Comparison of Open Source GIS

Free Geography Tools featured this post, which highlights a very useful table summarizing the features of different open source GIS.

The VTM photo-hunt is on (at least in the Bay Area)

I am reinvigorating the mission to re-shoot the VTM photos. At least in the Bay Area. This was prompted by the recent Berkleyan article about the new UC reserve in Santa Clara County ("preserves oak-woodland ecosystem at urban/wildland interface"). I thought "I wonder if there are any pictures of the area from the VTM collection?" and had a search this weekend. Sure enough, there are some nice ones. So I've geo-located a few from around the bay to get us started. Any ideas on: automating the process; making an easy site to upload paired photos; an easy way to link Township/Range queries into gmaps... Any volunteers to do Santa Cruz County? Lots of great pics there. And check out the local logging history documented in the photos of the New Almaden quad.

VTM field crews at work

VTM-235
Originally uploaded by MaggiKelly

I was going through the VTM photos for an upcoming talk at SFEI, and came across some of these RAD field photos of the VTM crew in action.
Love these photos. All courtesy of the Marian Koshland Bioscience and Natural Resources Library, University of California, Berkeley, www.lib.berkeley.edu/BIOS/vtm/.

Yikes! More trouble with GIS data access ahead

From the BAAMA news: You may be aware that our state legislature is considering a bill to amend the California Public Records Act.  The bill (AB 1978) was introduced on February 14, 2008 by State Assembly Member Jose Solorio, and may have implications on public access to geospatial information in the future. We believe this topic is of primary interest to all GIS practitioners. We invite you to review Assembly Member Solorio's proposed bill and discuss its implications within your organization. You can find the text of AB 1978 here. A critique of AB 1978 may be found here. Based upon your review of AB 1978, you may wish to share your opinion of the bill with your local Assembly Member or state Senator. The bill is scheduled for committee review 30 days after introduction, which would be March 15.

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.

Eye-Fi Card - Wireless Memory Card

The Eye-Fi Card is a wireless memory card. It automatically uploads pictures from your digital camera to your PC or Mac and to your favorite photo sharing, printing, blogging or social networking site. No cables, no waiting, no hassles.

I was in disbelief when I was first told about this little gadget because it is such a small wireless device. I haven't tried it myself, but it would be pretty cool that I don't need to worry about the upload process. I imagine that when the location coordinates are stamped into EXIF information of the pictures, uploading and geocoding pictures on Flickr, Picasa, or other map-based photo services will be so easy.

Fire Eagle - A Centralized Location Service

Yahoo! Research released the beta version of Fire Eagle last week. This web service allows you to store and update your (current) location, and then it can propagate your location information to other web services, such as Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, and etc., that you have authorized. Fire Eagle claims to be

the secure and stylish way to share your location with sites and services online. We want to make the whole web respond to where you are, and to help you discover more about the world around you.

Security of location information and privacy are in question here. Also, how much can you trust Yahoo! with your location information and location history? Nevertheless, it is an interesting service and might be useful in some way.

Apple announces iPhone SDK — with Core Location!

Apple announced the software development kit (SDK) for the iPhone today. While you won't be able to distribute or run your apps on an iPhone yet (that'll come in June), you can download a beta of the SDK today (if you can get to the site -- it's been a bit busy). The SDK is free to download and develop with, but distributing apps will require a $99 per year fee for Apple to host and market your goods. You decide the price, free or otherwise. The even bigger news for geo-minded people, though, is that Apple is opening up their programmatic interface with the "Locate Me" feature in Maps.app. Called Core Location, developers will be able to use a documented API to develop apps with location awareness.

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.