western willow ventures inc.

The open source GIS uDig 1.2.0 has been released. uDig stands for User-friendly Desktop Internet GIS. From the announcement: "The uDig 1.2 series highlights a lot really great ideas the developer community has been working on. We have migrated to a modern version of the GeoTools library - bringing in five years of new developments in standard support, and a host of new raster and vector formats. An exciting addition is the use of the ImageIO-ext project allowing the use of raster formats supported by GDAL. New and capabilities of uDig 1.2 include: * ImageIO-EXT rendering enabling additional raster formats and working with images larger then memory. * On select platforms MRSID and ECW raster support. * Tiled rendering (as an option in preferences) with a new flicker free panning tool. * Support for GeoWebCache and TileCache via WMS-C. * WFS 1.1.0 support (read-only). * Greatly improved ArcSDE support; multithreaded and faster. * Advanced Symbology including Hatches and True Type Font support." See also some previous uDig stories below.

Read more of this story at Slashgeo.

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Marc Harter writes "Ogre is a web client (free service) that translates spatial files into GeoJSON using the ogr2ogr command line tool for use in JavaScript web applications and frameworks (like OpenLayers). It is built on NodeJS.

http://ogre.adc4gis.com/

The project is opensource and available to view and contribute to at:

http://github.com/wavded/ogre

"

Read more of this story at Slashgeo.

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A lawsuit against Bell Mobility by two Yellowknife men, who say the mobile carrier charges for locally non-existent 911 service, has been certified as a class-action lawsuit within the Northwest Territories.(author unknown)

Discussed over the weekend on Slashdot, Court Rejects Warrantless GPS Tracking. Their summary: "The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today firmly rejected government claims that federal agents have an unfettered right to install Global Positioning System (GPS) location-tracking devices on anyone's car without a search warrant. ... The court agreed that such round-the-clock surveillance required a search warrant based on probable cause. ...the court noted: 'When it comes to privacy... the whole may be more revealing than its parts.'" See also some related stories below.

Read more of this story at Slashgeo.

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Here's the return of the Friday geonews in batch mode. This includes news for the last two weeks.

On the FOSS4G/Open data front, while we did mention the release of QGIS 1.5, a system glitch did not send the daily newsletter that day. Related, there new extensive QGIS training documents named "GIS Basics with Quantum GIS". If you're amongst the many that have to deal with dxf files from time to time, the OGR (GDAL) DXF driver is being upgraded. Via the OSGeo list, I learned about the open source software that transforms ArcMap projects to SLD documents, named ArcMap2SLD. On the OpenGeoData blog, there's an entry discussing to which extent OpenStreetMap is open. Talking of OSM, don't get fooled by people trying to sell you free data. We mentioned KDE's Marble virtual globe before, it has been recently updated to version 0.10.0.

In other geonews, Autodesk released a new version of LandXplorer. Geoff also shared an entry named Quantifying the Business Benefits of Open Geospatial Standards. Here's a compass using and learning tool in Google Maps. Here's an insightful entry on why GPS voices are annoying. Here's how to draw isochrone maps in Google Maps (via TMR). We mentioned a while ago the Geospatial Revolution Project, it is now getting more speed and plan to release episodes in September. Good news in space, the CARTOSAT-2B satellite is now sending high quality imagery. Here's how to use Google Location Databases for doing evil. Again, MapQuest added more features and data. And the funny discovery that the most common reason for in-car arguments are directions.

In the maps category, here's an entry on experts malaria map. I also like Vector One's idea of classifying land use by capability. Here's a discussion on Border Delineation and Desiccation in Lake Chad. Here's an image of the space objects circling the Earth. Here's a discussion on light pollution map. Here's an interesting map of Human Development Index Along the U.S.-Mexico Border and another one Mapping U.S. State Debt.

I'm not entirely done catching up, expect more geonews next week.

Read more of this story at Slashgeo.

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Anonymous Voxel writes "PySAL is an open source cross-platform library of spatial analysis functions written in Python. It is intended to support the development of high level applications for spatial analysis. Version 1.0.0 is now available at http://pysal.org/." From the scope: "First and foremost, PySAL is a library in the fullest sense of the word. Developers looking for a suite of spatial analytical methods that they can incorporate into application development should feel at home using PySAL. Spatial analysts who may be carrying out research projects requiring customized scripting, extensive simulation analysis, or those seeking to advance the state of the art in spatial analysis should also find PySAL to be a useful foundation for their work. End users looking for a user friendly graphical user interface for spatial analysis should not turn to PySAL directly. Instead, we would direct them to projects like STARS and the GeoDaX suite of software products which wrap PySAL functionality in GUIs." See also related stories below, including The Essential Python Modules for GIS.

Read more of this story at Slashgeo.

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Good news for those using open source GIS desktop clients.  QGIS 1.5 has hit the servers and users can now download it and start using it.  These is a great “visual change log” that gives the details.  For me the Spatialite and symbology improvements are going to make QGIS much more usable as a desktop GIS application.

Hello – is that open source desktop GIS that I’m looking for?

A helicopter hit a communications tower before it crashed to the ground, killing two young men, on Friday near Elk Lake in Ontario, a Transportation Safety Board official says.(author unknown)

The popular open source MapServer 5.6.5 has been released. From the announcement: "The MapServer team announces the release of MapServer 5.6.5. This release fixes a scale calculation issue that was introduced in the 5.6.4 release from a few days ago. All users are strongly advised to upgrade to this release since it also contains the security fixes that prompted the quick release of 5.6.4." See also selected previous MapServer stories below.

Read more of this story at Slashgeo.

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kstreith writes "Opticks release candidate for 4.4.0 has been released along with updates to the existing Python Scripting extension, IDL Scripting extension and Spectral Processing extension. The highlights include:

• performance improvements for loading data
• the ability to rotate an image to north up
• define color composites based upon wavelength ranges
• developers can now build extensions using the free Microsoft Platform SDK on Windows

The Python Scripting extension highlights:

• now supports 64-bit Windows

The Spectral Processing extension highlights:

• algorithm to calculate NDVI
• additional options for plotting signatures
• additional visualizations for working with many signature match results

In total, 38 enhancements and 40 bug fixes are in this release candidate."

We mentioned the open source software Opticks quite a few times in the past, see related stories below.

Read more of this story at Slashgeo.

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Community member Michelle Ballinger has put together a short tutorial on creating an open source web map using GeoServer.

This tutorial is designed for a beginner and is easy to follow. The steps she uses are:

1. Creating and editing data with QGIS
2. Designing SLDs with uDig
3. Serving maps with GeoServer
4. Creating a custom OpenLayers application
5. Posting to the web

The introduction mentions the benefits of using open source and also, interestingly, discusses the pros and cons of making a “mash-up” versus serving one’s own data.

Once again, we see Penn State as a proponent of open source GIS. Have you looked at their Master of Geographic Information Systems program lately?

The following is a guest blog post by Kevin MacDonald of ThinkWrap Solutions

We're coming to you live from the Michigan International Speedway, where the Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE (PIAXP) competition is underway.

This competition will award $10 million in prizes to the teams that win a rigorous stage competition for clean, production-capable vehicles that exceed 100 MPG energy equivalent (MPGe).

Vehicles are equipped with telemetry sensors and a GPS that together capture the following key performance indicators (KPI): fuel consumption, CO2 emissions, carbon footprint, speed, distance travelled and location.

ThinkWrap Solutions partnered with PIAXP to build a web experience that lets you monitor these KPI -- second-by-second -- from the comfort of your web browser.

The web-based experience is centered around a dashboard, a Flash application that embeds a number of telemetry gadgets, each responsible for the display of one KPI.

A Google Map is central to this experience, which uses a combination of location and horizontal dilution of precision (HDOP) to show the vehicle's movement around the track.

It's quite a novelty to be present at the Speedway, to watch the vehicle's icon round a turn on the map -- and then look away from the browser and to the track to see the actual vehicle approach and pass by.

To enjoy this experience, visit the official website, to meet the teams and their vehicles. (Check this video to see the map and telemetry data in action.)

Race times and vehicles are updated daily and posted at this page. Click on one of the vehicle photos on this page to view its telemetry data, and track its progress as it races around the racetrack, live on a Google Map!

Challenges

Our first challenge was to make sure that the map accurately tracks the vehicle's movement around the track. Although a GPS reports latitude and longitude coordinates to a precision of a few feet, availability of GPS satellite signals and atmospheric conditions can affect coordinate accuracy. Without concern for this accuracy, the map might show a vehicle hopping around the track, up on to the stands, over the stands and into a nearby farmers field!

We all know that GPS coordinates include latitude and longitude. GPS also measure the accuracy of these horizontal coordinates through a metric called Horizontal Dilution of Precision (HDOP) which for us, varies from 1 to 50 (1 is best and 50 is worst).

The map plots the coordinates on the map only if HDOP is 3 or less. If it's greater, the vehicle icon does not move. After 30 seconds, the icon is removed from the map.

Another challenge was to economically satisfy the clients' real-time demand for data, especially under conditions where a media blitz attracts tens or hundreds of thousands of visitors. Data flow -- from vehicle to website -- involves many intermediate stages: each vehicle independently broadcasts its KPI through a Sprint cellular connection, second-by-second, to a central server. Every second, this server batches KPI records across all reporting vehicles, and pushes, as a POST request, through a REST interface to a Java-based server running on Google App Engine. This server then caches the data in memory, and stores a copy in Datastore.

Client applications, which display the dashboard, poll for new data from Google App Engine through another REST interface. If the request hit the servlet that originally received the KPI from the vehicles, the request is serviced from a cache. Otherwise, the servlet needs to query the Datastore, cache the data and then reply to the client.

The client receives a batch of KPI data for the last 10 or so seconds, which it plays back through the dashboard, one record per second. When the client's buffer is nearly empty, it requests another batch of new data and continues, rinse-cycle-repeat.

Although the clients play back KPI data from a few seconds ago, collectively, they place much less burden on the server, and maintain sufficient buffer so as to minimize interruptions when updating the map.

We built our map on the Google Maps API for Flash platform, primarily due to the maturity of its software development kit (Flex Builder), relative ease of development, and cross-browser support.

Enjoy!

Posted by Kevin MacDonald of ThinkWrap Solutions

Another nail gets hammered into the TomTom coffin. How do you market a paid app/device versus a free app (so long as you pay your cell carriers data charges), which performs worse? From slashdot : "A real-world road test of several different satnav systems has found that the free Google Maps Navigation outperformed TomTom's premium GPS unit. PC Pro put the satnavs through four different real-world tests, covering country roads, inner-city traffic and motorway driving. The Google satnav finished the four tests more than half an hour ahead of the top of the range TomTom Go 950 Live. "For those in rural areas or people who spend hours in their car every day, we believe the investment in a dedicated satnav device or software will still pay off," PC Pro concludes. "But for the recreational user, it's amazing what you can get for free.""

Read more of this story at Slashgeo.

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Currently in discussion on slashdot. Here is their summary : "Scientists, using three NASA satellites, have created a first-of-its-kind map that details the height of the world's forests. The data was collected from NASA's ICESat, Terra and Aqua satellites. The latter two satellites are responsible for most of NASA's Gulf spill imagery. The data collected will help scientists understand how the world's forests both store and process carbon. While there are many local and regional canopy maps, this is the very first global map using a uniform method for measure."

Read more of this story at Slashgeo.

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For all those interested in outer space (come on, who isn’t at least a tad bit curious?), we want to let you know about an exciting project just getting underway. As part of Google’s ongoing relationship with NASA, Googler Tiffany Montague is on her way to the high arctic to participate as a crew member in some remote NASA field tests.

Haughton Crater, located in the Canadian arctic, is an extreme environment that simulates Martian conditions – otherwise known as a planetary analog. Tiffany just happens to have both extreme expedition and near-space suit experience, so she’ll be spending a week at a remote research station operated by the Mars Institute and sponsored by SETI and NASA.

Among the cool things she’ll be doing while in the field are landscape documentation, prototype space suit testing, simulating pressurized rover traverse missions, surveying new aircraft landing sites, and characterizing the geology of the Moon, Mars and NEO-like terrain. Many of these activities are even being planned using Google Earth!

Tiffany will be blogging about her adventures as Internet connectivity in the station permits. Check out her first post and follow her blog, Voices from Space, to keep up to date, and we’ll also ask her to share a full report complete with favorite stories and photos when she returns.

Posted by Deanna Yick, Lat Long Blog Team

As of today, the OpenLayers development version supports Google layers served by the Google Maps V3 API. This is not only Google’s latest and greatest Maps API, it also makes life easier on the OpenLayers side because no API key is required. To use the new Google layer, application developers just have to include this script tag on their html page:

<script src="http://maps.google.com/maps/api/js?sensor=false"></script>

When creating OpenLayers.Layer.Google instances, the only difference to the V2 API is the way the layer types are configured:

var gphy = new OpenLayers.Layer.Google( "Google Physical", {type: google.maps.MapTypeId.TERRAIN} // used to be {type: G_PHYSICAL_MAP} ); var gmap = new OpenLayers.Layer.Google( "Google Streets", // the default {numZoomLevels: 20} // default type, no change needed here ); var ghyb = new OpenLayers.Layer.Google( "Google Hybrid", {type: google.maps.MapTypeId.HYBRID, numZoomLevels: 20} // used to be {type: G_HYBRID_MAP, numZoomLevels: 20} ); var gsat = new OpenLayers.Layer.Google( "Google Satellite", {type: google.maps.MapTypeId.SATELLITE, numZoomLevels: 22} // used to be {type: G_SATELLITE_MAP, numZoomLevels: 22} );

Work on the V3 API support for OpenLayers started in February during the NYC Sprint hosted by OpenGeo. At that time, the v3 API did not allow us to pan the map without a built-in smooth animation, resulting in ugly dragging behavior with overlay layers. After this issue was starred by many OpenLayers users, Google finally changed the API’s setCenter method to not do a pan animation any more.

Now that Google has also deprecated the V2 API, it was about time to give OpenLayers users a new Google layer for the future. Speaking of future, OpenLayers.Layer.Google.v3 comes pre-configured with a working Spherical Mercator setup, like OpenLayers.Layer.OSM. This means that the new layer type can be used without configuring map options like projection, maxExtent, units or maxResolution. Developers only need to transform coordinates to the EPSG:900913 projection when setting center or extent of the map.

The recommended entry point for getting started with OpenLayers.Layer.Google using the V3 API is the new google-v3.html example, which should make clear how to migrate existing applications.

For existing applications that continue to use V2, the only caveat is that due to separating V2 and V3 specific code out from the OpenLayers.Layer.Google class into a mixin, OpenLayers.Layer.Google.prototype calls may need to be modified. This is explained in the release notes for the next release, which will ship with the new Google V3 layer.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

An earthquake occurred on Wednesday evening in Southern California with a magnitude of 5.4. According to the United States Geological Survey, the earthquake occurred at 16:53 local time (23:53 UTC). At least two dozen smaller aftershocks, none greater than a magnitude of 3.6, have struck the same area since the quake.

More... (author unknown)

Monday, July 5, 2010

The unmanned Progress M-06M spacecraft, which failed to dock with the International Space Station a few days ago, succeeded in a second attempt Sunday. Russian officials said that today's docking went flawlessly and exactly as planned, save for the fact that the docking occurred two days behind schedule.

NASA officials made clear that in the event of a total failure of the cargo ship, the orbital outpost's crew would have had enough surplus supplies to utilize until October or possibly November. By that time, a space shuttle and another Progress spacecraft would have arrived at the station to deliver supplies.

More... (author unknown)

Sunday, July 4, 2010

A 6.4 magnitude earthquake hit near the east coast of Honshu, Japan early Monday morning, according to the USGS. The earthquake took place at 06:55:51 AM local time on July 5. (21:55:51, July 4 UTC).

More... (author unknown)

Friday, July 2, 2010

The unmanned Progress M-06M supply ship failed to dock with the International Space Station Friday due to an apparent critical communications failure. The spacecraft bypassed the station at a safe distance and NASA officials report that the six member American-Russian space station crew were never in any danger; however, flight controllers are struggling to determine what exactly went wrong.

It is believed that the abort was caused by a malfunction in the Progress spacecraft's automatic docking system, resulting in the loss of telemetry data. The malfunction occurred while the spacecraft was at a distance of several kilometers from the orbital outpost, and there was never any threat to the spacecraft or the station, report NASA officials. "The Progress literally flew past the station, but at a safe distance from the outpost," says NASA commentator Rob Navias, "The station crew reported seeing the Progress drift beyond their view, as they worked to reestablish telemetry with the spacecraft."

More... (author unknown)