Sun Acquires MySQL

http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/2008/01/16/sun-acquires-mysql/

GeoNames

Thought this service/database, GeoNames, might be relevant for us.

It contains over eight million geographical names and consists of 6.5 million unique features whereof 2.2 million populated places and 1.8 million alternate names.

Brian Hamlin’s Portfolio

For those of you who attended Bernt Wahl's geolunch talk about context-based neighborhood mapping, you may remember Brian Hamlin. Brian is assisting with the programming side of the project. Toward the end of the geolunch talk, Brian displayed some of his work with various open-source GIS disciplines, including OpenLayers, PostGIS and FeatureServer . He's recently put together a portfolio that summarizes his work nicely ... I thought I'd share it with you all. He welcomes comments and suggestions sent to maplabs AT light42 DOT com.

Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI)

In addition to the volunteer computing, distributed thinking, and coordinated activities that David Anderson discussed at the Feb. 8th Geolunch, Volunteered Geographic Information is a growing form of "Citizen Cyber-Science." OpenStreetMap and Wikimapia are the most well-known examples of VGI, an emerging process in which citizens voluntarily create and combine spatial data for maps and mash-ups. I went to a talk last week by Rutgers Professor David Tulloch. He gave an overview of an interesting VGI site that was developed to let citizens help map vernal pools in New Jersey. Examples of other VGI projects and presentations on the ethics, reliability, and potential of VGI can be found on the Workshop on VGI site which includes info collected from an event held at UCSB last December. Also of interest is a site that provides the information presented at a Workshop on Agent-Based Modeling of Complex Spatial Systems. The talk was hosted by the Cal's Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, which will be hosting upcoming events on topics such as the SF green spaces, National Parks, and EU ecological policies .

Some of David Anderson’s Citizen Cyber-Science websites

Dave's talk last week for Geolunch was AWESOME. Here are some of the sites he mentioned. Get started with your distributed computing and thinking people! SETI@Home Climateprediction.net Stardust@Home Distributed Proofreaders Rosetta@Home Just to summarize, they have 500k active participants and 700k computers making up about 2 PetaFLOPS of juice.

Mikel Maron’s blog: building digital technology for our planet

Here find another related blog: Brainoff.com. Mikel is an advocate of open collection and distribution of geographic data, particularly with OpenStreetMap the "free and openly editable map of the entire world". Using Wiki concepts and GPS units, They are rapidly mapping using entirely voluntary contributions.  There are some great examples of participatory mapping on this site, among many other interesting ideas.

QGIS screencasts help you get a jump start

The folks over at the QGIS blog have posted two screencasts to help get you started with QGIS and its GRASS integration.

Coyote Bytes: LA Times Article

Our CoyoteBytes collaborator Bob Timm at Hopland Research and Extension Center was recently featured in the LA Times talking about the website Karin and Brian built. Check it.

CASA software tools

The UCL CENTRE FOR ADVANCED SPATIAL ANALYSIS (CASA) has some nice webGIS and other GIS tools for you to check out. Including some Google Maps mapping tools that provide nice transparencies and other cartography; a CA model; and other tidbits.

WhereCamp, June 2nd-3rd

Y'all might be interested in this. Hell, I might even go. Via the geowanking list,

A quick reminder: WhereCamp is being held June 2-3 at the Yahoo! Sunnyvale campus. There'll be sessions and whatnot. You might also consider it a Geowanking list meet-up of sorts. Description: WhereCamp un-conference. Free. A hugely energetic overlap of diverse interests ranging from newbies, web 2.0 and mobile developers, social place hackers and artists to grad students, geographers, earth scientists and people focused on humanitarian and environmental efforts. Wiki: http://wherecamp.pbwiki.com/WhereCampSF Directions: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/address/ Registered Attendees: http://wherecamp.pbwiki.com/WhereCampSFRegistrants and: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/170065/ See you there! -- Joshua Schachter http://del.icio.us/joshua http://joshua.schachter.org/