Walking Papers, a paper-based solution for contributing to OpenStreetMap that we mentioned before
• SS also shared, just before SotM 2011, a perspective named Why should open geospatial data and software be taken seriously?

Since the Tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004, volunteers around the world have been involved right from the start in the force task when a major event is seeking help from mappers. Over the years, OSM and its Humanitarian OSM Team (HOT) has been playing a key role in collaboration with emergency managers (e.g. MapAction, UN-OCHA, USAID, local government) and has demonstrated its usefulness. The HOT was involved in many crisis management situations, such as the Earthquake in Haiti in 2010 (http://cosmha.wordpress.com/ &  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/FR:WikiProject_Haiti), the Revolution of the people in Tunisia and Libya, the Ketsana Typhoon in Philippines, the Tsunami in Japan, the flooding of Richelieu River in Canada, etc.

In Denver, the delegation of Japanese was well represented with two subjects at the State of the Map and one at the FOSS4G: http://2011.foss4g.org/sessions/response-osgeo-japan-other-comunities-great-east-japan-earthquake-0. In some other countries, such as Tunisia and Libya, OSM has been demonstrated to be an empowerment tool such as Facebook and Twitter during a crisis when information was at stake. Contribution of volunteers from Japan and other parts of the world (e.g. Haiti) has been done mostly in collaboration with NGO’s, public organisation, UN offices and private contributors. Finally, in the disaster risk panel, chaired by Kate Chapman from HOT, at the State of the Map conference on Sunday, a project utilizing OSM and Open Source Software for Disaster Risk reduction in Indonesia was presented and general discussion was made on what is so challenging for mapping Team in such exercise (e.g. using commercial imagery, government trust and licensing problems).

While the first day of the State of the Map 2011 in Denver was a bang on Business day and Mapping Party, the second part of the Conference has been schedule as the Weekend – Community. During these three beautiful sunny days in the Colorado Capital City, technical development, ethics, grassroots mobilizing effect, quality control, humanitarian mission, symbology enhancement were some of the subject presented and discussed.

The total number of registered persons was estimated around 255 (as one of the biggest ever) and more than 15 sponsors supported the Conference. This Denver edition marked a step forward maturity for the OSM Foundation and its related OSM projects (OpenCycleMap, OpenTrailView, OpenStreetMap-3D, etc.) as well as its presence in North-America (will see after the event). With more than 400 000 members, OSM is one of the biggest open source project in the world in terms of members participating within the same environment. This edition of 2011 marked a point where the community has a vibrant presence in many continents and looks more diverse than ever (Africa: Tunisia, Middle-East: Israel, Australia, Americas, Europe and Asia: Philippines and India). State of the Map Conference is very different than usual or formal IT/GIS Conference, it just lets sense of humour, Humanity and Engagement been expressed and playing a role in all contribution and activists presentation. The fun-filled atmosphere lets the community to learn unique story of OSM mapping projects (e.g. blind mapper in the Philippines, live balloon photography to document the size of protests in Chile, Address Hunter multi-player game), their positive changes all over the world (e.g. Mapping for Changes) and at the same time what is yet to be develop for the upcoming years (e.g. Road Sheilds, OpenTrailView, Local Chapter).

While there is still new private partners involved recently with OSM, such as ESRI (e.g. ArcGIS Editor for OSM), this “Do It Yourself” (DIY) type of mapping project looks now as a datasource that cannot be ignored by public (e.g. USGS, Ordnance Survey) and private (e.g. MapQuest, Bing, Yahoo! and Google) geospatial data provider in their business model.

OpenStreetMap annual event finished Sunday night with its General Meeting with new board members, but the presence of OSM at FOSS4G 2011 during the week ahead will still be active in Denver in workshops (http://2011.foss4g.org/sessions/introduction-humanitarian-openstreetmap-team and http://2011.foss4g.org/sessions/foss4g-routing-pgrouting-tools-openstreetmap-road-data-and-geoext), presentations and discussion on Open Data.