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 JPEG 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

There is an interesting time lapse video that shows the speed of the OpenStreetMap coverage evolution in Europe. It might explain why companies like Microsoft (Bing) and MapQuest have recently announced the integration of the OpenStreetMap data.

Here's a few recent open source geospatial software and open data news.

On the open data front:

• MapQuest continues to dive into OpenStreetMap
• Here's an interesting graph on OpenStreetMap data accuracy per contributors density
• Denver will host the State of the Map Conference, at the same place and same month than the OSGeo's FOSS4G Conference.
• Here's an entry named Wikipedia makes OpenStreetMap more prominent
• There's a few entries a critique of OpenStreetMap, another specifically on city labels in OSM
• The Wall Street Journal estimates Open Source Mapping Poses Threat For TomTom, Nokia
• Here's OpenHeatMap, an online tool for creating heat maps and choropleth maps

On the open source software front:

• Shapely 1.2.6 has been released
• OpenGeo won a contract with UK's Odnance Survey
• Here's an entry on using QGIS on Windows with ECW
• And an entry about kml 2.2 in gvSIG

Here's recent geonews in batch mode.

On the ESRI front:

• ArcGIS Mapping For Microsoft SharePoint 2.0 Now Available
• ArcGIS API For iOS 1.0 Now Available
• Latest Software And Firmware Versions To Use With ArcPad 10
• And an entry on creating a web application using ArcGIS
• James Fee encountered a limitation of the ESRI's EDN developer licenses when trying to test on multiple OS

In the miscellaneous category:

• OpenStreetMap editor named Potlatch version 2 is almost ready to be the default OSM editor
• MapQuest launched the MapQuest Atlas
• An entry on New Features for Bing Maps REST Services
• Here's an interesting entry on comparing image compression formats such as MrSID, jpeg, jpeg, GeoTIFFs and ECW
• The FGT blog offers a nice entry on online GPS satellite geometry error predictions tools
• APB mentions that SAP now have their own augmented reality app
• They also have an entry on tying a credit card to a cell phone location for location-based fraud protection
• The U.S. EPA GeoData Gateway website is now available to all

In the maps category:

• GeoCurrents shares an entry on the dangers of mapping religions, in an entry focusing on Islam mapping
• Here's a map of the gangs of New York

A busy week for these geonews in batch mode.

On the Google front:

• Google Latitude is now available for our desktop computers, a reminder; Latitude is Google's tool to share your location with friends and see where there are in real-time on map. And yes, you can get alerts when friends are neaby.
• If you use Google's Panoramio, integrated into Google Maps and Earth, you now have access to new sets of statistics for your photos.
• The GEB answers the question How often does Google update the imagery in Google Earth? And of course, there was another imagery update this week.
• The GEB offers an entry named 8 things to do with Historical Imagery in Google Earth

On the FOSS4G / opendata front:

• Here's an entry on running PostGIS in parallel threads
• Here's a link on a "GDAL Web driver", GDAL filesystem implemented on HTTP
• OpenStreetMap's founder Steve Coast left CloudMade
• SpotMaps images are now available in OpenStreetMap [French link]

On the Microsoft front:

• Here's an entry about new options regarding Enabling the New Style in the Bing Maps AJAX Control.
• Here's an entry on Bing Maps and the use of U.S. 311 issues, specifically for Miami and San Francisco.

On the ESRI front:

• James Fee informs us Esri Added Parcels to Their World Streets Map Service.
• There's a new software called GeoCat Bridge for ArcGIS, to publish using OGC services data from ArcGIS Desktop to the open source GeoServer and GeoNetwork.
• Here's an entry about Trimble Support For ArcGIS 10 And ArcPad 10 Now Available.

In the miscellaneous category:

• The European GNSS (GPS) system GALILEO needs more funding and more time, completion date is now projected to be.
• TMR links to Gizmodo's best navigation apps for iOS and Android.
• IBM launched CityOne, their SimCity-like game to build smarter cities.
• Spatial Sustain discusses a review of online mapping tools usability and accuracy, specifically Google Maps, Bing Maps and MapQuest.
• Regarding augmented reality, APB mentions an app with which you point an airplane with your iPhone and you get info about it (flight number, destination, height and speed).

In the maps category:

• Here's an entry on The Census of Marine Life in Google Earth, "the major international oceanographic research project involving researchers in over 80 countries, who tagged more than 120,000 types of species & millions of organisms over the past decade".
• Here's a Map of all the munitions dumped in Europe after WWI and WWII.
• The Australian Atlas of Mineral Resources has been updated

Oliver Kühn from the OpenStreetMap Foundation interviewed ESRI founder and president Jack Dangermond on OpenStreetMap, ArcGIS for OpenStreetMap and the differences between OpenStreetMap and the ESRI Community Maps Program. Oliver is board member of the OpenStreetMap Foundation and co-founder of skobbler, a company that provides software application based on OpenStreetMap.

Here's the now traditional weekly dose of geonews in batch mode. On the ESRI front:

• ArcGIS Viewer For Flex 2.1 Now Available
• There's an new white paper on GIS In The Cloud, The Esri Example

On the Google front:

• Here's an entry on AlterEarth, a new gaming platform for Google Earth, and yes, you can play Grand Theft Auto on Earth
• The Google elevation service now available in the Maps API for Flash

On the open data / open source front:

• MapQuest adds OpenStreetMap data of four more countries: Spain, Italy, Germany and France
• Here's GeoSpatial for Java Workbooks available

In the LBS category:

• O'Reilly links to locationlabs' Universal Location Service: "Remotely locate 250+ million phones. The Universal Location Service [ULS] aggregates location access across major tier 1 carriers including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon."
• A friend sent me a link to a small entry stating that your Facebook friends can check you in to places
• O'Reily also have an entry on a crowdsourced and location-aware bird watching app called BirdsEye
• Here's an entry on a Offline Map Viewer And GPS Tracker For Android

In the miscellaneous category:

• Emma wrote to let us know Slashgeo is amongst their top 50 Scholarly Blogs for Climate Science Students
• Bing Maps is now integrated directly in some HP printers
• I forgot that share that one before, you can now embed MapQuest maps on websites
• Arctic Web is a site to look for geospatial data of the artic
• You can now map your LinkedIn connections via a third-party

In the maps category:

• TMR has an entry on the National Geographic's Maps of the Gulf of Mexico's Oil Infrastructure
• Slashdot discussed a story named "Microwave Map of Entire Moon Revealed"

Here's a few recent OpenStreetMap news:

• MapQuest has launched an open directions service using OpenStreetMap data, we did mention the new MapQuest relation with OSM recently (in our still unavailable archives)
• There's a new book named "OpenStreetMap - Be you own cartographer" by Jonathan Bennett
• There's another one coming soon named "OpenStreetMap - Using and enhancing the free map of the world" by Frederik Ramm and Jochen Topf
• Waze apologized for inadvertedly infringing on OSM data and quickly corrected the situation
• Finally, the OpenStreetMap community has reached 300,000 contributors

Still having quite a lot of geonews catching up to do, here's the geospatial-related stories discussed over Slashdot during the past week.

• GPS Tracking Without a Warrant Declared Legal in the U.S.
• Can an Open Source Map Project Make Money?, discussing the relation between Bing Maps, MapQuest and OpenStreetMap
• Garmin Recalls 1.25M 'Fire Risk' Satnavs
• Brazil Using Smartphones For Planning the Future, their summary: "Brazil has bought 150,000 LG smartphones and has embarked on the world's first fully digital national census. Can they succeed when the US recently failed to go digital? The Brazilians say that the digital census has several advantages over paper and pen methods. They say that the data is more accurate since GPS data will pinpoint the exact location of a household. The GPS data is cross-referenced with satellite images to ensure that responses are correctly geo-tagged. The recently begun census will underpin future publicy-making decisions."

Story imported from the previous Slashgeo Slashcode site, user comments have not been migrated. For more information, please read Welcome to the new Slashgeo!. Thank you for your understanding. Mark Williamson writes "As described on Torsten Rahn's blog, the KDE 4.1 desktop environment is slated to include OpenStreetMap support in the Marble desktop globe. Marble will be able to download map tiles from the OSM servers and display them on its own globe interface. This is in addition to the various other map resources already provided by Marble.

This has also been discussed on the OSM-talk mailing list."