Here's the recent open source geospatial news in batch mode, which includes everything about FOSS4G on the geoblogs that we haven't mentioned yet.

On the FOSS4G Conference front:

• Interesting numbers, "By there are now 19,471 unique subscribers to OSGeo, more than 400 mailing lists, and more than 15 million lines of code, with 740 contributors, and 269 that have contributed for more than 12 months."
• Slashgeo editor Nicolas summarized Brian Timoney's excellent talk at FOSS4G, and if you want to hear it yourself, here is that 14-minutes impassioned talk on the state of the geospatial industry, Brian demonstrate how much better we could do
• Here's the slides of Paul Ramsey's keynote
• Here's Jody Garnett's updated slides on the WPS Shootout
• Here's the entry to read about Open Source and Open Data at the U.K. Ordnance Survey
• If you haven't read too much about it already, here's an entry on the case study of the U.S. FCC National Broadband Map based on open source geospatial software
• Here's the what's coming to PostGIS 2.0 slides [pdf]
• I heard comments that 30-minutes talks at FOSS4G was too short for the presenters to dive into their subjects, would you agree? If you're interested in what could be improved see this recap of FOSS4G by OSGeo's president
• Here's Directions Mag complete wrap up of the conference

In other news:

• I was surprised to read that Tyler Mitchell won't be the OSGeo Executive Director anymore
• GWT-OpenLayers version 0.6 has been released, that's the wrapper library for using OpenLayers in Google Web Toolkit applications
• MapFish is now an official OSGeo project
• This entry reminds us of the comprehensive list of web mapping toolkits (there's too much of them!)
• SS mentioned GrassrootsMapping, which is a crowdsourcing aerial image project with goals similar to OpenAerialMap

You probably know what Git is, the modern distributed revision control system, replacing CVS and Subversion for many projects. Spatially Adjusted made me aware of the GeoGit approach.

Here's what the documentation written a month ago says: "Following on the core Versioning WFS work, in OpenGeo started experimenting with a new way to handle versioning, drawing on git, a distributed versioning system built for Linux and widely used. There are two different paths taken, both of which warrant further investigation:

• Using git and github directly, storing data as geojson in files
• Drawing inspiration from git core code and adapting the structures to work with geospatial information

[...] 

The code for the core repository can be found at  . This code backs both a GeoSynchronization Service module (a spec by the OGC to synchronize data) and the versioning constructs of WFS2. The plan is to eventually get both in to the standard distributions of GeoServer.

[...] 

For the geogit implementation we instead code things to be optimized for the fact that a typical geospatial representation doesn't have much nesting - it's just a bunch of features. The index is orthogonal, doesn't need to be part of the tree structure. But the problem we had when we tried to use straight git with lots of leafs is that it wouldn't really work. It doesn't scale to a single directory with millions of files."

We mentioned it over two years ago and now it reaches a major milestone, the open source SOLAP server GeoMondrian 1.0 has been released.

What is GeoMondrian? "GeoMondrian is an open source Spatial OnLine Analytical Processing (Spatial OLAP or SOLAP) server, a spatially-enabled version of Pentaho Analysis Services (aka. Mondrian). As far as we know, it is the first implementation of such a server and it is open source! [...] GeoMondrian provides then a consistent integration of spatial objects into the OLAP data cube structure, instead of fetching them from an external spatial DBMS, web service or a GIS file. To summarize, GeoMondrian brings to the Mondrian OLAP server what PostGIS brings to the PostgreSQL DBMS, i.e. a consistent and powerful storage and querying for geospatial data!"

Via email I learned that a week ago ESA released a new version of their open source SAR toolbox named NEST, now at version 4B-1.0. This is their first major update this year. We mentioned NEST releases since.

Supported product formats include: 

• ENVISAT ASAR, ERS AMI 1 & 2 (CEOS & Envisat format from PGS and VMP), JERS SAR, ALOS PALSAR, TerraSarX, ADARSAT-2, Cosmo-Skymed, BEAM DIMAP, GeoTIFF, HDF, NetCDF, ENVI, PolsarPro, GETASSE30 DEM, ACE DEM, ASTER DEM and SRTM DEM

What's new for version 4B:

• Interferometry
  • Improved interferogram and coherence estimation
  • Topographic phase removal
  • Filtering of spectras in range and azimuth
• Command line interface improvements
• Easier Coregistration from the command line
• Band variables for batch processing of BandMaths
• ReprojectionUI for graph processing
• Automatic fetching of DORIS and PRARE orbit files
• Automatic GETASSE30 download
• New interpolators
• HSV View
• Uses JDK 7
• Bug fixes
• Significant performance improvements

Via Datalibre, I learned about OpenTreeMap, an open source software for collaborative, geography-enabled urban tree inventory.

From the main site: "Urban street trees have myriad proven benefits for communities including providing shade, improving air quality, assisting with stormwater runoff, raising property values, decreasing utility bills, and enhancing the look and feel of communities. While tree inventories provide municipalities with vital data to consult when managing the urban forest, creating a complete inventory is a time consuming and resource intensive process.  OpenTreeMap provides an easy-to-use public inventorying platform that enables individuals, organizations, and governments to collaboratively contribute to an interactive and dynamic map of a community’s tree population. OpenTreeMap can be used in a single municipality or cover a broader geographic region with many communities.

• Search for trees by species, location, or advanced filters such as diameter, date planted, or tree characteristics (flowering, native, etc.)
• Add trees individually or load tree datasets to the system
• Edit and add information about existing tree records including species name, location, height, plot size and type, conditions, actions needed, funding sources, data owner
• Upload tree photos
• Export tree lists as KML or CSV files
• Automatically calculate ecosystem benefits (greenhouse gas, water, energy,  air quality) based on a tree’s species and diameter
• Monitor user accounts, comments, and system edits
• Get optional integrated tree key to assist in identifying tree species"

Geocoded trees have been mentioned a few times in the past, including Google Earth 6's native support of 3D trees, using lidar to identify urban trees, or even embedding RFID tags in trees.

Position: Level 2 - Customer Support Lead

Company Description:

Digital Map Products has an immediate opening for a Level 2 Technical Support Analyst.  Digital Map Products is a fast-paced and growing company in Irvine, CA who is leading the next generation of embedded Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the preeminent pioneer in integrating land-related information into a single visual map-based interface.

Candidate Description:

As Digital Map Products’ (DMP) Customer Support Lead, the position will play a critical role in the success our clients have with our product and services.   

Our products are used by a wide range of users in both public and private enterprises.  As a result of our growth, we have created this position to ensure that our clients are able to get the most out of our service.

Primary Job Description:

• Personally handle customer account issues via both phone and email, as well as escalate when necessary.
• Manage the efforts of the company’s Customer Success Team resources to ensure that customers are retained and satisfied. 
• Implement improved process and/or operational policies. 
• Recommend changes to products, services and documentation to fulfill customer needs.
• Provide high level training to users on our DMP Products
• Monitor the department’s key metrics and drive continuous improvement.
• Develop and maintain a proactive and productive working relationship with the company’s sales, product development, and engineering teams.
• Assist in software testing efforts.

Prerequisite Knowledge:

• Best Practices for customer service and training.
• Familiarity and experience with MS CRM software.
• Basic GIS knowledge.
• IT experience or skill is highly desired.

Skill Set:

• Proven self starter
• Self-directed contributor to a high-performance team.
• Analytical thinker.
• Possess a high level of verbal and written communication, presentation, and critical thinking skills.
• Demonstrate the highest level of professionalism.
• Comfortable dealing high volume contact with customers.
• Highly motivated and dynamic.
• Ability to set priorities, manage a varied and heavy workload, and work extended hours to support project timelines is a must.

Other Information:

• Growth opportunities.
• No travel anticipated.
• Reports to Customer Success Manager.
• Business casual environment.

In today's world of in-demand location technologies, no real estate site would be complete without mapping. Because this technology’s rapidly evolving, it’s critical to stay abreast of best practices and the latest features users are requesting so your mapping advantage doesn’t turn into a mapping faux pas.

We invite you to join us for a complimentary webinar where you'll learn all of the information you need to succeed with mapping, improve your user experience, and make your site stand out using location technologies. Plus, we’ll share with you secrets to make mapping much easier to implement, maintain, and use.

Follow this link to register: 

Via the OSGeo-Discuss list I learned about the release of the open source library MapQuery 0.1. Here's the official mapquery website.

What is MapQuery? "MapQuery is a pure javascript based library which builds upon OpenLayers, jQuery and jQuery UI to provide an easy to use webmapping library. It is meant for jQuery application developers who want to build Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) with maps. Currently it provides a few basic widgets to create functionality around a map and an easy API to write your own widgets."

Here's more on its goals: "MapQuery formally extends OpenLayers, it is similar in concept as GeoExt, but uses jQuery instead of Ext. The idea is to create a jQuery-style webmapping library which wraps around OpenLayers and extends it with functionality like layer managers, datagrids (NYI), legends etc. We try to make it easy to create a webmap-application with OpenLayers, without having to know all that OpenLayers has to offer.

We aim at jQuery developers more than on people who are already well-versed in OpenLayers. As such we will provide a few simple functions which (we think) will be enough for 90% of the use-cases. The other 10% is not actively pursued, though one could directly access OpenLayers and do some of the advanced stuff we're not providing."

Last week was announced GeoKettle 2.0, an open source spatial ETL (extract transform and load) tool. 

From the announcement: "GeoKettle, as its name suggests, is based on the widely used and robust generic ETL tool Kettle (aka Pentaho Data Integration or PDI) made « geo-capable » by integrating and leveraging the power of geospatial libraries such as of JTS, GeoTools, OGR, deegree and of course, brand new Spatialytics code." Here's the details of what's new for version 2.0. We mentioned quite a few times GeoKettle the past three years.

There's another open source spatial ETL tool out there that we haven't mentioned for a while, it's Talend's Spatial Data Integrator, with its version 4.2.0 released earlier this month. 

From their main page: "Spatial module for Talend Open Studio (aka. Spatial Data Integrator or SDI) is an ETL with geospatial capabilities. Likewise regular TOS components, there are basically three sorts of Geo components: input, output and transform components. Input and output components read features from and write feature to datastores, respectively. Transform components read features from their input flows, possibly transform those features, and write features to their output flows. The term transform is to be taken loosely here as it represents any sort of operation."

We are pleased to announce the release 0.2.0 of Jaspa (JAva SPAtial). Jaspa potentially brings around 200 spatial functions to any relational database system that supports Java stored procedures. In this 0.2.0 version Jaspa supports PostgreSQL and H2. The biggest change from the previous release is a new topology rules system with around 70 topology rules.

New features:

• A new web page dedicated to Jaspa. It has a blog and links to the documentation and download section. 
• A new driver for gvSIG 1.11 (Jaspa for PostgreSQL).
• A new driver for Kosmo 2.0.1 (Jaspa for PostgreSQL).
• A new topology rules system with around 70 topology rules. 
• A new workshop material of more than 100 pages (in English and Spanish) which can be very useful to a new user who wants to get started into spatial databases and Jaspa. It covers the installation, spatial analysis exercises, topology rule exercises and even a guide about developing new stored procedures in Jaspa using Java. 

Best regards,

The Jaspa team
Jose Martinez-Llario
Marta Gonzalez-Alcaide
Universidad Politecnica de Valencia

[Editor's note: Jaspa is open source software]