In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

I was away last week, I have a lot of geonews to catch up... I'll try to share them in the coming days.

This story was discussed over Slashdot during the last weekend, Cops' Warrantless Cell Phone Tracking Now Better Than GPS.

Their summary: "On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing to discuss a proposed bill to limit location tracking of electronic devices without a warrant — what it's calling the Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act, or the GPS Act. Ahead of that hearing, University of Pennsylvania computer science professor Matt Blaze submitted written testimony (PDF) telling Congress that phone carriers, as well as the law enforcement agencies with which they share data, can now use phones' proximity to cell towers and other sources of cellular data to track their location as precisely or even more precisely than they can with global positioning satellites. Thanks to the growing density of cell towers and the proliferation of devices like picocells and femtocells that transmit cell signals indoors, even GPS-less phones can be tracked with a high degree of precision and can offer data that GPS can't, like the location of someone inside a building or what floor they're on. With the GPS Act, Congress is considering expanding the ban on warrantless tracking of cars with GPS devices that the Supreme Court decided on in January. Blaze's testimony suggests they need to include non-GPS tracking of cell phones in that ban, a measure law enforcement agencies are strongly resisting."

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OGRS2012 :: CALL FOR PAPERS REMINDER (closing at May 28th)
Open Source Geospatial Research and Education Symposium

October 24 – 26, 2012 in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland
Hosted by School of Business and Engineering Vaud (HEIG-VD)

Website: http://www.ogrs2012.org
Contact: cfp@ogrs2012.org
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(our apologies for cross-postings)
Dear colleagues,
the program committee would like to remind you that the deadline of OGRS2012 call for papers is soon closing (at May 28th). All information to submit a presentation, a workshop, a poster or discussion group subject is available on the symposium website : http://cfp.ogrs2012.org.

Moreover, the organizing committee is pleased to announce that four prominent scholars will present keynote addresses. The synopsis of these talks are now published on the symposium website :

- The open source GIS, an ideal framework for the development of and integrated modelling platform devoted to sustainable urban planning: first steps with OrbisGIS and CartoPolis (Gérard HEGRON Ifsttar/IRSTV);

- Building open source geospatial education at research universities: where we are and what is holding us back (Helena Mitasova, Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, North Carolina State University);

- Open source spatial analysis: lessons for research and education from PySAL (Sergio Rey, GeoDa Center for Geospatial Analysis and Computation, Arizona State University);

- How open source can help achieving sustainability of e-learning content: The GITTA experience (Robert Weibel, Department of Geography, University of Zurich and GITTA Association).

Please consider these last weeks to submit a contribution. We look forward to read your contribution proposal and to see you in Yverdon-les-Bains.

We would appreciate if you could kindly distribute this call to other interested parties of your acquaintance.

Best regards,
OGRS2012 program committee

Bloggage update: Bridging the gap between desktop and on-line GIS follows the first and second instalment, online vector GIS and spatial data validation. GisCloud introduced a free Esri extension to load features and attributes to its file system. This follows other services such as Arc2Earth and  Arc2Google, except in the vector domain. Having both Esri @ home and a private cloud I put this new extension through its paces...

MacRumors shares a long entry named Apple Moving to In-House Mapping Service with 3D Views in iOS 6?

From the 9TO5Mac report: "Apple will drop the Google Maps program running on iOS since 2007 in favor for a new Maps app with an Apple backend. [..] The most important aspect of the new Maps application is a powerful new 3D mode. The 3D mode does not come enabled by default, but users simply need to click a 3D button that is conveniently and visibly stored in the app. Perhaps under the fold like the current traffic, pin, and map view buttons. This 3D mode is said to essentially be technology straight from C3 Technologies: beautiful, realistic graphics based on de-classified missile target algorithms."

We mentioned in the past that Apple Acquired Web Mapping Firm Poly9 and Apple's C3 Technologies 3D Maps Also Offer Street Views and Interior Views.

Related, Apple's iPhoto maps now show attribution to OpenStreetMap, we mentioned Apple using OpenStreetMap data in March.

While I wait until next week to share geonews in batch mode, James made me aware of a great MapBox project: the Maki open source point of interest icon set for cartography.

What it is? "Designed pixel-by-pixel to look great at small sizes but scale up elegantly. We designed Maki specifically for TileMill with the goal of creating an international, comprehensive, and stylistically unified point of interest icon set. Each symbol is drawn three times at different sizes to maximize crispness and readability. Maki symbols are based on international recognized symbols, following precedents set by AIGA and other international symbol systems, but preserving a unique look at feel.

Use Maki for everything from adding context to the base map of your mobile app to highlighting critical data on your disaster map. Just download the icons and start using them with TileMill or put them on your server to integrate with another mapping API."

As pointed out by James, The Noun Project jumped in the Maki train. Looking for previous related entries, I found, those two: Impacts of Symbology Changes for Organizations and Map Symbols and A Summary of Thematic Mapping Techniques.

That's the name of the Slashdot story, North Korea Jamming GPS Signals In South Korea.

Their summary: "North Korea has been looking for new and inventive ways to mess with South Korea. It seems that their missile launch fizzled a bit though, so those wacky folks from the North have bought a few GPS jamming trucks from Russia and are now blocking GPS signals around their city of Kaeson. While Kaeson is around 60 Km inside their borders, the jamming circle is around 100 Km, so it actually covers good parts of South Korea including the airports at Inchon and Gimpo. While no accidents have been caused as yet, it has caused quite some disruption and has made ocean going craft suffer as well due to their heavy reliance on GPS signals."

That's it, after some time in the dark, ESA declares end of mission for Envisat.

From the ESA: "Just weeks after celebrating its tenth year in orbit, communication with the Envisat satellite was suddenly lost on 8 April. Following rigorous attempts to re-establish contact and the investigation of failure scenarios, the end of the mission is being declared. A team of engineers has spent the last month attempting to regain control of Envisat, investigating possible reasons for the problem. Despite continuous commands sent from a widespread network of ground stations, there has been no reaction yet from the satellite."

Want to know more about all sensors that were onboard Envisat? Here's the wikipedia article.

I've been overly away and busy lately, it just means we'll share the geonews a bit later than usual.

I was a heavy (and happy) ENVI user 10 years ago, and the product, now developed by Exelis, is at ENVI version 5.

Since we mentioned ENVI only about 10 times in the past 7 years, here's the generic summary of what it is: "ENVI is the premier software solution for processing and analyzing geospatial imagery. The newest ENVI release makes your image analysis workflow more efficient than ever and allows you to get the information you need more quickly. With a streamlined user interface, a modern high-speed display, new and advanced processing tools, and a flexible API for easy customization, ENVI 5 makes it easier for you to solve problems using geospatial imagery. And, since all ENVI tools are still conveniently accessible from the ArcGIS® toolbox, GIS users can easily add information to their GIS workflow for enhanced mapping applications."

That's the name of the Slashdot story, U.S. In Danger of Losing Earth-Observing Satellite Capability.

Their summary: "As reported in Wired, a recent National Research Council report indicates a growing concern for NASA, the NOAA, and USGS. While there are currently 22 Earth-observing satellites in orbit, this number is expected to drop to as low as six by the year 2020. The U.S. relies on this network of satellites for weather forecasting, climate change data, and important geologic and oceanographic information. As with most things space and NASA these days, the root cause is funding cuts. The program to maintain this network was funded at $2 billion as recently as 2002, but has since been scaled back to a current funding level of $1.3 billion, with only two replacement satellites having definite launch dates."

Bloggage update: Exprodat published a free eBook: Why use GIS in petroleum?, an excellent state-of-play as well as good industry marketing to augment their impressive blog. One of their figures similar to one I published 25 years ago, led me to briefly look at what GIS looked like in oil&gas a generation ago.