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

• Here's the fourth entry in the Free Shapefiles of Countries of the World (4) series
• Via OpenGeoData, I learned about OSMTrack 3.0, an iOS app designed for contributing to OpenStreetMap (more here on version 3)
• Here's an entry on the future of Marble, the KDE virtual globe
• Here's an entry on improving GeoTools / GeoServer raster reprojection performance

• Here's a list of ArcGIS Server Success Stories Published In

• Several geoblogs mentioned the ABC Australia flood maps, along with ESRI's Autralia flood maps
• Apple is adding a 'Find My Friends' feature to iOS 4.3
• An entry on the MapQuest and Ford Partnership on MyFord Mobile App for Electrified Vehicle Drivers
• Here's Andrew Turner's 3 main geospatial trends: consumer mobile and privacy, commercial data -> open data, and visualization -> analysis

• Sarah Palin's Political Action Committee map which uses crosshairs to target 20 Democratic Party members to defeat, a map discussed in the controversy regarding the shooting in Tucson, Arizona
• A map of Aerosols in Earth's Atmosphere
• NRCan released hundreds of new or updated CanTopo free topographical maps for Canada
• A map of the Internet in 1972

Here's a few recent open source-related geospatial news:

• Via the OSGeo-Discuss list, I learned about pgVersion, a PostGIS versioning tool: "Versioning of Postgis-Layers will become essential, when more than one person edits the same layer concurrently. To manage concurrencing editing of a single Postgis Layer the pgVersion management system supports your work. The idea is to create a versioning system for editing PostGIS-Layers similar to source code versioning systems like CVS or Subversion."
• There's a new Python QGIS Cookbook available from Martin Dobias, named PyQGIS Cookbook
• Geomajas has graduated out of OSGeo incubation, Geomajas is an extensible open source web mapping framework in Java
• Here's a new free GeoServer 2.0 introductory workshop
• Here's an entry on editing gvSIG maps with Inkscape, on a side note, if you don't know Inkscape yet, try it, it's an excellent open source alternative to Illustrator
• The OpenGeo Suite Community Edition 2.3.0 has been released
• GeoNode is not at version 1.0 yet, but you can learn more about it with this GeoNode presentation

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode.

On the Google front:

• The Maps Data API is being deprecated, replaced by Fusion Tables in the Maps API v3
• In addition to the Maps API for Flash, Styled Maps launched for the Static Maps API
• There was an imagery update this week for Google Maps and Earth
• Google also previewed StreetView imagery for Germany
• There's an official Panoramio Photo Contest

On the FOSS4G front:

• The next version of QGIS will feature raster masks, explained in this entry
• GeoServer gets a new file chooser

In the miscellaneous category:

• Slashdot started a discussion today named Nicaragua Raids Costa Rica, Blames Google Maps
• The GEB details Breadcrumbs, a software to visualize your GPS tracks in 3D
• The Russians are serious mapping land use land cover, with 12,000 Landsat-5 scenes acquired in
• TMR shares a review of the DeLorme GPS/Communicator Combo
• DigitalGlobe is reporting is third consecutive down quarter
• Everyblock released their API

In the maps category:

• A quick look at this map with a reversed Mercator effect for Africa and Greenland makes obvious how maps projections can be misleading, especially the omnipresent Mercator projection

I wasn't available to share the recent geonews in batch mode last Friday, so there you go!

On the Google front:

• Google Places is now more widely available in Asia
• New in Google Maps for Android: Latitude real-time updating and more
• Via APB, there's a 'big buttons' version of the Google Maps UI that is being tested

On the Microsoft front:

• Bing Maps' latest map app is OnTerra’s “RouteSavvy” Route Optimizer, allowing you to find the best route for multiple destinations (think solving the travelling salesman problem)
• IDV's Visual Fusion 5.0 has been released, it integrates with Microsoft tools such as Bing Maps and Sharepoint

On the open source / data front:

• Here's an important entry if you use ExtJS or GeoExt, it's about the licensing limitations of GeoExt depending on your use case
• Here's a blog entry on how do OpenStreetMap and open government geodata fit together
• There's WMS cascading in the latest GeoServer
• Here's an interesting entry named Latest on JPEG2000 Improved Support for the Java world

On the ESRI front:

• An entry named Esri Forestry Group Aims to Create Open Templates and Tools
• Here's two entries from V1 on ESRI's Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) conference, one named “All Roads Lead to Rome” and a second one named Thought – Is ESRI Building a Search Engine?

In the miscellaneous category:

• Here's an entry on a disagreement of the value of REST for geodata processing and the OGC
• We mentioned China's MapWorld recently, here's more info and a note that it uses DigitalGlobe imagery
• Here's a free set of online calculators for geographic coordinates and distances
• It seems that Vans can Drive Themselves Across the World and another geo-related discussion over Slashdot: Forming New Mobile Networks With People-Borne Sensors
• Here's news from LizardTech: Next Generation MrSID Technology Offers Enhanced Compression Technology for Hyperspectral Data
• I liked this short tidbit letting us know that a "trial in New South Wales revealed that a GPS device that beeped when drivers were over the local speed limit (access from a database, not input by drivers as other devices require) caused 89% of drivers to slow down."
• Also from APB: MapQuest Visits Down 22% over Last Year
• And if you like editwars, "Neogeography" has been deleted from Wikipedia
• And ending up the serie from APB, updating a NAVTEQ in-dash GPS can cost you more than the value of a new handheld GPS device
• Why not, Australian Researchers Design Software to Help Robots Read Maps

In the maps category:

• The Wikileaks Iraq War Logs Mapped
• Here's an interesting entry named The Surprising Geography of International Tourism
• Here's a review of the new National Geographic Atlas
• Here's about the Berlin Solar Atlas project
• The One Europe One Geology book is now online

The GeoServer blog has an announcement about a new beta version. The following is a list of features available in the new beta :

• WMS Cascading
• Virtual Services
• Layers from SQL
• WPS
• Unit of Seasure
• DPI Scaling

Head on over to the blog to see the detailed description of the features and download links.