In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

Drones are a great way to do cheap remote sensing, but regulations are becoming more severe, Slashdot discusses a story named First City In the US To Pass an Anti-Drone Resolution.

Their summary: "According to an Al-Jazeera report, 'Charlottesville, Virginia is the first city in the United States to pass an anti-drone resolution. The writing of the resolution coincides with a leaked memo outlining the legal case for drone strikes on U.S. citizens [on foreign soil] and a Federal Aviation Administration plan to allow the deployment of some 30,000 domestic drones.' The finalized resolution is fairly weak, but it's a start. There is also some anti-drone legislation in the Oregon state Senate, and it has much bigger teeth. It defines public airspace as anything above your shoelaces, and the wording for 'drone' is broad enough to include RC helicopters and the like."

Last year saw a record number of drones and UAV stories, and it's not expected to stop since they now are an efficient and cheap way to do remote sensing and a lot more. Here's a story discussed over Slashdot last weekend: DRONENET: An Internet of Drones.

Their summary: "In a series of posts on his blog, military theorist John Robb outlines what he thinks will be the next big thing — "as big as the internet," as he puts it. It's DRONENET: an internet of drones to be used as an automated delivery service. The drones themselves would require no futuristic technology. Modern quadrotor drones are available today for a few hundred dollars, and drone usage would be shared across an open, decentralized network. Robb estimates the cost for a typical delivery at about $0.25 every 10 miles, and points out that the drones would fit well alongside many ubiquitous technologies; the drone network shares obvious parallels with the internet, the drones would use GPS already-common GPS navigation, and the industry would mesh well with the open source hardware/software community. Finally, Robb talks about the standards required for building the DRONENET: "Simple rules for drone weight, dimensions, service ceiling, and speed. Simple rules for battery swap and recharging (from battery type, dimension, etc.). Simple rules for package containers. Simple rules for the dimensions and capabilities of landing pads. ... Decentralized database and transaction system for coordinating the network. Rules for announcing a landing pad (information from GPS location and services provided) to the network. Rules for announcing a drone to the network (from altitude to speed to direction to destination). Cargo announcement to the network, weight, and routing (think: DNS routing). A simple system for allocating costs and benefits (a commercial overlay). This commercial system should handle everything from the costs of recharging a drone and/or swapping a battery to drone use.""

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode.

From the open source front:

• Along with new versions, here's the Geopublisher and AtlasStyler 1.9 release notes

From the Google front:

• Slashdot discusses a story named After Modifications, Google Street View Approved For Switzerland

• There was an imagery update on June 11th

Directions Mag articles:

• An article named My Top 6 Takeaways from SQL Server Spatial 2012
• Another one named Ten Things You Need to Know About GPS, reminding us that often people use the GPS term while they really should use GNSS
• Another one named Intergraph’s GIS Product Roadmap Comes Into Focus
• And for Pitney Bowes, New Features for MapInfo Professional Version 11.5, and by the way, Facebook Is Using Pitney Bowes Software for Geocoding

In the miscellaneous category:

• MacRumors summarizes the U.S. Location Privacy Protection Act
• MapQuest released an all new MapQuest for iPhone app

• Rumors that Microsoft is Going 100% with Nokia Mapping in Windows Phone 8
• After Google, Microsoft jumps in the Augmented Reality future with rumored AR glasses for Xbox
• Slashdot discussed a story named 64 Drone Bases Located On American Soil

In the maps category:

• O'Reilly shared a map of global BitTorrent usage

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode.

From the open source front:

• OpenGeo runs an entry named Five things you didn’t know about GeoExplorer

From the major companies front:

• I liked the Google vs Apple mapping discussion from Peter Batty: "Google announces that it is scared of Apple Maps
  [...] Now don't get me wrong, Google is the market leader and Apple has everything to prove." See also his entry named Apple Maps: Predictions and Questions, which are also of course innovations Google could implement. Viva competition! (well ok, I admit I prefer cooperation ;-)
• James has an interesting entry named One Man's Disruptor is Another Man's Incumbent, the incumbents are Google Maps, MapQuest, Esri and Microsoft, and the disruptors are MapBox, Esri and Apple

• Via O'Reilly, the connection between Google Street View and driverless cars: "Now, I’m realizing the biggest Street View data coup of all: those vehicles are gathering the ultimate training set for driverless cars." Read the comments, driverless cars data is not simple

• There's 2 new modules for Bing Maps V7: GeoJSON and WKT reader/writer modules

• The GEB discusses Using StreetView to validate 3D models

Discussed over Slashdot:

• NASA Tool Shows Where Forest Is Being Cut Down
• Autralian Mining Companies Increasing Use of UAVs

• Cognitive Software Identifies America's Brainiest Cities
• John Carmack Is Building a Virtual Reality Headset
• Trained Rats Map Minefields With GPS

In the everything-else category:

• The eoPortal shares an entry named US not losing its foothold in Earth observing satellites, only shifting power
• The eoPortal also mentions a new imaging system produces 3D models of monuments using unmanned aircraft
• On that very topic, DM shares an article named Ten Things You Should Know About Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS)
• VerySpatial have an informative entry on geospatial at the upcoming London Summer Olympics and U.K. in general

• AR as entertainment of the future? Kinect and RFID power an augmented reality theme park (via OR)

In the maps category:

• Here's a nice visualization of 56 years of tornadoes in the U.S.

As a bonus for reading till the end, here's a interesting quote: "If a picture is worth a thousand words, a map can be worth a thousand spreadsheets."

Slashdot discusses a story named Remote-Controlled Planes Used For Wildlife Conservation. This of course has a relation with the recent story named Commercial Drones Taking To the Skies in the U.S.

Their summary: "Conservationists have converted a remote-controlled plane into a potent tool for conservation. The drone — an HK Bixler equipped with cameras, sensors and GPS — has been used to map deforestation, count orangutans and elephants, and get a bird's eye view of hard-to-access forest areas. During their 4 days of testing in Sumatra, the drone flew 30 missions without a single crash. A mission, which typically lasts about 25 minutes, can cover 50 hectares. The drone, full equipped, costs less than $2,000."

During the weekend, Slashdot discussed the stiry named Commercial Drones Taking To the Skies. And the reason why I'm sharing it is the inevitable impacts of ubiquitous commercial UAVs will have on remote sensing.

Their summary: "A new federal law, signed by the president on Tuesday, compels the Federal Aviation Administration to allow drones to be used for all sorts of commercial endeavors — from selling real estate and dusting crops, to monitoring oil spills and wildlife, even shooting Hollywood films. Local police and emergency services will also be freer to send up their own drones. But while businesses, and drone manufacturers especially, are celebrating the opening of the skies to these unmanned aerial vehicles, the law raises new worries about how much detail the drones will capture about lives down below — and what will be done with that information. Safety concerns like midair collisions and property damage on the ground are also an issue."

​This batch mode edition is unusually long. It covers the past month and a bit more. Yes, that's way too much and I won't try to repeat the experience ;-) Here's what I considered pertinent enough to share with you. Exceptionally, in some cases I haven't gave attribution to the source of the news, thank you for your comprehension.

On the geospatial open source front:

• I just recently became aware of PostGISonline, a site for testing and learning spatial SQL
• You can now create and manipulate SLD (the OGC Styled Layer Descriptor standard) in Python with python-sld
• Via the AGISRS list, I learned about OpenQuake.org, for calculating seismic hazard and risk at any scale, which of course ingest geospatial data and outputs maps
• Here's WherePost.ca, which crowdsources the location of mailboxes and post offices for Canada
• Here's the Switch2OSM website promoting OpenStreetMap, OpenStreetMap might go indoor too
• Still on the OSM topic, V1 shares an entry on the use of OpenStreetMap data in agriculture
• Here's an entry on the future of GeoCouch and CouchDB
• GeoServer gets database-level security
• There's now a plugin to run Python scripts in QGIS
• Here's about improvements to the QGIS rule-based rendering
• On a similar topic, here's a guide to beautiful reliefs in QGIS
• Did you know you can add Google Maps, OSM, and Bing Maps directly in QGIS? You can via the OpenLayers plugin - hey, there's even a Profile plugin
• There's an updated book published by Gary Sherman, now named The Geospatial Desktop , subtitled Open source GIS and mapping
• GEOS 3.3.2 has been released

On the Esri front:

• Mandown shares how to convert GPX files to Features using ArcGIS 10
• From the same source, Learn The Basics Of Working With The ArcGIS Runtime SDK For Android
• There were updates to ArcGIS for SharePoint, ArcGIS Mobile and to the ArcGIS API for Windows Phone
• James and SS talks about ArcGIS Online as the Esri Content Management System

On the Microsoft front:

• Microsoft announced a few new Bing Maps features, such as traffic incidents and find near route
• They announced the Bing Maps Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Control v1
• There's new Bing Maps V7 modules too along with a new routing engine
• James Fee shares an interesting entry named Bing Maps gets Nokia Brand and Possibly the Boot

On the remote sensing front:

• This is pretty interesting to many: SS shares an entry named USGS Now Offers OrbView-3 High-Resolution Images for Free, 180,000 scenes at 1m spatial resolution available
• China launched their first high-resolution remote sensing satellite, Ziyuan I-02C
• Slashdot discussed the newly released version of Blue Marble high definition (and beautiful) satellite image of the Earth from the Suomi NPP satellite
• Slashdot is running a story named Who's Flying Those Drones? FAA Won't Say and related, O'Reilly mentions OpenPilot, open source UAV with cameras
• And another named Launch Your Own Nanosatellite Into Space

On the GNSS / GPS front:

• It's coming, car makers are preparing for augmented reality driving
• Not exactly GPS but via radio-tagging, see the nice and short video of whale 3D paths in the ocean
• Slashdot is also discussing a story named New Mexico Is Stretching, GPS Reveals
• MapQuest launched an html5 app-like site for Android and iPhone for using MapQuest

In the miscellaneous category:

• The 7 geo predictions for 2012 of Cédric are interesting 
• Microsoft's Flight Simulator, renamed Flight, will be available for free next Spring, with paid extra content
• We never mentioned it before, but now Indiemapper is free, it "helps you make static, thematic maps from geographic data by bringing the best of traditional cartographic design to internet map-making."
• SS mentions the new alliance between Autodesk and Pitney Bowes, APB also discuss this new relationship
• SS also shares an entry named Safe Software’s Expanded Role as a Conduit Between Sensors and Systems
• The U.S. EPA in their Locations Challenge introduced a crowdsourcing project of georeferenced photos of environmental problems
• Slashdot ran a discussion on assembling your own 3D printer
• The OGC shared a summary of the Eye on Earth Summit held in December
• Another OGC entry was named Status of the OGC's Water Resource Activities
• DM shares an article named GIS Adoption and Use on College Campuses: An End-of-Year Review and Look Ahead to 2012
• The GEB mentions a new 3D San Francisco website
• I found interesting the possibility of a .data TLD
• A new free iPad app: GeoViewer from LizardTech, supports MrSID format and more
• It's been a while since we mentioned them, GISCorps were recently in 7 countries, including Libya

In the maps category:

• APB summarizes this: Comparing Maps of Obesity and Car Travel
• Here's an entry on cleanly using symbols on maps
• Here's U.S. routes as a subway map and the U.S. National Wind Energy Map
• Fox News shared a map with missing or wrongly placed countries
• TMR shares an obligatory animated map of rising global temperatures since 1880

Slashdot discusses a story named US Sentinel Drone Fooled Into Landing With GPS Spoofing.

Their summary: "Following up on the earlier Slashdot story, the Christian Science Monitor now reports that GPS spoofing was used to get the RQ-170 Sentinel Drone to land in Iran. According to an Iranian engineer quoted in the article, 'By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain.' Apparently, once it loses its brain, the bird relies on GPS signals to get home. By spoofing GPS, Iranian Engineers were able to get the drone to 'land on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications.'"

Here's the recent Google-related geonews.

From official sources:

• There's new 45° imagery available for nothing less than 21 cities: "U.S.: Albuquerque (west), NM; Benton, AR; Boulder, CO; Eldridge, IA; Boston (east), MA; Centennial (south), CO; GooglePlex, CA; Indianapolis (south), IN; Las Vegas Strip, NV; Montgomery (outskirts), AL; Olathe, KA; Petaluma, CA; Tulsa, OK. South America: Brasilia, Brazil"
• ​On a similar topic, there's new cities in 3D in Google Maps: Rome, Seville, Las Vegas and more - the full list: "US: Foster City, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Norfolk,Palo Alto, Portland, Redwood City, Riverside, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, Santa Cruz, Sunnyvale. Europe: Rome, IT, Rotterdam, NL; Seville, ES; Stuttgart, DE, Amsterdam, NL"
• Google Map Maker has been revamped with a new user interface, my hope is that one day Google will surprise us and link Google Map Maker with OpenStreetMap - they could eventually do it, since Google doesn't make money out of the data directly anyway and they're already great supporters of open data - am I delusional? :-)
• Somewhat related, Google Maps data got improved in the United Kingdom, Germany, Finland and Sweden
• The official Dev blog shares an entry named The power of visualization with the Google Analytics API and Google Earth
• We also previously mentioned Liquid Galaxy, and now they're running Google Earth on 48 screens! The code is open source is your living room is big enough 
• Here's a new entry on the tsunami-affected areas of Japan in Street View
• Here's an entry named Exploring ancient ruins in 3D with Google Earth

From other sources:

• The GEB reports about new high-resolution imagery in Antarctica in Google Earth
• APB mentioned Google blocking a first person shooter "game" in Google Maps
• The GEB also has an entry on the reorganization of the 'Ocean' layer
• Still from the same source, here's how to View your Google Latitude history in Google Earth
• Ed Parsons mentioned that satellite images revealed a “secret” Nevada UAV site
• Finally, the GEB is excited about the 3D tours of Mount Urgull in San Sebastian, Spain
• SS informs us that Google purchased Clever Sense, which tagline was "Never Miss Places You’ll Love", and APB informs us that Google launched Schemer, a non-checking location-based service for finding what to do, it's in invite-only beta

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode. As we can see by the lower number of stories shared recently, a lot of people are on holidays.

From the open source front:

• In an entry on GIS salary results, GeoChalkboard mentioned that after Esri software at 93%, open source GIS came second at 14% as their primary platform
• Two entries on QGIS, one on the upcoming massive improvements to raster performance and the second the upcoming new hatching modes

From the Esri front:

• If you like betas, ArcGIS 10.1 Beta 1 is now available

From the Google front:

• Google offers new 45° imagery for 35 cities: "Augsburg, Germany. Barstow, CA. Bartlett, TX. Big Bear, CA. Blackstone, VA. Catalina Foothills, AZ. Córdoba, Spain. Delano, CA. Desert Hot Springs, CA. Richmond, VA. Elgin, TX. Healdsburg, CA. Helendale, CA. Hemet, CA. Houston, TX. Mendoza, Argentina. Midlothian, VA. Napa Valley, CA. New Braunfels, TX. Ojai, CA. Ottawa, Canada. Pensacola, FL. Porterville, CA. Plant City, FL. Rancho Del Lago, AZ. Rosario, Argentina. Santa Clarita, CA. Sarasota, FL. Taylor, TX. Temecula, CA. Treasure Island, CA. Troy, IL. Twentynine Palms, CA. Wakefield, VA. Yucca Valley, CA."
• I also liked this example, using Google Earth to preview what you'll see from your seats at a Paul McCartney show

From the Microsoft front:

• We mentioned Microsoft exposing the location of PCs and devices,  they took action and their wifi location database isn't publicly available anymore

In the miscellaneous category:

• APB mentions tablets in grocery stores using RFID to provide location-based information, and instant deals, to shoppers
• C3 Technologies has been acquired by an unknown but presumably big company, they focus on generating impressive 3D  "maps" from aerial imagery, such as this example in Oslo
• Slashdot reports that working UAV aircrafts can be built by 3D printers within minutes
• V1 mentions GeoHive, a website offering world statistics on various themes, including population, and India will surpass China in population pretty soon

In the maps category:

• SS mentions that the online CORONA Atlas of the Middle East, based on spy imagery from 1968-1972, is now available  
• O'Reilly mentions the oldest surviving map of Great Britain, from the 14th century, now digitized. Also for the same region, there's a new Great British Picnics maps