In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

"The European Space Agency is looking for student coders to join the Summer of Code in Space. ESA will pay 4000 Euros to each student for contributing to a space related open source project for the summer. Accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios. Mentor organizations have been selected. Students now have until July 27 to submit their applications. Check out the ideas pages of each project such as for the NEST SAR Toolbox"

A similar post was posted to Slashdot followed by clueless and immature comments. Hopefully this will reach the right audience here on Slashgeo.

While we mentioned it in a PR, it's via Perrygeo that I learned more about the open source Madrona software framework for effective place-based decision making.

What it is? "Madrona offers a flexible set of software building blocks and design patterns that allow you to create cutting-edge tools for decision support and spatial planning at any scale, along with step-by-step tutorials, an open community to assist you along the way, and a full range of support services to help ensure a successful outcome."

Its building blocks: "Madrona is built on libraries such as Django, PostGIS, JQuery, OpenLayers and Google Earth, which provide all of the essential building blocks for developing modern spatial web applications. [...] Madrona builds on these core building blocks to create new ones that are designed specifically for planning and decision support. Mix and match them to meet your specific needs."

Catching up geonews, I learned the sad news that earlier this week the FOSS4G 2012 conference in Beijing has been canceled. To learn more, see this reply from Jeff McKenna, former member of the OSGeo Board of Directors.

From the announcement: "With great regret, the FOSS4G Beijing Local Organizing Committee (LOC) has made the difficult decision of cancelling the event due to a lack of financial resources and the unexpected withdrawal of the Professional Conference Organizer. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. For those interested in FOSS4G events, the LOC suggests consider:

• FOSS4G 2013, to be held in Nottingham, United Kingdom, 2013
• The Asian Geospatial Forum, September 2012, Hanoi, Vietnam, which will have an OSGeo session: http://www.asiageospatialforum.org/"

Slashgeo participated to several FOSS4G conferences in the past, including FOSS4G-NA 2012 (North America) a few months ago. There are plenty of other regional geospatial open source events to take place before we head to FOSS4G 2013 in Nottingham, United Kingdom, September 17-21, 2013.

Just announced, the popular open source library OpenLayers version 2.12 has been released.

From the announcement: "OpenLayers 2.12 offers great new features and improvements in various areas:

• A new CSS-customizable zoom control
• Sensible projection defaults to ease the creation and configuration of maps
• Tile caching for offline use
• CSS-based tile animation
• UTFGrid support
• Improved image request management (tile queue)
• Fractional zooming for tiled layers (a.k.a. client zoom)"

Directions Mag offers a product overview of Maptitude 2012 by Caliper Corp., a product we never mentioned before.

From the article: "The U.S. version of Maptitude 2012 includes the October 2011 geographic data release from NAVTEQ. [...] The census geographic boundary files with Maptitude 2012 encompass variables from the 2010 Census and the 2009 American Community Survey to map demographic information from the state level down to the census tracts. [...]

Maptitude 2012 is designed to provide a user with the ability to quickly generate presentation quality maps at a very affordable price and includes a vast database with the product. As an experienced GIS software user, I was able to get up and running with the software very quickly and found the user interface to be very user-friendly and intuitive. Caliper’s website provides free video tutorials for prospective and existing customers to view and learn about the capabilities of the software. I like that Maptitude 2012 provides the ability to create maps with the Quick Start and Map Librarian menu. The layers are added and symbolized automatically, which saves plenty of time for a user to create presentation quality maps quickly. I was also impressed with the model estimation tool."

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode.

On the open source front:

• Wonder where OpenLayers 3 is heading?
• ImageI/O-Ext 1.1.4 was released
• Here's a short entry on creating hillshades with gdaldem

In the miscellaneous category:

• O'Reilly links to a few interesting stats on mobile maps in the context of Apple Maps vs Google Maps, including "In the US, Google gets about 31 million users a month on its Maps app on iOS. On average those users spend more than 75 minutes apiece in the app each month." and "90% of all iOS users used the Google Maps app at least once during April 2012. Only 71% of Android users used the Google Maps app."
• Slashdot discussed a story named Chuck Schumer Tells Apple and Google To "Curb Your Spy Planes", referring to the new high-resolution imagery coming later this year to Apple Maps and Google Maps

In the maps category:

• TMR shares an entry on fantasy maps, with the book 'Here be dragons' by Stefan Ekman
• Via O'Reilly, I stumbled onto the Art of GPS article which shares beautiful GPS-related visualizations, here's the U.S. electricity network

A lot of geoblogs mentioned the release of Quantum GiS 1.8.0. QGIS is one of the most mature and widely used open source desktop GIS software, with tons of useful community-contributed plugins. Version 1.8.0 is clearly a major update of this already excellent GIS software.

The list of new features is quite long, here's a few of them:

• QGIS Browser: a stand alone app and a new panel in QGIS. The browser lets you easily navigate your file system and connection based (PostGIS, WFS etc.) datasets, preview them and drag and drop items into the canvas.
• DB Manager: the DB manager is now officially part of QGIS core. You can drag layers from the QGIS Browser into DB Manager and it will import your layer into your spatial database.
• New symbol layer types: Line Pattern Fill, Point Pattern Fill.
• Terrain Analysis Plugin: a new core plugin was added for doing terrain analysis - and it can make really good looking colored relief maps.
• Ellipse renderer: a new symbol layer type to render ellipse shapes (and also rectangles, triangles, crosses) by specifying width and height.
• Support for nesting projects within other projects: embed content from other project files.
• Layer grouping: Option to add layers to selected or active group.
• Customization: Allows setting up simplified QGIS interface by hiding various components of main window and widgets in dialogs.
• Action Tool: accessible from the map tools toolbar. It allows you to click on a vector feature and execute an action.
• Pan To Selected tool: Pans the map to selected feature(s); does not change the zoom level.
• Updated CRS selector dialog
• Legend-independent drawing order: The order seen in the legend can be different from the display order.
• Other features include: MSSQL Spatial Support, Expression based labelling, Heatmap tool, WFS support in QGIS Server, and much more

Head to the release notes (link above) to learn more and see screenshots.

Via the OSGeo Discuss list I learned about OpenPerception.org, an independent non-profit foundation, focused on advancing the development and adoption of open source software for 2D and 3D processing of sensory data. Currently the main output of the foundation is the open source Point Cloud Library.

On the Point Cloud Library: "The Point Cloud Library (PCL) is a standalone, large scale, open project for 3D point cloud processing. The PCL framework contains numerous state-of-the art algorithms including filtering, feature estimation, surface reconstruction, registration, model fitting and segmentation, as well as higher level tools for performing mapping and object recognition."

On Open Perception itself: "We are an independent organization created with the purpose of supporting the development, distribution, and adoption of open source software for 2D/3D processing of sensory data, with applications in research, education, and product development."

It's been over two years since we mentioned the open source GeoMOOSE project, which just announced the release of version 2.6.

From the Why GeoMOOSE page: "GeoMOOSE excels at creating a useful web-based GIS environment for those who need something that works from the first download. The GeoMOOSE demo contains a fully operating web-based parcel application. It can render, investigate, and even edit layers without the need to write a single line of code. [...]

Beyond rendering, gaining information on a dataset is an important every day use of a Web GIS. GeoMOOSE includes all of the basic tools for traditional selection, identification, and searching on a dataset. However, GeoMOOSE’s functionality is not limited by those services. To power that functionality we have developed a power service-based architecture that users can use to create their own custom scripts in any language.

As of the 2.6 version, GeoMOOSE includes new powerful vector capabilities. While not seen in the default demo, GeoMOOSE can work with a WFS-T server to create, edit, and delete features in a dataset. The styling is defined in the GeoMOOSE mapbook and the layers can even be printed to a PDF!"

Direction Mag offers an update on Oracle and spatial.

From the article: "I met with Steiner later in the day and challenged him to share with me three ideas he wanted our readers to know about Oracle in 2012. Here’s his list:

• Spatial is in everything we do. It’s in the context, that is, in the very fabric of the Oracle technology.
• Oracle solutions scale. Oracle is literally working at a different scale from other IT and database companies. The support of some of the largest geodata sets, LiDAR point clouds, is testament to that.
• The technology and data are accessible and consumable. Oracle ensures this by supporting standards, working with partners and having a commitment to simplification.  Spatial technology should be presented to both developers and end users as “less of a professional GIS person’s thing” and more of a “just like other technology” kind of thing. This idea relates back nicely to “spatial is in everything,” above.
• Oracle is innovating. The company innovates not only in its databases and proprietary software but in hardware and open source as well."

We mentioned Oracle Spatial tons of times before.