One of the most popular open source GIS just got updated, Quantum GIS "QGIS" 1.7.0 has been released. That's the last major version before the 2.0 release. "This release includes over 277 bug fixes and many new features and enhancements." Here's the headers of the major additions and changes, head to the announcement to see screenshots and learn more.

• Symbology labels and diagrams
• New Tools
• User interface updates
• CRS Handling
• Rasters
• Providers and Data Handling
• Api and Developer Centric
• QGIS Server
• Plugins
• Printing

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.

The first release after last September's version 6.4.0, the powerful open source GRASS GIS version 6.4.1 has been released. From the announcement: "This release fixes some bugs discovered in the 6.4.0 source code and a few new features (over 560 updates to the source code with respect to 6.4.0 have been added). As a stable release 6.4 will enjoy long-term support. GRASS 6.4 brings a number of exciting enhancements to the GIS. Our new wxPython graphical user interface (wxGUI) is debuted, Python is now a fully supported scripting language, and for the first time since its inception with a port from the VAX 11/780 in 1983, GRASS runs natively also on a non-UNIX based platform: MS-Windows." Here's the overview of changes for 6.4.1, including new modules and major module changes.

Submitted by a user via email: Borrowing a page from the open source community, ThinkGeo has added OpenStreetMap support to the latest version of their Map Suite GIS controls. In a new post on their blog, ThinkGeo mentions how a new OpenStreetMap overlay in Map Suite 4.5 allows developers to display geographic data from OpenStreetMap directly on their maps with minimal coding and effort. This functionality is built into every Map Suite control. It sounds like it could take the effort out of procuring maps for use in your .NET GIS applications, given the free and open nature of OpenStreetMap's data. You can see ThinkGeo's blog post talking about it on their website.

The OpenJUMP GIS core developer team is proud to announce the release of OpenJUMP 1.4. Highlights with this edition: Again, we deliver better editing capabilities: * "EZ"-buttons that can be programmed with often used menu functions and used with the "F#"-keys * drawing of selections can be defined * invert current selection OJ 1.4 says hello to raster data: * support of reading ESRI ASCII grid files as Sextante Raster * four new raster functions (for images load as "Sextante Raster"): (i) Create Lattice from Image, (ii) Create Polygon Grid from Image, (iii) Profile Graph, (iv) Raster Color Editor Of course, we also worked on other helpful things, such as: * optional selection of the CHAR set (international code) when loading shape files * functions to merge selected polygons with neighbor polygons (similar to ArcGIS "eliminate"), and intersect all polygons within a layer * OpenJUMP now remembers the window location, size, and maximized state in the workbench-state.xml file and the project files * better handling of null attributes and date attributes in queries * five new statistical plotting and classification functions for vector data: ... plus: several bug fixes. You want try? - Download and enjoy!