Meet other geobloggers face to face (well almost) in the planet gs meebo

Like I need another place on the web to distract me... but seriously, "fantom planet" created a room on meebo where planet geospatial readers can connect and chat in real time. See http://wwwm.meebo.com/room/planetgeospatial/. Unfortunately no other geo-bloggers were online when I signed in..m aybe later. These things are cool although a "club penguin" feel would be really cool... imaging strolling over to the Tiki lounge to meet up with others etc... I guess I'll bookmark this one for later

Google Earth and Microsoft Live Local Search not blurring out same sensitive areas

Interesting watching CNN news do a piece today on distorting imagery within Google Earth and Microsoft's Live Local Search. Its become apparent that the same areas are not obscured on both mapping sites. For example, The White House is blurred in the Microsoft app yet it appears quite clear in Google Earth.. there are also blurred images in Google Earth that appear un-touched in the Microsoft application. According to the report, the two companies will likely have to come together and have their commerical imagery providers provide blurred out imagery for the same sensitive areas.. sounds like some job opportunities to me! See http://intl.local.live.com/ & http://maps.google.com/

More on the USGS Rolla office closure and consolidation in Denver

A reminder came my way from the USGS -- More from the RollaDailyNews regarding the USGS and their plans for the move... Despite a protest from the Denver U.S. Geological Survey team preparing its proposal to be the permanent home for the agency, the Rolla USGS team is moving forward to make its formal presentation on June 18... they continue - "Formerly, the USGS had four locations, one each in Reston, Va., Menlo Park, Calif., and the Denver and Rolla sites. Both the Virginia and California sites have since been closed. The closure of the Rolla office, which had been forecast last Sept. 31, was pushed back at least a year. Closing the Rolla facility would leave about 100 workers unemployed and result in a loss of $13.74 million in annual payroll." See http://therolladailynews.com/articles/2007/05/18/news/news01.txt

LibTiff library with support for the new BigTIFF format

LibTiff (http://www.remotesensing.org/libtiff/) maintainers have started work on LibTiff 4.0, the next major upgrade of the time-proven TIFF (http://www.awaresystems.be/imaging/tiff.html) codec. This upgrade will include support for the new BigTIFF file format. It is planned a preliminary version (LibTiff 4.0alpha1) will be operational by June 15, 2007. Testing and final release improvements for LibTiff 4.0 will be completed by July 30, 2007. For more information on the BigTIFF file format, we recommend AWare Systems' BigTIFF page at http://www.awaresystems.be/imaging/tiff/bigtiff.html

Does everyone hate podcasts?

Wow, looks like I'm not alone... Vodcasts and videocasts are great... audio podcasts though.. sorry... looks like James has quite a few readers commenting that also aren't to hot on Pocasting. Simply put, they really aren't that conveneient it appears - pretty interesting! http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/2007/05/15/stop-posting-the-podcasts/ - Remember... video killed that radio star - enter YouTube!

RFP released for hosting FOSS4G 2008 conference

Received this message from DM Solutions Group today... The Open Source Geospatial Foundation, or OSGeo, today released a request for proposal, or RFP, (available at http://www.osgeo.org/files/webfiles/conference/rfp/osgeo-conference-2008-request-for-proposal.pdf) for the hosting of the FOSS4G 2008 conference. As the excitement for the upcoming FOSS4G 2007 conference in Victoria Canada builds (http://www.foss4g2007.org/), OSGeo aims for the following 2008 conference to be a major geospatial conference during that year. The RFP solicitation closes July 20th, 2007.

I want one!!! Pileus The Internet Umbrella with camera, GPS, photo sharing, navigation

Pileus is an umbrella connected to the Internet to make walking in rainy days fun. Pileus has a large screen on the top surface, a built-in camera, a motion sensor, GPS, and a digital compass, and it provides two main functions; A Social Photo-sharing and A 3D Map Navigation.  The photo function is connected to a major web service "Flickr". A user can take photo with a camera on the umbrella, and pictures are uploaded to Flickr in two minutes with context tags via a wireless Internet connection. User can also enjoy theirselves watching photo-streams downloaded from Flickr (and video-stream from YouTube on an advanced proto) with simple operation of wrist snapping. See http://www.pileus.net/ - can't you just imagine this selling in hot cakes in rainy cities like Seattle and San Fran!

Canadian Association of Geographers, Geography Awareness week and GIS Day - an update

The Canadian Association of Geographers is developing a national program to increase geography awareness in every region. According to Dr. Barry Wellar, Director of Geography Awareness Week for the Canadian Association of Geographers, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Ottawa,  this is a major achievement and GAW 2007 in Canada is going to differ greatly from the majority of other GAW efforts. Dr. Wellar has shared with me some details of plans for the week, scheduled as usual for November (this year Nov 12-16). He notes... "since GIS is central to each of the Themes, the GIS topic not only has its own day, it also gets serious coverage during the other Days in an applications way that will be greatly appreciated by many Canadians." November 12 is Weather and Climate Day, November 13 is Water Day, November 14 is GIS Day, November 15 is Transportation Day, and November 16 is Food and Health Day. Each Day is on a topic that directly affects all Canadians. For more on GAW see http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/11629/

OSGeo Mapguide Open Source edges out Google earth in geospatial award

Interesting to see this out of the Geospatial Leadership Awards today at the annual GeoTec Event in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. In the Leadership awards under the "innovation" category Autodesk's Mapguide Open Source edged out Google to take the hardware. The award is given to a geospatial tool developer that has created new software or hardware that expands the possibilities of the geospatial industry. More on the award in this PR - http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/11620/ - are you surprised?

Twitter - is it me or is this boring? Although twittervision and flickrvision are sort of cool

Do you twitter? Twitter has received a fair bit of attention lately and there's some very cool apps built around it... but really.. what is the use of this??? Maybe I'm boring, or maybe I'm getting old.. but who the heck has the time to actually type in or text message what they are doing, posting it online and sharing details with a bunch of strangers... WHY?? So if I'm a skilled and passionate Twitterer then I would be constantly updating and interrupting my day by posting continuously... I'm now having a coffee... I'm now reading the paper... I'm now going to the bathroom... cool app but I really don't get it! Can you share with me a useful application of this? The coolest one I've seen is maybe twittervision which lets me be a voyeur and simply sit back and watch what people are doing.. once again, I have a life so this really isn't very interesting to me - see http://twittervision.com/ (there's also a similar app that does the same but with flickr updates - see www.flickrvision.com) - not familiar with Twitter.. see www.twitter.com - I have to admit, I have a twitter account and I posted 3 times I think.. then I grew bored of it. I'm interested in the technology and I'm sure there's some talent behind the scenes but is there really a use and moreso, where's the business model? I see that twitter is hiring.. how do they pay the salaries?

Volume 1 of the OSGeo Journal released

OSGeo has announced that Volume 1 of the OSGeo Journal is now available for your reading pleasure! This is the first volume of the new Journal and includes many interesting articles, news and updates from our open source communities. See http://www.osgeo.org/journal/volume1

coming soon - loki 2.0

rumors and tips of interest... At the O’Reilly Media Where 2.0 Conference on May 29, Skyhook Wireless will launch Loki 2.0 - the platform for delivering auto-location awareness to the geoweb.   It features new user controls, an updated look and feel, broader operating system support, a mobile version and an open web services API that enable any web developer to location-enable their content, application or service. see www.loki.com

formation of the National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC)

The NGAC is being created to advise the Federal government on the management of national geospatial programs and the development of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI).  The NSDI promotes sharing of geospatial data throughout all levels of government, the private and non-profit sectors, and the academic community.  The Committee will provide advice and recommendations on Federal geospatial policy and management issues and provide a forum to convey views representative of our partners in the geospatial community.  The Committee is being formed by the Department of the Interior on behalf of the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) under the authority of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). The NGAC will include approximately 20–25 members, who will be selected to generally achieve a balanced representation of the viewpoints of the various partners involved in national geospatial activities.  Nominations for Committee membership should be submitted electronically to ngacnominations@fgdc.gov by June 28, 2007. See www.gsa.gov/faca

OnPoint + Virtual Earth extension = cool!

Canadian company, Orion Technology has just updated their flagship product, OnPoint - OnPoint 6 comes in two flavours, Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition, and can now connect to more spatial data sources including ESRI’s ArcIMS, ArcSDE, and ArcGIS Server, OGC (WMS & WFS), Microsoft MapPoint, Pictometry, and more.  It also connects to all non-spatial data in Oracle, SQL Server, and any other ODBC compliant database to allow user interaction. The Microsoft Virtual Earth extension to OnPoint provides users with a wealth of road network, landmark, oblique, and street level imagery that they do not need to build and maintain. A primary advantage is being able to overlay all locally managed GIS database content with Virtual Earth imagery, essentially allowing the user to click on the imagery and receive attributes through OnPoint’s GIS layers and joined business systems. The extension also offers the ability to route throughout road networks – searching with specific parameters in OnPoint and designating the results as Start/End points in routing using Virtual Earth. More info in the PR at http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/11595/