In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

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

I had to investigate OGC's WCS standard and in the process I learned about Rasdaman, a geospatial radar data manager software which is apparently the only software that currently support WCS 2.0 both as a server and client. Rasdaman exists both in a commercial 'rasdaman enterprise' version and as open source with the 'rasdaman community' version. We never really mentioned rasdaman before.

The rasdaman community introduction: "Rasdaman extends standard relational database systems with the ability to store and retrieve multi-dimensional raster data ( arrays) of unlimited size through an  SQL-style query language. On such sensor, image, or statistics data appearing, e.g., in earth, space, and life science applications rasdaman allows to quickly set up array-intensive services which are distinguished by their flexibility, speed, and scalability.

Rasdaman is brought to you by the guys writing the geo raster standards, including  OGC WCS and  WCPS, the OGC raster query language. The petascope component of rasdaman provides service interfaces based on the  OGC  WCS,  WCPS,  WCS-T, and  WPS. For several of these, rasdaman will be reference implementation. Since April 2011, rasdaman is available on the  OSGeo Live DVD. Rasdaman embeds itself smoothly into  PostgreSQL; further, a  GDAL rasdaman driver is available, and likewise a  MapServer integration (beta). A  PostGIS query language integration is under work, see our planning. EarthLook is a demonstration site showcasing rasdaman in a variety of 1-D to 4-D geo use cases."

The pycsw team announces the release of pycsw 1.4.0.

The 1.4.0 release brings numerous features, enhancements and fixes to the codebase, including:

* WSGI server support
* harvesting support for WFS, WCS, WPS, and other CSW endpoints
* support for Open Data Catalog integration
* enhanced support for GeoNode 2.0 (GeoNode development branch)
* support for distutils setup/install, which enables pycsw to be installed as a library
* support for PyPi
* support for displaying counts for GetDomain requests based on queryable properties
* support for requestId request parameter
* fix GetRecords sortby parameter support for HTTP GET
* support for W3C XLink 1.1 migration
* support for Debian and Ubuntu packaging
* support for sorting GetRecords requests by geometry area
* support for PostGIS enabled PostgreSQL

This release also marks our migration to GitHub for source code management, issue tracking and wiki.

The full list of enhancements and bug fixes is available at https://github.com/geopython/pycsw/issues?milestone=2&page=1&state=closed

pycsw is an OGC CSW server implementation written in Python. pycsw implements clause 10 (HTTP protocol binding (Catalogue Services for
the Web, CSW)) of the OpenGIS Catalogue Service Implementation Specification, version 2.0.2.

pycsw allows for the publishing and discovery of geospatial metadata. Existing repositories of geospatial metadata can be exposed via OGC:CSW
2.0.2. pycsw is Open Source, released under an MIT license, and runs on all major platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X).

Source and binary downloads:
----------------------------------------

The source code is available at:

http://pycsw.org/download.html

Testers and developers are welcome.

The pycsw developer team.

http://pycsw.org/

This is my tentative to catch up the geonews since my mid-August holidays. Here they are!

On the open source / open data front:

• UDig 1.3.2 has been released with several new features and supports Axios spatial editing tools again
• Since 2008 the USGS provides the Landsat archive, but this entry mentions that a substantial part of the Landsat archive is available on the fast and reliable public Google Earth Engine cloud storage

On the Esri front:

• The free plugin ArcGIS for AutoCAD version 300 is now available
• There's now an ArcGIS Runtime for iOS for ArcGIS.com WebMaps

On the Google front:

• Google made a few Google Maps announcements, including voice guided directions in India, Map Maker in New Zealand and new Street View in 150 university campuses
• In another entry, Google offers a roundup of their August Google Maps related news, most news we already shared with our users
• Nothing surprising, new imagery released on September 1

On the Microsoft front:

• Microsoft shares an entry on overlaying Esri shapefiles in BIng Maps
• Microsoft's Global Ortho Project is complete for the United States, meaning there's high resolution 30cm imagery everywhere in the country
• There's a new Bing Get Me There App for iOS for London, UK
• An entry on Bing Maps V7 AJAX Highlights

In the everything else category:

• James shares a must-read short entry named '80% of Data Is Not Spatial So Stop Claiming It Is', read the comments for insights
• Here's a pertinent entry related to a UN paper, Criticism - Future Trends in Geospatial Information Management: The Five to Ten Year Vision
• Here's an update on the OGC standards and the semantic web (aka Linked Data)
• APB informs us that 22 companies formed the In-Location Alliance to Enhance Indoor Positioning
• O'Reilly links to an article on Yelp Checkins to Measure Geopositioning Accuracy Across Phones
• Slashdot discuss the Location Privacy Act Approved By California Legislature
• Other stories at Slashdot, The Rapid Rise of License Plate Readers and UK License Plate Cameras Have "Gaps In Coverage"
• Big numbers, APB indicates that the GIS market will soon reach between 3.7 - 10.6 Billions, depending on who you ask

In the maps category:

• On APoD, there's a pretty interesting map of hurricane and tropical storms paths (screenshot below)
• An interesting map of the Global Decline in Religiosity
• Some London Olympics 2012 maps: The politics of London 2012 Olympic medal counts

A colleague informed me of the new Open Access 'Geoscience Data Journal', specifically for describing geospatial datasets.

From their aims and scope: "Geoscience Data Journal provides an Open Access platform where scientific data can be formally published, in a way that includes scientific peer-review. Thus the dataset creator attains full credit for their efforts, while also improving the scientific record, providing version control for the community and allowing major datasets to be fully described, cited and discovered. An online-only journal, GDJ publishes short data papers cross-linked to – and citing – datasets that have been deposited in approved data centres and awarded DOIs."

Their content description: "A data article describes a dataset, giving details of its collection, processing, file formats etc., but does not go into detail of any scientific analysis of the dataset or draw conclusions from that data. The data paper should allow the reader to understand the when, why and how the data was collected, and what the data is."

Via the OGD blog I learned about OpenGeoDa, an open source software program that serves as an introduction to spatial data analysis. The initial (closed) version was released in 2003 and they claim about 70,000 users. While we mentioned GeoDa before, it's really the first time we share about its existence with our users.

Here's what it is: "It is designed to implement techniques for exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) on lattice data (points and polygons). The free program provides a user friendly and graphical interface to methods of descriptive spatial data analysis, such as spatial autocorrelation statistics, as well as basic spatial regression functionality. The latest version contains several new features such as a cartogram, a refined map movie, parallel coordinate plot, 3D visualization, conditional plots (and maps) and spatial regression."

Still catching up my August holidays, here's the recent geospatial open source and open data geonews.

In general news:

• O'Reilly publishes an article named With new maps and apps, the case for open transit gets stronger: "There’s no reason why important civic infrastructure should get bound up in a fight between Apple and Google. And in communities with public GTFS, it won’t."
• Esri published an update on their relation with open source: "Esri has always hosted open code and samples in a variety of ways, but more can be done. Focus and motivation needs to be improved, and Esri is now making it a priority to improve its open source participation. More of Esri’s code should and will be open sourced in the coming days, weeks, months, and years." They are also on Github now, http://github.com/esri and http://github.com/arcgis
• sxdf
• India launched the beta of their open data portal
• MapQuest have a New Geocoding Service and Updated APIs Based on Open Data
• OpenGeo shares an article named Haitidata.org: using open source geospatial for disaster response planning
• FOSS4G software getting adopted, gvSIG 1.11 now official part of the standard software portfolio in the City of Munich and Luxembourg using open source GIS for cadastre
• DM shares a 2-parts article named Designing an Open Source Geospatial Solution to Manage Airport Noise and Operations
• For the curious ones, here's the new OSGeo Board and Charter members refreshed

In software news:

• The OSGeo-Live 6.0 GIS software collection has been released
• A serious OpenLayers competitor, Leaflet 0.4 has been released, actually, they're at version 0.4.3 now
• Believe it or not, MySQL inches closer to PostGIS with support of true spatial relationship functions
• Here's a short entry on Surface Interpolation in GeoServer and there's a new release, v 1.4.3, of GeoServer-Manager
• Nathan is enthusiastic about Five new awesomely awesome QGIS features, here's more on the Latest Style User Interface Improvements
• There's a new winGRASS 7 with R-integration
• Where's MapGuide Open Source? Here's MapGuide state of the union address (or: Results of the user/developer survey)

The GeoServer team is happy to announce the release of GeoServer 2.2-RC3.The release is available for download from:

http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/GeoServer+2.2-RC3

This release comes with assorted bug fixes and small improvements, and aims to be the latest RC before the final release. Notable changes:

• improvements in the security subsystem upgrade from the 2.1.x series
• bug fixes and improvements in the control-flow module (you won’t be wondering anymore if it’s properly installed, or not)
• avoid deadlocks on some WFS transactions

The entire change logfor the 2.2-RC3 release is available in the issue tracker:

http://jira.codehaus.org/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=10311&version=18700

A very special thanks to all those who contributed bug fixes and improvementsto this release.

–The GeoServer Team

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OGRS2012 :: Open Source Geospatial Research and Education Symposium

October 24 – 26, 2012 in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland
Hosted by School of Business and Engineering Vaud (HEIG-VD)

Follow us on https://twitter.com/OGRS2012 and tweet with #OGRS2012 !
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(our apologies for cross-postings)

Dear colleagues,

The Open Source Geospatial Research and Education Symposium (OGRS) program committee is glad to announce the publication of a tentative program. Also, the registration is now open. Register until end of September to take benefit of the early bird registration period.

Go to www.ogrs2012.org to discover the program and to do your registration.

OGRS is a meeting dedicated to exchanging ideas on development and use of open source geospatial software in both research and education. Several opportunities exist for presenting results, principles, methods and practices: keynote talks, regular presentations, posters with short presentations session, workshops and discussion groups.

Outcomes will validate the importance of the open source model and demonstrate how it can be used successfully for geospatial research and education.

There will be opportunities to mingle at evening events such as ice breakers and the social event at the Grand Hôtel des Bains.

We would appreciate if you could kindly distribute this announcement to other interested parties of your acquaintance.

Looking forward to your participation in this event.

Best regards,
OGRS program committee.
____________________________________________________________________
OGRS2012 Open Source Geospatial Research and Education Symposium
http://www.ogrs2012.org

I'm back from holidays - thank you for your patience. Expect several days for me to catch up geospatial news and share them with you. You can always submit anything pertinent directly.

Last November we mentioned the major 2.0 release, and now, Mapnik 2.1.0 has been released. Mapnik still is "a free Toolkit for developing mapping applications. Above all Mapnik is about making beautiful maps. It is easily extensible and suitable for both desktop and web development."

Here's the highlights for 2.1.0: "

• A new framework for Style level image manipulation called Image filters.
• A new pipeline for chained coordinate transformations like clipping or smoothing called Vertex Converters
• Compositing modes at Symbolizer and (experimental) Style level. Infinite possibilities from this, see a few examples from AJ.
• Support for Style level opacity
• WKT, WKB, GeoJSON, SVG parsers and generators that can be used outside of rendering
• Data-driven SVG style transforms on svg markers and images thanks to @lightmare
• Data-driven orientationfor Text, heightfor Buildings, and width/heightfor Markers.
• A new CSV input plugin
• A new GeoJSON input plugin
• A new Python input plugin
• Better text labeling through support for placement-type="list". See the docs at the bottom of this page.
• Improved Map loading speeds as well as warnings and errors"