Here's your weekly dose of geonews. There has been less than usual geonews published this week in part because nothing that major came out and also because the little time I can devote to the project has been attributed to our upcoming migration to Drupal. I think our users can expect a migration between April and June. It will be a major improvement for our users and editors. That said, there will probably be some bumps (e.g. data loss, downtime) in the process. I'll keep you updated... and now the geonews!
On the Google front, Google Maps for Android, specifically
with the new Google Maps for mobile 4.1, comes with a few new features.
There's
changes to browser support in the Google Maps JavaScript API v3, exit FF 2 and IE 6.
There's a reorganization in Google Earth layers to
help users browse places of interest.
Can you believe
Windsor wants to pay Google to reshoot StreetView over their city because they looked bad when Google visited them.
Here's a
Google Earth flight simulator with an iPhone controller.
And why not, a new
tool to search for gold in the U.S. using Google Earth.
On the Microsoft front, with the recent
license change, anyone can use Bing Maps in broadcasts for free. Micrsoft's
WorldWide Telescope is now getting integrated with Bing Maps. Microsoft announced
spatial support for Windows Azure.
On the FOSS4G and open data front,
FME will support writing to OpenStreetMap. There's a full entry on the
humanitarian OpenStreetMap team deployed to Haiti. The same blog has a entry on
why Google MapMaker is not open. Here's an entry arguing a
open data needs a micropayment ecosystem. Plenty of geoblogs mentioned the
NYT article on Ushahidi crisis tracking system.
The
FDO Toolbox 0.9.3 has been released.
Andrea details the
dynamic 'geometry transformations' SLD extension that GeoServer now supports.
You can also now
customize the builds of GeoExt to your needs.
In the miscellaneous category, SimpleGeo presented
SpotRank, a tool using mobile location requests to display where people are.
It seems
MapQuest now offer a mobile-optimized website.
James Fee offers an interesting entry on
the 'ESRI Map Sandwich', with this interesting quote: "
If your online geo-content isn’t in formats or services that can easily be integrated into popular mapping APIs and libraries, your data is not going be easily used."
The FGT blog offers a 2-parts
review of the Garmin Oregon 450t GPS for field work.
Here's
6 tips for developers who are moving into GIS.
Here's an entry on
using lidar to identify trees in a city.
In the maps category, a colleague sent me the link to the
U.N. Atlas of Water and Health, focusing on Europe data. I wasn't aware there was
a 'country' without territory, the Knights of Malta. Oh yes,
historical maps can be misleading, even from a source such as Britannica. TMR shares an interesting
map of who uses daylight saving time, an entry on USGS
satellite maps of post-earthquake Port-au-Prince, another entry for
Moon and Mars globes for the iPhone.