Apple, Google and others have been offering geofencing-related services for a while, and now Esri solidifies their offer with the public beta version of Esri's Geotrigger Service.

From the official entry: "How does the Geotrigger Service work? An invisible area drawn on a map is set to have an action or message associated with it. When your mobile device crosses into the “trigger zone” the Geotrigger Service sends a location-based message to that device, or even notifies your server for custom events. [...] The Geotrigger Service runs in the cloud. [...] Free while in beta."

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode, covering a too long timespan once again.

On the open source / open data front:

• That's just incredible to see this that snappy in a browser, Dynamic hill shading in the browser
• Open source software can be popular, over 2,500 participants for the Free CartoDB for Beginners Webinar
• Tyler Mitchell offers a new book, Geospatial Power Tools - Open Source GDAL / OGR Command Line Utilities
• With Google Maps API v2 going dark, Upgrading from Google v2 API? Free yourself and upgrade to OpenStreetMap
• Getting speed, Marble Virtual Globe Graduates OSGeo Incubation
• GRASS GIS 7 is still in development, but you can learn about it in News in GRASS GIS 7
• Open source software update, Boundless Releases OpenGeo Suite 4.0
• Another update, GeoTools 10.1 Released
• Impressive what you can quickly do with open source javascript libraries, Showing GPS tracks in 3D with three.js and d3.js
• MapBox, strong contributors to open source geospatial, hired, amongst many others, the creator of Leaflet and Sean Gillies, they also announced MapBox.js v1.4.0

On the Esri front:

• 30TB of fresh data, Latest DigitalGlobe imagery updates span the globe
• ArcGIS development is getting multiplatform, Introducing the ArcGIS Runtime SDK for Qt and updates, Version 10.2 of ArcGIS Runtime SDKs for iOS and OS X are now available and Announcing the ArcGIS Runtime SDK for Android v10.2 release!

On the Google front:

• New versions of Google Earth don't happen every day, Google Earth updated to version 7.1.2.2041, mostly a bugfix release
• New features in Google Maps, including virtual trips in full 3D, From where you are to where you want to go
• Another new tool for recording and sharing stories, Tour Builder: Tell your stories with Google Earth
• Related to the recent international surveillance discussions, Brazil Orders Google To Hand Over Street View Data
• An interesting story, Revisiting the UTA Flight 772 memorial in Google Earth
• As usual, New Google Earth Imagery – November 12

In the everything-else category:

• James is optimistic, Does Ideas4OGC Fix Problems with OGC Standards?, it seems it really helps
• Geoff has a nice summary named James Fee on remaining relevant as a GIS professional
• Not from Google, India gets its own Street View: Wonobo
• While Autonomous Cars Will Save Money and Lives, before more driverless cars, we'll get more driverless trucks, Autonomous Dump Trucks Are Coming To Canada's Oil Sands and why not, UK Town To Get Driverless 'Pods' Mixing With Pedestrians
• Also related, Driverless Cars Are Further Away Than You Think
• What's great is that we're also getting closer to Finland's Algorithm-Driven Public Bus
• In Canada, one of the biggest communications provider is tracking location of all users, no opt-out possible, but it won't be that simple, Is Bell's Plan to Monitor and Profile Canadians Legal?
• In the same vein, Seattle PD Mum On Tracking By Its New Wi-Fi Mesh Network, and you can also Connect To Unsecured Bluetooth Car Systems To Monitor Traffic Flow, I did not know that even car tires have RFID tags that can be tracked
• And we mentioned before being tracked in malls, it gets even more serious with Google Starts Tracking Retail Store Visits On Android and iOS
• Nothing really new there for our regular readers, Police Use James-Bond-Style GPS Bullet, and in the US, Court Rules Probable-Cause Warrant Required For GPS Trackers
• Not the first time we see a similar initiative, Oregon Extends Push To Track, Tax Drivers Per Mile, and this one titled Police Tracking License Plates Nationwide for Massive Data Base of Citizen Car Trips
• There's the usual story on the theme of US Mini-Satellites to Track and Kill Terrorists
• Unsurprisingly, New Job Listings Point to Continued Work on Transit Options in Apple Maps, transit is currently the big absent from Apple Maps, and what might be surprising, Apple Maps Significantly More Popular Than All Other iOS Mapping Apps, Including Google
• VerySpatial shares an entry named The Geography of Twitter
• Two articles on maps and marijuana; Tabulating the Underground Economy, and the DEA’s Pathetic Attempt to Map the Marijuana Trade and Unnecessary Environmental Destruction from Marijuana Cultivation in the United States
• In case you need to know, RapidEye changes name to BlackBridge
• Remote sensing will be more popular than ever, Government and industry to combine for 1150 satellites over next decade (including telecommunications)

In the maps category:

• It has been popular recently, the Digital Attack Map, A Live Map of Ongoing DDoS Attacks
• It happened to Google Maps in, Taiwan Protests Apple Maps That Show Island As Province of China
• In the U.S.? Is there too much arsenic in the soil where you live? Metals, Minerals, Poisons and Maps
• Also for the U.S., Two Detailed Rail Maps and an attempt at Mapping Honesty and Property Crime
• Crime? Police relaunches its crime map
• Let's learn a bit more, Get to Know a Projection: Lambert Conformal Conic
• The paper edition is $400, you can get the digital version for $20, The Barrington Atlas Comes to the iPad
• A map of the Countries most vulnerable to climate change
• I'm not certain if we shared that link before or not, the excellent series of 40 maps that explain the world

Bloggage update: More and more free data are available that are quality-controlled and verifiable. Guardian Data Blog's @smfrogers (now at Twitter) was quite sanguine about this: "Comment is free, but facts are sacred". This reflects the geo-industry's credo is "say what you want, but ensure your data's Triple-A rating: available, accurate and auditable."

Guardian Data posted Great Britain's train station data, and they used Google Fusion Tables to post some of the data. I downloaded the data set, mapped it against UK post code data from Doogal UK to place stations at post code centerpoints, and classified it by year and frequency. UK Ordnance Survey County and District data, and NOAA GSHHS coastal outline subset completed the picture. The maps were created on ArcMap for Home Use. then posted on loader for ArcMap data was then used to post it online here and below, together with USGS SRTM web map service for background.

This is yet another example where posting data and making it publicly available can move forward map making through mashups of various data sources. The key proviso, however, is that data sources are acknowledged all the way. Not only will it allow auditing and referral, but it also allows others to create more of the same according to their particular expertise. Isn't that, after all, what crowdsourcing is all about?

The recent geonews in batch mode:

From the open source / open data front:

• At the beginning of the month, followers of Slashgeo's Twitter feed learned right away about the announcement by the City of Montreal that they'll make their textured 3D buildings publicly available in OGC's CityGML format later this Fall - this was announced at the Geomatics event - I'm waiting for a link to share for a full story (they showed impressive fly-troughs), and as far as I'm aware, that's the first major city to provide detailed textured 3D building to the public, is that right?
• The 20-minutes video of Paul Ramsey's closing session of FOSS4G, on Being an open source citizen, well worth watching
• Using a drone and open source software to make an image mosaic of mountains
• Users of the R open source statistics software, mapmap 0.7 released: "Import, plot and analyze bathymetric and topographic" data
• Here's about using CSS instead of the SLD standard to style layers in GeoServer

From the Esri front:

• There has been a GDAL/OGR driver for the Esri File Geodatabase since January, but what's new is that the FileGDB format is being reversed-engineered, which opens the door for deeper support than what the API provides
• Updated, Esri Maps for SharePoint 3.0.1 Released and why not, Esri Maps for Office 2.1.1 Released

From the Google front:

• Google offers a New Google Maps preview, which includes directions for multiple destinations, your reservations, upcoming events and more
• This may interest some of you, A Google Earth Exercise for Biblical Geography

In the miscellaneous category:

• Interesting, James Fee on remaining relevant as a GIS professional
• Via VerySpatial, I learned about the article named China 'to rent five per cent of Ukraine'
• We mentioned Semantic Mediawiki since, here's a fresh article named Semantic MediaWiki: A promising platform for the development of web geospatial crowdsourcing applications
• Can you believe them? NSA Abandoned Project To Track Cell Phone Locations
• Location tracking is getting more insidious with an accuracy of 10cm through walls without any transmitter, MIT Develops "Kinect of the Future"
• Yes, you can even do that, Satellite Maps Reveal Who’s to Blame for the Sinking of Venice
• A reminder, What four things do map projections distort?
• Locating things matter, The Internet of Things will be a $1.9 Trillion business by
• With all the NSA / spying / privacy stories, not surprising to hear Germany Announces Rules on Sale of Commercial High Resolution Imagery

In the maps category:

• A former colleague shared an interesting collection of 40 Maps That Will Help You Make Sense of the World
• A Map By Nokia Shows All Windows Phones With Language Set To “Chinese” In Asia And Europe
• A map named Roads of Death, mapping road accident deaths per country
• For the U.S., a New York Times “Immigration Explorer” Interactive Map
• In New York? Lower Manhattan Growth Animation (1840-2020)
• Oh, but you might currently be more interested by the Government Shutdown Map by the Washington Post
• Still U.S.-related, via APB, BitLy's Media Map

Ok, I did it again, way too much time since our last batch mode edition, but here it is, thanks for your patience!

On the open source / open data front:

• Amongst the numerous FOSS4G summaries out there, I selected Paul's for you to read... and here's to watch, the FOSS4G talks on YouTube, that's 86 videos. Amongst what else happened at FOSS4G this year, Arnulf Christl Received the Sol Katz Award
• Open source GIS software not ready for real maps? Look at this FOSS4G State of the Art Digital Cartography Collection
• We now know what's new in GeoServer 2.4, thanks! :)
• That's easy, mapping csv files with Leaflet Simple CSV
• This demonstrate how OpenStreetMap data is great, New York City and OpenStreetMap Collaborating Through Open Data
• And yes the recent iD editor helped OSM and here's OpenStreetMap's Contributor Community Visualized - Individual by Individual
• The open source GeoMesa software proposal seems interesting, 'a foundation for storing, querying, and transforming spatio-temporal data in Accumulo [read the cloud]'
• OSGeo officially has the non-profit status to the eyes of the IRS
• On Creating a WebGL Earth with three.js, a topic mentioned before
• I also became aware of the GeoTriple / Geozilla open source software to handle WMS services, Windows-only
• Already, MapStore 1.3.0 released

On the Esri front:

• Here's What’s New in ArcGIS Online (September), including the ArcGIS Marketplace, CityEngine Web Viewer and more
• A new term pushed by Esri, What is CyberGIS?, essentially, it's WebGIS / CloudGIS to me
• A list of ArcGIS Online Learning & Help Resources
• Another major update to Esri's World Topographic Map, specifically for France
• There's ArcGIS API for JavaScript Version 3.7 Released with lots of new features

On the Google front:

• For developers, Full screen maps and new marker features now available in the Google Maps Mobile APIs, with marker animations!
• A hot topic, Mapping climate change in Google Earth
• Here's how to Embed your Google+ posts into Google Earth
• The GEB shares The best 3D models of all time for Google Earth
• Street View arrives at CERN
• Google share a blog entry on The HALO Trust: Helping communities reclaim the land with Google Maps for Business, but you know me, as much as I like Google, I still can't understand why they don't user OpenStreetMap data

Discussed over Slashdot:

• Metadata On How You Drive Also Reveals Where You Drive
• Ordnance Survey Creates Minecraft Model of Great Britain
• Protesters Are Dodging Sudan's Internet Shutdown With a Phone-Powered Crowdmap
• Wealth In Africa Mapped Using Mobile Phone Data
• Bypassing US GPS Limits For Active Guided Rockets
• Yeah, privacy... NYC Is Tracking RFID Toll Collection Tags All Over the City
• I tell you, we'll see this on the roads sooner than later, How Google, Tesla, and Uber Could Team Up For the Driverless Taxis of the Future
• Regulations need to be updated, FEMA Grounds Private Drones That Were Helping To Map Boulder Floods
• Social and location, Wi-Fi Sniffing Lets Researchers Build Graph of Offline Social Networks
• Researchers Develop the Most Detailed Map of Gravitational Variations Ever

In the miscellaneous category:

• Last time we mentioned GeoGit was a year ago, Geoff shares an entry named Distributed spatial data management with long transactions
• An excellent reminder of the contributions of SAR imagery, SAR – we love it, we hate it. Take a general look!
• Or even more general, an ESA article named Looking to the future of Earth observation
• More easy access to Landsat data from the ESA, currently, it's Landsat 5 data, with Landsat 7 planned
• Rumors are rumors, Apple's Maps Team Hiring Web UI Designer for 'New Secret Project', maybe they need such a project, Apple's Maps App Directs Alaska Drivers onto Airport Taxiway
• Still Apple related, Tidbits discusses The Promise of iBeacons in iOS 7, to help you locate things around you via Bluetooth
• A real improvement, now wireless, 3DConnexion releases their wireless SpaceMouse
• It's been several years that we mentioned eCognition, well, its version 8.9 has been released
• You can Add MapBox to iOS 7 with One Line of Code
• Here's an excellent question we'll eventually have to answer, Can crowdsourced land cover data be used as an authoritative data source ?
• Yahoo's not dead yet, Updated Yahoo Maps for the U.S. which includes public transit and pedestrian routing

In the maps category:

• APB links to a long series of maps related to drug use in the U.S., from a survey, impressive stats
• An excellent way to understand geographic projections, This is Your Brain on Maps
• Poison, Mapping Arsenic in the United States Is Not Pretty
• My wife would love this, Mapping emotions across the World
• Some free time? Things that look like other things in Google Earth

And the final bonus, totally unrelated to geospatial though, if you have a smartphone or tablet, try Just a Reflektor

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode. With FOSS4G next week, I expect exciting news soon!

On the open source / open data front:

• OpenStreetMap's State of the Map ended, here's an outsider overview, keywords: growing and healthy
• It's been a while since we mentioned that one, New MapProxy 1.6.0 released, a reminder, "It caches, accelerates and transforms data from existing map services and serves any desktop or web GIS client"
• GeoMoose is now officially an OSGeo project, reminder, it's an "Open Source Web Client JavaScript Framework for displaying distributed GIS data"
• Paul shows us Census Mapping Made Easy with open software

On the Esri front:

• Esri added Landscape Layers to ArcGIS, "over 60 layers are available at your fingertips as input to geoprocessing models and for the creation of beautiful and informative interactive web maps"
• Here's for next Tuesday, Check Out What’s Coming in ArcGIS Online
• Esri also introduced GeoEnrichment for JavaScript developers, which helps you "create a web app that’s full of interactive demographic, consumer spending, and lifestyle data for the viewers of your map"

On the Google front:

• The GEB shares More great Google Earth resources for teachers
• Google invites us to Explore the Galapagos’ biodiversity with Street View, and why not boats, Kurt shares the R/V Falkor in Street View and still on the same topic, Updated Street View imagery of tsunami-affected areas of northeastern Japan, including the exclusion zone
• Same old story still making the news, Court Declares Google Must Face Wiretap Charges For Wi-Fi Snooping when collecting data for StreetView
• In the trivia category, Court Orders Retrial In Google Maps-Related Murder Case
• Nice to look at, Tri-bridges around the world, three-way bridges

In the everything-else category:

• Bing Maps got a major imagery update, 13 Million Square Kilometers of Imagery, or 315.92 terabytes
• Here's a beautiful 4-minutes video on the last 50 years of the satellite industry made by DigitalGlobe
• Amazon improves its geo offerings with a New Geo Library for Amazon DynamoDB, allowing a basic set of spatial queries
• Another way Apple Maps will improve, Apple Working to Leverage New 'M7' Motion-Sensing Chip for Mapping Improvements
• Wired reviews the book The Lost Art of Finding Our Way by Harvard's John Edward Huth
• An OGC entry named Smart Cities Depend on Smart Location Communication
• Efforts mentioned before, 3 million data points collected by Safecast to warn Japan about radiation
• Yes, the NSA knows where you've been, NSA Can Spy On Data From Smart Phones, Including Blackberry
• Geoff has an entry on the successful use of satellite imagery to reduce illegal deforestation in Brazil
• On GhettoTracker and segregation through geospatial knowledge, Could Technology Create Modern-Day 'Leper Colonies'?
• When geospatial apps goes too far, New Smartphone Tech To Alert Pedestrians: 'You Are About To Be Hit By a Car', this other app might be more useful: Dangerous Neighbourhood? Kovert App Will Navigate With Vibration From Your Pocket
• In the maps category, Wired offers links and maps on The Geography of American Agriculture

Catching up the August geonews, we're now all up to date with this way too long entry.

On the open source front:

• The new open source GraphHopper Maps – High Performance and Customizable Routing in Java based on OpenStreetMap data (via OSM)
• Here's Quantarctica, a free GIS package for Antarctica, the basic package is 7 gigs of free geodata and works with QGIS
• MapBox has an entry on the US Census Bureau released the version of TIGER
• There's more of those, the first Open Source Geospatial Lab in Switzerland is established at SUPSI, Ohio's First Open Source Geospatial lab will be established at KSU, and another one, First Australian Open Source Geospatial Laboratory at the University of Melbourne
• Frequent improvements, GeoTools 9.5 Released, GeoServer 2.3.5 Released, and Geopaparazzi 3.6.0 is out
• MapGuide Open Source is still alive and a major release planned for next year, meanwhile, Announcing: MapGuide Open Source 2.4.1 and 2.5.1
• Try open source software easily, OSGeo-Live 7.0 Released

On the Esri front:

• WordPress and Esri are both very popular, this gives us a WorldPress Plugin for ArcGIS Online: Spatial-Blogging for all Bloggers
• Esri released ArcGIS for State Government
• Here's an open source boilerplate for ArcGIS API for Javascript apps
• From Esri Press, the second edition of book 'The GIS 20: Essential Skills'
• MS and Esri, Bing Maps Use in ArcGIS Has Changed
• Updates, ArcGIS API for JavaScript Version 3.6 Released and ArcPad 10.2 Released

Discussed over Slashdot:

• More free data, Using Zillow's Creative Commons Neighborhood Boundary Data For the U.S.
• Microsoft acquires a part of Nokia, including access to Nokia mapping services
• Patents block innovation, How Patent Trolls Stalled a New Transit App
• Mapping unhappiness, Twitter-Based Study Figures Out Saddest Spots In New York City
• With MapBox behind, Open Source Mapping Software Shows Every Traffic Death On Earth, on a similar topic, Visualizing New York’s Road Accidents With the Interactive ‘Crashmapper’
• Old maps, Ostrich-Egg Globe Believed Oldest To Show New World
• More competition for driverless cars, Nissan Plans To Sell Self-Driving Cars By
• Sharks with lasers? Great White Shark RFID/Satellite Tracking Shows Long Journeys, Many Beach Visits

In the miscellaneous category:

• Another insightful entry from Brian Timoney, with an example of how difficult it can be to simply get the latest US state boundaries
• Kickstarter to get a 4-cm accuracy real-time kinematic GPS for only 2,000$, named Piksi
• OGC standards and Advancing Toward Spatial Data Quality Assurance
• MapBox has been testing their upcoming quick access to satellite imagery 'MapBox Satellite Live'
• Another research indicating using GPS negatively impact our internal picture of the world
• MapQuest wants to stay relevant with their new spatially aware Data Manager API web service
• Here's the YouSayCity, a 3D tool to discuss and document the future of individual cities
• Not directly geospatial, Discover the World's Greatest Internet Cities
• While it's a rather poor game, gamification of crowdsourcing geospatial data is here, this example of the Landspotting iPad app to crowdsource satellite imagery classification in a game, I preferred the Kort game to improve OpenStreetMap
• Wired shared an article on Google Map Maker, OpenStreetMap and the State of Crowdsourced World Mapping
• Nothing surprising, Apple too will leverage its users, iOS 7 Will Ask Users To Help Improve iOS Maps, Apple also acquired Embark to Further Improve Mass Transit Navigation
• In-the-house mobile devices, Are Mobile Users Really Mobile? Not So Much
• With Agile everywhere, it's Agile somewhere, 17th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science
• Don't know how many people there is an in area? Use the pickle consumption index
• Something we heard before, the geospatial identity crisis and the term 'geomatics'
• We mentioned it in and here's an updated about Gmap4: REST and WMS Map Viewer for Google Maps and GIS Data
• Another OGC entry, this time on big data and Big Processing of Geospatial Data
• A generic NYT article on Microsatellites: What Big Eyes They Have
• Drones again, Light-weight UAV-mounted laser scanning system announced
• Future unevenly distributed, Video Flashback 1987: Star Trek's Shatner Tells You Where You Can Stick Your Maps
• Pretty interesting, geo doesn't have to be that complex, James Fee shares GIS Is Complicated by Design

In the maps category:

• Yosemite fires entries: The Fire Last Time: Mapping Blazes Past, Present - and Future, 6 Months of Wildfires Burning North America, and Yosemite Fire’s Destruction Mapped in Beautiful, Frightening Color
• Another source for marine traffic, Visualize and Monitor Maritime Vessels, Real-time on Google Earth
• Map of Nobel prizes, A visual exploration of the Nobel Prize history
• An printed atlas, Atlas of the World Wide Web
• Maps of war, Targeting Sites of Attack in Syria
• Correlation is not causation, maps of Milk, the Drink of Conquerors
• Via Wired, don't miss (really) this London’s Underground With This Mesmerizing Interactive 3-D Map
• On a similar topic, the Interactive Map of the Paris Metro
• A new version, the nice Submarine Cable Map

With a focus on layout and core functionality, this 12-hour evening course offers an overview of ArcGIS components, basic display and map querying functions, metadata browsing and file management, basic analysis techniques, and map layout. Increase your software proficiency with practical, in-class exercises!

Featured Topics
• Introduction to ArcCatalog
• ArcMap Basics
• Table Joins and Thematic Maps
• Setting Projections
• Attribute selection
• Spatial Queries
• Basic Geoprocessing
• Boolean Logic

SPECIAL OFFER! All participants in this course will receive a free trial of the ArcGIS 10 software. Practice and refine your newly acquired skills at home or at work for 1-year at no additional cost!

A batch mode edition while on holidays. Next one will be late August since I'll be away from computers (and even without electricity!) for a few weeks.

From the open source / open data front:

• With open source software, you can get Super Sharp 50cm Pléiades Satellite Imagery on MapBox, "Any point on Earth, everyday, with 50cm resolution. With this guide you can go from image download to rendered maps in minutes, all with open software."
• Here's a Digital Trends article named Google Map Maker vs. OpenStreetMap: Which mapping service rules them all?
• With Foursquare direct OpenStreetMap editing, could encourage others to provide the same direct OSM editing (via Mapperz)
• Fiona 1.0 released, "Fiona is OGR's neat, nimble, no tears API", a Python library
• Work continues, OpenLayers 3.0 alpha 4
• Interesting, Why OpenGeo Has Taken on Outside Investment

From the Esri front:

• There's New Developer Subscriptions for ArcGIS Online​
• Esri and open source, New Esri Open Source Javascript Projects: Esri-Leaflet, Geoservices.js, Terraformer, Pushlet
• Still competing, Esri and MapBox play well together via Arc2Earth
• More integration with Microsoft too, Esri Maps for SharePoint 3.0 Released!

From the Google front: 

• Google is Introducing “Views” - A new way to contribute your 360° photo spheres to Google Maps
• Many will be happy, Google pushing out 3D Imagery at a rapid pace, with about 150 new cities with the 3D imagery
• Not intuitive, What the imagery dates really mean in Google Earth
• Tips on Making high-quality movies with Google Earth
• I have one too and I agree, The SpaceNavigator remains the best way to use Google Earth

A big bunch of geospatial-related news discussed over Slashdot:

• We mentioned a few times GPS spoofing, Students Hijack $80 Million Superyacht With GPS Spoofing
• Autonomous, aka driverless cars, are really getting closer, Full-Size Remote Control Cars
• For 3D printing, Fuel3D Start-Up Promises Affordable Point-and-Shoot 3D Scanner
• And an 'undo', 3D Printing In Gel Enables Freeform Design and an Undo Function
• Privacy again, Fifth Circuit Upholds Warrantless Cellphone Location Tracking
• Privacy in Russia, Moscow Subway To Use Special Devices To Read Data On Passengers' Phones
• And we told you before that RFID isn't safe, Long Range RFID Hacking Tool To Be Released At Black Hat
• Drones in the sky? No, that's underwater drones now, DARPA Hydra: An Unmanned Sub Mothership to Deploy Drones
• Stores too, Retail Stores Plan Elaborate Ways To Track You
• Crowdsourcing the perception of cities via pictures, MIT's "Hot Or Not" Site For Neighborhoods Could Help Shape Cities
• If you feel up to, DIY Satellite Tracking
• To end with a map, A Circular New York City Subway Map To Straighten Things Out

In the everything-else category:

• Geoff shares a summary of the UN report on The future of national mapping agencies over the next 5-10 years - this is a must read even to those not in the governmental sector
• More free imagery, from the Sentinel satellite this time, The European Commission Plans Remote Sensing Satellites and Free Access to their Data  
• Apple is looking to improving power management of mobile devices by remembering charging locations and usage patterns 
• Interested in contributing to Apple Maps? Apple Filling Out its 'Ground Truth' Mapping Team with New Regional and Local Job Listings
• For your non-geo colleagues, Get to Know a Projection: Mercator
• Here's a 4-minutes video, DigitalGlobe takes a look at the last 50 years of the satellite industry
• An ESA article on watching wetlands from space

In the maps category:

• Cars, Visualizing New York’s Road Accidents With the Interactive ‘Crashmapper’

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode. Several interesting bits in there that may have deserved a full entry, but it's Summer time and I'm on holidays :-)

On the open source / open data front:

• Remember Maki, the open / free cartography symbols? Maki got significantly improved and even gets an API
• Announced, OpenGeo dives deeper into QGIS, along with the OpenGeo Suite 3.1 release
• Jody shares his experience on OSGeo and LocationTech software foundations and their different cultures
• Getting closer, OpenLayers 3.0.0-alpha.3
• A success story in the Netherlands, Open standards open source projects for sharing geodata among provinces saves €4.5 million
• A book review of 'Interactive Map designs with Leaflet JS Library How-to' by Jonathan Derrough

On the Esri front:

• Lots of Esri news in the Round Up of Directions Magazine Esri UC Coverage 
• A popular template, Map Tour story map template updates
• James goes on with ArcGIS for Minecraft this time
• Overview for Using the power of Amazon EC2 to build ArcGIS Server map caches

On the Google front:

• Bang! 89% of websites that use mapping technologies use Google, while that may not be the exact figure, it does mean something
• The new Google Maps interface is available to all, but you still have to opt-in, it's *really* an improvement
• I'm amongst the happy ones, The new Google Maps app for iPhone and iPad is here
• This goes along with the SDK version 1.4, Street View, indoor maps, and an updated map design in the Google Maps SDK for iOS
• Jumping in, Google joins LocationTech
• Indoor mapping everywhere, Where are we going to eat? See inside before you decide!
• New places, On top of Mt. Fuji with the Street View Trekker and Scaling the heights of the Eiffel Tower
• Still on a parallel track of OpenStreetMap, Growing the Google Map Maker community in Europe
• And today, there is new imagery again

Geonews discussed over Slashdot:

• Cheer up, Spatial Ability a Predictor of Creativity In Science
• Another one, Disney Algorithm Builds High-Res 3D Models From Ordinary Photos
• 3D printing for the masses, eBay Dips Toes Into 3-D Printing Market With iOS App
• In case your weren't certain, U.S. DOJ: We Don't Need a Warrant To Track You
• If you have a car, you can be tracked, "Smart Plates" Could Betray California Drivers' Privacy
• And why not, ACLU Study Says Police Cameras Create Database of Our Movements
• But some good news, Texas School District Drops Embattled RFID Student IDs; Opts For Cameras
• Unsurprisingly, New Android Eyewear Wants To Compete With Google Glass
• We mentioned what3words before, and now over Slashdot, Describe Any Location On Earth In 3 Words
• What's in an Interactive Nukemap, Now In 3D

In the miscellaneous category:

• Exposing online devices, Shodan lets you search and find the physical locations of online devices
• On Apple, Apple Acquires Locationary to Address Location-based Big Data and Acquires HopStop for public transit  ... and according to Slate,  Apple's Maps Strategy Is Working Just Fine
• An interesting discussion on mapping millions of dots and making great maps out of it
• Via OR, an architecture book and design book named Operative Design: A catalogue of spatial verbs
• OR shares a interesting quote: "We’re all carrying little networked laboratories in our pockets. You see a photo. I see millions of light-sensor readings at an exact coordinate on the earth’s surface with a time resolution down to the millisecond. The future is combining all these signals into new ways of understanding the world, like this real-time stream of atmospheric measurements."
• BIM is there to stay? 71% of AEC professionals in annual UK survey see BIM as the future and Widespread adoption of BIM by national governments

In the maps category:

• This was a hot topic in the U.S. recently, Mapping the Trayvon Martin murder case
• Maps of Global Patterns of Tobacco-Related Economic Issues and another one on tobacco consumption
• O'Reilly shares an Interactive map: bike movements in New York City and Washington, D.C.