In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

One of the main open source competitors to OpenLayers, Leaflet 0.4.5 has been released and they share their plans for version 0.5.

From the announcement: "Highlights of things already implemented in the master branch include touch interaction support for IE10 touch devices and Metro apps and a more smooth and responsive panning inertia. Follow the full changelog for more details. We’re also in the process of a major refactoring of vector rendering code to allow much simpler extension of base functionality with custom shapes, additional rendering systems (like WebGL in addition to existing SVG/VML and Canvas renderers), easy switching between renderers, also making the code simpler and easier to understand. The same goes for projection-related code to make using Leaflet with non-standard projections easier, inluding plain projections for game and indoor maps."

The project that initially emerged from Autodesk and became MapGuide Open Source just released its version 2.4.

I haven't found a summary of the changes so far. There seems to be numerous improvements to MapGuide OS's core, to Fusion Tools and FDO. Here's what looks like their list of major new items:

• A new service for profiling performance (RFC 110)
• Web Tier directories now include SVN metadata, allowing for the pulling of viewer updates and fixes instantly with a subversion client (RFC 111)
• Path scaling support in Symbol Definitions (RFC 113)
• New Feature Service API for save points RFC 114
• Improved Coordinate System conversion performance (RFC 116)
• IPv6 support (RFC 118)
• Support for enhanced URL information in Layer Definitions (RFC 119)
• Configurable Coordinate System dictonary paths via serverconfig.ini and webconfig.ini (RFC 122)
• Feature Join performance optimizations (RFC 123 and  http://themapguyde.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/improving-feature-join-experience-or.html)
• Toggle-able tooltips for AJAX and Fusion viewers (RFC 120)
• Lots of performance and usability improvements in Fusion (see  this link for an overview)
• Datum Transformation enhancements (RFC 94)
• WMS 1.3.0 support (RFC 95)
• QuickPlot? command for AJAX and Fusion viewers (RFC 96)
• EPSG/SRID code changes (RFC 98)
• WFS 1.1.0 support (RFC 106)
• Watermark support (RFC 108)

My main question when MapGuide Open Source comes to my mind: what's the status of its adoption? I had a lot of hopes for it when Autodesk made MapGuide open source along with providing the financial support for OSGeo's birth, but it seems like MapGuide does not get much love nowadays, at least not as much as competing solutions like GeoServer and MapServer. Any comments?

The Cartography and Geovisualization Group at Oregon State University has been experimenting with ways to improve web mapping. An OSU summary page explains the current situation:

"Today's web maps (such as those by OpenStreetMap, Google, Bing, or Yahoo!) have two major shortcomings.

(1) They use the Mercator projection for all scales and for all locations, and

(2) they only provide pre-rendered views for a series of predefined scales."

Almost a week ago, one of the most popular web mapping server engine has been updated, GeoServer 2.2 has been released. As they wrote: "The release of a new major version update is a big deal (the last one was over 16 months ago) [...]", here's some of the highlights, follow to link to get the full overview!

• NTv2 and NADCon Support allows for datum transformations with cm level precision
• Continued work for supporting high accuracy datum transformations
• A new reprojection console
• The image collection coverage store allows users to serve un-referenced data through WMS using image/pixel space as the coordinate system
• Support for WFS 2.0 adds some interesting new capabilities to the WFS protocol
• Support for additional dimensions brings time and elevation support to both vector and raster data. And, with support for time, comes support for animation in WMS.
• A GeoWebCache configuration GUI is now available directly from within the GeoServer web admin interface

And much much more...

Amazon just announced the release of  Amazon Maps API beta.

[Editor's addition] From the Amazon blog entry: "When we announced Kindle Fire HD, we also made the Amazon Maps API available to our developer community. The Amazon Maps API makes it easy for you to integrate mapping functionality into apps that run on the all-new Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD.  These new devices will also support location-based services through the android.location API. The Amazon Maps API provides a simple migration path for developers who are already using the native Google Maps API on Android. "

Many sources pointed to the excellent article from Brian Timoney named How the Public Actually Uses Local Government Web Maps: Metrics from Denver.

Here's the metrics, but head to the article to understand the context and get the informative details:

• "Single-Topic maps get 3 times the traffic of the traditional Map Portal
• 60% of map traffic comes directly from search engine requests
• Auto-complete drives clean user queries
• Map Usage is Spiky
• People Look Up Info on Maps, and Leave
• People Actually Interact with Balloon Content
• People Rarely Change Default Map Settings

[...] What’s clear to me is what local government maps need is less GIS and a lot more user-friendly auto-complete and SEO. Because in the end users want search and retrieval to work for maps the way it works for the rest of the web."

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode. It excludes Esri-related geonews since I wait for the conclusion of the User Conference to share an aggregated entry. Also to note, this week some of our users finally get our daily newsletter in their inboxes after an absence of over a year - the problem was that it was identified as 'spam' by a 3rd party filtering system - thanks to the user who reported this issue!

On the open source front:

• It's in a James Fee rant named Google Maps Is More Accurate Because They Say It Is, I learned about the OpenStreetView.org, you guessed it, an open version of Google's Street View
• A few weeks ago, we mentioned FOSS4G 2012 in Beijing being cancelled, here's the related official OSGeo board reaction

• Here's an entry on Creating contour lines with GDAL and Mapnik
• A technical entry named Manipulating GPS tracks in Spatialite
• Time flies, QGIS Is Ten Years Old

On the Microsoft front:

• Microsoft released an impressive 215TB of new Bird's Eye imagery: "spans across the United States and features certain areas in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Tokyo"
• In an entry, Microsoft details the Bing Maps keys, including the limitations of what you can do for free

Discussed over Slashdot:

• Dr. Faragher Answers Your Questions About the Future of Navigation Technology, he's the Principal Scientist at the BAE Systems Advanced Technology Centre and NAVSOP supporter

• A discussion on Resources For Identifying Telecom Right-of-Way Locations?
• Australian Consumer Group Wants Geo-IP Blocking Banned "saying it created significant barriers to the free flow of goods and services"
• Samsung Galaxy S3 Stripped of Local Search

In the miscellaneous category:

• Pretty interesting stat: 93% of the top million sites and 89% of the top 10,000 sites on the internet with maps are using Google maps or the Google maps API, this comes from this overview of statistics for mapping technologies
• Directions Mag offers screenshots in an entry named Get Ready for the London Olympics with AEgis’ 3D Models
• Via the AQT [French link], I learned about the Kessler syndrome: "[...] a scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) is high enough that collisions between objects could cause a cascade – each collision generating debris which increases the likelihood of further collisions. One implication is that the distribution of debris in orbit could render space exploration, and even the use of satellites, unfeasible for many generations."
• APB tells us that DigitalGlobe and GeoEye agreed to merge
• APB informs us that there is Nokia 4000 Indoor Maps
• Apparently, drones are an hazard to air traffic in Somalia
• The GEB has en entry on Meograph, as multimedia tool for creating Google Earth visualizations
• Long entry on MapQuest iOS Maps API 1.0.1 released and their official announcement of their iOS Maps API
• The US NGA released its Strategic Plan for 2013-2017
• An interesting short entry, Starbucks: 1 Store = $1 Million Investment and GIS Helps Get It Right

In the maps category:

• Via O'Reilly, you can read Google's Ed Parson in an short article named The Future of the Map Isn't a Map at All—It's Information

• TMR shares an entry about Susan Schulten's 'Mapping the Nation' book, focusing on 19th century U.S.

I'm on holiday, but I saw this discussion over Slashdot named Great Open Source Map Tools For Web Developers.

Their summary: "InfoWorld's Peter Wayner surveys the rich ecosystem of free maps, free data, and free libraries that give developers excellent alternatives to Google Maps. 'The options are expanding quickly as companies are building their own databases for holding geographical data, their own rendering tools for building maps, and their own software for embedding the maps in websites. ... Working with these tools can be a bit more complex than working with a big provider like Google. Some of these companies make JavaScript tools for displaying the maps, and others just deliver the raw tiles that the browsers use to assemble the maps. Working with the code means making decisions about how you want to assemble the pieces — now within your control. You can stick with one simple library or combine someone else's library with tiles you produce yourself.'"

Like APB pointed out, the linked article got a few things wrong, like "OSGeo is a collection of open source packages for creating maps and displaying them in browsers."

A critical need among map users is usually due to annotations and redlining. People want to take notes and share maps easily. This is more and more a need in a social network driven timeframe.

Notemap.it has been developed aiming at this. It is a small webGIS designed to draw lines and polygons on the map, with customized style. It also let the user to add markers, notes, icons and more. Once the maps has been saved a sharable personal URL is given back to the user. Notemap is built upon OpenStreetMap, OpenLayers and Dojo.

Notemap.it: http://www.notemap.it
A brief explanation of the concept can be found at: http://www.notemap.it/free-redlining/

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)"