We just released Geopaparazzi 3.3.0 in the market. There are a couple of small enhancements and a feature we think most people will like.

• sketch pad for forms (the feature we think most people will like)
• enhanced forms
• geo-sms are now sent through the system app
• better geocoding ui

The most important feature for this release is for sure the sketch pad, that allows user to draw their notes out in the field.

Please allow the recent silence, busy week, I should be able to catchup next one. Here's the recent Google-related geonews.

Regarding Google and Apple Maps:

• MacRumors claimed that Apple's Split with Google Over iOS Maps Driven by Turn-by-Turn Navigation Dispute, that Google's Work Toward Standalone iOS Maps App Complicated by Integration with Google Earth and apparently, Apple Reportedly Had Over a Year Left on Maps Contract with Google
• Slashdot discussed Apple Reportedly Luring Ex-Google Mappers With Jobs

From official sources:

• Google Maps now offers underwater imagery, a topic discussed by Slashdot in Google Captures 'Street View' of Underwater Habitats
• Street View reaches other new places, introducing Imagery of Chile and Croatia on Google Maps, and Andorra too
• Google Maps for Android has been updated, and you get all your Google Maps searches in one place
• Live Road Traffic Launches in 3 New Countries, in three new cities: Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Kuwait City, Kuwait and Guayaquil, Ecuador
• Your can now explore the great indoors of France with Google Maps for Android

From other sources:

• Slashdot discussed California Legalizes Self Driving Cars, and to my knowledge, Google is leading the way the car's future
• Here's Geoception, a new Google Earth-based game: "In a nutshell, you command and control a fleet of combat drones to provide local and regional security, eventually taking over the whole world."
• The GEB also offers an entry named Cambodians fighting malaria with SMS and Google Earth
• And yes, there was another imagery update

A new version of Geopaparazzi is out in the market: 3.2.0 (or at least it should be soon, lately google play takes some time to get in sync)

The list of news is quite nice:

• huge enhancement of forms with support for multiple tabs, fragments for tablets, images and map screenshots, date widgets...
• integration of forms with kmz export
• style enhancements on kmz export
• send simple notes and bookmarks info via sms
• geocoding via google services
• osm routing via openrouteservice
• measure tool is back
• opening of geoSMS by geopaparazzi in offline mode
• editing mode for geonotes with forms
• support for rendering themes through style maps for offline maps
• battery level visible in map mode
• gps connection status visible in map mode

Read more about it here.

Here's the recent Google-related geonews. From official sources:

• Google announced the release of My Track 2.0, the open source app on Android to generate GPS/GNSS tracks and share them in Google Maps and Google Earth
• Biking directions in Google Maps expands to several countries in Europe and Australia, a topic also discussed on Slashdot
• In the latest Google Earth for Android (and upcoming for iOS), they included a new tour guide feature for visual trips using the great new 3D imagery they are adding. There is 11,000 tours available covering 110 countries!

• California's National Parks are now available in Street View
• Walking directions made its way in Google Maps for Africa
• In the latest Google Maps for Android, you now get indoor maps of 20 popular museums, added to the 10,000 other indoor maps they already provided
• Related, there's an entry on going indoors at locations across the United Kingdom
• There is new 45° imagery available for 31 cities including 26 cities in the U.S. and 5 international locations
• Google also offers an entry on Map Makerpedia, their community tool for Google Map Maker (but you already know I prefer OpenStreetMap, for openness reasons)

Here's recent Google-related geonews, with some pretty interesting.

• While there's a new uninformative official entry on Project Glass, their augmented reality glasses we mentioned in April, Slashdot provides more information in this entry named More Details On Google Glass, including: "As we mentioned earlier, the developers at I/O have the option to buy the 'Explorer Edition' of Google Glass for $1,500. In addition to the (functional, but unfinished) device itself, they also get access to Google's engineers and to keep up with the devices development. Worry not: when the consumer version of the device is finalized, it will be cheaper, but of course they aren't ready to talk about actual prices yet. As for availability: "Less than a year after we get these Explorer Editions out.""

From official sources:

• A new Google Earth for Android version is out, with new 3D cities imagery, yes, that's the new great city imagery similar to what Apple Maps will provide with iOS 6, and Google will soon provide a new  iOS version of Google Earth too. The other major feature is the 'Tour guide': "We’ve put together short tours of thousands of famous places and historical sites across the globe so it’s easier than ever to discover amazing places." Here's which cities have the new 3D imagery: "Boulder, Boston, Charlotte, Lawrence, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Portland, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Cruz and Tampa in the United States, along with Rome, Italy."
• The Dev blog announced that Public transit routing and layer now are now available in the Google Maps API

• It was announced and it's now reality, you can now Go offline with Google Maps for Android

• And because we need to seriously take care of our home, Planet Earth, Google shares Geo in Rio: Cool Tools for a Warming Planet, and another related official entry is about Crowdsourcing Forest Monitoring
• The official Dev blog shares an entry on symbols and heatmaps for the Google Maps API

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode.

On the open source front:

• Wonder where OpenLayers 3 is heading?
• ImageI/O-Ext 1.1.4 was released
• Here's a short entry on creating hillshades with gdaldem

In the miscellaneous category:

• O'Reilly links to a few interesting stats on mobile maps in the context of Apple Maps vs Google Maps, including "In the US, Google gets about 31 million users a month on its Maps app on iOS. On average those users spend more than 75 minutes apiece in the app each month." and "90% of all iOS users used the Google Maps app at least once during April. Only 71% of Android users used the Google Maps app."
• Slashdot discussed a story named Chuck Schumer Tells Apple and Google To "Curb Your Spy Planes", referring to the new high-resolution imagery coming later this year to Apple Maps and Google Maps

In the maps category:

• TMR shares an entry on fantasy maps, with the book 'Here be dragons' by Stefan Ekman
• Via O'Reilly, I stumbled onto the Art of GPS article which shares beautiful GPS-related visualizations, here's the U.S. electricity network

Today Google announced a few major upcoming features to their map-related products, including much improved 3D models for Google Earth and offline maps for Android.

From APB and the official Google blog :

• On the 3D models: "today we are excited to announce that we will begin adding 3D models to entire metropolitan areas to Google Earth on mobile devices." [...] "[...] advanced automated 3D model creation from imagery. He noted it’s not new, but it far better than what came before. It uses stereo photogrammetry from many well overlapping images. [...] Google is contracting planes to collect the imagery." [...] "By the end of the year we aim to have 3D coverage for metropolitan areas with a combined population of 300 million people."
• On Android offline maps: "So today we’re announcing that offline Google Maps for Android are coming in the next few weeks. Users will be able to take maps offline from more than 100 countries. This means that the next time you are on the subway, or don’t have a data connection, you can still use our maps."
• They also announced Street View Trekker: "There’s a whole wilderness out there that is only accessible by foot. Trekker solves that problem by enabling us to photograph beautiful places such as the Grand Canyon so anyone can explore them. All the equipment fits in this one backpack [...]"
• Map Maker is coming to several new countries (too bad for my hopes of seeing Google move to OpenStreetMap data ;-): "Today we’re announcing the expansion of Map Maker to South Africa and Egypt, and to 10 more countries in the next few weeks: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland."

If you want to see screenshots of the event, CNET has plenty of them.

At last week's 3D GeoInfo conference, I learned about the open source Glob3 3D GIS and Glob3 Mobile 3D virtual globe.

There isn't much on the sourceforge website: "glob3 is an open source 3D GIS multiplatform framework written in java with a very non restrictive license and advanced features." 

​But you'll get more on this page for Glob3 Mobile: "Glob3 Mobile is an open source 3D multiplattform virtual globe engine, running in mobile devices (Android and Apple) and in HTML5 web browsers. In this first version, it allows to connect to any OGC WMS public layer, and show it on the globe. Glob3 Mobile is also a framework for virtual globe development. It allows to write plugins directly in Javascript, and these plugins can run in the three plattforms (Android / Apple / web browsers). The project is currently in development, but first plugin examples can be tested in this site."

The apps for iOS and Android are free.

Catching up geonews, here's the recent Google-related geonews.

From official sources:

• The latest Google Maps 6.7 for Android introduces Google Offers and Indoor walking directions
• We mentioned Speadsheet Mapper in, and now Spreadsheet Mapper 3 is available, in short, "Spreadsheet Mapper is a tool that enables anyone to easily create a well-designed  KML file  to show off their data in Google Earth and Maps"
• The Baltic nations of Estonia and Latvia are now in Street View
• Here's the 'Model your Town' winner, Getaria, Spain
• In Google Maps, 'work' and 'home' made their way to My Places
• Regarding Google Earth Builder that was renamed Google Maps Engine, nonprofits can have it for free
• Here's the latest improvements of the Google Places API searches
• And of course there was an imagery update on May 14th, and on May 4th too

From other sources:

• Slashdot mentioned Google Gets Driverless License For Nevada Roads
• At the beginning of the month, the GEB showed the One World Trade Center building model in Google Earth, and later, Saint Basil's Cathedral
• Using Google's Fusion Table on mobile devices? Look at My Fusion Tables
• Slashdot discussed a story named Google Releases Key Part of Street View Pipeline

Google is clearly one of the most news-generating entity in the geospatial industry. Here's the recent Google-related geonews.

From official sources:

• Google now uses live traffic data alongside with historical data  for trip durations in Google Maps, they use the My Location feature on Google Maps for Android to extrapolate live traffic conditions. This news was also discussed over Slashdot
• And if that isn't enough, we now get typical traffic for roads, not just highways
• Here are the finalists for the Google Model Your Town Competition 2012
• Google Maps for Android got a fresh look with version 6.5
• Google released the Google Maps Floor Plan Marker app, to help orient customer in businesses 
• Mix art and Street View and you get the Google Art Project
• You can now see service alerts for the London Underground in Maps
• Traffic and Transit Come to Google Maps in Malaysia
• And there's new 45° imagery available for 15 cities: US: Atlanta, GA; Canyon Lake, TX; Charleston, SC; Dallas, TX; Houston, TX; Lakeland, FL; Lubbock, TX; Orlando, FL; Port Charlotte, FL; Roanoke, TX; San Luis Obispo, CA; Smyrna, TN; Walker, LA. International: Adelaide, Australia; Cordoba, Argentina
• The Weather Layer is now available in the Google Maps API

From other sources:

• The GEB found out about the latest imagery update in Google Earth yesterday
• The GEB also shares an entry named Exposing Shantytowns in India with Google Earth