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.

Here's the Friday geonews in batch mode, exceptionally covering the last two weeks. We're now up to date regarding geospatial news! From the open source front:

• You can influence what the OSGeo priorities should be with this quick survey, here's funding ideas partial results
• Here's an entry on Sextant, a geoportal solution from IFREMER
• In a maintenance release, GeoTools 2.7.1 is now available

• Google Transit is now available in Washington DC
• Google shared an entry named Make beautiful interactive maps even faster with new additions to the Fusion Tables API
• Google Places now supports in-business 360-degree perspectives, in another entry, the new Google Places API is described
• The GEB compares Nokia's new Ovi Maps 3D vs Google Earth
• The GEB discusses using Google Earth to confront government lies about damaged rainforest in Sarawak

• Andrew Zolnai has en entry on ESRI's Change Matters website to compare satellite imagery, and that's possible thanks to Landsat imagery dating back to 1972 now available through ArcGIS Online

• While we mentioned it before, Kurt too is, as I am, enthusiastic about Microsoft's free Photosynth iPhone / iPad 2 app
• There's a New Bing Maps iOS SDK
• Microsoft invites you to See AJAX 7.0 in action with the new interactive SDK

• The MapQuest for Android Navigation App got updated and improves GPS capabilities
• Slashdot discusses using credit card transaction locations to determine CO2 footprints
• Spatial Law mentions a California Bill that would regulate 'Precise Geolocation Information'
• Vector One argues on Why Now is a Good Time to Invest in Geospatial Technology Stocks, and here's entries specifically on Trimble and DigitalGlobe stocks
• SS informs us Moscow Upholds Limits on the Resolution of Satellite Imagery

• TMR links to an excellent series of 12 static maps of the Canadian federal election results 
• Mapperz mentioned WeatherSpark Beta, a Google Maps mashup to visualize historical weather patterns
• The FGT blog mentions Free Marine Chart Views, Plus An Online Waypoint/Route Editor With GPS Export
• Here's a New York Times's Natural Disaster Map for the U.S.

Here's the Friday geonews in batch mode. From the Google front:

• Google Latitude for Android and iPhone got improved for U.S. users, with checkins, status gaining and unlocking offers
• Google Maps for Android also got new features
• Here's a single kml for everything related to the Fukushima power plant in Japan
• The GEB believes there might be no more StreetView imagery capture in Germany and in Switzerland, court has ruled that all faces and license plates must be blurred
• A tip not tied to Google Maps itself, but here's how to search Google Maps directly from the address bar of Firefox
• And there was new Google Earth imagery made available on April 5th

• Here's an entry on using Bing Maps with SQL Server spatial

• SS informs us that Bentley Systems simplified their product suite, Bentley Map V8i, and focuses more on 3D GIS
• The FGT blog offers his review of the Garmin 62s GPS
• VerySpatial mentioned Roadify, a real-time app that sends alerts about subway, bus, and driving conditions in New York City
• V1 mentions the book 'Arc Hydro – Groundwater GIS for Hydrogeology' by Gil Strassberg, Norman L. Jones and David R. Maidment

• TMR shares a link to BBC News' nice interactive pseudo-virtual globe of the world’s time zones
• O'Reilly mentions the new Big Map Blog, focusing on... big maps!
• Here's an interactive map named 'What conditions cause poor air quality near you?' from SharedAir, providing back trajectories and pollutant concentrations in the U.S.
• TMR shares a map of France's High-Speed Rail Network
• SS wonders if the lack of the U.S. federal government mapping be a good thing?

Here's the recent geonews that we haven't already mentioned in batch mode. In addition to last Friday's FOSS4G geonews:

• There's a new open source Microsoft Bing Maps Android SDK available
• MapFish 2.1 has been released, and it's now BSD-licensed instead of GPL
• Here's news of what's coming for OpenLayers 2.11
• Shapely 1.2.9 has been released

• The FGT blog is excited about Voyager, a tool to catalog and search your local geospatial datasets (free and paid version available)
• Several sources have mentioned that the U.S. data and other open sites are closing
• Kurt offers an entry on the U.S. marine cadastre
• There's a first GLONASS smartphone available in Russia
• I smiled when I read the newly introduced "NoGIS" term, remisnescent of WebGIS and neogeography, James Fee shares what he thinks of it
• Slashdot discusses ESA's GOCE satellite detailed information about the Earth's gravitational shape
• If you're that curious, the last Google imagery update included the set from the upcoming 'The Hobbit' movie shot in New Zealand
• The Geonames blog shares an update on the geolocation of Wikipedia articles and Wikipedia Web Services

• TMR links to NYT day-by-day situation map of the Libyan uprising
• JF mentions a nice Census map analysis of New York City using Google Fusion Tables
• Here's a map of Canada's ridings for the national election early next month
• TMR also shares a map of the decline of ozone in the Arctic
• The prolefic TMR also mentioned the book "Railway Maps of the World"
• Ok, maybe not newsworthy, but here's 25 Mind-Blowing Aerial Photographs Around the World

Here's the Friday geonews in batch mode. From the open source / open data front:

• Here's a quick look at the WFS GDAL Driver
• MapQuest added Japan to their open data initiative, still linked to OpenStreetMap
• It's been a year since we mentioned it, and now there's a new version of the OpenStreetMap plugin for Wordpress available

• Microsoft now offers 148 US mall interactive maps in Bing Maps, including the 9 largest
• The Bing team shares a tip on how to search by driving time with AJAX v7, REST, and Spatial Data Services

• SS shares an entry the unveiling, by Autodesk, of their products, including AutoCAD Map 3D and plenty other products
• Slashdot runs a story on a surveillance robot that covertly maps its environment in 3D
• The FGT blog mentions a cheap GeoPDF to GeoTIFF converter in the context of use for Garmin Custom Map Imagery
• GeoCurrents offers two entries, named Caribbean Geopolitical Rivalry? and When Is an Island Not An Island? Caribbean Maritime Disputes
• Here's a link to a review of the Magellan RoadMate 9055 SatNav GPS
• APB mentions MapInfo Manager, a solution for geodata searches from Pitney Bowes
• We mentioned it in, and here's a preview of Depiction 1.3, which "aims to provide all the tools and necessary features for summarizing events such as disaster and emergency relief efforts, location events and situations where maps and information collections need to be integrated rapidly and easily"

• Slashdot discusses Crowdsourced Radiation Maps In Asia and US
• Here's an informative Poster of the Great Tohoku Earthquake (northeast Honshu, Japan) of March 11, - Magnitude 9.0 from the USGS
• The Map Room analyses the New York Times radiation map and why it's an irresponsible map
• It seems Apple is still seeking to 'radically improve' maps for iOS
• TMR links to global migration maps
• SS mentions a new interactive Sea Ice Atlas
• Here's news of EPA launch of a Clean Water Violation Map

 Here's Friday geonews in batch mode. Exceptionally, the last two weeks are covered. From the Google front:

• Google now offers 'Follow Your World', an alert system to let you know when new imagery is available for your area of interest
• The official entry on this week's imagery update
• Google discontinues the real estate feature in Google Maps
• The California Bay Area is now in 3D and the GEB discusses the nice 3D models of Belgrade

• MapQuest is providing an update on their increasing use of OpenStreetMap data, 8 new countries is now using OSM data, MapQuest also continues to financially support OpenStreetMap. There's even a new MapQuest Directions API based on OSM.
• It seems SPRING GIS is now open source software (GPL) [post in Spanish]
• Fortius One announced their new tool called Acetate, "a brand-new custom styled map that is designed for visualizing data and reintroduces the idea of a multi-layered basemap". Here's their technical introduction to Acetate, and the software they've used is open source.
• The city of Paris now offers open data and Finland's Land Survey opened its data too
• Ushahidi will be using the open source GeoDict free form geocoder. GeoDict is described as "a simple Python library/tool for pulling location information from unstructured text"

• The Geodatabase Toolset for ArcCatalog 10 is now available

• Microsoft released a new Bing Maps Drupal module

• Here's an entry named playing with the HTML5 Geolocation API
• O'Reilly offers an article named Social data and geospatial mapping join the crisis response toolset, another one on Urban Mapping's Mapfluence and two articles on health and location: New geolocation app connects citizen first responders to heart attack victims and Healthier living through mobile location data
• Via TMR, MacWorld offers an article named Apps with Maps: 11 iPhone GPS apps compared
• The FGT blog mentions iCMTGIS, a free field GIS data acquisition tool for the iPad
• ESA's budget rises to $4 billion, with 14 nations boosting contributions. And the GALILEO program is on track. And guess what, a Wikileaks cable forced a GALILEO head to step down.
• TMR also mentions U.S. Defense Department testing may affect GPS signals in Southeastern U.S. until Feruary 22nd
• TMR also note that the book "Map Projections: A Working Manual" published in 1987 by John P. Snyder is now available online.
• NAVTEQ is still selling more and more data

• Here's a discussion on a map of worldwide suicide statistics, let's hope you don't live in Mari El
• Here's a map of scientific collaboration

If you're interested in the latest spatial technology trends and where mapping is headed in you won't want to miss our free webinar on January 26th at 10 am PST. Our webinar will cut through the hype and distill all the buzz to what you need to know about web 2.0, mapping technology, and on which trends have staying power and which will have the biggest impact on your site. Register today to reserve your spot.

This is more of an "end of year" geonews in batch mode! Everything pertinent found in the last two weeks that we haven't shared yet. I wish you an excellent holiday break. We'll be back in January. You can still send in your contributions.

From the Google front:

• A summary entry on everything Google Maps/Earth and Santa Claus and another one on holiday trees in 3D
• More details on Google Maps 5.0 for Android
• Paris gets major 3D enhancements in Google Earth
• Google Kills (beta) Location Alerts Feature in Latitude
• Google now offers a 3D Body Browser
• There also was an imagery update in the middle of the month

From the ESRI front:

• ESRI Confirms 400 million user-genenerated maps on ArcGIS in October

From the open data / open source front:

• Via the geodata list, I learned about the U.S. Census TIGER/Line Shapefiles starting to become available, and it's also available from WeoGeo
• OpenLayers gets a new Bing Tiles layer
• Natural Earth map data in the public domain
• An entry on Geocoding Github: Visualizing Distributed Open-Source Development
• An O'Reilly article on Ushahidi enabling crowdsourced journalism and intelligence
• rgeo, a new geo library for Rails
• Here's a new project named GeoApt Spatial Data Browser
• The OpenGeo Suite Community Edition 2.3.2 released
• An entry on QGIS 1.7's vector rule editor and polygon line styles

From the Microsoft front:

• Bing Maps REST Services now supports transit routes

In the miscellaneous category:

• SS informs us Russia Launched a Geospatial Data and Earth Imagery Portal
• V1 offers their geospatial top 10, DM also have their own geospatial top 10
• Here's a new augmented reality app that translate text that you see
• Still in the AR topic, an entry on how Kinect democratizes augmented reality
• Two Slashdot entries on 3D printing: MakerBot Thing-o-Matic 3D Printer Assembly and Cheap 3D Fab Could Start an Innovation Renaissance
• Still on the 3D topic, Researchers Develop Genuine 3D Camera
• TanDEM-X is now operational

In the maps category:

• Here's visualization of Wikileaks mirrors around the world
• A colleague sent me a link to the BBC Facebook connections map the world
• An Interactive Map of Diabetes in the U.S.
• Don't we all dream, here's an Atlas of Remote Islands

And the almost-off-topic link of the week, an amazing 4-minutes animation of the last 200 years of global history

This is certainly major news. Steve Coast, the OpenStreetMap founder, joined Microsoft's Bing Maps team. From the announcement: "Continuously innovating and improving our map data is a top priority and a massive undertaking at Bing. That’s why we’re excited to announce a new initiative to work with the OpenStreetMap project, a community of more than 320,000 people who have built high quality maps for every country on earth. Microsoft is providing access to our Bing Aerial Imagery for use in the OpenStreetMap project, and we have hired industry veteran Steve Coast to lead this effort. [...] As a first step in this engagement, we plan to enable access to Bing's global orthorectified aerial imagery, as a backdrop of OSM editors. Also, Microsoft is working on new tools to better enable contributions to OSM." Amongst the geoblogs reactions, James Fee provided his analysis of what this really means: " Microsoft needs to get involved with OpenStreetMap to continue to be relevant in the web mapping space and OSM needs Microsoft, their aerial images, their big pocketbook and their need to dominate all spaces they exist to join up." All Points Blog shares some more: "I don't think OSM has all the data inputs needed, nor the paid and unpaid staff needed, nor the smart software needed to win this competition. Not yet anyway, but clearly their backers are slowly adding to their dowry." Overall, from the "open data" point of view, it can certainly be considered a major win. Last August, Bing Maps was already offering the OpenStreetMap layer, and MapQuest already dived into OpenStreetMap some time ago.

Over on the Bing Maps blog, there is an announcement of the launch of a couple of new items regarding Microsoft's map offering. From the article, the following were the highlights. The V7 ajax control was launched, the left-rail was redesigned, and there is now broader access to Map Apps and StreetSide. Head on over to the blog for a detailed explanation of each of those.