In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode, covering the last few weeks (which have been crazy to me).

From the Esri front:

• Mandown reminds us that ArcGIS 10.1 is coming this June and the ArcGIS 10.0 SP5 is coming in July

• You can access and edit Esri maps even on the Kindle Fire

From the Microsoft front:

• Microsoft announced that Bing Maps is now using Nokia backend services for Traffic and Geocoding
• There's an official entry named Integrating Bing Maps With WPF
• And there's new Bird’s Eye Imagery & Streetside Coverage on Bing Maps

Discussed over Slashdot:

• Russian Satellite Takes Most Detailed 121-Megapixel Image of Earth Yet
• DEA Wants To Install License Plate Scanners and Retain Data for Two Years

• Senator Seeks More Info On DOJ Location Tracking Practices
• Modeling People and Places With Internet Photo Collections

• NASA's Interactive Flood Maps

• LightSquared Files For Bankruptcy

Directions Mag articles:

• Here's about what’s new in both the software and the use of GeoPDF
• Another one named Can Geofeedia Provide Location-based Citizen Input to Journalists?

In the miscellaneous category:

• An interesting Ogle Earth entry named Why do Panasonic, Leica, FujiFilm, Samsung and Nikon censor their GPS cameras?, short answer: China laws

• Learning Geography skills through a Zombie Apocalypse Narrative?, yes, nothing less
• While I found nothing surprising in there, it's still interesting to read the United Nations Five to Ten Year Vision on Geospatial Information Management (via)
• We heard this before, New Report Warns About Decline in U.S. Earth Observation Capabilities
• Meanwhile, India launched its first EO satellite, RISAT-1, with SAR capabilities

In the maps category:

• Strange Maps shares a map of Population by Latitude and Population by Longitude
• TMR shares a map of U.S. Life Expectancy by County

• It was submitted as a press release but deserves more attention, UrbMet.org, interactive web map for the urban metabolism of cities, the same tool was later featured on the O'Reilly Radar

• Here's Climascope, an interactive web map to explore climate change
• The Earth is mostly (70%) covered by water, but there isn't that much in terms of volume
• Mapperz mentions MapofLife.org, mapping geographic distributions for any terrestrial vertebrate species
• At the other end of the spectrum, FearSquare.com, crime around you (UK only)

Ah... it feels good to be current on geonews once again!

Here's the recent Google geonews for the last 7 days.

From the official sources:

• Google announced that Google Earth is now optimized for Android-powered tablets, which includes fully textured 3D buildings
• Google announced the Distance Matrix API web service, providing "a chart that showed the driving distance and journey time between pairs of major cities"
• Google shared an entry named Using the power of mapping to support South Sudan
• There's a new Google Earth Outreach Developer Grants Program
• Traffic information is coming to Google Maps in Sweden and Taiwan
• On the gaming front, here's an entry on the Travel Game and Google Earth as a gameboard
• And there was yet again a new imagery update for Google Earth and Google Maps, with tens of countries getting fresh imagery

From other sources:

• About an hour ago the GEB published an entry on High-res imagery of the Mississippi River flooding in Google Earth
• Google Building Maker supports new cities and offers expanded coverage for others, including Fresno, Lake Tahoe, Austin, Phoenix, Sacramento, San Diego and St. Louis
• The FGT blog mentions a tool to Generate Custom Color Code For Google Maps
• Here's an entry on powerful drag-and-drop capabilities with HTML5 and the Google Earth Plug-in, and another entry named Quickly share locations using the Google Earth Plug-in
• Inevitably, there's plenty of new Osama bin Laden's compound 3D models for you to explore in Google Earth, and there's even fresh imagery of the area taken on May 2nd

Here's recent Google-related geonews.

From the official sources:

• There's a new widget to select content to display in Google Maps, a significant interface change
• There's now an "Upload a photo" link in Google Places
• Continuing improving Hotpot, Google Maps searches can be enhanced by your Hotpot friends
• Google software, including Google Earth, is now available in Iran
• The Developer blog discusses 5 ad campaigns using Google Maps

From other sources:

• The GEB offers an entry on simulating flooding in Google Earth
• Here's how to turn SketchUp models more realistic with Shaderlight, a quick look at the screenshots show the dramatic improvement
• There was new imagery added to Google Earth last Sunday
• For people in California, here's how much solar power your house could generate calculated from Google Earth
• The GEB also discusses Water Point Mapper and finding safe water sources in remote areas with Google Earth 

The Brisbane Times reports that an Australian firm, Nearmap has conducted a very high resolution aerial survey of the recent floods in Brisbane and has made it available online on its website. According to its CEO, the resolution of the survey in 2cm, or about 5 times higher than the resolution normally seen on Google Maps. According to Nearmap's parent company, the company's camera system "is designed to capture PhotoMap data at a small fraction of the operating and capital costs for alternative camera systems - and captures overhead and four oblique photos while doing so."

Here's the Friday geonews in batch mode.

From the open source / open data front:

• A third entry in the series of the Free Shapefiles of Countries of the World, focusing this time on small countries
• Mapperz mentions FacilMap.org Beta, that aims to group together layers of various OpenStreetMap projects
• An entry on OpenPisteMap, for mountain sports
• Via Kurt, here's NOAA's new bathymetry data viewer
• There's a new offline editing plugin for QGIS
• GeoNetwork opensource v2.6.2 released
• Shapely 1.2.8 has been released

From the ESRI front:

• SS summarizes Jack Dangermond's opening talk at the GeoDesign Summit and shares a second entry named Exploring the Esri Approach to GeoDesign
• James praises for Python in ArcGIS

In the miscellaneous category:

• There has been quite a few entries on the Australian flood maps, the best one I found is from VerySpatial
• Here's the Top 10 Spatial Law and Policy Stories of 2010
• Via APB, here's DigitalGlobe's Top Ten Imagery Related Events of the Decade
• APB mentions that a Japanese Company Achieves 3 cm Accuracy for GPS
• GLONASS-enabled phones are coming in March
• Here's Cédric's seven 2011 geo predictions
• Kurt mentions the Earth Observer iOS app
• SS mentions Satellite Monitoring Employed to Prevent Civil War in Sudan, supported by actor George Clooney
• Slashdot ran a story named 'French Use Space Tech To Find Parking Spots'

In the maps category:

• A map of North American English Dialects
• An entry on Michael Zeiler's Solar Eclipse Map Website