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.

Some pretty interesting Google geonews in batch mode.

From official sources:

• Google announced Photo tours in Google Maps: "Photo tours are available for more than 15,000 popular sites around the world [...] To produce these photo tours, we use advanced computer vision techniques to create a 3D experience from public, user-contributed Picasa and Panaromio photos."
• The new 3D buildings announced last month are now available in Google MapsGL
• There's new 45° imagery available for 19 cities, International: Avignon, France; Reus, Spain; Rotterdam, Netherlands; L'Alcudia, Spain; Gandia, Spain; Sueca, Spain; Burgos, Spain; Los Palacios Y Villafranca, Spain, US: Albany, GA; Omaha, NE; Baytown, TX; Miami, FL; Amarillo, TX; Monroe, LA; Manchester, NH; Alexandria, LA; Rapid City, SD; Loudon, TN; Farmington, NM
• Street View is now available in Ukraine

From other sources:

• It's James that made me aware that the Google Maps game 'Maps Cube' is available, I couldn't test it yet on the Linux machine in front of me. Here's how James describes it: "Basically you use your mouse to tilt a 3D cube and have a ball travel down the transportation networks (road, trails, subways, etc). Since we in GIS all know about topology in these networks, the game isn’t as hard as you might expect. Still it’s a pretty amazing example of using HTML + WebGL for web mapping." APB also links to a short PC Mag article on the Maps Cube Game.
• The GEB shares an update on the impressive Data Appeal visualization tool for Google Earth
• Slashdot also ran the story named Google Releases FCC Report On Street View Probe
• If you want analysis of Trimble's acquisition of SketchUp from Google, read more from the GEB, from Spatial Sustain,
• Here's Plymouth, Michigan in 3D
• And to end with something funny, here's UFO Sightings in Google Earth

This comes as a surprise to many, Slashdot discusses Trimble To Acquire Google SketchUp.

Their summary: "It looks like Google is selling off SketchUp or, conversely, Trimble is acquiring it. Despite several indications there will continue to be a free version of the 3D modelling software, users are unsure about what this will mean for the SketchUp community at large as indicated by the comments on the official Google SketchUp Blog post. They are, however, rejoicing that they will be freed from Groups for SketchUp discussions."

From the Trimble press release: "[...] we are committed to continuing to provide SketchUp as a free version to millions of users."

We of course mentioned tons of times SketchUp, which is a popular tool to generate 3D models. Trimble also found the road to our users quite a few times.

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode.

From the open source front:

• Here's a DM summary entry on FOSS4G-NA 2012 that I haven't shared yet, and it's pretty informative
• There's a new video showing us uDig features
• Here's examples of using QGIS in local government, related to QGIS, here's an entry on What's New in QGIS Plugins
• A technical entry on dynamic WMS styling with GeoServer with SLD
• Here's an interesting web browser memory usage experiment for OpenLayers

From the Google front:

• Google announce new StreetView imagery for Israel in an entry named Exploring Jerusalem’s Old City streets with Street View
• There's also an update to the Google Maps API deprecation policy and Terms of Service
• The GEB reminds us the options we have for Sharing your favorite locations in Google Earth

On the Microsoft front:

• You can now Find Venue Maps, Businesses and Buildings Faster on Bing Maps
• Bing Maps is Reducing the Complexity of Rendering Shapes

Discussed over Slashdot:

• A "Big Brother Chip", the Broadcom 4752, that acts as a ubiquitous location chip using everything available: "global navigation satellites, cell phone towers, and Wi-Fi hot spots, coupled with input from gyroscopes, accelerometers, step counters, and altimeters"
• A GPS system that will speed up tsunami warnings
• The Physical Travelling Salesman Challenge
• Using satellite imagery to counting Emperor Penguins from space

Directions Mag articles of note:

• The Top 10 Things You Should Know about GIS Certification, including "In 2012, more than 5,000 people are active GISPs." and "Eight states have recognized and endorsed the GISP"
• A Q&A entry about Is Intergraph’s New GeoMedia Smart Client for You?

In the everything else category:

• The ESA mentions Envisat's mapping of ice shelf disintegration in Antarctic and update on the investigation of Envisat woes, being offline since early April
• @Thierry_G links to interesting impressions on the Where 2012 conference titled From Where 2.0 To Just Where; With Meh 2.0 Somewhere In The Middle, asking where is the geospatial excitement today?
• Via Paul I found this extreme video example of augmented reality
• APB has an entry on TomTom’s New Global Geocoder Targets Power Users
• SS shares a perspective named Have the geospatial technology frontiers changed much in three years?
• SS also shares an interesting summary of a session on capacity building and the expansion of the global geospatial marketplace to a billion plus people

In the maps category:

• O'Reilly shares two visualizations, one on The history of shipping routes and the other on Mapping the Titanic's passengers

We mentioned the project two times earlier this year, and now GeoNode 1.0 has just been released.

From their about page: "GeoNode is an open source platform that facilitates the creation, sharing, and collaborative use of geospatial data. The project aims to surpass existing spatial data infrastructure solutions by integrating robust social and cartographic tools.

At its core, the GeoNode is based on open source components GeoServer, GeoNetwork, Django, and GeoExt that provide a platform for sophisticated web browser spatial visualization and analysis. Atop this stack, the project has built a map composer and viewer, tools for analysis, and reporting tools.

To promote collaboration, the GeoNode is designed on Web 2.0 principles [...]"

There's a demo if you want to experiment what it's all about.