Directions on Open Source

Open Source GIS Workshop at URISA Office in Suburban Chicago

Wed, 30 May 2012 08:55:39 -0500

Des Plaines, IL (May 30, 2012) - URISA, the Association for GIS Professionals, is offering the full-day certified workshop, An Overview of Open Source GIS Software, at its headquarters office in Des Plaines, IL on Thursday, June 21, 2012. Free and open source software (FOSS) has been offering choices to computer users for a number of years....

OpenGeo Suite 2.5 Released

{blog_authors backspace="2"}OpenGeo Suite 2.5 Released, {/blog_authors} — Tue, 29 May 2012 12:03:18 -0500

OpenGeo Introduces Client SDK and Other Impressive Features New York, NY May 29, 2012 —Today OpenGeo released version 2.5 of their flagship product, The OpenGeo Suite. Version 2.5 bundles many improvements and bug fixes from the open source communities and adds special OpenGeo features, including a toolkit for developing and deploying applications...

TomTom Takes a Stand on Open Source Mapping

Tue, 29 May 2012 06:00:45 -0500

In what seems to be a May 2012 newsletter, TomTom pens an article highlighting the limitations of "open source mapping" While the article does not name any by specific maps, nor define what open source maps are, the discussion is clearly about OpenStreetMap.

URISA’s Best Web GIS and other Open Source GIS News

Wed, 23 May 2012 06:00:14 -0500

A City of Cornwall employee has been recognized for his efforts in creating a unique on-line mapping site for the City. GIS Applications Specialist Denis Lalonde of the City of Cornwall (Ontario, CA) received the gold medal prize in the Best Web GIS category of the Best Geographic Information System Challenge Awards from the Ontario URISA chapter.. The awards are...

Presentations Can Make Great Sessions, But so Can Good Questions! #LI12

Tue, 22 May 2012 13:42:37 -0500

I've been moderating sessions today at the Location Intelligence Conference. I'm very pleased all my speakers have stayed within their time; it makes my life so much easier. It also means we have time for a good number of questions. The session on Embedded Geospatial Capabilities in Enterprise Computing and BI Solutions included presentations on how the FCC implemented its...

Podcast: Kickstarter and Geography

Tue, 22 May 2012 03:25:53 -0500

Two weeks ago the world learned about Zombie-based Learning, a geography teaching tool envisioned by a middle school teacher from Seattle. He used the crowdfunding site, Kickstarter, to ask the world to support his project. He had $5000 pledged in just four days. What other geography-related projects, educational and otherwise, are appearing on Kickstarter? What is...

OpenGeo to Present at FOSS4G Central and Eastern Europe Conference

Mon, 21 May 2012 14:29:56 -0500

Multiple Workshops Introduce Users to the Power of OpenGeo Enterprise Geospatial Solutions New York, NY May 21, 2012 — OpenGeo, a company committed to bringing the best enterprise open source geospatial software and support to organizations and governments worldwide, will be an active participant in this year?s Free and Open Source Software for...

AP Uses TileMill, Leaflet in its New Zoomable Map Platform

Thu, 17 May 2012 06:48:03 -0500

The Associated Press is leaving other mapping systems and Flash behind with a new HTML based map to be used for its interactive media offerings. Among the tools used are TileMill (to make the map tiles) and Leaflet (for the JavaScript interaction) according to Michelle Minkoff, Interactive Producer for the Associated Press. She notes its first use: Our first project...

Two Geographers Among National Geographics’ 15 Emerging Explorers

Tue, 15 May 2012 15:12:46 -0500

There are many innovative and interesting people in the list of 15 people in the 2012 class of Emerging Explorers (11 men, 4 women for those counting). Each receives a $10,000 grant from National Geographic. I was happy to recognize two names with which I've become very familiar. Patrick Meier (Ph.D.) pioneers the lifesaving new field of crisis mapping and makes it...

Summer Ushahidi Course and other Education GIS News

Tue, 15 May 2012 07:39:59 -0500

Ushahidi: Frameworks for Effective Platform Management is a four-week, online course from TechChange, running this summer from June 4th – 29th. What has us most excited about this course is our approach toward one the highest-profile and most utilized programs in the current generation of ICT4D tools. Working closely with Patrick Meier, Ushahidi’s Director of Crisis...

World Malaria Day and other Health GIS News

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 06:25:50 -0500

April 25 is World Malaria Day. What' new? The World Health Organisation (WHO) has a new initiative in combating malaria called ‘T3: Test, Treat, Track’, which urges malaria-endemic countries and donors to “move towards universal access to diagnostic testing and antimalarial treatment, and to build robust malaria surveillance systems.” Surveillance via tracking and...

Iron Sheep! A GIS Map Hacking Event

{blog_authors backspace="2"}Iron Sheep! A GIS Map Hacking Event, {/blog_authors} — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:23:03 -0500

Matt Zook, Ate Poorthuis, and Monica Stephens explain the exciting event they hosted in Manhattan, Iron Sheep. Loosely based off the popular television show, Iron Chef, Iron Sheep was a map hacking event where instead of editable ingredients, teams are given geo-coded data and asked to create "tasty" maps in a fraction of the time a geographer might normally...

OpenGeo Hosts User Meeting at FOSS4G North America

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:21:47 -0500

Sponsor Day Programming Highlights OpenGeo?s Vision New York, NY, April 18, 2012 — OpenGeo, successfully held the first OpenGeo User Meeting on April 12, 2012 during Sponsor Day at FOSS4G North America in Washington DC. As Eddie Pickle, OpenGeo CEO, mentioned: ?FOSS4G North America and Sponsor Day would not have been possible without our fellow...

Ten Things You Need to Know About OpenStreetMap

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 03:18:41 -0500

OpenStreetMap has been making the news quite a bit since last fall. Executive Editor Adena Schutzberg asks, do you know everything you need to know about this important data project?

Location Intelligence & Oracle Spatial User Conference: Introduction

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 11:29:59 -0500

Here is an introduction to Directions Magazine's Location Intelligence and the Oracle Spatial User Conference. Directions Magazine and Oracle are collaborating to offer consecutive events over two days in Washington, DC. First, on May 22, the LI Conference will offer a multi-track program exploring the latest industry trends. Then, on May 23, the Oracle...

iVAULT web mapping facilitates quality decision making at City of Terrace

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 08:00:53 -0500

The City of Terrace migrates from MapGuide 6.5 to iVAULT MapGuide Open Source for internal and public web mapping Terrace is a city of 11,486 on bench lands overlooking the Skeena River in British Columbia, Canada. The community is the regional retail and service hub for the northwestern portion of British Columbia and the seat of the...

MapStory.org Soft Launches

{blog_authors backspace="2"}MapStory.org Soft Launches, {/blog_authors} — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 12:08:29 -0500

I got a preview of MapStory.org (or is it Mapstory - the site has it both ways) last week at FOSS4GNA. It was scheduled to launch last Thursday and is now up an running. What is it? There is no "about" page, so I can only tell you what I think it is. It's a platform for collecting datasets (StoryLayers), amd MapStories (animaged maps of these datasets over times). The...

Takeaways From the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial North America (#FOSS4GNA) 2012

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 03:36:28 -0500

The Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial North America (FOSS4GNA) conference was held in Washington, D.C. on April 10-13. Hot on the heels of FOSS4G in Denver last fall and a warm-up for FOSS4G 2012 in Beijing, China, the event drew 360 attendees, with many coming from the local area.

FOSS4GNA Tweets of Note - 4/11/12

{blog_authors backspace="2"}FOSS4GNA Tweets of Note - 4/11/12, {/blog_authors} — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 06:00:47 -0500

MapBox ‏ @MapBox "spacial data is not special, it is a column in a database" @byrne_tweets keynoting @foss4gna on how the @FCC opens data. Peter Batty ‏ @pmbatty "We will decide on a data retention policy when we run out of disk space" - typical business, says Josh Berkus at #foss4gna Simon Mercier ‏ @SimonMercier PostGIS 2.0...

FOSS4GNA 2012 Day Two Plenary: URLs and Firehoses

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 10:26:00 -0500

Michael Byrne, Geographic Information Officer (GIO) of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), started with this idea: The FCC doesn’t make paper maps. Why not? Because people want interactive maps. Which led to the title of his talk: "I believe in URLs." Byrne and his team have two key tasks: make sure the policy team has data it can visualize for decision...

FOSS4GNA Panel: Gaps and Voids in Open Source Geo Technology

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 06:00:43 -0500

The Day 1 afternoon panel was titled Gaps and Voids in Open Source Geo Technology. The idea was to have those in the know highlight what was “still” missing in open source geospatial offerings, offer some insights into why and even offer solutions. The panel included the following folks who were expertly questioned by Sophia Parafina. Howard Butler, Hobu...

FOSS4GNA Tweets of Note - 4/10/12

{blog_authors backspace="2"}FOSS4GNA Tweets of Note - 4/10/12, {/blog_authors} — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 05:59:37 -0500

Robert Barber-Delach ‏ @GeoTechie I was wondering what CartoDB was. basically... PostGIS hosted and enhanced in the cloud. Pretty slick #foss4gna Steven Johnson ‏ @geomantic Already impressed (overwhelmed?) by quality/quantity of presentations at #foss4gna Aaron Steele ‏ @eightysteele #postgresql 9.2 adds space partitioning trees for faster reads/updates...

A Review: Key Resources on Open Source Geospatial Technology

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 02:26:36 -0500

Use of open source software for geospatial is old hat to some, and still rather new to others. These articles and podcasts from the first quarter of 2012 include some basics, reviews and industry trends in open source and open data.

FOSS4GNA 2012 Day One Plenary: Recapping Roots and NGA Rhythms

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:31:31 -0500

The opening plenary of Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial North America (FOSS4GNA) was essentially a review for any of the 360 people in attendance already familiar with the topic.

Podcast: Where Conference 2012

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 03:25:24 -0500

This week we mull over the announcements and news from the Where Conference held last week in San Francisco. It?s supposed to be about the business of location. So how?s business? What?s hot? What?s old news?

Indoor Evacuation Simulation with OpenStreetMap (IndoorOSM) data

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:15:59 -0500

This video demonstrates a multi-agent traffic simulation for the scenario of an emergency indoor evacuation. As a simulation framework MATSim (http://www.matsim.org) is utilized. The required files (network, agents etc.) are automatically generated from volunteered geographic information (VGI) of OpenStreetMap. The data in OSM is mapped according to the...

Watercolor Rendering and other OpenStreetMap News

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 07:18:47 -0500

Designers at data visualization house Stamen have created a very cool compromise for digital maps. It’s a watercolor-like skin for any OpenStreetMap project, and it’s totally remarkable. Streets have an organic, analog roundness to their edges, and bodies of water aren’t a solid blue, but a mix of hues and color densities, as if the map is actual, textured paper...

What is the OGC?

{blog_authors backspace="2"}What is the OGC?, {/blog_authors} — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 06:49:31 -0500

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 435 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC...

Podcast: Sharing Data via APIs or Downloads?

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 03:25:16 -0500

There are many proponents of data sharing, including the current U.S. president. But questions still linger about how best to deliver those data. Should organizations provide APIs and bulk data downloads? And, does what works for other kinds of data work as well for geodata?

International Space Apps Challenge and other GIS Competitions

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 06:00:38 -0500

The International Space Apps Challenge is a 2 day technology development event during which citizens from around the world will work together to solve current challenges relevant to both space exploration and social need. The International Space Apps Challenge will take place on all seven continents – and in space - on 21-22 April 2012. Locations in which events are...