slashgeo.org

Welcome to the new Slashgeo! The migration appears to have mostly worked as planned. Expect a few things to be broken, if you find any, please let us know!

• Let me remind you one last time: users that were receiving the geonews by email will need to register again to the new newsletter - the box to subscribe is found top-right of the site
• The new site automatically morphs for tablets and phones
• A much nicer daily newsletter
• Better integration with social media… soon!
• I haven’t enabled all new features yet, it’s an iterative process and I suspect it’s going to take me a few months to fine tune the new site

In short: nicer and more flexible site with many new features for all of us, along with easier administration for our small team of maintainers. If you find bugs or have improvements requests, just let us know! As always, everyone is welcomed to submit geospatial news and geospatial-related press releases.

The short-term priority is now to catch up geonews for the month of June! As you’re accustomed to on Slashgeo, while we do not publish geospatial news as soon as they happen, we manually aggregate and filter the most pertinent geonews for the community - you might get your news ‘late’, but you won’t miss anything significant.

I hope this new site will help ensure Slashgeo’s long term viability to the enjoyment of our users! Cheers — Alex for Slashgeo

ACTION REQUIRED FOR NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIBERS: this is the last email you'll get from this incarnation of the Slashgeo website. You'll need to subscribe to the new newsletter once available, which should be before the end of June.

Why? We're migrating Slashgeo to a new backend which will provide several benefits, including (A) a site that works well with tablets and phones, (B) better integration with social media, (C) a cleaner and nicer daily newsletter, and lots more for users and our volunteer editors to ensure a sustainable future to Slashgeo!

Most content will migrated to the new site. But we voluntarily won't migrate current users. Yeah, we'll certainly lose several of you in the process, but since you really like our geonews aggregation service, you'll subscribe to the new site right?

Stay tuned.. and visit the site back in a few weeks! — Alex for Slashgeo

Packt Publishing and Slashgeo are happy to announce the 10 winners of the 'Give Away Contest - Grab a chance to win a free ArcGIS Book eCopy!'. Winners were chosen amongst participants over Slashgeo, and the GIS and ArcGIS Server groups on LinkedIn. Congratulations to winners!

The prizes were a free digital copy of "Building Web and Mobile ArcGIS Server Applications with JavaScript"  written by Eric Pimpler.

AtomJump is today announcing a new alternative to the encumbent 3D Earth mapping tools available.  Built in pure Javascript, this Earth software and API allows publication of 3D Earth maps on apps or websites. The maps run on virtually any device or website (right back to IE7 on the desktop, and up to iPad/iPhones and Android browsers), without needing any software to be downloaded.

Currently the service is only available for globe-level mapping, however a zoom capability is in the works.

In this release, AtomJump have added the ability to import a spreadsheet with points of interest for an instant map, and functionality to view GeoJSON and KML files from a server.  Further enhancements include individually specified map icons, bringing the flexibility of Javascript 2D web mapping into 3D mapping.

AtomJump host the maps on Amazon servers, and users of the API can make use of an allocated 10GB of free map data downloads per month for their own map.

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode.

From the open source and open data front:

• Rezoning permits are #1, Open Data Summit Top 10 Most Wanted Municipal Datasets
• New open source tool, batyr: On-demand synchronization of vector data to a PostGIS database
• QGIS improvements the QGIS Field calculator is dead. Long live the Field calculator bar
• Something many end up doing, and here's a guide to do it, A guide to the rasterization of vector coverages in PostGIS
• An extension in development to make OpenLayers more powerful, CAD-like Feature Construction with the OpenLayers Editor
• Open data is everywhere, and any time! OpenHistoricalMap is a project designed to store and display map data throughout the history of the world
• GeoAwesome asks Should navigation companies move to OpenStreetMap like Telenav?
• Is a new website newsworthy? The new GeoServer website is certainly a nice improvement
• Getting closer to version 1.0, here's another summary of GeoGit - Distributed geospatial data versioning based on Git
• Geoff also shares a summary on the state of Canada's open geospatial data initiative
• On the American side, the NED DEM dataset will be replaced by 3DEP - 3D Elevation Program, offering always higher spatial resolution

From the Google front:

• Google provides an update on transit directions in Google Maps, including all transit routes in Great Britain and host cities in Brazil, real-time updates for Vancouver and Chicago, and more, also mentioning that transit is available in "64 countries and more than 15,000 towns and cities worldwide"
• At the beginning of the month, new Google Map apps added several new features, including Uber integration and an offline button for iOS
• The GEB shares Tips to make Google Earth appear more realistic and the screenshot is convincing and here's How the Google Earth cache works
• If you don't already know what those geometric structures are on the sea floor, Did Google Earth discover an underwater alien base?
• Want to understand El Nino? Everything about the El Nino Zone in Google Earth
• We told you about Project Tango already, Slashdot discusses Google Rumored To Be Making 3D-Scanning Tablets
• One article I missed published last month, in forestry, Google Earth Engine Brings Big Data to Environmental Activism
• And yes, here's the list of locations for this month's new Google Earth imagery

In the everything-else category:

• GeoJSON now an official media type registered with the IANA (IANA on Wikipedia)
• Over the Spatial Law site, an entry named White House Big Data and Privacy Report: Wake Up Call for Geospatial Community?
• At the research stage, ‘Quantum Compass’: Navigation technology that might replace GPS, this is also discussed over Slashdot
• Numbers to say it's worth, contribution of Geospatial Industry to Irish Economy in: E69.3m
• Interesting to see what is considered the Big 5 of geospatial: future cities, open geospatial, BIM, big data and policy, it's a series of events planned for next Fall
• Another free online course, Simon Fraser Professor Introduces GIS MOOC
• A short reminder of the potential of Augmented Reality and Geospatial Technology
• It's happening, Volvo Testing Autonomous Cars On Public Roads
• Privacy, US Police Departments Using Car Tracking Database Sworn To Secrecy
• But there's useful uses to tracking? Robbery Suspect Tracked By GPS and Killed
• Creating 'Swarm', Foursquare Splits To Take On Yelp
• Deeply into remote sensing? A new eNewsletter from the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society
• The Proba-V mini-satellite, Views of Earth From Europe’s New Plant-Mapping Minisatellite
• I remember discussions about this 12 years ago, Canada might get its hyperspectral spaceborne mission, related press release
• Real-time tracking map of whales around Hawaii

In the maps category:

• Nice moon remote sensing, Help NASA Choose the Most Beautiful Lunar Image
• Less nice is ESA's Cryosat Mission Sees Antarctic Ice Losses Double
• Not useful, but there's something I like about the Worlds Capitals Voronoi map and why not, a Voronoi map of the world divided by airports
• A map according to languages, named by The Economist as The world according to Putin
• One of my favorite topics, Interactive map shows global economical inequality
• Let's end with funny maps, Slicing Europe with 20 stereotypes