Slashgeo

After yesterday's review of open source geocoders, Google just announced the introduction of the new Google Geocoding Web Service. Improvements, from the announcement: "* A flatter response format for address components that is easier to parse. * The ability to tag an address component with multiple types. * Both full names and abbreviations for countries and states. * Differentiation between rooftop and interpolated geocoder results. * Both the bounding box and recommended viewport for each result. [...] The Geocoding Web Service is intended to enable precaching of geocoder results that you know your application will need in future. For example, if your application displays property listings, you can geocode the address of each property, cache the results on your server, and serve these locations to your API application. This ensures that your application does not need to geocode the address of a property every time it is viewed by a user." See also related stories below.

GeoTools 2.6.2 has been released. From the announcement: "This release is mostly intended to provide a number of important bug-fixes, but there are also some new features and improvements for your programming pleasure including: * The rendering system now has the ability to draw polygon fills and SVGs as vectors and draw marks with arbitrary sizes. * GeoTools applications can now use the H2 database with a spatial index provided by Hatbox. * Support added for polyconic projections." See also previous stories below.

The linear thiking blog offers a short review of open source geocoders. From the entry: "All of the engines implement parsing and matching logic purely in code. None of them provide a declarative description language to allow easy modification of parsing, standardization, and matching rules. [...] In all the projects the parser design appears to be fairly ad-hoc and poorly documented. This situation doesn't inspire confidence that it would be possible to modify the parser to support a different address model, or to handle particular kinds of input errors." See also previous stories below.

Here's your weekly dose of geonews in batch mode.

On the Google front, you can now refine Google searches by location, with the "Nearby" tool in the Search Options panel. Google also announced the winners of their StreetView trike contest. There's also Athens in 3D. If you wonder how crazy it can get, here's an entry named solving a murder with Google Earth. There's also new imagery in Google Earth, including Chile. Here's an entry on heat maps with Google Fusion Tables.

On the Microsoft's front, here's a two-parts article on Integrating OpenStreetMap in Bing Maps. Bing Maps also just released their biggest imagery update ever, 6.7 million square kilometers.

On the ESRI front, we mentioned last week the podcast about ESRI's position on open source, via GGNB I learned about the new ESRI page about their position on open source software. The ArcGIS API For JavaScript 1.6 Now Available. And ESRI also announced their new World Topographic base map (screenshots included).

On the FOSS4G front, here's how to create contour lines in QGIS. There's also a new Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) mailing list.

In other news, several geoblogs mentioned that Platial is turning off their services. APB offers an entry named GIS Used to Help Decrease Stroke, Heart Disease, and Cardiovascular Risk 25%. There's also an entry about large shapefiles on small screens using a drawable spatial index. Engadget does a head-to-head comparison of three GPS smartphone navigation systems: Google Navigation, Ovi Maps, and VZ Navigator. TMR also points to the testing of the SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger.

In the maps category, via Mapperz, I learned about ProtectedPlanet, the latest initiative of the World Database on Protected Areas. Here's a named Which Burger Chains Dominate the U.S. Landscape? Here's another map, linking the affordability of housing and transportation in the U.S.

kstreith writes "Opticks 4.3.3 is now released along with a new Spectral processing capability and Python scripting capability. Also includes updates to the existing IDL scripting. The release highlights include better support for scripting and support for loading FITS data. The new Spectral Processing extension provides algorithms to work with hyper-spectral and multi-spectral data and visualize and perform signature matching. The new Python scripting extension allows a user to combine the power of Python with the visualization power of Opticks. The IDL scripting extension now supports IDL 7.0 and IDL 7.1." We mentioned the open source project Opticks before, see previous stories below.

Slashdot discusses a story named 3D Graphics For Firefox, Webkit. Webkit is the open source engine behind Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome browsers. Their summary: ""A group of researchers plans to release a version of the Firefox browser that includes the built-in ability to view 3D graphics. They've integrated real-time ray tracing technology, called RT Fact, into Firefox and Webkit. Images are described using XML3D, and the browser can natively render the 3D scene." The browser will be released within a few weeks, the researchers say, and they are checking with the Mozilla Foundation about whether they can call it Firefox."

The open source project GeoMOOSE 2.2 has been released two weeks ago. Since it's been a while we mentioned the GeoMOOSE project, here's a reminder of what it is: "GeoMOOSE is a Web Client Javascript Framework for displaying distributed cartographic data. GeoMOOSE has a number of strengths including modularity, configurability, and delivers a number of core functionalities in its packages. GeoMOOSE is also very light weight for servers making it easy to handle a large number of users, with a large number of layers, and a large number of services without stressing a server. The GeoMOOSE core is written using JavaScript and HTML. It is entirely possible to run GeoMOOSE with nothing more than a basic webserver (Nginx, Apache, IIS). But besides the basic client core, GeoMOOSE also comes prepackaged with a number of built in services written in PHP. These services add the ability to perform drill-down identify operations, selection operations, and search datasets. If you have existing scripts that perform similar functions, GeoMOOSE can be tuned to work with those services, no matter which language they were written." See also related stories below.

A friend sent me a link to an IBM article named "Make your own map-based mashup, create a KML service from ESRI shapefile data", using open source geospatial software. The summary: "Map-based mashups abound these days. Mashups require services that can be mashed up. Location-based mashups need services that provide boundary information. With Web-based mapping providers, you can easily create a map-based mashup with little or no capital investment. In this article, learn how to create a KML boundary service from an ESRI shapefile to be used in mashups."

Via O'Reilly, I learned about the free (but not open source?) software named SaTScan. What it is? "SaTScan is a free software that analyzes spatial, temporal and space-time data using the spatial, temporal, or space-time scan statistics. It is designed for any of the following interrelated purposes: * Perform geographical surveillance of disease, to detect spatial or space-time disease clusters, and to see if they are statistically significant. * Test whether a disease is randomly distributed over space, over time or over space and time. * Evaluate the statistical significance of disease cluster alarms. * Perform repeated time-periodic disease surveillance for early detection of disease outbreaks. The software may also be used for similar problems in other fields such as archaeology, astronomy, botany, criminology, ecology, economics, engineering, forestry, genetics, geography, geology, history, neurology or zoology. "

Version 1.11 of the open source Java Topology Suite (JTS) has been released. From the announcement: "The version contains numerous enhancements, including: * Delaunay triangulation and Voronoi diagrams * AWT Shape reading and writing * Geometry similarity metrics * support for Geometry densification * Numerous improvements to the JTS TestBuilder" See also related stories below. The JTS is the source of GEOS. See also related stories below.

Slashdot runs yet another geo-related story, this one named Google Awarded Broad Patent For Location-Based Advertising. Their summary: "Mashable has a report of a patent that just issued (6-1/2 years after filing) — apparently Google now has a lock on location-based advertising. It's not clear that the search company intends to assert the patent against any other companies (such as emerging rival Apple), but it's useful as leverage. Here is the patent."

Bertrand writes "Hi people at slashgeo, I am a long time reader of slashgeo, big fan of your work as a geospatial professional, and this is the first time I am submitting a link. I am currently working with a partner on a project called RadarVirtuel.com, that we started last summer and that we are currently developping on our free time, besides our day jobs. Our goal is to display real-time aircraft traffic on the web, using all latest geospatial technology. In order to do so, our system is based on a network of contributers (private persons, companies) owning some ADS-B receiver and willing to share their data with us. In exchange, we make their data available online for anyone, and we will develop advanced services for them to analyze airplane traffic. We believe that this information can be useful for various needs (locating an airplane for personal or business purposes, computing statistics), and notably it can lead to a better public understanding of what happens above our heads. Our coverage area is mostly over Europe, thanks to the many aviation enthusiasts we have here. But we would love to have the same coverage over USA, Canada (all over the world, actually), and we hope people will want to contribute to our project everywhere. We hope you will be interested by our project, and that you will want to share this story with your readers. Since my English is not perfect, do not hesitate to write me if you have any question. Bertrand." See also related stories below, including the OpenFlights database.

There is plenty of geoblogs sharing information on Chile earthquake mapping efforts. Brady Forrest of O'Reilly offers several links in an entry named 'Lessons From Haiti Will Aid Chile'. Off the Map offers other links, including Ushahidi Chile situation room. The Map Room offers map screenshots of the tsunami wave. The GEB offers satellites images and links. Map Hawk criticizes the New York Times maps for being highly confusing. Finally, both Google and OpenStreetMap offer their whole set of resources for the Chile earthquake response.

A friend sent me a link to the open source project Sourcemap.org. From their about: "Sourcemap helps you find and share the stories behind products. Your everyday product choices have a significant impact. Some decisions have impacts that stretch across the world, whereas others are regional. [...] We want to empower organizations to connect with their consumers by sharing their product stories. Sourcemap is an open source project dedicated to tracking, documenting, and mapping where all of the components for our everyday goods come from. We believe transparency is the first step towards global supply chain improvement"