Batch Geonews: WorldView-3 Launched, UK to Allow Autonomous Cars, ArcGIS Pro, MapBox GL, and much more

This is an unusually long edition of the geonews in batch mode, covering all of our Summer break.

On the Esri front:

  • A nice summary, Twelve Things Worth Knowing from Esri User Conference Q&A
  • More options is good, Introducing Esri’s World Elevation Services
  • It’s not ‘beta’ anymore, ArcGIS Open Data production
  • APB discuss the upcoming 64-bits friendly ArcGIS Pro in an entry named ArcGIS Pro: Not Ready for Education Yet
  • Not the full platform but still nice, Now Available: Explorer for ArcGIS on Mac OS X
  • Mostly weather layers and for ArcGIS Online Organizational subscribers, New Live Feeds added to the Earth Observation collection in ArcGIS Online
  • And there’s new imagery too, SPOT, Pléiades and DigitalGlobe added to World Imagery map

On the remote sensing front:

  • Lots of blogs mentioned the successful launch of the WorldView-3 satellite, up to 31cm imagery
  • An upcoming webinar, August 27th, named Operating UAVs in U.S. Airspace - the Legal Implications
  • It’s getting stunning, Mapbox GL video: Drone edition
  • Related, here’s a WIRED article on Have a Drone? Check This Map Before You Fly It, or go to the source, Don’t fly drones here
  • New satellite data source, First Images Released from SkySat-2
  • There’s was also SPOT 7 launched

On the software front:

  • WebGL again, Announcing Mapbox GL for the Web, “An open source JavaScript framework for client-side vector maps”, MapBox also has more data, Mapbox Satellite gets 48TB facelift
  • India’s Google Earth competitor named Bhuvan has been significantly updated

Discussed over Slashdot:

  • Faster than I expected, UK To Allow Driverless Cars By January
  • Globalization at work, Online Tool Flagged Ebola Outbreak Before Formal WHO Announcement, and more on the topic, Animated Ebola Map, Addresses for Ebola, Esri and Ebola
  • Crowdsourcing geocoding, ISS Earth at Night Photos Crowdsourced For Science, and the CitiesAtNight project
  • Less positive, Satellite Images Show Russians Shelling Ukraine
  • Snooping your neighbourhood, Connected Collar Lets Your Cat Do the War-Diving
  • We’ve seen this quite a few times, 2D To 3D Object Manipulation Software Lends Depth to Photographs
  • Using GPS and 3D, New Display Technology Corrects For Vision Defects while driving cars
  • Involving lots of geospatial technologies, “Magic Helmet” For F-35 Ready For Delivery
  • Cell phone tracking incentive, Verizon’s Offer: Let Us Track You, Get Free Stuff and similarly, Shoppers: Don’t Track Me Unless…
  • Helping crystal balls, New Map Fingers Future Hot Spots For U.S. Earthquakes
  • Educated cities, Geographic Segregation By Education
  • Crowdsourcing science, The Video Game That Maps the Galaxy
  • Because we can, Mapping a Monster Volcano
  • It’s never fun to be left aside, New Zealand ISP’s Anti-Geoblocking Service Makes Waves

In the everything-else category:

  • Interesting slides from Google’s Ed Parsons on where maps are today, SoC 50th Anniversary talk: Potential and propaganda
  • Innovation never stops, 3D Object Manipulation in a Single Photograph using Stock 3D Models
  • You can fly, Virtual flight over 3D cities using Oculus Rift
  • An upcoming OGC + IoT webinar, September 3rd, Making Location Work for Smart Cities: the Case for Location Standards
  • Testing your data for compliance, Get OGC Certified for KML 2.2
  • On sale, New Web Store for Satellite-Derived Water Quality and Bathymetric Data by EOMAP
  • Why not, Apple Explores Auto-Adjusting Security and Other Settings Based on Device Location, but that won’t help, Key Maps Engineer Chris Blumenberg Leaving Apple for Uber
  • Programming is unavoidable, Learning GIS programming: An overview
  • A conference for May 25-29, in Lisbon, Time to get ready for the next Geospatial World Forum!
  • Peter Morville who wrote ‘Ambient Findability’ several years ago released a new geospatial book Intertwingled, Finding Intertwingled

In the maps category:

  • already? World Population Map
  • Rankings, no maps, The Good Country Index, Ireland is first
  • A map of $60 billions, Arms Sales By The US And Russia
  • It’s real, Map Shows Western U.S. May Suffer Huge Reductions in Snow
  • A US map of greenhouse gas emissions by state and per capita
  • Nice map, A Beautifully Detailed New Geologic Map of Mars | Science | WIRED
  • I admit this is remotely geospatial-related, here’s a bizarre 2-minutes video on 3D live face-tracking with projection mapping
  • And your off-topic bonus for reading all of this entry is my invitation for you to try Monument Valley, a beautiful M.C. Escher-style 3D puzzle

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