2008 Agile Adoption in GIS Survey - results

Chris Spagnuolo of Data Transfer Solutions has released the results of the 2008 Agile Adoption in GIS Survey. A brief discussion of the results, a detailed whitepaper, and a summary of the raw data are available at Chris Spagnuolo's GeoScrum.

Fluid Earth, custom pinstripe topo Bowl - and a tip on the FME UC summary

Thanks (again) to Peter Batty for a very cool tip (actually he has many of them!) This one is a little odd and fun as Peter provided a pointer on his blog to a company that produced a decorative wooden topo representation of Vancouver - this was a gift to peter for keynoting the recent Safe Software FME user conference. Imagine being able to select an area of interest using a Google maps app, then viewing the region as a 3d elevation surface, then having that area carved (in 3D) asa a custom, wooden, decorative bowl! The company, FluidForms, can custom create a wooden decoration that represents, in 3D, any area that you want. You can custom order your Fluid Earth Strip Bowl online by specifying a location (using a Google Map), then adjust/fine tune your location, then order. Quite impressive. The final product is quite amazing and be sure while your there to check out the Java applet that enables you to view your "bowl" in 3D - it's awesome! A standard size Blow is roughly 300x300x65mm although custom sizes can be ordered. Thanks for the tip Peter, I'm sure the bowl will look great in your office! You can custom order your or simply test the bowl app online. FYI, this tip was discovered while reading Peter's very lengthy and interesting summary of his 2 days at the FME user conference.

A great local (New York) search Google mashup from OutAlot

Heads up, another cool, local search utility has hit the web - enter OutAlot. This clever Google map mashup is currently only providing information in New York (hopefully more places will be added soon). Use the app to search and locate food, movies, bars in the big apple. To test it I search for Food, then I was provided a lengthy list of food types (Indian, Italian, Dim sum etc...). I enter Indian and a lengthy list of relevant hits are displayed in a table and on the map. Click the icon and get more details of the selection. Users are invited to join so they can add places, comments, Bookmark favorite places, and add reviews... very nice. Kudos to the team for producing a very professional local search/mashup application.

FYI, Outalot is also available via most popular mobile devices (even iPhone, Nokia smartphones, etc...) simply point your mobile browser to outalot.com or wap.outalot.com. This cool local search utility comes to us from Seed Wireless, a startup company founded in 2007 and based in Brooklyn, NY.

See http://www.outalot.com

British Columbia Government close to moving forward with Google Earth deal

This one from the Victoria Times Colonist... The B.C. government is set to announce a deal with online search engine Google that will make it the first Canadian province to link its detailed forestry, mineral and topographical database into Google Earth. According to the article, The province and Google are "within a month or so" of announcing more details and costs of the partnership. Recall in related news from B.C, Nanaimo (http://www.nanaimo.ca) recently launched a service that plots calls to its fire department in real time through Google Maps, allowing users to watch what the fire department is doing at any given moment. Nanaimo has been one of the most progressive cities around that have made their data available to users of Google maps and Google Earth.

GITA 09 to head South

Heads up, here's one for your calendar - GITA's 2009 conference will take place next April 19-22, 2009 in Tampa, Florida so be sure to fill that one in on your calendar... looks like the corners of the country are a favorite for the event planners. See also GITA.org

MapQuest Platform: Free Edition of Mapquest's developer APIs

Just heard this morning from the Mapquest comm team about MapQuest's new free, feature-rich and competitive developer offering - MapQuest Platform: Free Edition - the offering was announced via the MapQuest Dev blog (http://devblog.mapquest.com/).

This new offering of Mapquest's developer APIs (aka. "MapQuest Platform: Free Edition”) has taken nearly all the features of the platform and made them freely available to developers.

Mapquest also comments how they've also been rebuilding their geospatial web services platform. Starting with the 5.0 releases, the team has rebuilt much of the platform from the ground up. Currently at version 5.2 and with 5.3 in beta (available at http://developer.mapquest.com/beta/), we wanted to showcase something competitive in regards to a truly robust free offering.