In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

Frisco, TX – ThinkGeo has released version 5.5 of Map Suite, its full line of GIS software components for .NET developers.  This major milestone refresh introduces two important new features: a robust map printing and page layout system, and support for generating visually stunning contour lines (also known as isolines).  A wide variety of bug fixes and stability improvements round out the 5.5 release of Map Suite.

With Map Suite’s new printing system, .NET software developers can use the Map Suite GIS controls and components to add robust map printing capabilities to their GIS applications.  Map Suite 5.5’s new PrinterLayer can programmatically prepare and print attractive page layouts containing not only high-resolution maps, but also images, labels and titles, scale bars and lines, north arrows and data grids.  In addition, Map Suite Desktop and WPF Desktop Editions have the added bonus of the PrinterInteractiveOverlay, which allows the end user to assemble their own custom page layout using a graphical user interface.  Either way, the end product can either be printed, exported to a PDF document or a raster image file.

Contour lines (also known as isolines) are also new to Map Suite 5.5 and offer a compelling way to visualize breaks between different groups of data – such as elevation levels, soil properties and much more.  All editions of Map Suite now have the ability to generate contour line maps either dynamically or via a set of input data.

Both the new printing and contour line features are supplemented with sample code available on the ThinkGeo Wiki (http://wiki.thinkgeo.com) and 30-minute instructional videos narrated by David Rehagen, Map Suite’s Chief Architect.

Other noteworthy enhancements in the Map Suite 5.5 release include a high-performance rewrite of the Bing™ Maps overlay (which also now includes support for Bing Maps Enterprise Keys), the ability to download tiles from a WMS layer simultaneously instead of serially in Map Suite Web Edition, an update to the latest address data in Map Suite Geocoder, and an overhauled routing API for improved performance in the Map Suite Routing Extension.  Beyond that, a variety of bug fixes and stability improvements have been added throughout the Map Suite GIS product range.  Complete change logs are available at the ThinkGeo Wiki (http://wiki.thinkgeo.com), the company’s official online source for Map Suite documentation, reference and learning material.  The 5.5 update includes new builds of all of Map Suite’s major editions, including Desktop, Web, Silverlight, WPF Desktop, Services and WMS Server Editions, as well as the Map Suite Geocoder, World Map Kit and other Map Suite extensions.

ThinkGeo has also announced plans to release special “daily builds” of each Map Suite product in the coming weeks, which will introduce several new features that did not make it into the final Map Suite 5.5 release.  Developers will be able to test these new capabilities, which include memory usage and drawing speed improvements, support for the latest versions of MrSid and ECW files, and XML serialization for storing layers, styles and much more across different Map Suite versions.

ThinkGeo’s biannual release plan puts them on track to unveil the next major milestone of Map Suite, version 6.0, in May of 2012.  GIS professionals who wish to request specific features or enhancements for the next revision of Map Suite are encouraged to visit ThinkGeo’s Enhancement Tracker at http://helpdesk.thinkgeo.com/EnhancementTracker, where they can vote on their favorite enhancement ideas and suggest new ones directly to Map Suite’s development team.

For more information about Map Suite, or to download a free 60-day evaluation of any Map Suite 5.5 product, visit ThinkGeo’s website at http://gis.thinkgeo.com.  New users and existing users alike can discuss and get help with their Map Suite applications at ThinkGeo’s official Discussion Forums at http://gis.thinkgeo.com/forums.

ThinkGeo is an industry leader in GIS mapping components and customizable GPS tracking solutions.  The company offers a wide variety of high-quality geospatial products for software development, asset tracking and much more.  They have clients from a wide base of industries ranging from agriculture to aerospace.  For more information about ThinkGeo products or professional services, visit www.thinkgeo.com or contact a ThinkGeo sales representative at sales@thinkgeo.com or (866) 847-7510.

MapQuest introduced MapQuest Vibe in beta: "Today, we’re launching MapQuest Vibe, which is your shortcut to becoming a local, anywhere.  This early beta cuts through the clutter of ratings, lists and pins on a map, by giving you actual rankings of places based on key criteria within a local neighborhood context. [...] The “local knowledge” is generated with a new patented algorithm called VibeRank.  This blended social-algorithmic formula takes several implicit signals (like searches on MapQuest and cartographic data), creates a baseline ranking and then layers on explicit social signals from the new Vibe pages. Based on this algorithm, MapQuest Vibe profiles more than 50,000 neighborhoods, 27,000 cities and 50,000 hotspots in the U.S., reaching 98 percent of the population."

MapQuest Vibe presents neighborhoods from a different angle than other mapping sites and it's integrated with Facebook. Directions Mag offers a round up of early MapQuest Vibe reviews. In other recent MapQuest news, they now have a map widget for GoDaddy-hosted websites.

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode. Some of those news seem important enough to deserve their own entries, but I dare share them in a single one. Yes, that's another unusually long post. Normal posting frequency should resume next February!

From the open source / open data front:

• SS shares an entry named MIT Releases Smartphone Data Tracking Tools as Open Source Software, it's called Funf
• There's now an OpenStreetMap Inspector, a quality evaluation service to help improve OSM data
• Here's a short entry on using OpenStreetMap data, tidbit: the entire database is 250GB
• Here's an entry on generating contours using GDAL (via shell or QGIS)
• Paul explains Indexed Nearest Neighbour Search in PostGIS
• Here's the FOSS4G 2011 WMS Performance Shootout 2011 slides, and I haven't shared this yet, James Fee's Guide to what was important at FOSS4G 2011

From the Esri front:

• Mandown reports that Esri updated their deprecation plans for ArcGIS 10 and 10.1
• SS indicates Esri Releases a Map Story on Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions

From the Google front:

• Finally, single-language labels made their way to Google Maps, that's making it much less confusing
• Here's in simple words why Google offers Google Maps / Earth
• Ogle Earth shares an entry on using Google Earth to hunt illegal mining in Goa, India

From the Microsoft front:

• Bing Maps added detailed airport maps, 42 U.S. airports so far 

In the miscellaneous category:

• SS reports that TomTom Launched a Geospatial Platform with Oracle: "The service will offer geocoding, vehicle routing and mapping information, all hosted on Oracle’s 11g database."
• V1 writes about INTERGEO, the German geospatial conference that attracted 17,000 attendees, making it one of the largest geoconferences in the world (the largest?)
• James Fee linked to the U.S. and Canadian top 10 largest cities GIS web maps
• We mentioned it before, but here's another article on the completion of the ERS satellite missions after 20 years
• O'Reilly shares an entry named Why indoor navigation is so hard and another entry on the state and future of local news
• If you have interest in the GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification), here's data model diagrams
• MapQuest launched a Mobile Flash Maps API
• VerySpatial mentioned the National Geographic Challenge game for the PS3, XBox360 and Wii
• On a more serious topic, VS shares an entry on The Geography of the Death Penalty

Slashdot discussed a few geospatial-related stories:

• Don't you wish you were a student again, Put On Your 3D Glasses — Class Is About To Start
• Not the first time we hear such news (from any OS phone), HTC Android Backdoor Leaks Private User Data, including GPS locations
• US Military Seeks Non-Cooperative Biometric Tracking Technology
• A story named California Governor Vetoes Ban On Warrantless Phone Searches, including GPS logs
• An on the same theme, a Senator Goes After 'Brazen' OnStar Privacy Shift
• With a search, you'll find plenty of similar stories, German Researchers Crack Mifare RFID Encryption, in other words, RFID can be of great use, but can't be considered secure 
• There's also a story about using stereo-vision mapping to visualize the oldest submerged city

In the maps category:

• TMR shares a few map books for Fall 2011
• Here's the first global map of ocean salinity
• Here's the Japanese tsunami mapped in detail for the first time

In the coming days, I'll be at Géomatique 2011, the major geospatial event in the province of Québec. Slashgeo is a media partner of the event.

A year after version 2.10, the popular open source web map frontend OpenLayers 2.11 has been released.

The highlights: "This release is a big one, closing over 380 outstanding tickets and providing significant performance improvements. The biggest win is the mobile support enhancements. OpenLayers now allows features to be dragged and zoomed with touch gestures on mobile devices. Handlers for pinching and zooming have also been added to the library. Other key highlights are the plethora of performance enhancements and the additional support for accessing Bing Maps tiles."

You can learn the details in the 2.11 release notes.

Here is a press release from the geOps website :

geOps releases the source code of OpenLayers Editor under a FreeBSD license. OpenLayers Editor offers a toolbar for precise and efficient editing of geodata in the browser.

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OpenLayers Editor is an easy to use JavaScript library that brings geodata digitizing functions to the browser. Besides basic capturing of point, line and polygon data, OpenLayers Editor supports the upload of shape files, snapping, merging, splitting and validation of geometries.

Fort Collins, Colo. — August 17, 2011 — Mapbiquity.com and Manastash Mapping announced a partnership that makes simple, cost-effective web mapping available to more organizations. Although easy to use, Mapbiquity requires a small amount of technical knowledge to prepare data and publish a web map. The new services provided by Manastash Mapping eliminate that need by helping clients generate and manage their own location-based data, configuring the data in Mapbiquity, and publishing maps on the client’s web site.

“Mapbiquity’s original goals were to help small organizations benefit from their location-based data by making it easier to put maps on their web pages”, says Kris Peterson, Founder and Owner of Mapbiquity. Kris continues, “This partnership allows us to reach out and help even more of those organizations.”

About Mapbiquity

Mapbiquity LLC was founded in 2010 with the goals of bringing web mapping to more organizations and making it easy to create elegant maps for the Web. Mapbiquity is found on the Web at www.mapbiquity.com and on Twitter at @mapbiquity.

About Manastash Mapping

Manastash Mapping was founded in 2009 to provide quality, affordable mapping and geographic analysis to community organizations, non-profits, and local governments. Manastash Mapping is found on the Web at www.manastashmapping.com.

The GeoServer team is happy to announce the release of GeoServer 2.1.1.  This release is primarily a bug fixing release, with patches and enhancements submitted from many users.  The GeoServer development team would like to thank the contributors for their development efforts, the users for their feedback and the companies the provided sponsorship to implement new features and bug fixes.  In particular, we would like to thank the following contributors whose patches have been included in this release:

• Rudi Hochmeister for improvements to our logging configuration and documentation.
• Gianna Barrotta, Andrea Di Nora and Pietro Arena for the addition of three new WPS processes.
• Robert Coup for efforts to bring KML and GeoRSS formats in line with normal URL-assembling practises.
• Matt Bertrand for adding character set support for to uploads.

Thanks also go to LISAsoft for sponsoring this release.

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The GeoServer Team

ThinkGeo has updated all of the products in their Map Suite line this month to version 5.0 and has included a variety of new features, many of which are aimed at making their GIS software suite compatible with a wider range of data types, including TAB and projection metadata (PRJ). There's also built-in support for Bing Maps in every product, and the Map Suite Web Edition product gets upgraded to OpenLayers 2.10 and Google Maps API version 3. The full release details have been posted on ThinkGeo's developer blog.

The company has also invited the community to submit and vote on suggestions for enhancements to future releases of Map Suite, for which they have set up a site called the ThinkGeo Enhancement Tracker. You don't have to log in or anything, so it's easy to head over there and vote on stuff you think Map Suite needs.

MapServer 6.0 has been officially released.  It brings a number of improvements and enhancements, outlined in the official release announcement.

Notable improvements include the implemntation of single-pass queries, and an overhaul to the rendering API and espression parser.  Some of the new features that look pertty interesting include OpenGL rendering support, KML output, combining mupltiple layers, and clustering points.

The changes do require careful migration, so be sure to refer to the 6.0 migration guide.

[Editor's note: MapServer, in addition to being open source, is one of the oldest, most stable and efficient existing web mapping server, having won most FOSS4G benchmark shootouts so far, well, at least in 2009 and 2010 ;-)]

One of the most popular and mature open source web mapping server just got better, GeoServer 2.1.0 has been released.

From the announcement: "The release of a new major version update is a big deal (the last one was 18 months ago), and while we’ve talked about all of the new features that have been incrementally showing up, let’s put them all together here in one place:"

• WMS Cascading
• Virtual Services
• Layers from SQL
• Web Processing Service (WPS)
• Unit of Measure
• DPI Scaling
• Graphical File/Directory Chooser
• Core improvements to support a database-backed catalog
• Font Improvements
• Upgrade to Spring Security 2.0.6
• WCS Limits
• WMS 1.3.0
• SLD 1.1 / SE 1.1 enhancements
• GeoWebCache Integration
• Improvements to RESTConfig
• Improved Raster Reprojection Performance
• WCS Request Builder
• Run multiple GeoServer instances from a single data directory
• Tons of bug fixes

I just copied the paragraph titles. Please head to the announcement entry to learn more about all of these new features.