Planet Geospatial

Topographic Map of the Earth Released

2009-07-02T23:39:25Z

NASA has announced the release of the most complete topographic data of the earth to date. Over 99 percent of the earth’s surface was mapped using measurements obtained from NASA’s Terra spacecraft using the Japanese Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer instrument, aka Aster. Previously, the most comprehensive mapping of the earth’s topopgraphy was accomplished through the Shuttle [...]

Enterprise Resource Centre Added To The ESRI Resource Centres

2009-07-02T22:56:57Z

A big new addition to the ESRI Resource Centres is the Enterprise Resource Centre. Launched a few days ago, the Enterprise Resource Centre contains resources to help IT professionals implement a sustainable enterprise GIS. The Enterprise Resource Centre contains best practices, patterns and guidance in the areas of security, performance and scalability, application architecture and interoperability.

The Enterprise Resource Centre is broken into three categories for resources.

Application Architectures

The ArcGIS Platform provides a comprehensive suite of applications and services. The Application Architecture section of the Enterprise GIS Resource Center provides an introduction to the ArcGIS Platform, along with standardized representations for each of the core Application Architectures. For more information on the different application types (Rich Client, etc.), including pros, cons and other considerations, please visit Microsoft's® open source Application Architecture Guide.

Within this, there are four key areas covered. These include Rich Client Applications, Web Applications, Services, Mobile.

Security

The Security Resource Center provides unified access to Security related information for enterprise solutions utilizing ESRI products. It is intended primarily to help IT Architects, Managers and Administrators understand ESRI's approach to security, and how the ArcGIS Platform can be implemented securely.

Three key areas are covered here. Strategy, Mechanisms, Application Security

Performance And Scalability

Performance is a measure of the speed at which a computer system works. Scalability is the ability to grow in size or complexity without showing negative effects. Problems in either area may expose the enterprise to operating inefficiencies and potentially general failure of critical business components. Testing, monitoring, and tuning the environment will ensure optimal performance and user satisfaction.

Three key areas here as well. Application Performance Considerations, Infrastructure Performance Considerations, Capacity, Performance Benchmarks and Testing.

To add to these excellent resources is the community. The community includes a number of galleries. The implementation gallery contains a number of resources from benchmarks through to security guidance through to test reports, while the media gallery includes a number presentation slide decks from the ESRI Developer Summit 2009.

This is a now a one stop portal for finding resources on implementing an enterprise GIS. It is a very valuable resource and encourage users to make use of the important resources on this new Enterprise Resource Centre.

You can find the Enterprise Resource Centre here: http://resources.esri.com/enterprisegis/

Tips For Speeding Up Caching ArcGIS Server Map Services

2009-07-02T22:31:16Z

Users are always on the lookout for ways to speed up map caching. There are a few things that users can take into consideration when looking into speeding up caching ArcGIS Server map services. The Mapping Centre has complied a short list of some of what they have learnt over the past few months. This list if focused around how you can optimise the environment you are caching your map in.

So what are these tips?

Upgrade to ArcGIS 9.3.1. If you have not upgraded to 9.3.1, do it before caching because the file I/O for writing map cache tile images was vastly improved in the latest version. The result is anywhere from 25% to 2000% faster caching. Basically, the simpler the map, the more improvement you’ll see. That’s because simple maps draw faster and therefore file I/O is a larger proportion of caching time.

Use more than one computer to cache. If you have the luxury of using several computers to do your caching, break up the caching job first by map level, and, if needed for the largest scales, geographically. Each portion of the job should be done such that tiles are being written to each of the several computers’ hard drives. When the caching is done, then copy the tiles from each machine into a master cache. One tip here is that we bought a software application called Secure Copy by ScriptLogic Corporation which made the job of copying possible for the largest scales where the potential exists to produce millions of map tiles.

Set the number of processes to two. We’ve found that two is the optimum number of processes on each computer doing caching (we’ve been using 2 Duo CPUs E8500s each with 4Gb of RAM). One process just doesn’t take full advantage of available CPU and memory. Three processes pin the CPU, but actually produces fewer tiles per hour than two processes. Our theory is that file I/O is maxed out—we’ve been using 250GB and 1TB internal IDE hard drives.

Turn off the option for indexing in your cache folder. In the Windows file manager, right-click on your cache folder and select Properties, then click Advanced (Windows XP), and uncheck the option “For fast searching, allow Indexing Service to index this folder”. This will make cache production 15-20% faster.

Check your available memory. During our caching processes, we’ve usually got the Windows Task Manager open because we want to know how much memory is being used by the ArcSOC.exe processes that are being used to create the cache. This is especially important if you’ve got other services running on the server, because these services are taking up memory, too, and you want to make sure the caching process, which will be more demanding of memory usage, is not pushing out of your available physical RAM and into your pagefile.sys (which will result in catastrophically slower caching times!)

Relocate the server’s pagefile.sys file. Unfortunately, stability of the caching process can be an issue, especially if you have other services running on your server. We’ve found one particularly good practice to minimize unexpected stoppage of our caching processes, which is to relocate the server’s pagefile.sys file onto a dedicated partition, preferably on a disk that is not primarily involved in caching. Minimally, we used to do this for printing large maps because it kept the pagefile.sys file from becoming fragmented, which limited the size of available memory blocks.

Avoid having other services running while you are caching – this is really a summarization of the last few tips together!

The Mapping Centre’s post on these tips can be found here: http://blogs.esri.com/support/...

Integrating The Adobe Flex Builder Plugin Into An Existing Eclipse IDE

2009-07-02T21:57:45Z

For those that have been wondering how to go about doing this. A short article has been posted by the ESRI Support Centre. This article provides a brief look into integrating the Adobe Flex Builder Plugin into an existing Eclipse IDE.

You can find this article here: http://blogs.esri.com/support/...

Extremely useful for existing Java ADF developers wanting to work with the ArcGIS API for Flex.

“We need visionary leadership for sustainable development”

2009-07-02T19:29:07Z

These were the words of Margot Wallström Vice-President of the European Commission to the new EU presidency Inauguration of the Swedish Presidency to the European Union Stockholm, 1 July 2009. Sweden now takes over the Presidency and it is widely expected that that country will pursue sustainable development goals that impact nearly 500 million people directly.

DigitalGlobe Prepping For Launch of WorldView-2 Satellite

2009-07-02T17:27:30Z

Longmont CO based DigitalGlobe has announced the launch date for WorldView 2 - October 6 and the place - Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. As the third satellite in DigitalGlobe’s...

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Working in the Cathedral

2009-07-02T17:21:15Z

In February, at the Toronto Code Sprint, the PostGIS team looked each other in the eye (for the first time) and committed to get the 1.4 release out by late April.

Well, it's late June now. It seems very likely that I will get to cut 1.4.0RC1 tomorrow morning.

My personal preference has always been to release early and often. In the hacker ethic, this sounds like a good thing, it's the "bazaar" model that Eric Raymond promoted over the "cathedral" model of development. In the bazaar, you dump out regular releases, and let the community dictate whether they are of quality ("don't use 2.31.2a, it's garbage!"). I still remember being told by a more knowledgeable Linux user that I could upgrade to 1.1.53 (?), but not any further than that, because the succeeding releases were unstable. In the cathedral, you release no wine before its time, aiming for a polished diamond of a release.

So, 1.4.0 has taken much longer than expected, the confluence of a development team that is now unwilling to accept the existence of any "crasher" bugs at all (no matter how unlikely they are to be exercised) and a growing comprehensiveness in the test suite, which is now covering all the functions, in most every combination of inputs. Because of the enhanced testing, we discovered crashers we didn't know we had – and then we had to fix them.

Despite chafing to release! release! release! I have come to appreciate our new conservatism. Among my favorite feedbacks on PostGIS is the users who say "it just works, install it and forget about it, rock solid". That feels good, and to keep things that way, our new austerity is only going to help.

The maturation of PostGIS into a product you can just "install and forget" has been multi-stage.

Prior to the 1.0 release, Sandro Santilli added the first regression tests. These tests have been growing ever since and have been invaluable in ensuring that old bugs don't re-enter the code base, and that new features don't break old features.

For the 1.4 release, the documentation was upgraded substantially, by adding a great deal of extra structuring to the reference section. Regina Obe discovered that a side effect of the extra structure was that she could automatically generate a test for most every documented function using XSLT on the docbook XML. This new "garden test" found a number of previously undetected bugs, that have since been removed.

For the 1.4 release, I added the start of a CUnit test suite that exercises the PostGIS functions without requiring a database back-end. Even in it's early state, it has saved me from a couple booboos already. For future releases, this extra regression suite is going to help keep things stable.

For the 1.4 release, Mark Cave-Ayland re-worked the logging and debugging infrastructure, to make the coding cleaner and easier to maintain during debugging cycles. He also split out the underlying geometry implementations, which are now used in the loader/dumper utilities, for a more consistent approach to geometry handling.

These are all under-the-covers improvements that end-users never see. But they all contribute to that "it just works, it just runs" end-user experience that I have come to treasure even more than the sensation of slamming out a point release at 2am. I hope everyone tries out RC1 so that we can slay any remaining bugs before the 1.4.0 release!

Lies, Damn Lies...

2009-07-02T17:17:40Z

"Green shoots..." ah, for the good old days of only two weeks ago, when green shoots were in our future...

I never really understood why decreases in the rate of change of unemployment were considered such great news. "Good news, the second derivative has gone positive! we're plunging into the abyss slightly less quickly!" Only in a world of rampant, congenital optimism – or statistics-induced myopia – could four months in which 18,300 Americans lost their jobs every day be described as a period of "improving conditions".

Broadband Mapping Funding Available

2009-07-02T17:06:00Z

The US Department of Commerce has released a Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) (PDF) for a State Broadband Data and Development Grant Program. The Notice is published in the Federal Register. There is also a Fact Sheet (PDF).

The media announcement, from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), explains that the funds are intended to support the collection of state-level broadband data, "as well as state-wide broadband mapping and planning."

The Program will provide approximately $240 million in grants to assist states or their designees to develop state-specific data on the deployment levels and adoption rates of broadband services. These data, including publicly available state-wide broadband maps, will also be used to develop the comprehensive, interactive national broadband map that NTIA is required by the Recovery Act to create and make publicly available by February 17, 2011.

This is a grant opportunity that has been expected for some time. Most states have already established teams working on possible approaches to broadband mapping. Broadband mapping is a part of the "Technology for the 21st Century" section of the NSGIC 2008-2009 Advocacy Agenda (PDF). And broadband mapping has been the subject of presentations and discussions at the most recent NSGIC Annual (September 2008) and Midyear (February 2009) conferences.

The program allows only one grant application per state. State-level grants will range from $1.9 million to $3.9 million. Applications are to be accepted via grants.gov between July 14 and August 14, 2009.

ArcGIS Server WebADF: Adjusting the Zoom Scale for Find Address Task Results

2009-07-02T15:51:00Z

Overview

When working with the Find Address Task in the ArcGIS Server WebADF, the default zoom scale that is displayed when the user zooms to a found address might not be what you want. This article discusses how to change it using the ZoomToPointFactor property. Read More...

3DGIS Cityvu 0.9.6.3 Released

2009-07-02T15:47:00Z

Eduard Roccatello writes "3DGIS has released a new minor version of Cityvu, a multiplatform CityGML viewer.
Cityvu is a 3D GIS data viewer able to load CityGML data format from any compatible data source.
It runs on mainstream operative systems as Microsoft Windows XP and Vista, Apple Mac OS X and GNU Linux.
Cityvu offers comprehensive support to the Internet without need of installation, as it only requires Java Runtime.

This release comes after the UDMS symposium with new features:

* Stereo view
* Wireframe outline (useful for DTMs)
* User selectable face culling
* Improved scene tree
* CityGML attributes support (not yet complete but we are working on it :-) )
* Item highlighting and focus
* Screenshot support
* Lot of bugfixes

URL: http://cityvu.3dgis.it/"

GeoMaker - Geo Locations As Microformats

2009-07-02T14:44:00Z

Found on Ajaxian, go there to check out the screencast and a lot of other info : GeoMaker allows non-developers to enter some text or a URL, filter the results (using YUI datatable) to remove false positives (no system is perfect) and get the embed code for a Yahoo Map or a list of microformatted locations as copy+paste. See the screencast to get the end user experience

OpenFlights - Route Mapping The World

2009-07-02T14:14:02Z

OpenFlights - Route Mapping The World

OpenFlights is a tool that lets you map your flights around the world, search and filter them in all sorts of interesting ways, calculate statistics automatically, and share your flights and trips with friends and the entire world (if you wish). It's also the name of the open-source project to build the tool.

Search by Click the Icons on the Map or Airport Code, Airport Name or IATA Name- a very handy Aiport Map. Mapping base by OpenLayers

Note: Now, you can click on any airport and see every single scheduled flight:

Testing Stages:

OpenFlights has been going through Alpha, Beta and Gamma test phases, OpenFlights is now in its Delta phase: all core functionality is implemented, but development on new features continues. If you'd like to be informed about major updates to the site visit their blog

For easy access to this, we’ve added a Quick search widget, shown expanded above but normally hiding in the bottom-right corner under the icon. Here’s how to use it, in two easy steps:

Enter the airport name, city or IATA code in the box. OpenFlights will automatically suggest matches as you type, and if the airport is already shown on the map, OpenFlights will pop it up.
Once you’ve entered a valid name, the Search button becomes active. If you click on this, OpenFlights will load a route map showing all flights from that airport.

But there’s more! In the popup for every airport, there’s now a Routes button, which you can also use to see the map. If you click on the List button for the mapped airport (via popup or the top left corner), you’ll get a list of all flights operating from there; if you click on that button for another airport, you’ll get a list of all airlines connecting the two, even including codeshares.

Source and Image:

http://openflights.org/blog/2009/06/26/route-mapping-the-world/

Visit the OpenFlights Route Map

NAVTEQ: "The phone will not replace the sat-nav"

2009-07-02T14:08:46Z

Not a new sentiment, though I've mostly heard it from sat-nav providers, not data providers. That comment comes from NAVTEQ vice president, Serge Bussat. He goes on to say, in an interview from Pocket-Link, "It's not about building the map, it's about building the layers on top of it." That says the article means not data layers, but apps. The future for NAVTEQ in sat-nav? In-car solutions. As the article points out, most folks commenting suggest phones will indeed push stand alone sat navs aside.

I'm not sure why it matters to NAVTEQ where its data end up. And, I'm not sure why a spokesperson would say, "it's not about building the map" unless it plans to get out of the data business and into the app biz. And, of course, the company is getting into the app biz, at least a bit, with its online and mobile phone directions/traffic apps.

Discussions in an MSNBC article that highlighted missing information in a satnav highlight the importance of the added layer. This was official NAVTEQ response from Navteq spokesman Bob Richter:

“The information for travelling on the I-66 is correctly referenced in the Navteq [sic] map and is made available to our customers. We regret we cannot comment on the actual system performance, as it is our policy not to speak on behalf of our customers who make other necessary decisions in the final system development once we deliver our data.”

- Pocket-Lint

In other NAVTEQ news:

NAVTEQ Vice Chairman (and former CEO) Judson Green is joining the board of human resources consulting and outsourcing company Hewitt Associates Inc.

- press release

North Shore City, New Zealand in Google Earth

2009-07-02T14:01:08Z

In response to yesterday's post on 3D terrain a GEB reader in New Zealand, Paul van Dinther, forwarded me an article in a local paper which describes how North Shore City shared high resolution imagery and 3D terrain data with Google for Google Earth. The data was released back in April, and is quite impressive. I spent some time this morning flying around this nice looking suburb area north of Auckland. The aerial imagery is clear and sharp at about 6cm resolution, and the terrain is very well done. You can see shoreline cliffs, roads, and even footpaths in the sides of hills in the terrain.

I've made a brief GE 5 tour of the North Shore City area showing some of the high resolution aerial imagery, 3D terrain, the navy base, and views of Auckland. Here's a screenshot from North Head (a park on a hill) with an impressive view of Auckland and Mount Victoria on the right:

Many cities around the world have started promoting themselves by giving more accurate imagery, terrain, 3D models and other data to Google for use in their mapping tools. This is an excellent example of how Google Earth is getting better in a way that is mutually beneficial to users of Google Earth, and providing economic benefit to those living there.

Some handy mobile urls for your bookmarks

2009-07-02T13:52:47Z

A few useful Mobile apps and mobile web resources via mobile friendly urls - some handy bookmarks for your mobile as you hit the road this summer - enjoy! Travel Apps MobiMate Travel app Google...

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MapQuest Adds July 4 Events to its Maps

2009-07-02T13:43:05Z

In the spirit of the upcoming July 4th Independence Day events, MapQuest has added another icon on its maps - it's a startburst firework. Clicking on it shows July 4th celebrations from When.com, which is not all that complete. The icon joins the other regular ones (some hotel chains), grocery stores, bars, pharmacies...

Adding road closures related to those would be a nice addition!

via LA Times

Firefox adds Geo-Location and rolls out Location-aware browsing

2009-07-02T13:26:38Z

In what is being termed location-aware web browsing, Firefox is boasting location provisioning in release 3.5. The idea is that users will be asked where you are in an effort to deliver more...

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The Importance of Time

2009-07-02T13:13:31Z

The ASTM E57.04 Data Interop subcommittee is debating how to specify DateTime in the standard.
There are 3 options being discussed.
One of the key issues involves the conversion from GPS time to other time standards due to “leap seconds”.

We are having quite a debate within the ASTM E57.04 Data Interoperability subcommittee on the importance of time. If you have never been involved with creating a standard, it really is a learning experience. Maybe we can get a few of you to provide your thoughts, in case we are missing something.

Basically the key issue is how important is it to accurately specify the time of a scan. Remember that we are trying to have the standard apply as broadly as possible, including mobile mapping and airborne LiDAR platforms, while at the same time trying to keep things simple.

We have one camp that maintains that DateTime should be specified as year, month, day, hour, minute, second – YMDHMS with it left up the user to be responsible for choosing whether it is UTC, TAI or GPS time. An optional field would be available to indicate what time standard was being used. This is the single format, multiple time references – Option #1.

GPS time is specified as GPSweek/GPSsecond. The issue with using it is that the GPSweek rolls over periodically and there is an issue with leap seconds that are added as needed, but GPS time can be specified with high relative precision.

The second proposal is to allow either YMDHMS or GPSweek/GPSsecond to be explicitly used. That is, the standard would support both formats rather than just YMDHMS as in Option #1.

A third proposal is also on the table to use GPSweek/GPSsecond as the only allowed format. This is the method used in the LAS standard. The standard would provide code to convert from GPS time to any other universally accepted time standard. This would support those who need the highest precision, and with a bit of work, could also be converted to a different time standard. The objection to this is the issue of leap seconds, since the conversion software will have to be updated each time a leap second is published.

See the fun you are missing. Your thoughts would be appreciated.

Apps for Democracy 2 Wraps

2009-07-02T13:12:54Z

Version 2 of DC crowdsourcing initiative to better serve its constituents saw its final submissions come in last night. In this version the community determined what sorts of apps were needed and developers were then asked to address them. Then, there's options for more funding. The results of phase 2 are here.

Government folks (D.C. Department of Transportation, the Office of Planning and the office of the city's CTO) took on one request themselves: developing a "Where's My Bus?" app. It details the five route Circulator Buses. A commercial option for that NextBus is back up and running, but having some issues, per the Washington Post.

- ReadWriteWeb

Help me make your map better

2009-07-02T13:11:57Z

I’m trying an experiment with walking-papers. Get all my non-mapping friends to print out a map of their area, write on the print out the errors, house numbers etc and then I will do the rest. I’ve tweeted here:

“Help me make your map better http://bit.ly/B8F5X – what you think?”

You can too. Get your friends, family… even enemies involved. Re-tweet or facebook status update with that, or ask them to send you the paper yourself.

This is a great way to get lots more people involved, and spread your mapping efforts. For bonus points, next time you see your Aunt Ethel print it out for her, or get all your workmates to fix their home areas. Buy a pint for the person with the best map updates.

EU Drops Planned Tax on Mobile Phones with GPS, TV

2009-07-02T12:45:32Z

The proposed tax would have menat a 14 percent charge on phones with mobile TV and a 3.7 percent tax on phones with navigation. Phone makers of course were against the plan and a majority of European countries voted "no" ending discussions for now.

- Reuters

Send your Flickr Photos to Twitter via Flickr2Twitter

2009-07-02T12:36:10Z

In a relatively quiet move, Flickr recently added Twitter integration to their service - enter Flickr2Twitter. Using the service, Flickr users can now easily “blog” their existing photo...

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SOTM now just over 7 days away

2009-07-02T11:53:00Z

Have you registered? Check out State of the Map. And, there are still many cheap travel options with easyJet and others.

India Institute of Remote Sensing Website Hacked

2009-07-02T11:49:18Z

There are several reports of the hacked ‘www.iirs-nrsa.gov.in’ website of India’s Institute of Remote Sensing. A report from ‘PC1 News’ indicates that cyber criminals are using the site to distribute malicious code. The report goes into some detail regarding the tools that were used to spread a virus to all visitors, and reminds readers to [...]

Everyblock Source Code Now Available

2009-07-02T11:00:00Z

Just as we vote on some of the most influential people in geospatial, one on our list has a big announcement: Adrian Holovaty explains on his blog that as his Knight News Challenge Grant comes to an end, the code behind his project, Everyblog is now being released under an open source (GPL) license. The two year grant has ended, but Holovaty assures the world the site will continue, under the direction of a private company.

via @timoreiily and Brady Forrest

Spatial European Soil Property Data Set

2009-07-02T07:41:35Z

Soil property information is often used for modeling applications involving soils. The information is difficult to collect and expensive, largely due to the expense and variability of soil properties. Nevertheless, it’s value is high. The European Joint Research Centre (JRC) is developing a European wide spatial soil property data set. The product links together soil [...]

jai & tail: cannot open `+215' for reading: No such file or directory

2009-07-02T06:15:55Z

tail: cannot open `+215' for reading: No such file or director

I already had this once and I was able to forget. When installing jai_imageio in your jdk you might get this.
For example it happend me with jai_imageio-1_1-lib-linux-amd64-jdk.bin but I remember last time it was on a 32 bit.

The fix is really easy with sed (do not use a text editor to change, else the binary content of the installer will get corrupted). You just have to change the tail command syntax to work:

sed s/+215/-n+215/ jai_imageio-1_1-lib-linux-amd64-jdk.bin > jai_imageio-1_1-lib-linux-amd64-jdk-fixed.bin

Then run sh jai_imageio-1_1-lib-linux-amd64-jdk-fixed.bin

EMAGIN – the British Horse Society’s GIS

2009-07-02T03:23:11Z

As a former horse owner, exercise rider, and all-around horsey person, I think the British Horse Society’s EMAGIN – Equine Mapping and Geographic Information Network – is a really cool GIS project and I just had to give it a mention. With the goal of creating a database of equestrian-related information, including routes for riding in the countryside, the EMAGIN project received an Awards for All England grant to help with the project. Currently the project is ongoing, with some riding routes available for download in a form that can be manually overlaid on Ordnance Survey maps.

Future plans include an online version of EMAGIN, and the BHS is looking for help in mapping coastal riding areas, among other tasks.

So, if you’re a horse enthusiast in the UK, definitely check out EMAGIN. For those riders and horse owners in other countries, you might be thinking how you could utilize GIS for lots of horse-related things, including directories of services and farms, mapping trails, etc.

Grad School- worth it?

2009-07-02T01:49:22Z

Before I started my *real* job, I got a MA (UMD) & did some PhD coursework (UMN), as well as work in various university teaching/research/admin positions. I also was privileged enough to teach undergraduate courses this past year at UMD (programming & cartography), primarily because the full-time faculty were dedicated to the MPS in GIS program. I value the university's role in providing a base of GIS knowledge and skills. Still, the NY Times has a nice discussion on the value of grad school, and I think it's appropriate to view the MS/GIS programs in this light.

My personal thoughts echo the respondents. I'm in the DC/Baltimore area. They're local programs at UMD (~40-50 students/yr), UMBC (a guess at ~40/yr) and Salisbury University (a guess at ~20-30/yr), plus the GIS-oriented graduates of GMU, Towson, Penn State, just to name a few places with a local impact. I feel that the DC market is probably *the* biggest for GIS in the US (thank you, feds + sophisticated locals), but can we really readily absorb the production of bachelor's (conservatively, let's say 200) *and* 80+ MAs specializing in GIS (not to mention the people with GIS skills but not an explicit degree in it). If we can absorb that many MS students, is the payoff differential between a BS + 2-3 yrs experience and a MS anywhere near 7K/yr yet (that just might make the MA cost-efficient over 4 years, if you get funding)? I don't think so- from talking around, I've heard the usual horror stories of students being hired post-MA to do basic technician-level tasks; also, it takes some planning on an organization's part to integrate the combination of advanced skills and shallow experience that a former graduate student probably has.

The above being said, I think that a professional MA (or graduate certificate) has a major role in GIS- there simply isn't enough time or courses in an undergraduate curriculum to provide the breadth or depth of skills necessary to adequately grok certain topics (programming from a non-CS background, for example). Some of these topics are better learned either in a class or class/work setting (programming being very much the latter).

I just don't want potential students to go into debt and find that it takes more than 5 years to recoup a $50,000 MS (in-state full-time and bare-bones living)- it's hard on the beginning side of a degree to fairly estimate the expected payoff.

Wake Up

2009-07-02T01:15:36Z

Okay, it's time to try to reactivate this. I'm presenting @ UC (http://events.esri.com/uc/2009/infoWeb/OnlineAgenda/?fa=ofg_details_form&ScheduleID=227), after all :)

New Digital Elevation Model Covers 99 Percent of the Earth

2009-07-02T00:43:28Z

A new digital terrain map for the planet is now available. Based on imagery from the Japanese ASTER instrument on NASA's Terra satellite, the new global digital elevation model covers 99 percent of the Earth's landmass to a resolution of 30 metres; the previous digital elevation model, the Shuttle...

Implications of ESRI MapIt

2009-07-01T22:11:09Z

So ESRI has a new product arriving:

Another major/joint effort involves the development of a new ESRI product called MapIt. This technology provides simple geocoding and mapping capability for the Microsoft environment. MapIt enables developers to create maps of their enterprise data stored SQL Server 2008 and Excel. MapIt is designed to give non-GIS organizations the ability to easily create maps and share them within a variety of Microsoft environments like SharePoint. Details will be announced in July.

There were rumors of such a product coming out at the DevSummit, but nothing came of it. This appears to be the continuation of the Silverlight/WPF product that ESRI has been working on. What is interesting here is it would appear not to be using ESRI Servers (ArcGIS Server/ArcSDE) and direct connecting to SQL Server then visualizing on Bing Maps. It would appear that you can develop using ESRI’s APIs, but not deal with ArcObjects. As an ESRI developer though, I’m wondering if this could be my new MapObjects?

No word on pricing and licensing, but I’m going to be paying close attention to MapIt in two weeks.

Firefox 3.5 Released

2009-07-01T18:06:26Z

In the it’s-about-time department, Firefox 3.5 has been released. The world’s #2 browser (#1 if you factor out monopolies) is patiently awaiting your download.

Among the great new features are:

Updated Gecko 1.9.1 rendering engine, including standards improvements and support for a number of HTML5 elements like video and audio tags and offline storage. Video playback with no plugins!
TraceMonkey Javascript engine, which greatly improves Javascript performance.
Privacy and security improvements, and porn private browsing mode.
Over 5,000 enhancements and user interface improvements.
Location-aware browsing. Firefox can share your location based on IP to web sites, which can use that information for location based services.
Tons more.

I’ve been using 3.5 since it was 3.1 (they did a version numbering change during beta), and it’s a big improvement over what was already a good 3.0 release. Check out this video for a demonstration of some of the new features, and grab 3.5 today!

GPS-Based System For Driving Tax Being Field Tested in the U.S.

2009-07-01T16:13:00Z

Slashdot discusses a story named GPS-Based System For Driving Tax Being Field Tested. Their summary: "Apparently, since gas consumption is going down and fuel efficient cars are becoming more popular, the government is looking into a new form of taxation to create revenue for transportation projects. This new system is a 'by-the-mile tax,' requiring GPS in cars so it can track the mileage. Once a month, the data gets uploaded to a billing center and you are conveniently charged for how much you drove. 'A federal commission, after a two-year study, concluded earlier this year that the road tax was the "best path forward" to keep revenues flowing to highway and transportation projects, and could be an important new tool to help manage traffic and relieve congestion. ... The commission pegged 2020 as the year for the federal fuel tax, currently 18.5 cents a gallon, to be phased out and replaced by a road tax. One estimate of a road tax that would cover the current federal and state fuel taxes is 1 to 2 cents per mile for cars and light trucks.'"

MapDotNet UX Engine

2009-07-01T15:16:22Z

Description: Disconnected GIS Solutions using MapDotNet UX Engine

Keywords: MapDotNet, UX, Engine, WPF, disconnected

Body:

One question we hear from our customers is: "How can we use MapDotNet UX to build disconnected GIS solutions?" Because of our integration with third-party map services such as Bing maps it is easy to assume an internet connection is required for GIS functionality using UX. But that is not the case.

The screenshot is from a disconnected WPF (Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation) application using a customer's street centerline data as well as their county parcel vectors and ortho aerial imagery. The application requires no internet connection. All of the data is stored in a local SQL Server 2008 Express spatial database and maps are rendered on-the-fly using UX Engine. The quality of the hybrid imagery and street data rivals third-party base map services. But it is the customer's data which they already own - and no internet connection is required!

A complete GIS is available in the field using UX engine. In this example, the user is able to do a spatial query against features stored in SQL08 as well as draw new features and have them snap to geometry in another spatial layer. Dynamic labeling creates vector labels that push/shove dynamically on the client as they navigate the map. The entire application was written in .NET C# and is less than 300 lines.

UX Engine is included in MapDotNet UX and client licensing costs are roughly 50% per seat compared to competitive GIS engine products. And the UX Engine renderer is .NET managed code!

Category: Engine;.NET;GIS;WPF

Published: 7/1/2009 11:34 AM

Designing a Better Honey Jar

2009-07-01T14:29:40Z

Paul Ramsey’s post about James Dixon’s beekeeper model got me thinking about how OpenGeo adds value to open source software through our design work. Paul summarizes the beekeeper model like so:

The open source community is the bee hive. The company provides care for the hive, and processes the results into the kinds of products that customers expect. In open source, as with bees, customers are not really interested in the details of production (they may even find it kind of frightening), but they are interested in the final product.

The problem with this model, as Paul points out, is that customers don’t perceive the value in the non-software activities, like design.

In fact, design is one of the important ways OpenGeo adds value. A lot of our design work falls under what Dixon calls “bee care” and involves investing resources in user experience. We do this by spearheading new user interfaces, as we did with GeoServer 2.0; actively developing new frameworks, as we are doing with GeoExt; or simply by creating common collateral for projects to consume, like the GeoSilk icon set used in both GeoServer 2.0 and GeoExt.

At the OSGeo Hacking event in Bolsena in 2008, for example, our team worked with other developers to make the GeoServer administrative interface more appealing to new users. While the GeoServer 2.0 user interface would not have resulted without the hard work of a committed community of developers, we like to think that our design work—the user experience work we did in anticipation of the event, the many sessions we had with developers in Bolsena to refine those ideas, and the web design work contributed by Chris Patterson (of The Open Planning Project, our parent organization)—went a long way towards making GeoServer 2.0 an even more appealing option for people looking to to run a solid geospatial stack with as little hassle as possible.

Similarly, we have been hard at work fleshing out GeoExt, particularly though work on an application library called GeoExplorer. Our goal is to have users be as comfortable in our GeoExt-based web applications as they are with their favorite desktop applications. To that end, we’ve researched precedents and use cases, laid out guidelines for consistent metaphors and interactions, and incorporated our standard icons. Many of these efforts are already evident in core GeoExt components. We hope that by developing GeoExt into a framework for user-friendly web-based GIS applications it can become the foundation not just for our future work, but for much of the geospatial web.

So, while some wonder why anyone would pay for free software, remember that it takes time and money to make software usable and beautiful. Investing in design is just one of the ways that OpenGeo ensures that the honey stays sweet.

NASA/Japan Release Terrain Data - Google Earth's is Better

2009-07-01T12:55:50Z

One of the top stories yesterday was how NASA and Japan have released the data from their ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) satellite on the Internet - for free. What is significant about this is that the data covers 99% of the entire Earth's landmass terrain - verses 80% from the SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) - which was the best previously available free public terrain data. ASTER's data is also higher resolution than SRTM which had a base resolution of 90m and at best 30m. ASTER's resolution has a base resolution of 30m, and can be higher under certain conditions (up to 7-10m - see documentation). The data released comes from over 1.3 million photos taken by the Aster satellite.

So, will Google Earth make use of this new ASTER data? The answer is: only a portion of the data. Google Earth already has terrain data in many areas that has higher resolution than the data provided by Aster (see below). However, ASTER provides data for remote locations (particularly high latitude regions) which previously wasn't readily available in these resolutions. And, Google Earth still has regions (such as remote pacific islands) which are using SRTM data (90m resolution). So, I'm sure Google will consider using the new data to improve the resolution in some regions. IF, they don't already have another source with better resolution. By the way, I asked Google about ASTER, and got the standard reply that they don't have anything to announce at this time (i.e. "no comment").

As far back as the February 2007, Google started introducing significantly higher resolution terrain. At that time they introduced 10m resolution terrain for the Swiss Alps, followed a few months later by 10m resolution terrain for the US and Canary Islands (read GEB review). In the more than two years since, Google has added millions of square kilometers of higher resolution terrain. Some of the terrain is much higher resolution. For example, the state of West Virginia has 3m resolution. Back in April of 2008, the city of Bergen, Norway got very high resolution data - which appeared to be based on LiDAR. Recently, Oslo, Norway also got very high resolution terrain data (also seemingly LiDAR) as well as 3D Buildings.

In recent months, Google has been regularly adding cities and countries with higher resolution terrain with nearly every imagery update (see for example the May 2009 update - new terrain is listed at the bottom). Google is no longer releasing details on the resolution of the data. Probably because the terrain resolution varies for each city. One drawback to higher resolution terrain is the data starts capturing things like buildings - not just the land - and it gets to be harder to tell the difference between good data and noise. But, the ability to see the terrain more accurately is well worth this risk in my opinion.

An important tip if you're interested in Google Earth's terrain data: Under the Google Earth Options is a slider called "Terrain Quality". If you push that slider to the right, you can see higher resolution terrain. A word of caution: higher quality terrain means more 3D data - which can slow down your update speeds in Google Earth. After viewing higher resolution terrain, I recommend putting the slider back to closer to the middle for every day use. If you have a faster computer with a powerful video card, you might be able to get away with a higher setting. (Read more tips about optimizing GE performance).

Velodyne-64E

2009-07-01T12:48:35Z

I wanted to check back with Velodyne to see if there was any news.
Velodyne is teaming with GrayMatter to offer a trial version of its visualization point cloud software.
Is the mobile mapping community going to be interested in this technology?

I thought I would check in at Velodyne to see if there was any news concerning the 64E. I reported on this in one of my first posts. Velodyne is actually an acoustics company – they build subwoofers. Somehow they got interested in the DARPA challenge, which led them to building a laser scanner so that they could navigate their autonomous vehicle in real time. Turns out there was more interest in their scanner than their vehicle technology.

In order to collect the scenery that they needed to avoid collisions they decided to arrange 2 layers of 32 lasers in a circle, one on top of the other and then rotate them at 15HZ. This results in a data collection rate of 1.3 million points per second with a stated accuracy of approximately 1 inch – certainly adequate for many real time applications, including autonomous vehicle navigation. This is 3D video without using FLASH.

The most recent news from Velodyne is that they are teaming with a software company to offer point cloud processing for visualization purposes. GrayMatter AVS is an autonomous vehicle visualization and navigation software. Velodyne will be supplying a trial version with all of their 64E S2 shipments.

I have not seen or heard any interest from the mobile mapping community in this unit. I thought the price was reasonable. I was told that Google had been evaluating this unit. Check out the image in this spec sheet to better understand how it works.

Citysearch wants you to know...

2009-07-01T12:46:38Z

This from Mike Francesconi at Citysearch:

Citysearch and IAC are on the hunt for a killer, local mobile/web application for our site Sidewalk.com. We recently announced the launch of our “right here, right now” contest to find a brilliant idea for a local mobile/web app that focuses on making life easiern.
The creator of the winning application will win a $10,000 grand prize, and possibly, the opportunity to develop and manage a new business venture with up to $1 million dollars in funding and receive an equity stake in the new Sidewalk.com venture, and access to the Citysearch publisher network allowing them to instantly monetize traffic.

Check out all the details on the contest at sidewalk.com and follow our updates at twitter.com/sidewalkdotcom

Downloading ASTER Data and More...

2009-07-01T12:39:00Z

With all the recent media attention, it seems like it is best to wait a bit before trying to download any of the data. The Japanese site (ERSDAC) published a warning earlier today that downloads may timeout, and I had a challenging time even getting the USGS site to load:

I have mentioned this before, but here is a paper on hydrology/glacier mapping in the Tien Shan mountain range using both ASTER and SRTM elevation data. One of the benefits of ASTER and other satellite sensors is that they are very applicable to remote area mapping operations.

So while you're waiting for ASTER traffic to subside, why not check out the ASTER User Handbook? It contains a wealth of background information on the sensor, data products, processing, applications, and FAQs. Here it is:

USGS: aster user guide v2

Russia and Nigeria Team on Space Science

2009-07-01T12:08:45Z

Russia and Nigeria have signed a five-year memorandum of understanding to foster space science cooperation, including remote sensing, meteorology, satellite navigation and planetary studies. The exchange of technical information will include the use of earth observation in areas of agriculture, mineral exploration, water studies and environmental monitoring. Read more related Spatial Sustain posts: Remote Sensing Makes Emerging [...]