This news made it outside the traditional geospatial community, Slashdot's story is named GIS Community Blocks Esri's Geospatial 'Open Standard' REST API.

Their summary: "The developer of ArcGIS, Esri, has dropped its bid to have the GeoServices REST API recognized as an open standard by the Open Geospatial Consortium, after a community backlash against 'providing a vendor with significant market advantage, erring on the creation of a state-sanctioned monopoly.'"

This is a topic we covered 2 weeks ago. You can also read a useful summary and quotes from OGC officials named OGC heed community pressure regarding "GeoServices REST API": "“Considering the breath of discussion both internal and external to the OGC process since the vote announcement, the SWG members feel that the vote cannot continue until the many questions raised have been addressed. Issues regarding OGC process, vendor advantage, duplication of capabilities, etc. have now overshadowed technical discussions of the merits of the specification. By withdrawing the OGC GeoServices REST API candidate standard, the necessary discussions regarding OGC process, policy, and position can continue separately.”"

The recent geonews in batch mode, covering a larger timespan than usual.

On the open source front:

• The OSGeo presented an Open Letter to OGC on the GeoServices REST API standard, and it's pretty well documented and informative
• Here's an interesting entry on comparing OpenLayers and Leaflet
• The schedule for FOSS4G-CEE is now known
• Sean pointed me to  Tom MacWright's online GeoJSON editor
• In releases, there was GeoServer 2.3.2 released and GeoTools 9.2 Released
• Getting closer to QGIS 2.0, here's nice examples of the alpha channel in QGIS color ramps
• If you did not see the press release, OpenGeo is not non-profit anymore

On the Google front:

• The influx of Google Glass stories continues, now Facial Recognition Comes to Google Glass
• Here's Kurt's list of maps-related videos from the Google I/O conference

On the Esri front:

• ABP reminds us of Esri's Severe Weather Map, including tornadoes...
• An entry on why Esri is excited about the Android Location APIs
• Data updates, World Topographic Map updated with content for the Middle East, North Africa, and the United States
• along with other updates, including Additional DigitalGlobe and community imagery added to the World Imagery map
• Also updated, ArcGIS for Windows Phone and ArcGIS API for JavaScript v3.5 Released

In the everything-else category:

• MapBox tells us they got a huge satellite update, now cloudless and with aerial imagery, but also interesting are the OpenStreetMap updates making they way to MapBox maps in only 5 minutes
• Here's a Make article on mapping buildings with a Kinect
• Some of you might be interested by the GiT4NMD conference, Geo-information Technologies for Natural Disaster Management
• Space Daily share an article named World's major development banks look closer at Earth observation
• Here's links regarding the history of apostrophes in place names
• Via SL, an article named China's Drone Program Appears To Be Moving Into Overdrive
• Those interested in the exciting MapBox work may also want to read about vector tiles of MapBox Streets
• While CAD and GIS have come closer, they remain distinct, here's an entry named Integrating geospatial into construction: the challenge
• Geoff also shares two other interesting entries, one named Economic value of big geospatial data could reach $700 billion/yr by and the other Estimating the economic and financial impact of poor data quality

Slashdot discussed a few minor geo-related stories:

• One involving GPS named Researchers Are Developing Ad Hoc Networks For Car-To-Car Data Exchange
• Privacy stories goes on, UK's 4G Network Selling Subscriber Tracking Data To Police, Private Parties and this one Congress Demands Answers From Google Over Google Glass Privacy Concerns
• Along with new challenges to locating North itself, Global Warming Shifts the Earth's Poles

In the maps category:

• Here's The Best Geographic Visualization I’ve Seen In Ages according to VerySpatial, basically a circle centered in Asia where over half of the world's population resides
• In Paris? Apple Maps for iOS Adds 3D Flyover Coverage in Paris
• MapBox shares a Q&A of the City Guides by National Geographic mobile app

Bloggage update: Vector online GIS appears to be gaining traction. These emerging technologies contrast with Esri who offers a slew of tools on the desktop and in arcgis like mature web mapping services and model building. But these newcomers offer a service to process GIS functions online and allow to load data direct from web source further augmenting their web performance. Here I compare how I used a 180K vector dataset from NOAA NGDC described previously on these alternate methods. 

Chris Holmes shares a pretty insightful and informative letter in an entry named 'Opening Esri'. Esri's closer relationship with open source started with providing code on GitHub last September and even up to last February's official entry named going open source with Esri.

From the Chris Holmes entry: "So I wanted to give to Esri a measurable roadmap of actions to take that would signal to me a real commitment to ‘open’. [...] Each piece of Esri technology ideally could be used stand alone with other pieces. Stated another way, there should be no lock-in of anything that users create – even their cartography rules. [...] it is a business risk, since it opens up more potential competition. But it’s also a big business opportunity if done right. And reaches beyond mere business to being a real force for good in the world, becoming a truly loved company, with lots of friends."

[this story was submitted by a user as a press release (thanks!), I'm republishing it as a story too since it's a pertinent major release]

This release contains six months worth of improvements and fixes to the GeoServer code base. Including several important new features and improvements such as:

• A pluggable configuration subsystem (for the catalog and service configuration)
• GeoWebCache clustering and disk quota improvements
• More powerful layer groups and better control of the WMS capabilities layer tree
• Several security subsystem improvements
• WPS process whitelist (control which processes your WPS is exposing)
• WMS dimensions support improvements (units, custom dimensions)
• JSON and JSONP output format support in many OGC operations
• The monitoring module finally graduating to official extension
• Raster re-projection quality improvements and speedups
• INSPIRE module improvements for the WFS protocol
• A newfound ability to catalogue all components of GeoServer via a REST API

For those daring enough to try out nightly builds the 2.3.x series also offers a new scripting extension allowing you to write WPS processes and small applications in your preferred scripting language. Also included as a nightly community module available is a complete WCS 2.0 service implementation.

More information about the new features of the 2.3.x stream can be found in the  GeoServer 2.3-beta release announcement.

The good news do not stop there. GeoServer has finally completed the OSGeo incubation and it’s now an official OSGeo project. Many thanks to all that participated, in particular Jody Garnett for constantly pushing forward, Landon Blake for mentoring us, and all the people that participated to the FOSS4G-AU code sprint in which all of the grunt work of provenance review was done. We want to thank in particular Jody Garnett, Adam Brown, Karin Stronkhorst, Luca Morandini and Joshua Vote for the hard work.

Download GeoServer 2.3, try it out, and provide feedback on the GeoServer mailing list.  As with any new version, be sure to backup your data directory before upgrading.

Thanks again for using GeoServer!

Download GeoServer 2.3

[this story was submitted by a user as a press release (thanks!), I'm republishing it as a story too since it's a pertinent major release]

The GeoTools community is pleased to announce the availability of GeoTools 9.0 for download from sourceforge:

The GeoTools community is pleased to announce the availability of GeoTools 9.0 for download from sourceforge:

The GeoServer team is happy to announce the release of GeoServer 2.3.0, available for download.

This release contains six months worth of improvements and fixes to the GeoServer code base. Including several important new features and improvements such as:

• A pluggable configuration subsystem (for the catalog and service configuration)
• GeoWebCache clustering and disk quota improvements
• More powerful layer groups and better control of the WMS capabilities layer tree
• Several security subsystem improvements
• WPS process whitelist (control which processes your WPS is exposing)
• WMS dimensions support improvements (units, custom dimensions)
• JSON and JSONP output format support in many OGC operations
• The monitoring module finally graduating to official extension
• Raster re-projection quality improvements and speedups
• INSPIRE module improvements for the WFS protocol
• A newfound ability to catalogue all components of GeoServer via a REST API

For those daring enough to try out nightly builds the 2.3.x series also offers a new scripting extension allowing you to write WPS processes and small applications in your preferred scripting language. Also included as a nightly community module available is a complete WCS 2.0 service implementation.

More information about the new features of the 2.3.x stream can be found in the  GeoServer 2.3-beta release announcement.

The good news do not stop there. GeoServer has finally completed the OSGeo incubation and it’s now an official OSGeo project. Many thanks to all that participated, in particular Jody Garnett for constantly pushing forward, Landon Blake for mentoring us, and all the people that participated to the FOSS4G-AU code sprint in which all of the grunt work of provenance review was done. We want to thank in particular Jody Garnett, Adam Brown, Karin Stronkhorst, Luca Morandini and Joshua Vote for the hard work.

Download GeoServer 2.3, try it out, and provide feedback on the GeoServer mailing list.  As with any new version, be sure to backup your data directory before upgrading.

Thanks again for using GeoServer!

Download GeoServer 2.3

Here's the geonews in batch mode, unusually covering 4 weeks, thus a much longer issue.

On the open source / data front:

• With the GeoPackage standard in the oven and its opportunity to replace the aging shapefile format, read this very pertinent summary named Takeaways from OpenGeo’s Comments on OGC and the Proposed GeoPackage Specification
• An interesting entry on TileMill for Raster Analysis
• In the same vein, expanding TileMill's Building Symbolizer to Visualize Complex 3D Structures
• EasySDI V3 is now available
• The open source virtual globe Marble 1.5 is now available for MacOS X

On the Esri front:

• A book review of "Python Scripting for ArcGIS" by Paul A. Zandbergen
• A new version, and here's what’s new in ArcGIS Explorer Desktop 2500
• The ArcGIS Query Analysis Add-In is available for download
• Here's the ArcGIS Online World Topographic Map February updates and here's the previous update
• ArcGIS applied to tennis, Using spatial analytics to study spatio-temporal patterns in sport
• APB shares a Esri Federal GIS Conference News Roundup

On the Google front:

• Google announced that Public Alerts for Google Search, Google Now and Google Maps available in Japan
• The official entry on Expanding Street View in Europe
• The GEB again mentions Tracking Satellites in Google Earth, this time linking to the new SightSpaceStation website

On the Microsoft front:

• A new Bing Maps Tech Preview at TED Conference: "a new twist: the ability to mine Flickr for geotagged photos and overlay onto Bing Maps streetside imagery for a perfect visual lock"
• Bing Maps got a major overhaul, 46.7 TB of new imagery and a Silverlight version of Bing Maps... I though Silverlight was abandoned?
• Here's the entry on the New Top of the World and High Resolution Satellite Imagery
• An entry on Bing Maps REST Service Tips & Tricks
• And New to REST Services: Elevations API and 3D Elevation Models with Bing Maps WPF
• And training for apps builders, Bing Maps for Windows Store Apps Training Kit

Geospatial-related discussions over Slashdot:

• Startup Uses Radiation Fear To Map Cellphone Coverage
• Fox News: US Solar Energy Investment Less Than Germany Because US Has Less Sun, comparing maps, it's simply far from the truth
• The US Redrawn As 50 Equally Populated States
• Drones Still Face Major Hurdles In US Airspace and AirBurr UAV Navigates By Crashing Into Things
• Canon Demos New Head-Mounted Augmented-Reality Display
• Texas Bills Would Bar Warrantless Snooping On Phone Location

In the everything else category:

• A lot of sources mentioned 3Doodler: The World's First 3D Printing Pen, while not entirely geospatial-related, 3D printing is mainstream now
• APB shares an entry on a Free e-Book on Online GIS which compares ArcGIS Online, CartoDB, CloudGIS, GeoCommons, MangoMap and MapBox
• Trying to amend myself for not having shared this before, here's How Interactivity Works with UTFGrid for web maps, along with a visual demo, and an example using OpenLayers
• APB has an entry named U.S. House Representatives Introduce Online Communications and Geolocation Protection Act
• Everything is a geospatial sensor, Rain tracked with mobile network
• A milestone release, MapBox iOS SDK Goes 1.0.0 + New Features
• MapQuest Introduced Free Travel Blogs to help people share their travel adventures
• Mapperz mentions that the USPS Mapping Tool allows you to pick your own delivery routes
• APB links to an article named How Google And Bing Maps Control What You Can See

In the maps category:

• We presented a world map of undersea internet connections, here's the interactive Submarine Cable Map
• Scary, maps of the U.S. Geography of Sin, and here's the U.S. Geography of Happiness