In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

This is the third and last of my summary entries on FOSS4G-NA 2012.

First, here are other pertinent summaries I found on the blogosphere;

• Direction Mag offers several entries related to FOSS4G-NA 2012:
  • One named MapStory.org Soft Launches: "It's a platform for collecting datasets (StoryLayers), and MapStories (animated maps of these datasets over times)."
  • FOSS4GNA 2012 Day One Plenary: Recapping Roots and NGA Rhythms
  • FOSS4GNA 2012 Day Two Plenary: URLs and Firehoses
  • FOSS4GNA Panel: Gaps and Voids in Open Source Geo Technology
  • Tweets of note for the 11th and for  the 12th,
• Martin Davis (Dr JTS) FOSS4G-NA 2012 review

Reminder: here's my notes, stripped from content directly related to my employer. These notes intend to provide some level of information on components that I considered interesting or pertinent. Most, if not all, FOSS4G-NA 2012 talks are or will be freely available online, many with full video recording. The program schedule is available online.

Day 3

 

RadiantBlue - OMAR

• OMAR = Open Mapping ARchive
• About 20 people supporting and developing their open source software, another proof that this business model can work
• Web-based polished raster search user interface with a real fast data viewer
• Apparently easy to import data into OMAR

RadiantBlue - OSSIM

• Advanced C++ remote sensing and geospatial processing
• Started in 1998
• One of the founding projects of OSGeo
• Used in numerous commercial and government solutions

• Long history of government projects
• My main interest was in ossimPlanet, since we have our own in-house scientific virtual globe at MSC
• Along with the ossimPlanet tool, there's ImageLinker and OMAR that work together
• There's OSSIM Libraries
• Image chains for data processing, such as models, filters, combiners, with an excellent UI
• dynamic plugins

• ossimPlanet: virtual globe similar to Google Earth and NASA WorldWind (whatever happened to it), but... supports multiple platform, photogrammetric accuracy, native file access, WMS compliant
  • high performance 3D solution

• Demoed their tools

Skipped some talks that were mostly U.S.-specific

Panel on challenges in implementing FOSS4G software

• Integration with existing 'legacy' software such as SharePoint or Oracle can be a challenge
• Legal components of open source are not an issue. It's unlikely that open licenses will do a great deal of damages to projects and organizations
• Community is essential for the feedback loop in the open source software
• Security audits are the same for open source than for commercial software
• Panelists discussed their success stories

Panel on open source geo in federal IT

• More intimate relation with open source vendors than with proprietary vendors, particularly in regards to feature needs, development, etc
• Open source isn't entirely free, you need to put efforts
• OGC standards are much faster implemented in open source geo software than in proprietary ones
• Funding positions of Geospatial professionals on the long term can be a challenge at the federal level
• Investing in open source consulting vs employ a senior full time expert... sometimes the first option seems to be much more efficient
• Collaboration with the community requires energy, but it pays off over time
• The pertinence of having federal IT coordination in their investment in open geospatial software and access the impact of their investment on each other
• Challenge with reaching stakeholders of the federal gov which has interest in open source geo
  • At the Government of Canada we have the FCGEO (Federal Committee on Geomatics and Earth Observation) and GeoConnections, etc... there are some coordinating bodies and resources
• The best with open source geo is rapid updates and delivery mechanisms
• Expectations that the cloud will impact significantly how geospatial data is managed and stored at the federal level
• GeoCat Bridge, bridging ArcMap to open source SLD compatible software - just can't ignore past ArcMap investments

That's the second out of three summary entries on FOSS4G-NA 2012.

Reminder, here's my notes, stripped from content directly related to my employer. These notes intend to provide some level of information on components that I considered interesting or pertinent. Most, if not all, FOSS4G-NA 2012 talks are or will be freely available online, many with full video recording. The program schedule is available online.

Day 2

 

Mike Byrne FCC Wednesday plenary

• We don't make paper maps
• The importance of URLs
• Unintended consequences of data use are good
• Spatial data is not special... it's just columns in a database
  • I think I personally disagree with that statement; spatial data requires a datum and a projection and implies things like spatial topology and so on, so to me, these major distinctions makes it 'special' to some extent
• Need for low barrier to publish and low barrier to consume

Josh Berkus, PostgreSQL

• Large data collection with continuous processing and aggregation, firehose engineering
• Challenges:
  • volume of data, and volume grows over time
  • constant flow of data, 24/7, data collection component, it means no ETL
  • database size, lots of hardware, backups, redundancy, migration, etc... database growth, many components = many failures
  • component failures, all components fail, and data collection must meanwhile continue
• Data collection must be: continuous, parallel and fault-tolerant
• Don't use cutting edge technology, don't run components to capacity, do not do hot patching
• Little to no geospatial content in this talk

Ramsey - What's new in PostGIS 2.0

• Breaks some backward compatibility
• PostGIS uses a new serialization
• New WKT / WKB parser, Extended WKT vs OGC vs ISO
• New 3D functions
• 4D indexes, nD actually
• New 3D types and formats
• New shapefile loading GUI

• Raster
  • Raster support is there to enable analysis, not visualization, raster objects are very similar to vector objects in PostGIS
  • Many new raster functions
  • Raster Performance is still not great and sensitive to tile size, and function signatures can get very complex

• Integrated raster and vector analysis
• Indexed nearest neighbors, 2 million points, in 9 milliseconds... pretty fast

Tom Payne - OpenWebGlobe WebGL Globe

• Google Earth plugin competitor
• 100% JavaScript and WebGL
• SpiderGL.org and OpenWebGlobe.org
• Streaming lod terrain example on SpiderGL
• Spherical Mercator (more)
• Includes buildings, at various levels of quality to accommodate different use cases
• Data in the S3 cloud managed by TileCloud
• WebGL Navigation can't exactly mimic Desktop software
• It may need polishing, but it works well already
• VirtualGlobeBook.com for further reading
• WebGL is also an interest of the gaming industry so there's big pushing from them too
• No mobile browser supports WebGL yet

Bitner - Working with four dimensional flight track data

• Closer to the type of data I have to deal with than the CartoDB and PostGIS presentation
• XYZM (m = minutes)
• Smoothing track data
• Using R and PostgreSQL with the temporal extension on pgxn
• PostgreSQL 9.2 will have native time range data types
• R used for removing outlier data and helping the smoothing via statistics
• During spatial smoothing, must consider the time dimension otherwise it messes with speeds
• Displaying the 4D data
• Github OpenNOMS
• Using GeoExt and OpenLayers to display
• App.macnoise.com/flighttracker nice interactive map
• Rather technical presentation

Osti - Cloud-based open source tech to manage natural resources

• Opennrm.org
• Animated web maps, integrating a lot of sensor data, in the Californian delta for a fish and turbidity analysis
• Fully custom-made web page
• The GeoServer talk was probably more interesting

Davis - What's new in the JTS topology suite

• JTS started in 2001
• JTS and GEOS used by many may other software
  • GEOS 3.3.3 released at the beginning of the month
• There's a C# port and a JavaScript port JSTS
• What's new
  • Unary union
  • Delaunay triangulation, supports linear constraints
  • Voronoi diagram
  • Hausdorff distance: "measures how far two subsets of a metric space are from each other"
  • Densification, bounding envelopes
  • Single-sided spatial buffers
  • Magnify topology
• JTS comes with a GUI to test functions

• What's coming
  • Buffer performance improvements again
  • Fast distance computation
  • New algorithms such as concave hull, Bezier smoothing, point clustering, etc
• Future plans: computation in geodetic coordinate systems, improve performance is a constant quest, split packaging into core and algorithms, refactor geometry API to use interfaces
  • For JTS 2.0 since it will break the API backward compatibility
• That was an interesting but short 15 minutes talk... why not show more?

Klassen - Build your own cloud, open source approach to imagery storage

• 50 TB of data, essentially raster
• Their workflow is 'write once read many'
• Constraints: little staff time for maintenance, needs to scale, limit access to some datasets
• Image storage solution is OpenStack object storage aka Swift
  • Swift is optimized for long term storage
  • Why swift: no single point of failure, http/REST API, handles large objects over 5GB, security built-in
• They looked at alternatives such as raid servers, NoSQL such as BigCouch, distributed file systems and S3... but ended up using swift
• Proxy nodes: provides "public" URLs
• There's tradeoffs, including a significant learning curve
• Image catalog with a PostGIS backend
• Services viewers with MapServer and MapCache
• OpenAerialMap on Github.com/oam/oam

Ashton - cartography with TileMill, PostGIS and OpenStreetMap

• Presentation focused on digital map making; such as labels
• The import is part of the render
• Using group styles
• Abbreviations: prefix and suffix aren't that important, handling multiple languages abbreviations is a challenge
• Tens of types of 'spaces' in Unicode
• Features of MapBox Street in TileMill

Nathaniel - Watercolor maps using OpenStreetMap

• These maps were massively advertised in the past weeks
• maps.stamen.com... from stamen design
  • citytracking.org
• Different watercolor textures for each zoom level
• Used Mapnik and python processing
• Blurring things and adding noise, added inner glow
• They didn't render the whole world
  • They user tweets density to identify which areas to prerender at higher zoom levels
  • They also analyzed where people actually searched for watercolor maps

Matthew Davis - Incorporating open source mapping into mobile apps

• Excellent presentation
• Strategy options = native apps, web apps, hybrid apps
• Native apps: fast, mobile app feel, access to sensors, app store... but not cross-platform
  • iOS: 3 closed source maps APIs, none open source
  • Android: 4 mains options; Google Maps, osmdroid, Nutiteq, mapsforge... various tile sources, licensing, offline caching capabilities and vector support
• Web apps:
  • Good = cross platform, but... slower, limited access to sensor, levels of browser support, have to make it feel like a mobile app, no app store, etc...
  • HTML5/CSS3: app can run offline, local data storage, sensor support (GPS well supported, but others not (e.g. accelerometer)), varying degrees of implementation by browsers
  • Mobile frameworks
  • Open source mapping libraries: OpenLayers, Leaflet, Polymaps, Tile5, Modest Maps... things to consider: offline caching, touch gesture support, vector overlays, tile sources, size
• Hybrid apps: good = cross-platform, app store, sensor support, but... not as fast as native app, special attention to mobile app feel... main Hybrid apps solution is PhoneGap
• Detailed a case study & their experience

I was lucky to participate to the first FOSS4G-NA 2012 conference in Washington D.C. last week. Here's one of three entries in which I'll share my general notes, talk notes and links to other reviews of the conference. First, I want to acknowledge and thank the FOSS4G-NA 2012 organizers for this incredible conference and the complimentary pass as a media partner. There was also a recent official press release from OpenGeo wrapping up the conference. All entries related to FOSS4G-NA 2012 on Slashgeo should be found with a simple search.

Here's my general notes, stripped from content directly related to my employer. These notes intend to provide some level of information on components that I considered interesting or pertinent. Most, if not all, FOSS4G-NA 2012 talks are or will be freely available online, many with full video recording. The program schedule is available online.

General notes

• For Day 1 and 2, there were 3 concurrent tracks. For day 3, there was 2
• There was 'Ignite Spatial' presentations at the end of Day 2
• There was 350 attendees to FOSS4G-NA 2012
• Met and discussed with several colleagues and developers
• Next FOSS4G-NA 2013 will be in Minnesota

 

Day 1
 

Paul Ramsey Welcome Talk

• Discussed the history of open source
• Geeks and enthusiasm + tools + connectivity
• Paul reminded us that ArcGIS and Google Earth also use gdal, same for other pieces of open source geospatial software
• Open standards are embraced more quickly by open source software
• Exciting open source geospatial: Leaflet as a new OpenLayers competitor
• Proprietary software locks you in
• Open source software offers a lot of choice and it might be overwhelming, it appears 'simpler' with a single vendor solution
• Google is a FOSS4G-NA 2012 venue sponsor, and so is ESRI

Keith Barber, NGA

• NGA = National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (United States)
• GeoInt must be on-line and on-demand
• The 'pretty' component counts
• How does the users consume information and data? That matters a lot
• Big data, mobile computing, cloud computing, social networking
• Social networking is harnessing the power of already established associations

Kate Chapman, teaching QGIS and OpenStreetMap in Indonesia

• Hot: humanitarian OSM team, full details of their project here
• They did workshops in 9 regions
• Paper maps with no GIS involved
• They also used walkingpapers.org to input new data
• Using the Bing Maps satellite imagery in OSM, when available
• LearnOSM.org launched
• No street signs in small villages, only specific people know the street names
• GIS benefits are not obvious to people that don't know GIS
• Using OSM satellite imagery is much easier than buying a GPS and doing surveying
• On site Internet access is an issue, part of the solution is using 3G modems
• The OSM QGIS plugin is too hard to use in practice
• Goal was poverty mapping

Wickman - Emergency response performance analysis with open source geospatial

• Fire service departments
• First responders are the clients, and they're not always tech savvy
• E911 computer aided dispatch cad systems are almost systematically different one from another
• Cops vs fire fighters: they do not always get along happily
• Incident mapping
• Not all city GIS layers align correctly
• Using GeoKettle, PostGIS and MapServer and OpenLayers
• Showed their GeoKettle processing; seems relatively simple to use
• They'll be replacing MapServer with GeoServer, but didn't told us the reasons

De La Torre - CartoDB 1.0

• The 'Government Participation in Open Source' talk was cancelled
• New FOSS4G software, version 1.0 released last week
• Blazing fast drag and drop online mapping
• PostGIS 2 inside, with node.js and Mapnik
• Blazing fast geospatial queries directly on the online map
• Support importing OSM data
• Explained distinctions with Google Fusion Tables

MacWright - Beyond the Google Maps Paradigm

• Mapbox TileMill
• Everybody gets the same tiles on Google Maps and OpenLayers
• The design of today's maps is only possible because of the way we interact with it... There's less elements on maps because it's easy to zoom in and display more details
• OpenLayers weights 900k while Modest Maps API is 40k
• Google Maps got us halfway, TileMill halved it again
• He got a point: traditional geo technologies is evolving real fast, and not always pushed forward by geofolks

Herbert - FOSS, data delivery and discovery services - the Antarctic experience

• British Antarctic survey
• Gdal, PostGIS, GeoServer, OpenLayers, WMS, WFS
• From raw data acquisition to processing and distribution
• GeoRSS, kml, OGC services, jpeg 2000
• Using geonames.org
• Labeling is a challenge, SLD vendor options end up being critical
• Poor metadata and versioning
• They chose GeoNetwork Open Source for data discovery, with some cons
• Polarview.aq, map.arctic.ac.uk and a few more links

Hahn - Rendering the World

• Big world.... it requires a lot of storage and time to generate the tiles
• OpenStreetMap is 54 TB of storage
• Accepted wisdom: only render tiles on demand
• Render servers are slow, costly and stressful
• Pre-rendered tiles are fast, cheap and reliable
• The MBTiles format can store redundancy efficiently
• Tile storage
  • 17.2 billion tiles
  • Open ocean is 60% of World tiles, and it's a single blue tile
  • Solid land tiles are also redundant
  • 4 layers compositing
  • Human tiles is only about 1% of tiles
  • Instead of 10 TB, with removing the redundant tiles, it's 200 GB
• And for time
  • TileMill does all the tiles... With TileMill master, children skipping if redundant, pyramid approach... It mostly works at the moment
  • Instead of 200 days, it needs 4 days
• Still quite a lot of fine tuning to do
• This makes the whole World tile rendering possible

Panel Discussion on Gaps and Voids in open source geo technology

• User interfaces and user experience (UI and UX)
• We need to spend efforts to design interfaces
• Command line is powerful, but you lose plenty of potential users
• Goal is to engage non technical users
• User workflow
• Beyond the UI, there's the documentation too
• Who's the target customer of the software

• Innovation might not come from geoprofessionals if we aren't careful and think out of the box
• There's still not enough geoprofessionals for the industry needs
• It's about value and enabling users
• Investing in FOSS is like investing in fundamental science, it often pays off tremendously on the long term
• Cost of forking software is high and the value of a community is high
• Chose the open license that suits the context

• FOSS4G business models
• API vs download ? The answer is both
• Datasets don't tell you what's wrong with them... they should
• We still can't easily ask what-ifs questions with GIS... such as 'Whats the impact of changing this value or this other value'
• Need more cross projects collaboration

Schaub - OpenLayers: the rebirth of cool

• Moving to Github dramatically increased commits and contributors
• Talk focused on what's new 2.11 and upcoming 2.12
• Mobile devices support, this is major
• Html5 and CSS, tile transitions
• Many new keyboard controls via CSS
• Offline tile cache
• Canvas rendering
• UTFGrid interaction
• Continuous zooming

• Ongoing stuff and ideas for the future
• Improved UI/UX, including CSS styling
• Improved APIs
• Animations performance optimizations
• Tile queues with abortable tile requests
• Usability improvements, including documentation
• Custom built library for specific purposes
• Ongoing discussions about WebGL and Canvas 2D

Wadsworth - Raster Storage and Processing with MongoDB

• JSON
• NoSQL, no joins
• Integrated spatial indexing functionality
• Fast, "web scale"
• Mongo huMongous
• Alternatives, CouchDB/ GeoCouch,
• Their company were already into Ruby / Jruby
• Points associated to raster
• Slap: source, lookup, algorithm, process
• Parallel with celluloid on github

El capítulo hispanohablante comenzará a tener reuniones generales a las que están invitados a participar todos los miembros.

La idea es que todos puedan opinar y exponer sus ideas para mejorar el capítulo y agrandar la comunidad.

En principio, las reuniones serían mensuales y se llevarían a cabo el último lunes de cada mes.

El objetivo de estas reuniones es lograr mejor integración y más compromiso entre las miembros del capítulo.

 

La primera reunión sería el lunes 26 de marzo y el horario es de 18.00 a 19.00 UTC/GMT+0. 

El lugar de encuentro será el canal IRC del capítulo.

 

Primer reunión: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Reuni%C3%B3n_General_-_2012-03-26

Canal IRC: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Cap%C3%ADtulo_Local_de_la_comunidad_hispano-hablante#IRC

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode. My challenge in life is to find out what not to do - too much enthusiasm impacts focus. But don't worry, I'm not dropping Slashgeo just yet ;-)

From the open source and open data front:

• Here's an open source Kinect hack named Depthcam, doing live streaming of 3D points cloud via your webcam
• Via Simon, I was reminded about Graphserver, an open source multi-modal trip planner (we mentioned Graphserver in early 2009), on the same topic, here's OSM Explorer, for basic routing and spatial functions using OSM data on Windows (via OGD)
• MapQuest updated their OpenStreetMap tiles and mentions more OSM switchovers, such as FourSquare and in another entry, they updated MapQuest for Android
• Here's an entry on light styles for OSM layers in QGIS, making OSM great as a base map
• Quebec City is the latest city to open its data, with layers in shapefiles and kml, and here's an entry on Honolulu opening its data
• The OSGeo-Live DVD version 5.5 is now ready

From the Google front:

• Street View on Google Maps now available for Russia
• The GEB introduces Diorama, a presentation tool for Google Earth, helping you tell a story in Google Earth
• The same blog also look a the Power of Ten, the Google Earth version
• Google explains the enhanced search in Google Earth 6.2
• Here's an entry on the iNaturalist app and website using georeferenced pictures to document nature
• The GEB wonders if historical imagery is coming to Street View?
• And yes, there was fresh imagery released about two weeks ago and another round today

From the Esri front:

• Here's why ArcGIS 10.1 will be the “Biggest Release Ever”
• Here's Esri’s Federal GIS Conference Wrap Up
• Here's the recommended System Requirements For ArcGIS 10/10.1
• Mandown also shares an entry named Using ArcGIS.com For Quick Visualisation Of GPX Files

From the Microsoft front:

• Microsoft announced the Bing Maps and Nokia Release of a Unified Map Design

In the miscellaneous category:

• DM asks an interesting question, Should All GIS Users Learn to Code?
• While not all are geo-aware, this is an awesome categorized list of infographic tools and resources, because beauty matters when conveying information (via Thierry)
• The book "How Maps Change Things: A Conversation About the Maps We Choose and the World We Want" by Ward Kaiser is free in pdf for this month
• We previously mentioned that the world time zones database was in jeopardy, well, it's not anymore, EFF Wins Protection For Time Zone Database
• Here's an entry on OGC mobile case studies
• Here's a Product Review of BusinessWebMap by TexMobile
• Slashdot mentions the link between GPS navigation and in-car voice commands in Siri To Power Mercedes-Benz Car Systems
• APB informs us that DigitalGlobe published an image of damage to Homs, Syria

In the maps category:

• APB shares the map of sleep in the U.S.
• Slashdot discussed a story named LIDAR Map Shows Height of Earth's Forests
• Another story from the same source is named Need To Find a Hackerspace In Africa? Check This Map
• If your into astronomy, check this TMR entry on Moon maps
• Mapperz mentions Bristol's solar power hotspots map

GRASS GIS 6.4.2 released

19 February 2012

http://grass.osgeo.org

We are pleased to announce the release of a new stable version of GRASS GIS. This release fixes bugs discovered in version 6.4.1 of the program and adds a number of new features. This release includes over 760 updates to the source code since 6.4.1. As a stable release series, the 6.4 line will enjoy long-term support and incremental enhancements while preserving backwards-compatibility with the entire GRASS 6 line.

The new wxPython graphical user interface (wxGUI) has been updated with many new features and tools. Python is now a fully supported scripting language, including an updated Python toolkit to simplify the authoring of personal scripts, support for NumPy based array calculations, and a Python application interface for the GRASS C libraries. Additionally, MS-Windows support continues to mature.  GRASS 6.4.2 debuts ten new modules, a new GUI cartographic composer tool, a new GUI object-oriented modeling environment, and improved infrastructure for installing community supplied add-on modules.

Read the full story at
  http://grass.osgeo.org/announces/announce_grass642.html

About GRASS GIS

The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System, commonly referred to as GRASS, is an Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) and geospatial analysis toolkit. For nearly three decades, GRASS has provided powerful raster, vector, and geospatial processing engines in a single integrated software suite. GRASS includes tools for spatial modeling of raster and vector data, visualization, the management and analysis of geospatial information, and the processing of satellite and aerial imagery. It also provides the capability to produce sophisticated presentation graphics and publication-quality hardcopy maps. GRASS has now been translated into twenty languages and supports an extensive array of data formats. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

GRASS differs from many other GIS software packages used in the academic and professional worlds in that it is developed and distributed by users for users, mostly on a volunteer basis. Its code and spatial processing algorithms are open and transparent, and the software is distributed free of charge. The source code is also freely available, allowing for immediate customization, examination of the underlying algorithms, the addition of new features, and faster identification and patching of bugs.

For those who don't read our geospatial press releases feed, you might be interested in learning about the first FOSS4G - North America conference to be held in Washington DC in April 10-12, 2012. We mentioned in 2009 the possibility of a North American-specific FOSS4G conference to be organized by the OSGeo, it now has become reality.

From the press release: "In light of the success of last September’s international FOSS4G conference in Denver, Colorado, the newly-formed North America chapter of OSGeo, a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data,  seized upon the opportunity to organize a regional follow-up conference focusing on the North American open source geospatial community. “2011’s event showed us that there is great interest in the region to continue the conversation and strengthen the network of individuals and organizations working the open source geospatial field,” said Paul Ramsey,  accomplished geospatial software developer and FOSS4G- NA 2012 conference chair."

Here's the recent open source / open data geonews covering the last two weeks.

• The OSGeo and the International Cartographic Association (ICA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding
• This Dr JTS entry mentions MapQuest's Open Elevation Service, that we never mentioned before - unrelated, Dr JTS aka Martin Davis, just got hired by OpenGeo 
• OpenStreetMap for Denmark is now 97.2% complete, yes, crowdsourcing and open data can succeed, but the servers does cost money, hence the new OSM Tile usage policy
• Here's an entry on expression-based labeling now in QGIS and the new expression builder, another one on QGIS Topological Editing and we even got a new QGIS Plugin Builder
• R algorithms can now be called from SEXTANTE

Here's the recent open source geospatial news in batch mode, which includes everything about FOSS4G 2011 on the geoblogs that we haven't mentioned yet.

On the FOSS4G 2011 Conference front:

• Interesting numbers, "By 2011 there are now 19,471 unique subscribers to OSGeo, more than 400 mailing lists, and more than 15 million lines of code, with 740 contributors, and 269 that have contributed for more than 12 months."
• Slashgeo editor Nicolas summarized Brian Timoney's excellent talk at FOSS4G 2011, and if you want to hear it yourself, here is that 14-minutes impassioned talk on the state of the geospatial industry, Brian demonstrate how much better we could do
• Here's the slides of Paul Ramsey's keynote
• Here's Jody Garnett's updated slides on the WPS Shootout
• Here's the entry to read about Open Source and Open Data at the U.K. Ordnance Survey
• If you haven't read too much about it already, here's an entry on the case study of the U.S. FCC National Broadband Map based on open source geospatial software
• Here's the what's coming to PostGIS 2.0 slides [pdf]
• I heard comments that 30-minutes talks at FOSS4G 2011 was too short for the presenters to dive into their subjects, would you agree? If you're interested in what could be improved see this recap of FOSS4G 2011 by OSGeo's president
• Here's Directions Mag complete wrap up of the conference

In other news:

• I was surprised to read that Tyler Mitchell won't be the OSGeo Executive Director anymore
• GWT-OpenLayers version 0.6 has been released, that's the wrapper library for using OpenLayers in Google Web Toolkit applications
• MapFish is now an official OSGeo project
• This entry reminds us of the comprehensive list of web mapping toolkits (there's too much of them!)
• SS mentioned GrassrootsMapping.org, which is a crowdsourcing aerial image project with goals similar to OpenAerialMap.org

Version 5.0 of the OSGeo-Live GIS software collection has been released. OSGeo-Live is a self-contained bootable DVD, USB flash drive and Virtual Machine based upon Ubuntu Linux that is pre-configured with a wide variety of robust open source geospatial software. The applications can be trialled without installing anything on your computer, simply by booting the computer from the DVD or USB drive. A DVD or USB of OSGeo-Live is being distributed to every delegate at the upcoming international conference for Free and Open Source Software, http://2011.foss4g.org.

Homepage: http://live.osgeo.org

Highlights:

• 47 Quality GeoSpatial Open Source applications installed and pre-configured
• Quality free world maps
• One page overviews and quick starts for all applications
• Overviews of key OGC standards
• Translations for Greek, German, Polish, Spanish and Japanese

The full scoope - including what packages are included, is listed here: http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com/2011/09/osgeo-live-50-released-open-source.html