Here’s the recent geonews in batch mode.

On the open source / open data front:

• Registration is open for the FOSS4G-Europe conference in Como, Italy, July 14-17
• Anyone can now register to the FOSS4G in Seoul September 14-19
• The OSGeo and the ISPRS signed a MoU
• You can sign the Open Letter of the Need for Open Standards in LiDAR, open formats being threatened by Esri’s new proprietary LiDAR format, this story was also discussed over Slashdot and while Esri provided a response, it has not been judged satisfactory
• Related to LiDAR too, US NAVY Sonar/Lidar Editing Software Released To the World
• Slashdot discusses Getting Started Developing With OpenStreetMap Data
• A summary of Progress on open U.S. addresses
• New open source software, JAI-Ext, the Open Source replacement for Oracle JAI, JAI stands for Java Advanced Imaging: “The main feature of JAI is the ability to process image using deferred execution and tiling, which provide high performances when elaborating input data”
• While Stanford University launched EarthWorks to search for geospatial data worldwide with the open source GeoBlacklight, people I talked to about it were not enthusiastic considering it’s not as standards-driven as other existing tools
• We mentioned the Kickstarted and now it’s going to be part of QGIS 2.10, Introducing QGIS live layer effects!
• A book Review: Building Mapping Applications with QGIS
• A free gvSIG course, MOOC Cycle “GIS for Users”
• Useful, A How-To Guide For Exploring 3D Buildings in Cesium
• In recent releases, GeoServer 2.6.3 released, GeoTools 12.3 released, and PostGIS 2.0.7 & 2.1.7 Released

On the Esri front:

• Esri offers a series on Getting to know Esri Maps for Office 3.0: Part 1 and Part 2, here’s the initial announcement Esri Maps for Office 3.0 is now available
• Living Atlas news, Introduction to the Living Atlas Community and the Living Atlas Contributor App

On the Google front:

• The old version of Google Maps won’t be available anymore
• New Street View content in South Africa
• Informative, Understanding Google’s Imagery Updates map part 3: 3D imagery
• A developer entry on Interactive Data Layers in the JavaScript Maps API
• Location of the sun and the moon, anywhere, Sun Surveyor brings augmented reality to photographers using Google Maps APIs
• Affects Google Maps everywhere, Japanese Court Orders Google To Remove Negative Reviews From Google Maps
• I’ve seen it! Myth or monster? Explore Loch Ness with Street View
• Changes from Google retiring the old community and supporting The New Google Earth Community

Discussed over Slashdot:

• In the UK, Ordnance Survey Releases Mapping Tools
• Thanks in part to geospatial sensors, The Car That Knows When You’ll Get In an Accident Before You Do
• An interesting high-level analysis of autonomous cars, going from human centric to centralized geospatial AI, Autonomous Cars and the Centralization of Driving and on the same topic, it started 20 years ago, Back To the Future: Autonomous Driving In 1995 and even Uber is at it now Uber’s Hiring Plans Show Outlines of Self-Driving Car Project and so are others Hyundai To Release “Semi-Autonomous” Car This Year and if really you want to read more, A Robo-Car Just Drove Across the Country
• Crowdsourcing at work, How Flight Tracking Works: a Global Network of Volunteers
• Google to provide risk maps and early warning from the Google Earth Engine platform and Microsoft to provide drones, Obama Says Climate Change Is Harming Americans’ Health
• Snap a picture of a thing and 3D-print it, Smartphone-Enabled Replicators Are 3-5 Years Away, Caltech Professor Says
• It’s coming, Tiny LIDAR Chip Could Add Cheap 3D Sensing to Cellphones and Tablets
• And it’s going to be fun, Google, Developers Demo Impressive Gaming and VR Apps For Project Tango Tablet
• But don’t forget climate change, The World Lost an Oklahoma-Sized Area of Forest In, Satellite Data Show
• Wish I could do that, Cetaceans Able To Focus Sound For Echolocation

In the everything else category:

• Here’s the official video on how to use maps with the Apple Watch, nothing spectacular, but expect more geoapps on smartwatches in the future, also on Apple Maps, Apple Maps Now Includes Hotel Reviews From TripAdvisor and Booking
• If you did not know already, How to set up location-based reminder on iPhone?
• Can’t be easier? Now you can Google where is your lost Android phone
• Interesting to some of us, Using WMS Time to explore your data
• Remote sensing satellites becoming more affordable, Build Your Own Satellite For Less Than $30K
• A conference we never mentioned before, GeoAdvances In Kuala Lumpur October 28-30
• Geospatial matters, Geospatial contributes $21 billion to the Canadian GDP
• Free remote sensing data, SPOT and Pleiades data available for research and application development
• Internet of Things, O’Reilly offers an informative article on What are iBeacons?
• GeoA offers an article on Maplim – The Easiest Way to Collaborate on a Map
• A recurrent topic, DHS Wants Access To License-plate Tracking System, Again
• You want to monitor your child? FamilyTime App Review – One Of The Best Parental Control Apps With Advanced Geofencing

In the maps category:

• Geopolitical maps are not descriptive, they’re prescriptive, The Flawed Standard Model of Geopolitics and the accompanying entry Final Maps on “Geopolitical Anomalies”
• From the same source, Attempts to Map Latin America’s Political Spectrum
• A potentially interesting book, Weaponizing Maps by Denis Wood and Joe Bryan, ‘map or be mapped’
• I’m not certain that’s a funny point of view, there’s more Arctic sea ice in this new Canada map
• The same source also shares New Moon Maps and Space Maps: Ceres, Mars, Exoplanets
• Maps of How Diseases Spread worldwide
• Are they around you? Every UFO sighting since 1933 mapped
• xkcd map of US locations based on movie backgrounds
• And yes again, the Mercator projection is messing with our perception of the world, After this video you’ll never trust a map again