In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

A story discussed over Slashdot: Hackers Can Jam Traffic By Manipulating Real-Time Traffic Data.

Their summary: "Hackers can influence real-time traffic-flow-analysis systems to make people drive into traffic jams or to keep roads clear in areas where a lot of people use Google or Waze navigation systems, a German researcher demonstrated at BlackHat Europe. 'If, for example, an attacker drives a route and collects the data packets sent to Google, the hacker can replay them later with a modified cookie, platform key and time stamps, Jeske explained in his research paper (PDF). The attack can be intensified by sending several delayed transmissions with different cookies and platform keys, simulating multiple cars, Jeske added. An attacker does not have to drive a route to manipulate data, because Google also accepts data from phones without information from surrounding access points, thus enabling an attacker to influence traffic data worldwide, he added.' 'You don't need special equipment for this and you can manipulate traffic data worldwide,' Jeske said."

Google is clearly one of the most news-generating entity in the geospatial industry. Here's the recent Google-related geonews.

From official sources:

• Google now uses live traffic data alongside with historical data  for trip durations in Google Maps, they use the My Location feature on Google Maps for Android to extrapolate live traffic conditions. This news was also discussed over Slashdot
• And if that isn't enough, we now get typical traffic for roads, not just highways
• Here are the finalists for the Google Model Your Town Competition 2012
• Google Maps for Android got a fresh look with version 6.5
• Google released the Google Maps Floor Plan Marker app, to help orient customer in businesses 
• Mix art and Street View and you get the Google Art Project
• You can now see service alerts for the London Underground in Maps
• Traffic and Transit Come to Google Maps in Malaysia
• And there's new 45° imagery available for 15 cities: US: Atlanta, GA; Canyon Lake, TX; Charleston, SC; Dallas, TX; Houston, TX; Lakeland, FL; Lubbock, TX; Orlando, FL; Port Charlotte, FL; Roanoke, TX; San Luis Obispo, CA; Smyrna, TN; Walker, LA. International: Adelaide, Australia; Cordoba, Argentina
• The Weather Layer is now available in the Google Maps API

From other sources:

• The GEB found out about the latest imagery update in Google Earth yesterday
• The GEB also shares an entry named Exposing Shantytowns in India with Google Earth

The new version of AcidMaps has been released with a great change, it works as a Geoserver plugin.

That means you can use your own configured WMS layers to build Heatmaps, Isolines and other interpolated maps ON THE FLY!

For who doesn't know about AcidMaps:

• AcidMaps is an open source library that generates interpolated images from a set of valued points in real time.
• It's can be used to generate advanced visualizations with point datasets: (e.g.: sales, temperature, atmospheric pressure, population, etc...)

You can see a full demo built using Flex/OpenScales where you can play with the parameters to see different results.

If you want to give it a try with you own data, take a look to the Quick Start instructions, it is really simple!

There's a reference doc where you can get more details.

Please, let us know your opinion because it's still in beta and your experience will be very helpful.

In addition to today's other news about Microsoft named Bing Panorama Builder And Streetside Video, here's some more details on the two announcements. The first one focused on new features: Interior Views, Enhanced OpenTable Integration, Real-Time Transit, and Streetside for Mobile:

• Interior Views: Provides users with immersive 360-degree panoramas of local businesses
• OpenTable Integration: Lets users interact with OpenTable directly from restaurant pages
• Real Time Transit on Mobile: Gives users real time info if a bus is on-time or delayed
• Streetside for Mobile: Brings users street-level imagery + some mobile-exclusive enhancements

The second official entry is all about Bing Maps new map style, version 1.1. Key changes are:

• Increased city density while preserving a clean, visually appealing map
• Clearer differentiation between major and minor city streets
• Greater color contrast at the city-level so streets “pop” out more
• Altered font sizes and contrast for crisper, less cluttered map labels
• Improved highway shields for US and added new shields for 7 countries

Of course, the entry offers several screenshots to show the differences.

I've been overly busy lately, the consequence is you're getting your geonews in batch mode a little later than usual. Here they are!

On the Google front:

• Google provided an early look at HotPot, a local recommendation engine powered by you and your friends
• Google Boost, a local business advertising program, is now available to about 10 U.S. cities
• There's new panoramic photos in Google Earth

On the ESRI front:

• ArcGIS 10 Service Pack 1 Released
• V1 mentions GIS Tutorial books for ArcGIS 10
• SS informs us that Esri Adds an iOS App to Help Link Your Health to Your Environment

On the Microsoft front:

• There's a white paper on the new spatial features in the upcoming MS SQL Server

On the open data/open source front:

• O'Reilly is enthusiastic about Boston real-time transit data now available
• Here's an entry named Government institutions and OpenStreetMap in practice
• Also interesting is USGS Trialling OSM Software Stack for Editing
• A new feature for the Java Topology Suite: Single-Sided Buffers in JTS
• News of the integration of a 3D globe directly in QGIS, and while we're at it, a summary of the QGIS hackfest
• New releases: Geopublisher and AtlasStyler 1.6
• Shapely 1.2.7 has also been released
• Here's a discussion on ExifTool to modify location (GPS) metadata of your pictures

In the miscellaneous category:

• I do have to have to mention that we're in the Geography Awareness Week 2010
• While we already discussed worldfile basics, here's to refresh our minds: the WorldFile explained
• Vietnam ojecting to China's depiction of disputed islands in Map World
• The FGT blog mentions the release of Dinamica EGO 1.6, software for spatial environmental modeling
• V1 discusses ‘What is driving the need for real-time geodata, and how does that impact the spatial information sector?’
• In another entry, V1 discusses the Strategic Citywide Spatial Planning of Port-au-Prince, Haiti
• In a last V1 entry, BIM – CAD – GIS Integration is discussed

In the maps category:

• A quick look to the map of landlocked and double-landlocked countries
• Here's Cartograms of the 2010 U.S. Midterm elections
• Might be useful, an Easy Magnetic Declination Value Website

Each year the USGIF presents awards to the most influential members of the geospatial intelligence community from academia, government, and industry. Recognized for outstanding achievements and innovations, winners are selected based on their contributions for advancing the intelligence tradecraft.

This year President Steve Panzer and Chief Technology Officer David Hemphill were presented the award on behalf of ObjectFX for developing SpatialRULES, a Complex Event Processor (CEP) for geospatial data. SpatialRULES fuses multiple streams of real-time data from sensors and services to form a more complete decision making picture. Read More [press release link].

Via the OSGeo-Discuss list, I learned about the first release of Acid Maps, an open source tool for real time heatmaps generation.

From the announcement: " Acid Maps is basically a web server that generates interpolated images from a set of valued points in real time. This means that you can use your existing datasets (e.g.: sales, temperature, etc...) to generate advanced visualizations: heatmaps, isolines and Voronoi diagrams.

In addition, custom "client" layers have been created for OpenLayers and OpenScales, thus allowing an easier way to communicate with the server."