In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode. I've been overly busy lately - like a lot of us are at that time of the year I guess - please allow the unusual delay of this entry. Have a nice holiday break!

On the Esri front:

• Via an Esri email, I learned about the National Geographic World Map to be used as a basemap with Esri products and services

On the Google front:

• Again, there's new 45° imagery available, now for Detroit, Fayetteville, Nashville, Baton Rouge and Huntsville
• The GEB has an entry on Google Earth on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus
• The GEB also shares another entry on using Google Earth in the classroom
• Finally from the GEB, here's an entry named Visualizing Google Analytics data in Google Earth
• Slashdot is discussing a story about British Telecom suing Google over Android, including several location-related patents
• Here's the official entry on last week's imagery update

In the miscellaneous category:

• APB shares their top 10 GIS stories of 2011
• SS informs us that France's Pleiades-1 high-resolution is now in orbit: "Pleiades-1 has a 70cm resolution, mulitspectral views in the visible and near-infrared bands, and a swath width of 20km"
• Read this if you want to grasp how important geospatial intelligence is to the US Department of Defense
• We often mentioned the LightSquared debacle, now they want the FCC to rule now, not a bad idea since they might run out of money in the coming months
• SS also informs us of an hyperspectral imager that can be deployed on UAVs
• We mentioned GeoSMS before, here's the OGC blog the use of GeoSMS for disaster management
• APB informs us that Facebook added Location Tagging to their Timeline Rollout
• Two weeks ago in a PR we mentioned GISLounge's GIS job skills and employment survey
• Also from a recent PR, we never mentioned before the free Dinamica EGO software, now at version 1.8, EGO standing for Environment for Geoprocessing Objects
• V1 informs us that Russia's GLONASS satellite navigation system is officially global again
• Slashdot discusses how the brain's structure changes with your spacial and navigation skills, at least for taxi drivers
• Another location-related story discussed at the same place is named Japanese Use Wild Monkeys To Track Radiation
• Finally from the same source, DigitalGlobe's satellite spotted China's first aircraft carrier
• WebMapSolutions reviews 8 mobile GIS apps for iOS and Android
• Microsoft tells us about the Updated Spatial Features in the SQL Azure Q4 2011 Service Release
• MapQuest updated their Mobile Flash Maps API to v7.0.7, but with Flash for Mobile officially abandoned by Adobe, what's the future of Flash?
• O'Reilly shares a long entry on the Public Mapping Project for gerrymandering the U.S. elections, which we mentioned before
• Hum... APB shares an entry named Confidence Key to Women Doing Well at Spatial Tasks

In the maps category:

• While I'm a bit late for Christmas gifts, VS mentions interesting typographic maps of various U.S. cities on sale, VS also links to reasonably priced 'vintage' geography gifts
• Here's OWNI's list of Best Maps of 2011, a few of them previously mentioned here
• Discussed over Slashdot, a New All-Sky Map Shows the Magnetic Fields of the Milky Way
• O'Reilly shares this British map of traffic casualties

I wasn't available to share the recent geonews in batch mode last Friday, so there you go!

On the Google front:

• Google Places is now more widely available in Asia
• New in Google Maps for Android: Latitude real-time updating and more
• Via APB, there's a 'big buttons' version of the Google Maps UI that is being tested

On the Microsoft front:

• Bing Maps' latest map app is OnTerra’s “RouteSavvy” Route Optimizer, allowing you to find the best route for multiple destinations (think solving the travelling salesman problem)
• IDV's Visual Fusion 5.0 has been released, it integrates with Microsoft tools such as Bing Maps and Sharepoint

On the open source / data front:

• Here's an important entry if you use ExtJS or GeoExt, it's about the licensing limitations of GeoExt depending on your use case
• Here's a blog entry on how do OpenStreetMap and open government geodata fit together
• There's WMS cascading in the latest GeoServer
• Here's an interesting entry named Latest on JPEG2000 Improved Support for the Java world

On the ESRI front:

• An entry named Esri Forestry Group Aims to Create Open Templates and Tools
• Here's two entries from V1 on ESRI's Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) conference, one named “All Roads Lead to Rome” and a second one named Thought – Is ESRI Building a Search Engine?

In the miscellaneous category:

• Here's an entry on a disagreement of the value of REST for geodata processing and the OGC
• We mentioned China's MapWorld recently, here's more info and a note that it uses DigitalGlobe imagery
• Here's a free set of online calculators for geographic coordinates and distances
• It seems that Vans can Drive Themselves Across the World and another geo-related discussion over Slashdot: Forming New Mobile Networks With People-Borne Sensors
• Here's news from LizardTech: Next Generation MrSID Technology Offers Enhanced Compression Technology for Hyperspectral Data
• I liked this short tidbit letting us know that a "trial in New South Wales revealed that a GPS device that beeped when drivers were over the local speed limit (access from a database, not input by drivers as other devices require) caused 89% of drivers to slow down."
• Also from APB: MapQuest Visits Down 22% over Last Year
• And if you like editwars, "Neogeography" has been deleted from Wikipedia
• And ending up the serie from APB, updating a NAVTEQ in-dash GPS can cost you more than the value of a new handheld GPS device
• Why not, Australian Researchers Design Software to Help Robots Read Maps

In the maps category:

• The Wikileaks Iraq War Logs Mapped
• Here's an interesting entry named The Surprising Geography of International Tourism
• Here's a review of the new National Geographic Atlas
• Here's about the Berlin Solar Atlas project
• The One Europe One Geology book is now online