StayGeo

Enabling PostGIS Shapefile and DBF Loader on pgAdmin III [Ubuntu]

2013-05-19T11:50:00.000+05:30

When you install PostGIS from the OpenGeo Suite [link] on Ubuntu, you might notice that PostGIS Shapefile and DBF loader is missing from pgAdmin III plugins. This post explains the steps to get the plugin to work:

Convert GeoPDF Maps to GeoTIFF with GDAL

2013-03-24T18:31:00.001+05:30

The first thought a GIS Professional gets on seeing a GeoPDF map is how to

USGS Topo as GeoPDF

get it into GIS application. This particularly would be the case in US where USGS maps are all provided as high quality GeoPDFs and the analyst would want to derive maximum information from the maps.

A good way to get the map into a GIS application would be in the form of high resolution GeoTIFF. USGS National Map suggests using Global Mapper for the purpose [PDF]. When a similar requirement came to me I tried the operation with trial version of Global Mapper.

Highlights from Intergraph Geospatial 2013 Webinar

2013-01-09T22:43:00.000+05:30

As Geo-folks are already aware, Intergraph Corporation released its Geospatial Portfolio 2013 earlier in December 2012. The release happens to be unique as Intergraph Geospatial 2013 is the first and only comprehensive solution that connects all geospatial genres, integrating photogrammetry, remote sensing, and GIS into a streamlined system and comes from a single vendor. Intergraph has aptly branded this release as United, Modern and Dynamic.

GeoMedia 2013 - Performance metrics with the new caching mechanism

Map Makers, get Adobe Creative Suite CS2 for free

2013-01-07T22:55:00.000+05:30

CS2 Downloads

In what may seem as a user friendly move, an offer targeting budget constrained users, Adobe has started giving its 2005 release, Creative Suite CS2 for free [Download here]. The current version of Adobe Creative Suite in market is CS6. A professional user might not feel this is a nice deal but there are many others, especially in developing countries who wish to have Adobe products but simply can't afford them. This is a blessing for those who use products like Photoshop sparingly and for non-commercial use but wish to use a legitimate product. Despite of having several powerful free alternatives many don't use them as they are probably aren't aware of them or simply want to use a leading application in market.

A first look at New, Modern and Fast GeoMedia 2013

2012-10-13T22:12:00.000+05:30

Since 2011 Hexagon Conference (news link), the news of new revamped GeoMedia product is being heard everywhere. It was then announced that the product would be out by end of 2012. And that day is fast approaching! As promised earlier, Intergraph is on the way to release its flagship product by the end of this year in December. After acquisition of ERDAS and Intergraph by Hexagon many good things have happened. Intergraph was always seen proudly proclaiming about the benefits of having two great products from the same vendor. Synergy series webinars hosted last year showcased what things are in store for customers using both the products. (Read how ERDAS Imagine and GeoMedia are live linked). This post takes you around GeoMedia 2013 and describes what great things are enroute.

RailRadar: Spot your train on Google Maps in India

2012-10-10T22:54:00.001+05:30

Indian Railways Center for Railway Information System (CRIS) and RailYatri.in have jointly launched RailRadar for tracking Indian trains. RailRadar enables users to track moving trains in near-real time (the information is delayed by 5 or more minutes). Till recently train running information was available to a user in textual format - a user enters train name/number and the system provides appropriate information like next stoppage, estimated arrival time etc. With RailRadar all this is set to change. A user is presented with ubiquitous Google Maps showing trains running across the nation. Hence this is a giant leap by Indian Railways in terms of usability!

Amazon announces its own Mapping API

2012-09-17T22:46:00.002+05:30

Following the footsteps of Apple in building own mapping services, Amazon today announced beta version of its own mapping API for the developer community. This move is in line with Amazon's strategy of distancing itself from Google. It must be noted that though Amazon's Kindle Fire devices run heavily customized version of Android, it never contained Google Maps. Also Amazon runs a parallel app store in place of Google Play store for its users.

Amazon Maps API Signup Page

Google Maps Navigation and Live Traffic is now in India

2012-09-06T21:12:00.002+05:30

Google Guided Me!

This week has been fairly exciting for geo enthusiasts in India. Earlier we saw India's data portal go live as public beta. Though the data portal does not include any spatial data at present people are certainly hopeful about seeing them soon. Worldwide this month has been exciting due to numerous smart device launches lined up almost every week (Nokia, Amazon, Apple). With maps and GPS being an integrated part of most smart devices and growing smartphone adoption in India, just yesterday Google announced the launch of its voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation and live traffic (for select cities at present) in India.

Beta Version of India's Data Portal Goes Live

2012-09-03T23:35:00.002+05:30

Open Government Platform (OGPL), an ambitious project of India and United States was launched in March this year.

About OGPL

OGPL is a joint product from India and United States to promote transparency and greater citizen engagement by making more government data, documents, tools and processes publicly available. OGPL will be available, as an open source platform. By making this available in useful machine-readable formats it allows developers, analysts, media & academia to develop new applications and insights that will help give citizens more information for better decisions.

Welcome Message

Since launch the site was in closed beta, open to a select set of people. Today public beta of the site went live.

Near Real-time Traffic Information to reduce commuting woes

2012-08-04T17:09:00.000+05:30

Commuters of three Indian cities, Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore have a reason to rejoice. With a system called Traffline which is slowly becoming mainstream one can know the traffic congestion status in these cities. The site floated by Bird Eye Systems promises up-to-date information about traffic situation in city roads. This becomes possible as the information is sought live from GPS devices fitted on to public transport vehicles. The company will be launching Android and iPhone apps by October.

FOSS4G 2012 @Beijing Canceled?

2012-07-10T23:38:00.000+05:30

Earlier last week I was discussing about absence of prominent sponsors for 2012 FOSS4G event with Geoblogger, James Fee on twitter. By big sponsors I meant giants like Esri, Google, Safe Software and others. And today comes the bad

2012 FOSS4G Sponsors

news of Local Organizing Committee (LOC) expressing their helplessness in continuing the event arrangements [Read FOSS4G 2012 Cancel Request]. The main reasons given are lack of financial resources and the unexpected withdrawal of the Professional Conference Organizer.

Hexagon Online Marketplace is Now Live

2012-06-06T18:03:00.001+05:30

Hexagon AB, the leading global provider of design, measurement and visualisation technologies, entered into the new space of online marketing

Hexagon Online Marketplace

with the launch of Hexagon Marketplace. The announcement was made at the ongoing Hexagon Conference. With this launch, major Hexagon offerings are now available online - hardware, software and training. Currently the store is limited to U.S. customers but it will be made available worldwide in a few months (See image below 'Note' at the end).

Publish directly to Cloud with GIS Cloud Publisher

2012-05-21T22:56:00.000+05:30

Today leading Cloud GIS solution provider, GIS Cloud has come up with a one-click solution to publish maps to the cloud. This solution GIS Cloud Publisher for ArcMap. Another good news is the extension is free to download and use. As rightly noted by GIS Cloud, publishing maps from desktop has never been so easy - one had to hunt for appropriate map server technologies, upload contents separately, maintain and optimize them for different platforms.

Esri Maps for Office to add new dimension to Business

2012-03-03T20:18:00.000+05:30

A tweet by @IndyGIS drew my attention towards yet to be launched initiative of Esri - Esri Maps for Office.

Interesting take on open source learning from ESRI, not 100% in agreement mapoholic.wordpress.com/2012/03/03/esr… #GIS #esri #geospatial
— IndyGIS (@IndyGIS) March 3, 2012

I just went on to check what's in store for mapping enthusiasts. Though Esri has not made public more details about the product, the prospects seem bright. As rightly noted by Mapoholic,

GIS Companies Leverage the Power of Twitter

2012-02-18T17:52:00.001+05:30

It certainly won't be an exaggeration if I say every business out there is on social networks. Social media presence demands reasonable amount as investments. Companies are said to hire dedicated social media managers to handle their wide account portfolio on different networks. These managers are responsible for providing updates to the world about company's initiatives and also take up activities like solving customer issues. Numerous success stories can be found on how small companies made it big with the help of social media. These days social media like twitter form the core of every revolution around the world. Inspired by the way public opinions can be measured, Government agencies are also not left behind in joining the social media bandwagon. Celebrities are everywhere with huge number of followers!

ERDAS Imagine and GeoMedia 'Live Link'ed

2012-01-26T17:27:00.000+05:30

Earlier at the Hexagon 2011 conference, ERDAS and Intergraph had announced new data revision workflows. A prominent demonstration was also made on 'Live Link' capability which enabled live syncing of views and analysis results between ERDAS Imagine and GeoMedia. Later in the year Intergraph and ERDAS hosted a series of webinars, Synergy Series showcasing collaborative innovation. It was like emerging of a new power in the geospatial industry which will ultimately help the world in a big way. Clearly set objectives were a reason for this.

Rise of HTML5 in Geospatial Mapping

2011-11-26T18:00:00.001+05:30

It's over an year since HTML5 came into limelight and is still evolving day by day. A recent report reveals that out of the 100 most popular websites, 34% are using HTML5, with search engines and social media sites leading the pack! Coming to the Geospatial industry, right from the beginning HTML5 has received encouraging response, owing to map friendly elements, like the canvas. Leading cloud based GIS service provider GIS Cloud made a switch to HTML5 very recently.

Want ArcGIS for Linux? Vote for it!

2011-10-26T17:22:00.002+05:30

In the recent years, we have seen several proprietary software being ported to Linux, probably based on user demand. Few big names which have a Linux version include Mathworks MATLAB, Autodesk Maya, CATIA etc. Geospatial software vendors too did not stay behind. We have ArcGIS Server, Geomatica and FME Desktop to name a few.

This being the situation, there has been always a wish in the minds of geospatial community, particularly amongst the Linux fans, that ArcGIS must come to Linux. This never happened. But now there is a small hope.

Has ISRO Bhuvan Improved over two years?

2011-10-16T00:21:00.000+05:30

Prior to its launch in 2009, ISRO Bhuvan was always touted by media as India's answer to Google Earth. Like many others I was very much excited about it and made it a point to check it out right on the first day. Needless to say the excitement did not last long and I chose Google Earth over Bhuvan.

Today I decided to have a look at Bhuvan to see if things have improved over this long time of two years.

A First Look at FME 2012 on Linux

2011-10-02T19:31:00.000+05:30

Safe Software recently announced their plans to deprecate support for 32-bit Linux from FME 2012 release. At the same time I was looking to try out something new. This post is a result of that thought. Being a Linux user I decided to try out the 64-bit beta version of FME 2012 on my Ubuntu 11.10 which again is in beta stage!

Download and Installation

The download was in the form of .run file of size 330.5 MB. Installation procedure was simple.

Native 64-bit Support by Geomatica and Trimble

2011-10-01T19:48:00.000+05:30

The month of September was important for GIS industry with two important GIS events - FOSS4G in Denver and INTERGEO in Nuremberg. Along with the events product launches were also witnessed - Geomatica 2012, Trimble Trident Analyst, GIS Cloud default HTML5 support etc. All these products boast of robust productivity improvements in their respective realms, most important being native 64-bit support by Geomatica 2012 and Trimble Trident Analyst.

Both PCI Geomatics, the makers of Geomatica and Trimble claim improved performance with the support of 64-bit operating systems.

GIS Cloud Adopts HTML5

2011-09-25T17:33:00.000+05:30

Image via CrunchBase

With every modern web browser supporting HTML5, its adoption in online mapping is on the rise. GIS Cloud who started off with flash based map rendering, have switched to HTML5 as their default map engine earlier this week.

GIS Cloud regards HTML5 as ideal for map rendering:

HTML5 is great for mapping not only because it can render maps very quickly, but also because it is a standard. It works on the desktop, on the web, on smartphones and on tablets which means your GIS can work on those devices as well! No need to build native apps for each of those platforms, with HTML5 you get high performance right from the browser.

Ushahidi for Mapping 3G and Wi-Fi in India

2011-09-18T12:56:00.000+05:30

Telecomtalk which has been in the forefront in providing news from Indian telecom industry, last week launched a new website TelecomMap. The site helps users to map 3G and Wi-Fi networks in India. TelecomMap uses Ushahidi, a leading open source solution for information crowdsourcing.

Have GIS Questions? Here are the places to get reliable answers!

2011-09-11T13:51:00.002+05:30

When I was studying for my Master's in GIS I used to get a whole lot of questions on software usage and technical concepts. Like any other student I used to rely on Google Search to search for answers. In the meantime I used to bump into several forums, mailing lists where one can find answers to large variety of questions. Sensing that this would be the scenario with every student, with this article I am making an attempt to provide web-links to few forums where one can get reliable answers to GIS questions.

Online Map of Growing Support for stronger Janlokpal Bill

2011-08-20T20:22:00.000+05:30

Over recent days the support for Gandhian Anna Hazare in his movement for a stronger Jan Lokpal Bill is growing in leaps and bounds. People are out in the streets holding peaceful demonstrations/rallies in all parts of India. They are coming out with their families, after their work hours despite of rains in some parts just to support a larger cause of the country. To be honest such kind of activity can not witnessed in India even during general elections. That is Anna effect. Even school going students are said to have derived inspiration from the movement and flock to rally venues. Every Indian town/village is witnessing a vehicular rally/candlelight march each day.