Free GIS Data Tip: Orthophoto Servers and FTP sites... enjoy!

Looking for orthos? Here's a decent reminder list that I published a while back... always useful for reference.. enjoy. The data from the SDDS is available as a seamless product on the Seamless Data Distribution System see http://seamless.usgs.gov The imagery is available for online download as small files or larger areas may be purchased on media (CD or DVD). Looking for more free resources & FTP sites?  Other Sources of Orthophotos & imagery are provide in this list - try these and please, stop buying free, public domain data ;0) - this list is by no means complete but its a good starting point!

 

http://gisdata.usgs.net
http://www.faygis.org/datasearch.cfm http://www.cast.uark.edu/cast/geostor/raw_DOQ/index.html http://sal.uamont.edu/pages/nsdd/Arkansas_State.htm ftp://ccwgov.co.calaveras.ca.us/GIS/Raster_Data/Aerial_Photos/2002_2ft_Color_DOI/ ftp://ftp.ci.corvallis.or.us/pw/gis/orthophotos/ http://casil.ucdavis.edu/casil/kerncog.org/
http://casil.ucdavis.edu/casil/usgs.gov/ http://www.landwateruse.water.ca.gov/basicdata/landuse/digitalsurveys.cfm http://www.fcgov.com/gis/downloadabledata.php http://www.udel.edu/dgs/dgsdata/hundreds.html http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/cgibin/MAGIC_DBsearch2.plGeography=37811&Loc=0001 http://data.labins.org/2003/MappingData/DOQQ/doqq.cfm ftp://gisftp.hicentral.com/AirPhotoImages/
http://inside.uidaho.edu ftp://itoc.in-span.net/ http://cairo.gis.iastate.edu/map.html
http://gisdasc.kgs.ku.edu/kgcc/
http://gis.sedgwick.gov/view/ http://musashi.ogis.state.me.us/catalog/catalog.aspstate=2&extent=24k http://www.mass.gov/mgis/laylist.htm http://maps.dnr.state.mn.us/deli/data_search.html http://www.lmic.state.mn.us/chouse/airphoto_usda.html http://www.maris.state.ms.us/HTM/DataWarehouse/NAIP.htm http://msdisweb.missouri.edu/data/naip/
http://nris.state.mt.us/nsdi/orthophotos/ ftp://www.co.missoula.mt.us/Surveyor/Horizx/MR_SID/ http://www.dnr.state.ne.us/databank/fsa03.html http://www.dnr.state.ne.us/databank/lanc_doqq.html http://njgin.nj.gov/OIT_IW/index.jsp ftp://ims.bernco.gov/data http://rgis.unm.edu/loader_div.cfmtheme=Digital20Orthophotos http://www.nysgis.state.ny.us/gisdata/ http://lnweb02.co.wake.nc.us/gis/gismaps.nsf http://www.state.nd.us/gis/mapsdata/download/ http://www2.ocgi.okstate.edu/2003img1/ ftp://ftp.ci.corvallis.or.us/pw/gis/orthophotos/
ftp://imagery.pasda.psu.edu/pamap/ http://www.edc.uri.edu/orthosf/orthos/2003usda/ http://www.pasda.psu.edu/documents/datalist.cgi/naip http://www.edc.uri.edu/orthosf/orthos/2003usda/ http://www.edc.uri.edu/orthosf/orthos/2003usda/mrsid.html http://www.sdgs.usd.edu/register/index.html http://www.capco.state.tx.us/Information_Clearinghouse/Orthoimagery_main.asp http://agrc.utah.gov/agrc_sgid/naip.html
http://gis.vcu.edu/datausda.html
ftp://ftp.spokanemaps.com/ http://wvgis.wvu.edu/data/dataset.phpaction=search&ID=254#Download http://edc.usgs.gov
http://nationalmap.usgs.gov
http://www.usgs.gov
http://terraserver-usa.com/

 

Something missing??? Tell me about it - finally, if your interested in learning how to access free data using arcgis online check out this free webinar from ESRI -- Introduction to ArcGIS Online will air on ESRI's Training and Education Web site at www.esri.com/training on July 19 at 9:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., and 3:00 p.m. Pacific daylight time. 
 

Report on iPhone usability... learning curve is short, Google Maps was difficult to use

InfoWeek reports on a User Centric survey of iPhone users on the device usability

The learning curve was reduced on the iPhone but Google Maps was difficult to use according to some survey respondents

Other findings:
Safari Web browser was slow and they were frustrated by the browser

User Centric found using the outgoing and incoming call feature, visual voicemail, contact management, and taking and e-mailing digital pictures were all deemed successful by the iPhone users.

Participants found that text entry was much easier on the touch screen soft-keyboard of the iPhone compared to standard multi-tap text entry

users preferred the horizontal keyboard to the vertical keyboard

liking for the iPhone's horizontal view

As expected, users of the iPhone, which also has iPod capability, found selecting and playing music to be easy.

"The percentage of users actually utilizing all of the features that a smart phone offers was higher than other phones we've tested. The iPhone was more intuitive than other devices."

See here for details of the study

WorldMate now available free for S60 users (Nokia N95) and Zurfer is cool too!

Cool news for Symbian S60 device users (like the Nokia N95)... one of the most popular S60 applications is now available for free... WorldMate... the World's leading smartphone travel companion. WorldMate's feature set include weather forecasts, world clocks, a currency converter and a world day / night map. The new S60 WorldMate version also contains the Weathercaster service, the users' favorite audio / visual tool that pushes weather updates to the user. Premium services include real-time flight status, flight schedules and satellite weather imagery, and are available for a subscription fee. WorldMate can be downloaded for free at http://www.mobimate.com or over-the-air at http://mobile.mobimate.com.

Note... if this apps is cool to you then I also suggest you check out Zurfer for S60. ITs a cool add on for mobile flickr users (like me) enabling you to set your location, view photos from your sets, your friends/contacts, and others near you... way cool! Zurfer comes from the Yahoo research labs

Apple iPhone to kick-start LBS... huh??

A newsletter recently hit my mailbox and contained the following headline...

Apple's iPhone will help bring consumer awareness to LBS applications and markets. However, the iPhone has no GPS capability, slow data speeds and limited memory.

I'm a bit confused.. how is the iPhone (and AT&T for that matter) going to kickstart LBS? If anything iPhone may help kick-start mobile gaming, mobile music and mobile entertainment here in North America but LBS?? The author stated the limitations of the device (like no GPS - heck, there's no video either) but I'm supposed to believe that iPhone will spur the onset of LBS like we've never seen before? iPhone is indeed bringing smartphone awareness to the North American user ( a great thing for developers) but without an SDK or an open API for developers I won't hold my breath for the location-services... Symbian S60 and the Nokia N95 will do that!

my 2 cents - source of inspiration

BlinkGeo: Geospatial meets Digg a great new web service

Congrats to Andres from terraIMS on the way cool new BlinkGeo... think DIGG for Geospatial users. Simply put6 its a cool digg-like service where authors or articles, bloggers, or anyone for that matter can"blink" details of an article or item of interest. Simply setup an account and start blinking. See http://www.blinkgeo.com - I'm now blinking some GISuser articles

ESRI Webinar next week - Access Imagery, Obtain Maps, and Add Data using ArcGIS Online

A newly announced web seminar Seminar from ESRI Explains How to Use This Free Web Service... from ESRI... ArcGIS Online offers basemap foundations that can be easily used in ArcGIS Desktop applications including ArcGIS Explorer. ArcGIS Desktop users can connect to ArcGIS Online and access a wide variety of content at no cost including imagery, streets, shaded relief, and topographic maps. ArcGIS Online makes available seamless, high-resolution imagery at approximately 1-meter resolution for the contiguous United States and 2.5- to 15-meter resolution for the world. Visit www.esri.com/arcgisonline to learn more and register. Introduction to ArcGIS Online will air on ESRI's Training and Education Web site at www.esri.com/training on July 19 at 9:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., and 3:00 p.m. Pacific daylight time. This is a great opportunity to help those users who are still naively buying free data from online data stores!

The Zillow DISC neighborhood message

I see I'm not alone and wasn't the only one confused by the message from Zillow last week - see James' post on this.

From Zillow... the appology

We sent you an e-mail last week by mistake. Have you ever hit "send" when you didn't mean to - or copied the wrong person? That's pretty much what happened to us, and we apologize.

We’re very sorry that this happened. We respect your privacy and we’re taking every step possible to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.

This was in reference to the following message:

Since you claimed your home at , you might like to know you're part of the DISC neighborhood on Zillow. This is a brand-new feature -- literally, we just rolled it out -- and we would like to ask your help in getting it started.

By taking part in your Neighborhood Page on Zillow, you can help make Zillow a useful resource for other people like you.

Visit your DEMO Neighborhood Page now!

Oracle rolls out 11g - the pitch - Innovate Faster

Innovate Faster  with 11g (according to Oracle) -- From the official PR,  Oracle today introduced Oracle(r) Database 11g, the latest release of the world's most popular database. With more than 400 features, 15 million test hours, and 36,000 person-months of development

 

Summary of updates at 11g:

Oracle Database 11g can help organizations take control of their enterprise information
Real Application Testing Helps Reduce Time, Risk and Cost of Change
Increase Return On Investment for Disaster Recovery Solutions
Enhanced Information Lifecycle Management and Storage Management
Total Recall of Data Changes
Maximum Availability of Information
Oracle Fast Files
Faster XML
Transparent Encryption
Embedded OLAP Cubes
Connection Pooling and Query Result Caches

 

Enhanced Application Development
Oracle Database 11g offers developers a choice of development tools, and a streamlined application development process that takes full advantage of key Oracle Database 11g features. These include new features such as Client Side Caching, Binary XML for faster application performance, XML processing, and the storing and retrieving of files. In addition, Oracle Database 11g also includes a new Java just-in-time Compiler to execute database Java procedures faster without the need for a third party compiler; native integration with Visual Studio 2005 for developing .NET applications on Oracle; Access migration tools with Oracle Application Express; and SQL Developer easy query building feature for fast coding of SQL and PL/SQL routines.

 

Updates to Oracle Spatial
Oracle Spatial enhancements include support for
• Richer, more-interactive map application development
• Web services application programming interfaces (APIs) for spatial operations
• Business intelligence tools integration
• Dynamic input for routing applications
• 3-D support for terrain and city models and virtual worlds

 

A browse at other headlines from the Geospatial PR headlines and you'll see the Tele Atlas and Navteq are both supporting Oracle Database 11g Spatial Capabilities. See more at http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/12133/ or jump to www.oracle.com

Twitter Does iPhone with PocketTweets

Ok... this is cool...  PocketTweets: Twitter For Your iPhone -- PocketTweets is a Web-based Twitter client for the Apple iPhone. See the latest tweets from your contacts, update your status remotely, or see what's happening around the world by viewing the public timeline. -- all via EDGE or WiFi. PocketTweets was built from the ground up to support Apple's new phone platform - http://pockettweets.com/ - interesting to see some apps coming for the iPhone given that developers have yet to have access to an SDK or an open developer API

Nokia launches competition to find rulers of the mobile world

Looking for a way to "springboard" your mobile applications? Nokia, together with a number of high-profile sponsors today announced the launch of its second annual competition for developers and entrepreneurs working in the mobile space. The mobile rules competition was formerly known as the web2mobile competition. The competition is divided into two ‘tracks’. The first is for qualified developers working on mobile applications for Nokia platforms in four categories: ‘multiplayer and connected games’, ‘multimedia’, ‘enterprise’ and ‘infotainment’. The second is aimed at entrepreneurs, small businesses, start-ups and academic institutions and is for business plans in the mobile space, both those designed specifically for mobile devices and those that make existing static businesses mobile. See www.mobilerules.org or for more details jump to http://www.lbszone.com/content/view/2056/2/

Google Earth Build your campus in 3D competition finalists announced

After receiving submissions from more than 300 Colleges the finalists in the build your campus in 3D (i.e.. SketchUp) competition have been announced. The winners and the KMZ files are now available for viewing at http://contest.sketchup.com/entry.php

The finalists are:

Purdue University - Depts of Computer Graphics Technology and Education

Concordia University, Loyola Campus - Dept of Civil Engineering

Stanford University - Dept of Architectural Design

IPFW - Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne - Depts of Engineering and Computer Science

Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering - Dept of Engineering

Dartmouth College - Depts of Computer Science and Digital Art

University of Minnesota - Dept of Architecture

Grab the files, fly around the campus and pick your favorite

Nokia N800 Internet Tablet + Skype = way cool!

Today the already way cool Nokia N800 Internet Tablet just got much cooler. This Linux powered Tablet enables users to browse the web and communicate with others easily anywhere in the World that offers up a Wi-Fi connection. Now users of the tablet can take advantage of Skype which is now supporting the device. See http://www.symbianone.com/content/view/4645/108/ for details and see also www.nseries.com for more from Nokia.

Some features of the way cool N800:
Opera 8
Adobe® Flash® 9 browser plug-in
Internet communications
Skype support
Internet calling with integrated webcamera
Instant Messaging
Multi-protocol email client
Full screen finger keyboard
Access to internet media at home and on-the-go
High quality stereo speakers
Media player
UPnP architecture
Real Rhapsody
Expandable mass memory
Volume: 137 cc
Weight: 206 g
High-resolution touch screen (800 x 480 pixels) with up to 65,536 colors
DDR RAM 128MB
Flash 256MB, 128 MiniSD with extender included
Browsing time- up to 3.5 hours
Standby time- up to 13 days
WLAN: 802.11b/g
Bluetooth specification: 2.0.
Nokia AV connector 3.5mm
USB 2.0 high speed device mode for PC connectivity

It may not be an iPhone, but then again it doesn't cost $600 either - AND it runs Linux OS!

PCI Geomatics to offer up a look at Hyperspectral imagery

From our Canadian friends at PCI Geomatics comes a new section to be included in upcoming issues of Footsteps and Futures - their newsletter. Focus on Hyperspectral is the first in a series of informative guides designed to showcase the use of different data types in Geomatica; it explores what hyperspectral imagery is and what you can do with it. See details HERE

GISuser Today - a look at some recent updates

From today's GISuser newsblast - An update... the other day I accidentally referred to Factle maps as "Fractle maps"... my bad. Also, regarding the dataset that was mentioned, apparently I may have stumbled onto a story that is brewing and may be making headlines over the months to come. The long and short of it is that data being distributed, given away, and sold by factle is the subject of a brewing ownership dispute involving Homegain and a familiar name, Maponics. Coincidentally Maponics has officially announced the commercial release of this data product just today (see PR below & blog) - stay tuned on this story as the details come in. On a side-note, be sure to check out this very clever neighborhood data product. The idea of mapping by neighborhood is a very clever one and I believe offers amazing opportunities to the users of these data. Given the social and economic characteristics that residents of a "neighborhood" share this could indeed truly become a very powerful and useful data product. Moving forward, I'm pleased to offer up another excellent Google Maps Tutorial from our regular Google contributing author, Eric Pimpler - see today's spotlight for a look at Integrating ArcGIS and Google Earth and the new time control element. Finally, congrats to Alex Philp and crew on word of the merger of GCS Research & Geo-Spatial Solutions Inc - good luck to all involved! Today's top news items include the launch of Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise 2008 and Autodesk Topobase 2008, GeoPDF being used by the USGS, and updates to Leica Geospatial's TITAN. Have a super day! PS: Have you created a Schmaplet yet ;0) See today's newsletter online at http://www.gisuser.com/newsletter/jul112007.html

Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries - integrate these data into your Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft mashups

Maponics, LLC announced today the full release of Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries™. Until now, websites offering local search, including social marketing, real estate and Web 2.0 sites, have had to provide search results based upon ZIP Code or city name. By integrating Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries, search results for hundreds of cities can now be filtered and even mapped by universally accepted city neighborhood boundaries. The result - more relevant local search results, more loyal site visitors and higher ad revenue. More about the dataset... Covering hundreds of the top US cities, the Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries database includes all latitude and longitude coordinates for each neighborhood polygon. It is specifically designed for easy integration into Google™, Yahoo!®, or Microsoft® map mash-ups or into back-end data analysis applications.

The idea of mapping by neighborhood is a very clever one and I believe offers amazing opportunities to the users of these data. Given the social and economic characteristics that residents of a "neighborhood" share this could indeed truly become a very powerful and useful data product... I can't wait to see where this goes as we see apps developed based on neighborhood data. See www.maponics.com

A sample of the neighborhood dataset - Source: maponics.com

create your own online maps and mashups at MyOnlineMaps

Another new online we-mapping service launches today... MyOnlineMaps allows users to create national, regional, state and county maps that can easily be saved and transferred to presentations and documents. Site subscribers can create maps by uploading their own data to a private area of the site or choose from a variety of public data provided. MyOnlineMaps users have the flexibility to select geographic boundaries, data ranges, colors, and fonts to easily customize maps for a variety of purposes. Users can share their maps and data sets with other site subscribers and access free online mapping resources. See http://www.myonlinemaps.com for a free trial

Two GIS Companies From Pacific NW Merge to form GCS Holdings Inc.

This news out of Missoula, MT and  Bend, Oregon as our friend Alex Philp shares details...  GCS Research LLC. and Geo-Spatial Solutions Inc. today announced a strategic merger and combination of resources and assets under GCS Holdings Inc.  The combined assets of GCS Holdings Inc. (GCS) represent a nationally recognized, award-winning portfolio of products, services and solutions.

 

GCS features two key product offerings, both based on industry leading ESRI technology.  GeoMarc® is the most advanced offering today for digital watermarking in a geospatial context tied to the ESRI ArcGIS infrastructure, specifically for desktop, server and web-based geospatial data transactions, services and management.  GeoIrrigation™ is the industry’s leading hosted web-based GIS solution for irrigation and water resource managers.

 

GCS will now maintain offices in Montana, Oregon (Bend and Portland), Washington, Colorado, and Vermont with expansion objectives including the Washington D.C. area to better serve federal civilian and Department of Defense/Intelligence customers.  See www.gcs-research.com & www.gcs-research.net - details of the merger found at http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/12119/

Webinar - Deeper Insights: Definiens Cognition Network Technology

During this session, Dr. Martin Baatz, VP of Advanced Technology, Definiens will discuss: the challenges associated with image analysis, how structures of interest are extracted from images, the essentials of Definiens Cognition Network Technology, and application samples from Life Sciences and Remote Sensing. See also a four minute video synopsis of this session here

The session takes place on July 18th, 2007 (17:00 CEST, 16:00 BST, 11:00 EDT, 8:00 PDT).
To register, simply visit here

Nokia N95 Aerial Photography from PictEarth USA

As a follow up to our interesting blog post about the high-flying Nokia N95 strapped to a kite, I have the pleasure to share some information about a more sophisticated application that builds on this technology. Follow this lead for information about a savvy developer who's flying an N95 (and other Symbian smartphones) capturing aerial imagery and building a pretty huge gallery. See more Here

Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise 2008 and 12 cool things about it

Autodesk has officially released Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise 2008 today. At the heart of this release: enhanced FDO Data Access Technology, native support for Google Earth, speed and stability. Read on for a quick look at the new features, the benefits and 12 Cool Things About MapGuide Enterprise. Check out details here

AUGI rolls out AUGI UK to member community

The hard working crew of dedicated volunteers at AUGI have announced a UK spin-off. Welcome to the AUGI UK Country Chapter for the United Kingdom which officially launched June 22, 2007. Within this chapter and its website, AUGI members in the UK will find valuable learning  resources including:
The UK Library
Quick Access to AUGI publicatons
AU Downloads
Access to ATP
Events Calendar

See www.AUGIuk.com

Nokia N95 does aerial photography - try that Apple iPhone!

Ok, this is freaking awesome... you gotta love these wacked-out Europeans and their awesome ideas... this time it's aerial photography (video actually) over Denmark using a spanky, $600 Nokia N95 symbian OS smartphone duck taped to a kite! The "pilot" managed to grab several minutes of video and even had a sweet landing. Try that with your Apple iPhone.. oh, hold on, it doesn't have video capabilities! See details and video of the flying Nokia N95 over at the Erikso.com blog

updates for Leica Titan

Some recent updates announced for Leica TITAN... Leica TITAN (a solution for sharing your data). Recent updates include:

- Published data may be served and consumed by Google Earth
- Using the Geospatial Instant Messenger, images, terrain and feature data shared in Leica TITAN may also be viewed directly in Google Earth.
- With the base data provided by Google Earth, users may view and integrate large volumes of geospatial data.
- The Google Earth capability can also consume an OGC Web Mapping Service (WMS) published by users sharing geospatial data in Leica TITAN.
- New and improved user interface skin
More info listed at http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/12092/ or see also www.lggi.com/titan

The IE web browsing experience

Don't you just love the wonderful Web browsing experience that IE provides you, particularly when you get these messages ;0)

GeoMarc technology protects your imagery with digital watermark technology - maybe Miss New Jersey (Amy Polumbo) should use it!

Watching the news this AM and browsing the top headlines today it's hard to imagine that Miss New Jersey (Amy Polumbo) is one of the top news items of the day, apparently in hot water for having some "tainted" images floating around the webosphere. Listening to the odd circumstances it made me think that there's some very cool technologies coming out of the geospatial world that could likely have helped avoid this entire fiasco, enabling the news headlines to perhaps focus on some real news and worry less about who's doing body shots or ??? GeoMarc technology from GCS-Research is an amazing technology developed initially for the military and intel space that embeds a digital watermark within imagery, leaving essentially a paper trail behind any images. Typically we'd think of applying this to aerial photos, satellite imagery and the like, however, realistically this technology can be applied to virtually any digital images.. even photos of Miss New Jersey!

Imagine being able to embed meta data and other information within the header of images, safeguarding your investment and retaining your property - think GeoMarc. Here's more info about GeoMarc technology from GCS-Research...
GeoMarc technology embeds unique identifiers during the map exporting process without visually impacting the output products. These identifiers are read by downstream processes to enable a host of value added information and services. Through GeoMarc, the image becomes the gateway to embedded Web services, security profiles and permissions, identity and copyright tracking, and variety of geospatial data communication applications. If you've never had a demo of this cool application be sure to check it out... I saw it at the recent ESRI User Conference (in the Military & Homeland Security area of the exhibition hall) and I was truly wowed by it. Any agency serving up imagery (or photos etc...) via the web could make use of GeoMarc. See http://www.gcs-research.com

Factle maps and a neighborhood dataset

Note: The original message posted here has been removed and updated with a new message at the request of factle.net - the prior message was based on information contained within an email that was not edited accordingly prior to distribution... Factle is a company out of Berkeley California.

Factle Maps produces high quality neighborhood maps. From members of the team that won the 2006 MapInfo Meridian Award, we have put together a comprehensive dataset of neighborhood boundaries for all U.S. cities with populations of 150,000 and greater, as well as their demographic data. As leading experts on neighborhood mapping, we are constantly improving our datasets, continually mapping out neighborhoods for most U.S. cities with the goal to expand our neighborhood collection to other nations.

Until July 28, 2007, Factle Maps will be offering GISUser users neighborhood data at a reduced price that is often substantially lower than comparable datasets. This license comes with names and boundaries for over 11,000 neighborhoods and sub-neighborhoods, that includes elements of the dataset used by HomeGain and Trulia. The reason for this offer is that after this month, the rights -- to the original neighborhood data that we helped create – reverts to another company. As a result, we will lose our license to sell this specific dataset directly and we want to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to purchase our data at a reasonable price. We typically sell our neighborhood data at 50% of what others have been charging and we do not require an annual licensing fee. You also have the option of upgrading your purchase to include corresponding demographic data to as many as 500 different parameters. Your neighborhood purchase will be credited toward future Factle dataset purchases. see more at http://www.factle.net/

Note: Since the time of this original post, Maponics (www.maponics.com ) has sued Factle Maps over copyright infringement in federal court (see http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-candce/case_no-3:2007cv05777/case_id-197808/ ). Maponics is the legitimate owner of this data – please contact Maponics at 800-762-5158 for more information on licensing neighborhood boundaries.

topo map galore and simple to find and access

Nice to see that mainstream users, sports enthusiast, etc... are finding that topo maps and aerial photos are easy to locate, download, and view. A sample of this is a recent article in the Bowling Green Daily news (http://bgdailynews.com/articles/2007/07/08/sports/sports4.txt) describing that via simple search (using coordinates or place names) topos are now readily available to anyone. Most of us likely know this (although why some "of us" still elect to buy free topo maps) but its great to see this fact identified in the mainstream news... interesting and kind of nice to note that Google Earth wasn't even mentioned in this piece!

FOSS4G - 5 days in Victoria.. nice (perhaps a bit too long for some though)

I was just looking around at the events, sessions, and workshops planned for this September's OpenSource event, FOSS4G planned for September 24-27 in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (my old hometown). What I never noticed about this event before was that sessions and training span the entire week - 5 days. No doubt there's going to be loads of "meat" covered in this cool open source training session, however, in today's very competitive marketplace where there's oodles of events vying for your attendance, getting people to go somewhere (even beautiful Victoria) for 5 days has got to be a challenge. I've attended close to 100 events and training sessions in the past decade and I've seen how competitive this space can be. Perhaps this one is niche enough that the 5 day span won't matter, add to the fact that there will likely be a large Euro contingency and the fact that the event is much like a "user conference" then perhaps it won't matter to most. Presenters to date are listed as being from the following companies:
The Timoney Group
OSGeo China
IBM Corporation
Autodesk, Inc.
Precision Geomatics Inc.
OpenStreetMap
NASA/SSAI
Metalogic Software Corp.
more to come!
This is a great opportunity to get a good look at what's taking place in the open source movement and I wish I could be there (particularly to see some family and Canadian friends at the same time), however, 5 days is just a little too long for me during that time period. Those of you lucky enough to attend, you'll be pleased to know that September is likely THE best month you could ever select to visit Victoria! Drop me a line if you're looking for tips on what to see, where to go, and where to stay. A tip... check out Swan's Hotel!

A bit about the event:
The 2007 Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) conference gathers developers and users of open source geo-spatial software from around the world to discuss new directions, exciting implementations, and growing business opportunities in the field of open source geo-spatial software. FOSS4G is presented annually by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). Topics to be addressed at this event will include (but not be limited to):
-Interoperability
-NeoGeography and NovelGeography
-Using a Software Stack
-3D Worlds

See ://www.foss4g2007.org
Finally, a reminder that the RFP call for hosting the 2008 event will be closing July 20 see details here