In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

Done. Google Maps for iOS has just been made available. From the official description: "Navigate your world with Google Maps, now available for iPhone. Get comprehensive, accurate and easy-to-use maps with built-in Google local search, voice guided turn-by-turn navigation, public transit directions, Street View and more. Use Google Maps to discover great places to eat, drink, shop and play, with ratings and reviews from people you trust. Sign in to save your favorite places and quickly access all your past searches and directions from your computer, right on your phone."

MacRumors offers an entry named Roundup of Features in Google Maps for iOS: Better Design than Android Version, iPad Version Coming. Which includes:

• A horizontal two-finger swipe allows you to access a menu that shows traffic, public transit, satellite view and Google Earth (which sends you to the Google Earth app).
• Google's point-of-interest database allows you, for example, to read a restaurant review on Zagat, read the menu, book reservations and see interior photos at 100 restaurants.
• Pogue also notes there's a Compass Mode that allows you, at certain locations, to move your phone around and allow you to see the interior of a business on your screen.

Directions Mag offers an article named Research Explores How to Keep Up With Changing Web Mapping Technology, starting with 'change is inevitable: deal with it'.

From the results: "Despite the fact that the Google Maps API delivered on more of the requirements set out in the Needs Assessment Survey, the team selected Leaflet as the answer to the first question of which technology should be used for teaching. Leaflet was, in fact, second best in supporting the requirements, but the Diary Study suggested students made more progress and felt better working with that set of libraries. The team suggests that might be due to the added transparency and control provided by a fully open source library."

Quite a few interesting news in this batch mode edition.

From the open source front:

• It was the first time I heard about the open source LSI Viewer, an online Shapefile viewer
• There's the new MapProxy 1.5.0 released
• And Portable GIS is now at version 3.1
• It is also the first time we mention GisClient.org, "an open source software written in AJAX, Javascript, PHP/MapScript that offers an innovative way to manage complex GIS projects. The main strength in it is that allows to configure a big range of tools and functionalities easily and quickly."
• If you're working with the U.S. Federal government, take a look at FedGeo Day, to be held in Washington DC on February 28, here's the official website
• Here's the MapBox New Features Roundup
• Regarding QGIS, visualising QGIS data in 3D with Blender and on Sharing QGIS Symbols
• Here's the just released OSGeo 2011 Annual Report
• A bugfix, PostGIS 2.0.2 has been released
• And there's the call for papers and new website for FOSS4G 2013, in the U.K. this year
• The open source ArcGIS for Local Government Apps Available Now on GitHub

From the Google front:

• Google announced two new features for the Google Places API: Place Photos and Radar Search.
• Google wants us to know that they're listening to our Google Maps feedback
• The GEB shares links for The making of the "Powers of Ten", the 1977 video
• The GEB also reports that Botswana not happy with Google Street View, since it "compromise their security"

In the miscellaneous category:

• APB informs us about cloud-offloaded GPS (CO-GPS) to decrease power needed by GPS devices
• DM reports that the National Geologic Map Database Gets a Face Lift
• We now have drones that can infect with software virus other drones
• Here's an OGC summary of Location Business Summit USA 2012
• Augmented reality to the extreme, Belgian Researchers Build LCD Contact Lenses
• Extending their offer, MapBox Teams Up with DigitalGlobe on Satellite Imagery
• Here's the ArcGIS Online World Topographic Map December 2012 updates, and also Esri-related, Esri Updates Terms of Use on (Free) Personal Accounts for ArcGIS Online
• On geospatial jobs, APB shares two interesting entries; NZ Report on Geospatial Skill Shortage and Four of Eight Emerging Careers for 2013 Demand Geospatial Skills

in the maps category:

• Here's an entry named Using Series of Maps to Represent Changes in Time: How Diabetes Swept the U.S.
• VerySpatial links to an entry and map on the geography of US charity
• Let's end this issue with a fake map on procrasti-nation

Geopaparazzi 3.4.0 has just been released to the android market. This version has one major feature: support for vector data from Spatialite databases. This opens up a new world for android based mobile devices. This is how it looks like when one uses it by overlaying a scanned Finnish orienteering map and the results of some  hydrologic/hydraulic analyses: old, new and extracted watershed boundaries and channel lines.

Well, the other major feature added to the release gets a bit in the shadow of Spatialite, but it might be even more important to some users: RFID tag reading in custom forms through NFC or bluetooth.

If you are interested  you can read the whole story here.

Via Ecostudies I learned that SpatiaLite 4.0.0 has just been released.

Here's the warning and relevant changes related to switching to 4.0: "SpatiaLite Version 4.0.0 introduces several relevant changes; many of these may potentially pose severe cross-version compatibility issues. Accordingly to the above premise, a good comprehension of any related detail will surely allow you to successfully master and resolve any transition issue." A reminder, "SpatiaLite is an open source library intended to extend the SQLite core to support fully fledged Spatial SQL capabilities. SQLite is intrinsically simple and lightweight [...]"

See also this related 2010 discussion (read the comments) on SpatiaLite, the Shapefile of the Future? Of course, we mentioned SpatiaLite several other times.

Here's the recent FOSS4G geonews.

In open source software updates:

• GEOS, the Geometry Engine Open Source, got to version 3.3.6
• The popular GeoServer got to version 2.2.2
• Another bug fix release is the OpenGeo Suite version 3.0.1
• It's not the end, GeoTools 8.4 was released

In the everything else category:

• Here's an entry on the GeoServer CSS module, that presents itself as an alternative and improvement over the SLD (Style Layer Descriptor) OGC standard: "GeoServer CSS is inspired by the web—and by great tools like Carto, Cascadenik, and MapCSS. Like these tools it provides a concise styling syntax modeled on CSS but differs in that it’s goal is to improve the experience relative to SLD while preserving CSS concepts like cascading. While we ultimately aspire to a common CSS-like styling language for web cartography, we hope that GeoServer CSS is much easier than SLD and will be familiar enough for web designers to use."
• Arnulf links to the SplashMaps Kickstarter project that uses open data, "real outdoors maps; based on open data, on light, weather friendly fabric" (image below)
• Geoff shares an entry on the Cesium open source WebGL virtual globe and mapping Javascript library, we mentioned Cesium before
• You can now connect ArcGIS to the open source TileMill with Arc2Earth Sync
• I learned a new term today, here's an entry named Improving Population Density Maps Using Dasymetric Mapping
• Here's a Money Journey map that visualize transactions with the Open Bank Project data
• Here's an update on the Geometry Clipping Contest, and QGIS beats ArcGIS
• You heard of it already, but here's again on the topic, Why are we building OpenLayers 3?

The serial winner of the FOSS4G WMS Shootout just got better, MapServer 6.2 has been released. We of course mentioned the open source web mapping server MapServer innumerable times.

The major features of 6.2:

• MapServer 6.2 is INSPIRE View Service compliant, i.e. supports the provision of an INSPIRE View Service compliant WMS Server.
• Mask Layers: Mask layers are used to “mask out” part of a given layer, to only represent data that intersect features from another layer.
• Precise Symbol Placement: Traditionally, MapServer centers a marker symbol on the point it should be rendered to. ANCHORPOINT is a new SYMBOL level keyword that describes where the given symbol should be anchored.
• Complex Multi Label/Symbol Symbology: Some cartographic representations require juxtaposing multiple symbols and/or labels in order to obtain a complex final symbol.
• Vector Fields: MapServer can render vector fields based off data from GDAL supported raster formats containing u and v bands.
• Label Leader Offsetting: For densely labelled maps, MapServer now supports offseting a label with respect to it’s original anchorpoint if the original location resulted in a collision with an already present label. An optional line can also be rendered to link the rendered text to it’s original feature location.
• Multiple Font Support: List a set of true type fonts to search for required characters.
• SVG Symbology: Along with the traditional ELLIPSE, VECTOR, PIXMAP and TRUETYPE symbols, MapServer 6.2 now supports SVG symbols directly.

We just released Geopaparazzi 3.3.0 in the market. There are a couple of small enhancements and a feature we think most people will like.

• sketch pad for forms (the feature we think most people will like)
• enhanced forms
• geo-sms are now sent through the system app
• better geocoding ui

The most important feature for this release is for sure the sketch pad, that allows user to draw their notes out in the field.

Check out the release post for more info.

Here's the recent open source geonews.

• Geoff anticipates the next step in the evolution of open source geospatial software will be corporate engagement
• MapBox offers you to learn CartoCSS and compositing by customizing Geography Class and the open source TileMill
• We more about why the need for OpenLayers 3.0 to be developed
• Many of you will probably be interested by the State of GeoServer 2012 and State of GeoTools 2012 presentations, related, GeoTools 8.3 has been released
• Here's some partial results on the ArcGIS vs QGIS etc Clipping Contest Rematch revisited
• Via this upcoming introductory course for accessing it using open source software, I learned about WELD, USGS's Web-Enabled Landsat Data products
• You can open MODIS tiles directly in QGIS
• Here's how to add layers to GeoServer using the REST API
• If you have anything to do with New Zealand, head to this mapping New Zealand summary, which extensively uses open source
• This year, the Sol Katz Award has been attributed to Prof. Venkatesh Raghavan

A new major version of Google Earth doesn't happen everyday, explore the world with tour guide and 3D imagery in Google Earth 7.

From the announcement: "A few months ago, we announced Google Earth for mobile, which offered new ways to see cities in 3D and a new tour guide feature to help you discover places of interest on the go. Starting today, you can get both of those features on a bigger screen that makes it even easier to explore by downloading Google Earth 7 on your desktop. Check out the comprehensive and accurate tours of more than 11,000 popular sites around the world, including our growing list of cities where new 3D imagery is available."

Other recent Google geonews:

• I'm very happy that we get a better view of natural geography with Google Maps, follow the link for before/after images, but in short, Google Maps now shows us natural geography like forested and mountainous areas when zoomed out - much much nicer. And here's some more information for developers
• Google also released the first batch of post-Sandy imagery to Google Earth (image below)
• You can now add your Photo Sphere images to Google Maps with Android 4.2
• Here's a script to View all of your Google Contacts in Google Earth
• An entirely other topic, Google Earth reveals the secret of Angkor Wat's construction
• Much less funny, Imagery of sectarian destruction In Burma’s Rakhine state now on Google Earth
• APB tells us that Google and Friends Launch Privacy-focused Crowdsourced Image Blurring Service in Germany
• And there's fresh imagery for everyone