In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

The race for improved indoor navigation goes on, MacRumors informs us that Apple Acquires Indoor Mobile Location Positioning Firm WifiSLAM.

From the Wall Street Journal: "The two-year-old startup has developed ways for mobile apps to detect a phone user’s location in a building using Wi-Fi signals. It has been offering the technology to application developers for indoor mapping and new types of retail and social networking apps. The company has a handful of employees, and its co-founders include former Google software engineering intern Joseph Huang. [...] Google already offers indoor mapping in certain locations like airports, shopping centers and sports venues."

Catching up geonews, here's the recent Google-related geonews.

From official sources:

• The latest Google Maps 6.7 for Android introduces Google Offers and Indoor walking directions
• We mentioned Speadsheet Mapper in 2008, and now Spreadsheet Mapper 3 is available, in short, "Spreadsheet Mapper is a tool that enables anyone to easily create a well-designed  KML file  to show off their data in Google Earth and Maps"
• The Baltic nations of Estonia and Latvia are now in Street View
• Here's the 2012 'Model your Town' winner, Getaria, Spain
• In Google Maps, 'work' and 'home' made their way to My Places
• Regarding Google Earth Builder that was renamed Google Maps Engine, nonprofits can have it for free
• Here's the latest improvements of the Google Places API searches
• And of course there was an imagery update on May 14th, and on May 4th too

From other sources:

• Slashdot mentioned Google Gets Driverless License For Nevada Roads
• At the beginning of the month, the GEB showed the One World Trade Center building model in Google Earth, and later, Saint Basil's Cathedral
• Using Google's Fusion Table on mobile devices? Look at My Fusion Tables
• Slashdot discussed a story named Google Releases Key Part of Street View Pipeline

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode. Some of those news seem important enough to deserve their own entries, but I dare share them in a single one. Yes, that's another unusually long post. Normal posting frequency should resume next February!

From the open source / open data front:

• SS shares an entry named MIT Releases Smartphone Data Tracking Tools as Open Source Software, it's called Funf
• There's now an OpenStreetMap Inspector, a quality evaluation service to help improve OSM data
• Here's a short entry on using OpenStreetMap data, tidbit: the entire database is 250GB
• Here's an entry on generating contours using GDAL (via shell or QGIS)
• Paul explains Indexed Nearest Neighbour Search in PostGIS
• Here's the FOSS4G 2011 WMS Performance Shootout 2011 slides, and I haven't shared this yet, James Fee's Guide to what was important at FOSS4G 2011

From the Esri front:

• Mandown reports that Esri updated their deprecation plans for ArcGIS 10 and 10.1
• SS indicates Esri Releases a Map Story on Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions

From the Google front:

• Finally, single-language labels made their way to Google Maps, that's making it much less confusing
• Here's in simple words why Google offers Google Maps / Earth
• Ogle Earth shares an entry on using Google Earth to hunt illegal mining in Goa, India

From the Microsoft front:

• Bing Maps added detailed airport maps, 42 U.S. airports so far 

In the miscellaneous category:

• SS reports that TomTom Launched a Geospatial Platform with Oracle: "The service will offer geocoding, vehicle routing and mapping information, all hosted on Oracle’s 11g database."
• V1 writes about INTERGEO, the German geospatial conference that attracted 17,000 attendees, making it one of the largest geoconferences in the world (the largest?)
• James Fee linked to the U.S. and Canadian top 10 largest cities GIS web maps
• We mentioned it before, but here's another article on the completion of the ERS satellite missions after 20 years
• O'Reilly shares an entry named Why indoor navigation is so hard and another entry on the state and future of local news
• If you have interest in the GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification), here's data model diagrams
• MapQuest launched a Mobile Flash Maps API
• VerySpatial mentioned the National Geographic Challenge game for the PS3, XBox360 and Wii
• On a more serious topic, VS shares an entry on The Geography of the Death Penalty

Slashdot discussed a few geospatial-related stories:

• Don't you wish you were a student again, Put On Your 3D Glasses — Class Is About To Start
• Not the first time we hear such news (from any OS phone), HTC Android Backdoor Leaks Private User Data, including GPS locations
• US Military Seeks Non-Cooperative Biometric Tracking Technology
• A story named California Governor Vetoes Ban On Warrantless Phone Searches, including GPS logs
• An on the same theme, a Senator Goes After 'Brazen' OnStar Privacy Shift
• With a search, you'll find plenty of similar stories, German Researchers Crack Mifare RFID Encryption, in other words, RFID can be of great use, but can't be considered secure 
• There's also a story about using stereo-vision mapping to visualize the oldest submerged city

In the maps category:

• TMR shares a few map books for Fall 2011
• Here's the first global map of ocean salinity
• Here's the Japanese tsunami mapped in detail for the first time

In the coming days, I'll be at Géomatique 2011, the major geospatial event in the province of Québec. Slashgeo is a media partner of the event.