Planet Georezo » January 11, 2011

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11 janvier 2011
23:53
The Map Room: Weekly World News: Atlantis Found in Google Maps!
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

Only the Weekly World News could bring you the story that the lost city of Atlantis has been found on Google Maps. "The photo taken by Google Maps is most definitely the Lost City of Atlantis," said Yale Mythologist Anthony Braxwell. “It displays all the trademark characteristics of the legendary...
22:53
GIS Lounge: New Distance Learning Program Coming Online ~ CSU Stanislaus
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

The California State University at Stanislaus is launching a distance learning GIS certificate program starting in April. The program is aimed at students with a beginners or intermediary knowledge of GIS. The coursework covers such topics as Introduction to GIS, Spatial Analysis, Spatial Database Management, Digital Cartography & Visualization, GIS Programming Applications, and Open Source GIS. [...]
22:41
Urban Mapping Blog: Urban Mapping Adds Federal Court Data to Mapfluence On-Demand Data
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

We are excited to announce new data available within Mapfluence, our web-based mapping platform. US Federal Court Jurisdiction data are now accessible through our industry leading on-demand data catalog. The Federal Court Jurisdictions dataset contains geographic boundaries for the 94 US Federal District Courts and 12 Courts of Appeals. In addition, attribute data includes details, such [...]
22:39
OpenGeoData: Weekly OSM Summary #7
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com
12/23/2010 - 01/10/2011

Every week a lot of things are happening in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) world. It can be hard to keep track of all the different communication channels and don't miss any important news. That's why we've created a short summary of all the news here. Enjoy!
- The Call for Papers for the State of the Map conference 2011 in Denver has started.
- The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) is asking for help to trace the Ivory Coast.
- The Call for Papers for the SOTM-EU in Vienna has started too. SOTM-EU is also on Twitter as @sotmeu and the hashtag is #sotmeu.
- Oliver publishes two new videos of his interview series with OSMF board members: Mikel Maron and Henk Hoff
- OpenStreetBugs is now reachable with the short URL osmbugs.org (via [http%3A] title="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenStreetBugs/Redirector Wiki">[osmbugs.org] ).
- User:Bitsteller is creating isometric 3D maps from OSM data.
- TriMet, which provides public transportation in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area, is using OSM data for their OpenTripPlaner. More projects are planed.
- Klokan Přidals is working on a 3D globe rendered in a web browser using HTML5 Canvas with WebGL and OSM data. Here's a demo video.
- New WheelChairMap for Switzerland. More information in the wiki.
- User:frink has created a speed camera map.
- User:Gary68 has released a now perl module: “osmDB.pm is a module (in extension to osm.pm) to transfer data extracted from an osm file into a mysql database. It also provides functions to access this data.”
- Jochen Topf has released Osmium, “a C++ framework for working with OSM data files. Osmium will parse OSM files (XMLor PBF) and call back into handlers for each object (node, way, relation) it encounters along the way.” Osmium is also available on Github.
- A new version of the Bing Imagery Analyzers is online. The new release includes bug fixes and a transparency slider. Also: “The underlying tile.php now also supports TMS-type requests for easy integration with OpenLayers.”
- OSM is going to have a booth at the FOSDEM (The Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting) in Brussels, Belgium on 5 and 6 of February, 2011. Mappers are invited to help to run the booth (Wiki).
- FacilMap is an OpenLayers-based slippy map that aims to combine useful geographical information, renderings and tools of different projects into one reusable and extendable map (Wiki).
- The new Maps Beta on geocaching.com now also includes OSM maps (MapQuest, Mapnik and OpenCycleMap).
- Maperitive Build 1094 was released by Igor Brejc. One of the new things: “generate-tiles command now has the ability to detect whether tile contents have changed since the last run (using tile fingerprinting). This way only the actually modified tiles can be uploaded to an FTP server, saving you a lot of time and bandwidth.”
- Merkaator 0.17.0 was released. New features include a Bing Maps plugin, French Cadastre plugin, GDAL raster background support and printing.
- OSMTrack, an iPhone app designed specifically for contributing to OSM, was released as version 3.0 a while ago featuring offline vector map, multitasking, iPad support, etc (Wiki).
For more news, especially regarding new tags and wiki pages, you can check-out the community-updates over here.

Authors: Pascal, Jonas, Brice & Dennis.
We missed something? You want to help us collecting the news for next week's issue?
You can contact us via mail or Twitter.

Permalink | Leave a comment »
22:21
MapDotNet Blog: Indexed PNG support added to MapDotNet
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

As of our 8.1.2000 release, MapDotNet now supports indexed 8-bit PNGs. 8-bit PNGs are smaller than 32 bit PNGs and look much better than GIFs in many cases. 32 bit full color PNG 62,450 bytes 8 bit indexed PNG 19,002 bytes
21:24
AnyGeo - GIS, Maps, LBS, Geo and Social Location Technology: 10 Geo Tweet Faves – updates from the Geo Twitter-Sphere
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

We follow the Geo Twitter-sphere very closely… the following are just a few of the tweets we’ve “faved” in the past couple of days… please follow us @GISuser and/or @gletham to wind up on the radar! FYI, for more of my Geo tweet Faves check out this archive
@geopdx SchoolAndHousing map mashup @foss4g Denver rated [...]

20:32
The NYT Examines the Destruction in Haiti
sur Google Maps Mania

Destruction in Haiti, Then and Now

The New York Times has created an eye-opening interactive feature using aerial photos from GeoEye and Google Maps to show Port-au-Prince before and after the earthquake in Haiti last January.

Using the application is it is possible to view aerial imagery from both before and after the earthquake. The imagery includes shots of the tent cities that were created after the quake as well as highlighting some of the damaged structures in the city.

_____________

20:30
GeoForce Technologies acquiert le logiciel photogrammétrique de SimActive
sur Directions Magazine : Communiqués de presse

GeoForce Technologies acquiert le logiciel photogrammétrique de SimActive

19:05
VerySpatial: The Integration of Geo-spatial Technologies in Professions
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

I have noticed lately that increasingly conferences outside of the geospatial sphere are specifically requesting geospatially related topics. I think it shows the integration and acceptance or growing need for “every day” geospatial skills and geospatial literacy outside of fields normally thought of as being obviously geo-related. It means that for geospatial users who often could not find people who “spoke their language” except at specialized conferences (American Association of Geographers (AAG), Esri International User Conference among others), there is growing opportunity for learning and sharing skills with other people within their specific profession.

Some of the places I have seen this trend are in the recent Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education (SITE) which has a 20 Year history of technology & teacher education. They included both geospatial technologies, 3D modeling for manufacturing, and serious gaming in their topics for the upcoming 2011 conference. They state that skills in these areas are becoming an important part of education and future job preparation for students.

The prestigious EPA Science To Achieve Results (STAR) Fellowships For Graduate Environmental Study included this special note which states that awards, “may involve the collection of “Geospatial Information,” which includes information that identifies the geographic location and characteristics of natural or constructed features or boundaries on the Earth or applications, tools, and hardware associated with the generation, maintenance, or distribution of such information. This information may be derived from, among other things, a Geographic Positioning System (GPS), remote sensing, mapping, charting, and surveying technologies, or statistical data.”

The 26th International Conference on Solid Waste Technology and Management also created a section for Geotechnical topics due to the increasing number of papers being submitted on the subject of solid waste and geospatial analysis such as route planning, design, administration, and cross-boundary environmental issues.

18:59
Paul Ramsey: We interrupt this geeky spring...
sur Planet OSGeo

To do something completely different. British Columbia, my fair home, is in the midst of an odd period where both major parties are having leadership races. The race for my party of choice (the NDP) has just gotten started, and I believe that pitching in early for what you believe in is a way to have maximum effect. So I'm spending my spring working as much as possible for John Horgan. John's someone who reflects my belief nobody has all the right answers, and he's someone with the personal skills (that I envy) to both listen for the answers and bring folks together around a common direction. And he's fun to be around, which is a nice bonus.

Unfortunately for PostGIS, time doing campaign work takes from time spent on PostGIS 2.0, so unless another PSC member has an equal and opposite infusion of time to mine, things will slow down a bit for the next couple months. I'll still be going to the Montreal code sprint though: some things are sacrosanct.

18:59
AnyGeo - GIS, Maps, LBS, Geo and Social Location Technology: Flush Tracking via Google Maps
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

Flush Tracking via Google Maps Originally uploaded by GISuser.com GIS and Social, Mobile Tech Images

This fun and interesting tweet tip gave up details of the cool Flush Tracker app. Entering a service the user is shown a map of the local sewer system and reveals information like speed and distance for a flush to travel. Local [...]
18:49
Paul Ramsey: We interrupt this geeky spring…
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

To do something completely different. British Columbia, my fair home, is in the midst of an odd period where both major parties are having leadership races. The race for my party of choice (the NDP) has just gotten started, and I believe that pitching in early for what you believe in is a way to have maximum effect. So I'm spending my spring working as much as possible for John Horgan. John's someone who reflects my belief nobody has all the right answers, and he's someone with the personal skills (that I envy) to both listen for the answers and bring folks together around a common direction. And he's fun to be around, which is a nice bonus.

Unfortunately for PostGIS, time doing campaign work takes from time spent on PostGIS 2.0, so unless another PSC member has an equal and opposite infusion of time to mine, things will slow down a bit for the next couple months. I'll still be going to the Montreal code sprint though: some things are sacrosanct.
18:30
GeoData Policy: Countries Facing Court Procedures Failing to Impose INSPIRE Directives
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/10/1566&format=HTML Estonia and Poland face Court for failing to put EU law on their statute books (Brussels, 24 November 2010, IP/10/1566) The European Commission is referring Estonia and Poland to the European Court of Justice for failing to bring EU environmental legislation into force. These Member States have not yet adopted legislation on spatial data infrastructure at national [...]

18:30
Qu'est ce que la géographie aujourd'hui ?
sur Les Cafés géographiques

Albi, le 11 janvier 2011

18:14
Spatial Sustain: Adaptiveness in Earth System Governance
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

An interesting area of research takes place around the issue of global systems and their vulnerability, resilience, and adaptability. An upcoming conference, Resilience 2011 (taking place at Arizona State University in March), tackles the interconnected boundaries between natural and social systems. The event focuses on global challenges, and engages a global audience, with an approach [...]
18:08
Bing Maps Blog: NineMSN & Bing Maps User Collections: Tracking the Floods
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

As many Australians and others around the world have their eye on the catastrophic floods in Queensland, Australia’s ninemsn used Bing Maps’ user collections to map out where the floods have occurred.

The collection is a great example of how online maps can be dynamic sources of visual information and context. Simply a list of cities affected by the floods cannot show just how dense of an area or how wide these floods affected.

Our thoughts are with those in the Queenland’s area.

Brian Hendricks
Product Manager
Bing Maps

Bing Maps on: Blog, Twitter, Facebook
Learn more about Bing Maps on Wikipedia
18:08
Bing Maps Blog: NineMSN & Bing Maps User Collections: Tracking the Floods
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

As many Australians and others around the world have their eye on the catastrophic floods in Queensland, Australia’s ninemsn used Bing Maps’ user collections to map out where the floods have occurred.

The collection is a great example of how online maps can be dynamic sources of visual information and context. Simply a list of cities affected by the floods cannot show just how dense of an area or how wide these floods affected.

Our thoughts are with those in the Queenland’s area.

Brian Hendricks
Product Manager
Bing Maps

Bing Maps on: Blog, Twitter, Facebook
Learn more about Bing Maps on Wikipedia
16:53
All Points Blog: Thoughts on CloudMade Acquisition
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

I cited Cloudmade's acquisition of nav tech firm OneStepAhead last week. Before that, back last year, the company received a nice infusion of cash. So, what will happen? One reader shared this via Twitter: "After reading PRs, my initial take is...Read more

16:53
Thoughts on CloudMade Acquisition
sur All Points Blog

I cited Cloudmade's acquisition of nav tech firm OneStepAhead last week. Before that, back last year, the company received a nice infusion of cash. So, what will happen? One reader shared this via Twitter: "After reading PRs, my initial take is...Read more

16:11
Avenza Resources Blog: How to Download USGS Maps for your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

Avenza Resources Blog: How to Download USGS Maps for your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch
16:10
All Points Blog: LBS Tidbits
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

ClickZ explores how small businesses are using and are optimistic about "checkins." The example? An optometrist in NYC. - ClickZ The GM brand announced today it was launching the Quest for the Keys campaign, an interactive competition meant as ...Read more

16:10
LBS Tidbits
sur All Points Blog

ClickZ explores how small businesses are using and are optimistic about "checkins." The example? An optometrist in NYC. - ClickZ The GM brand announced today it was launching the Quest for the Keys campaign, an interactive competition meant as ...Read more

15:57
All Points Blog: OldWeather.org: Crowdsourcing Old Weather
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

Hundreds of OldWeather.org volunteers are pouring through ships logs and digging out key weather facts for locations around the world. The good news? The data dates back 100 years and otherwise would be lost. More good news: "So far, OldWeather.org r...Read more

15:57
OldWeather.org: Crowdsourcing Old Weather
sur All Points Blog

Hundreds of OldWeather.org volunteers are pouring through ships logs and digging out key weather facts for locations around the world. The good news? The data dates back 100 years and otherwise would be lost. More good news: "So far, OldWeather.org r...Read more

15:50
Automatiser les tâches répétitives grâce à la ligne de commande
sur RSS Libre@vous

A l'origine, les ordinateurs ont été conçus pour gérer de façon automatisée les tâches répétitives, déchargeant l'humain d'un travail ennuyeux et lui permettant d'améliorer sa productivité. Malheureusement, les choix fait dans les années 80 pour les systèmes dominant le marché des ordinateurs de bureaux (à fenêtres ou à pomme), a amené les utilisateurs à penser que le seul moyen d'interagir avec un ordinateur est de cliquer sur des icônes ou des menus. Cette manière de faire présente des avantages, mais certainement pas en ce qui concerne l'automatisation des tâches répétitives !

Qui n'a jamais eu un jour une tâche à refaire plusieurs fois et pour cela devoir cliquer autant de fois sur les mêmes icônes ou menus ? Si cette situation vous convient et que vous aimez perdre du temps en tâches ennuyeuses, passez votre chemin. Dans le cas contraire, je vous propose ici une formation réalisée pour mon unité de recherche. Cette présentation montre comment utiliser la ligne de commande sous GNU/Linux pour réaliser quelques automatisations simples (renommage de fichiers, téléchargements automatisés, traitement de données au format texte, etc). Elle est accessible aux débutants en ligne de commande.
{phocadownload view=file|id=12|target=s}
J'ai réalisé cette formation avec un collègue grand automatiseur devant l'éternel : Nicolas Bercher. Je tiens à le remercier ici pour ce travail qui fut un vrai plaisir à réaliser et à présenter à 4 mains.

15:28
got geoint?: Rebuilding “Rome in a Day” Via Virtual Reality Maps
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

We may need to revisit the age-old expression that “Rome was not built in a day,” as some very innovative members of the academic community are actually re-building Rome in a day via virtual reality maps. With the muscle of about 500 computers and 150,000 still images, Steve Seitz, a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington’s Seattle campus, and his colleagues have amassed about 500 computers and 150,000 still images to reconstruct many of Rome’s famous landmarks in just 21 hours. “The idea behind “Rome in a Day”‘ is that we wanted to see how big of a city or model we could build from photos on the Internet,” says Steve Seitz who was interviewed by the NSF blog. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), they’re rebuilding Rome pixel by pixel rather than brick by brick. According to a video we have embedded into this post “next generation” technologies like this may show up in places online like mapping sites, video games or real estate sites. Game changer and very cool!
14:39
LiDAR News: 3-D Object Scanner for the iPhone
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

You knew it had to happen. Scanning and mobile devices had to intersect. It does not use stereo cameras, white light or laser scanners. Continue reading →

Click Title to Continue Reading...
14:15
Google Earth Blog: Use Google Earth to estimate point-to-point links
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

AlphiMAX has recently updated their Point-To-Point Estimator to support a handful of new Google Earth features, and the result is pretty slick.

The tool already had a lot of great features in it, such as the ability to factor in temperature, terrain data and a variety of other factors.They added Google Earth support to it a while ago, via the Google Earth Plug-in, and it worked very well.

Then they recently added support for Google Earth 6, including the new 3D trees that were part of that release. For a P2P estimator, being able to see trees in the system is certainly an important part of it. The coverage of trees in Google Earth is still relatively small, making this feature somewhat less useful, but it's certain to grow quickly in the future.

If you'd like to try it out for yourself, simply visit their site and dive in. It's required that you have an account on their site for it to work, but otherwise you can get up and running fairly quickly. If you'd just like to see a resulting file, here's a KMZ file of a test set of data.

Not many of us will need a Point-To-Point Estimator in our work, but for those that do the new enhancements to this program should be very useful!
13:54
All Points Blog: GPS Tidbits
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced last Thursday that some city snow plows will be fitted with global positioning systems in a pilot program meant to better track sanitation vehicles as officials brace for a winter storm. This after the mayor was cri...Read more

13:54
GPS Tidbits
sur All Points Blog

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced last Thursday that some city snow plows will be fitted with global positioning systems in a pilot program meant to better track sanitation vehicles as officials brace for a winter storm. This after the mayor was cri...Read more

13:46
All Points Blog: Google Tidbits
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

Search Engine Land has more details of Hanke's new role. --- original post 1/11/11 --- Google is mapping Korogocho, one of Nairobis informal settlements. Volunteers are trained and do the work. It's unclear if they go into the field. - The ...Read more

13:46
Google Tidbits
sur All Points Blog

Search Engine Land has more details of Hanke's new role. --- original post 1/11/11 --- Google is mapping Korogocho, one of Nairobis informal settlements. Volunteers are trained and do the work. It's unclear if they go into the field. - The ...Read more

13:18
Google Maps of the Australian Floods
sur Google Maps Mania

The tragedy of the flooding in Australia seems to just keep getting worse and worse. Flash floods in the Brisbane area have left nine dead and at least 70 missing nearby.

All Things Spatial map of the Australian floods

Arek, of Australian mapping blog All Things Spatial, has written a great post about how the government is often slow to respond to such crisis with GIS projects.

Because governments are often slow to respond community lead projects in the GIS arena are a great solution. For example, ABC has just released the ABC Qld Flood Crisis Map, built on the Ushahidi platform.

ABC Qld Flood Crisis Map

The map is an attempt to crowdsource reports on the Queensland floods and the recovery operations. The Ushahidi platform is especially useful as it can be configured to send SMS alerts to registered users.

Arek also points to the Australian Early Warning Network that republishes Bureau of Meteorology information and sends emergency alerts to mobile phones, home phones, pagers and via SMS or e-mail. The Australian Early Warning Network is maintained by a private company.

Arek has himself produced a Google Map to show the huge extent of the area affected by the flooding.

You can donate to the Flood Relief Appeal here.

Via: All Things Spatial

_____________
13:02
How to Find Mambo Juice in LA
sur Google Maps Mania
Food Truck Maps

Google Maps showing the location of food trucks is definitely a growing trend in the USA, especially in LA. The latest application is Food Truck Maps which is tracking 104 food trucks in Los Angeles.

As well as the Google Map showing the location of the food trucks Food Truck Maps also shows the latest tweets from the trucks. You can search the tweets by category and location.

Also See
- Tweat It - Google Map of food vendors in New York
- truXmap - real-time location map of food trucks in Los Angeles
- Bistro Chaser - tracking food trucks in LA
_____________

13:00
All Points Blog: A User on Autodesk and GIS
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

This letter appeared in this week's UpFront.eZine: It was a little discouraging to see the dearth of anything related to GIS/Geospatial at AU. I heard several folks in that field saying they felt like the red haired step child at Autodesk. It is har...Read more
13:00
All Points Blog: Should the term GIS be retired? Should RSS?
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

A few weeks ago Shel Holtz noted an article from GigaOm titled "Sure, RSS is dead - just like the Web is dead." It's worth reading in full, but I want to focus on one key statement from writer, Matthew Ingram: But is RSS actually doomed, or even a...Read more

13:00
Should the term GIS be retired? Should RSS?
sur All Points Blog

A few weeks ago Shel Holtz noted an article from GigaOm titled "Sure, RSS is dead - just like the Web is dead." It's worth reading in full, but I want to focus on one key statement from writer, Matthew Ingram: But is RSS actually doomed, or even a...Read more
13:00
A User on Autodesk and GIS
sur All Points Blog

This letter appeared in this week's UpFront.eZine: It was a little discouraging to see the dearth of anything related to GIS/Geospatial at AU. I heard several folks in that field saying they felt like the red haired step child at Autodesk. It is har...Read more

11:44
Qu'est ce que la géographie aujourd'hui ?
sur Les Cafés géographiques

Albi, le 11 janvier 2011

11:29
Linfiniti Geo Blog: An interview with kCube Consulting
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

I have previously posted here about kCube Consulting’s donation of 6 months developer time to the QGIS project. Today I took the opportunity to interview Kumaran Narayanaswamy and SunilRaj Kiran from kCube to find out more about their plans and motivations.

Kumaran Narayanaswamy

SunilRaj Kiran

TS: Welcome Kumaran and SunilRaj to this interview. Could we start by asking each of you to give us a brief introduction to yourselves?

KN: Let me give a brief introduction about myself and kCube. kCube is a Startup company founded in year 2006 by myself and my college buddy (Senthil Kumar) and we specialize in providing Geospatial Services. I did my Engineering in Geoinformatics and graduated in 1999 and have been working in the industry mainly Logistics domain. I was working with Cognizant after graduation and have been executing projects for Logistics clients based out of US. I moved back to India in 2006 and started kCube along with my college buddy Senthil Kumar.

We did a market research before starting and we realized that Open Source want not being leveraged to a larger extent in India as it was being in western countires and we felt that Open Source Services is a huge market in India kCube is not a exclusive Open Source Company but we push Open Source as our first priority.
We try to sell the benefits of Open Source to the customers and if they buy in our ideas we go ahead with the open source based solutions if the client already has a technology preference and if he wants to stick with that we go ahead and implement based on his technology preference. We started in 2006 as a 2 member team and now we have a team of 15 members. We provide Application Development,Data Management and Capacity Building Services.

SK: I did my undergraduation B.E in the department of Geoinformatics right now im doing my masters in Geomatics. I have been doing various C++ applications and projects right from my college days. I joined Kcube as an employee last year and i have been dealing with Qgis since then. Initially started with building the source from trunk on various platforms and was analyzing all Qgis tools. resently I’m looking into the Qgis API for understanding. Also have developed simple plugins on Qgis to make sure I have understood the API properly.

TS: Kumaran, are you able to say what the split is in your business between FOSS GIS and Proprietary GIS solutions? In otherwords, how much demand is there for FOSS GIS solutions?

KN: All our Application Development Projects have been completely Open Source projects only for Data Projects some of the clients prefer to do their work using their infrastructre which is proproetary. We do lot of Classification work for which we use GRASS. Our target customers are NGO’s, Smaller Enterprises and Governement Agencies. We have been able to sell FOSS GIS easily in this segment. We also do a lot of Capacity Building Programs on various FOSS GIS products. In India we are the first to start on this segment.

TS: Sunil, did you learn C++ and programming as part of your undergrad course or are you self taught?

SK: Although it is a part of my curriculum, I always had a passion towards C and C++ programming.

TS: Recently kcube caused some excitement in the QGIS community when you announced that you would be donating 6 months of developer time to the QGIS project. What prompted kcube to do this?

KN: We have generated revenue through QGIS and we felt it is our time to give back to the community and make QGIS product even better. We do Capacity building programs on QGIS and we are promoting QGIS in India. We started working with QGIS from 2006 - I think it was 0.98 version – and from then we have been closely following QGIS more as an end user.

I have been doing training [with QGIS] and the feedback that we have recieved for QGIS is overwhelming, especially [since]these are the users who are currently with proprietary GIS packages. Open Source is always a community based development and we felt that also should be part of the development community and hence this initiative.

TS: SunilRaj, you have been appointed as the developer to work on QGIS for 6 months. Can you tell us something about yourself from a QGIS perspective? Are you new to the project, have you done any coding on QGIS before? What kinds of development work do you usually do?

SK: As I have mentioned earlier , I have just started developing small QGIS plugins for understanding purposes. During my college days I have used Arc Objects to customize ArcMap. Other than this I was doing only non Gis C++ development. Now I am getting familiar with QGIS API and it is very interesting.

TS: Kumaran, what did you think of the process we followed to decide what the SunilRaj should work on? Are you happy that his time will be spent on bug fixing?

KN: As I said earlier Open Source is always a Community driven approach and we are perfectly okay with what Community has decided. At the end of the day they are going to use the product and if we deliver what they want it will be a huge success for the product. Also during the training [sessions we hold] the bugs crop in and sometimes I also feel that we need to trash these bugs first and that was the same answer which we got from the community.

TS: SunilRaj – are you happy to work on bug fixing for six months? Often people arriving on the project are more interested in working on cool new features rather then maintaining existing code. Can you see personal benifits to working on bug fixing?

SK: From my view, bug fixing is a good point to start with. Since I am a learner of QGIS API, it is good that I start with bug fixing so that I will come to know as many API functionality as possible. Once I successfully fix some of the bugs, I will get the confidence to look into new features development.

TS: As a general question: How well is FOSS GIS being adopted in India? Are there any good success stories of it being taken up in government and industry?

KN: There is a huge adoption for Open Source in general in India but for FOSS GIS there is not much of awareness. One of our first plan is to create awareness on various Open source GIS products. We are running road shows along with NRCFOSS and OSGeo India chapter NRCFOSS is the [government agency] set up by Indian government to promote FOSS at Government and Academia. I would say the movement at GIs has just got started and will take a while to get the momentum but people who are exposed to FOSS GIS get fascinated from day one and give us the feedback that these packages are [more] user friendly than proprietary.

Coming to Case studies, we have implemented couple of webGIS and desktop GIS for NGO’s and government agencies. We have used mainly GeoServer, MapServer, OpenLayers, GeoExt, PostgreSQL/PostGIS stack for Web GIS and for Desktop we go with QGIS Customization.

TS: Is there anything else you need to make a success of this 6 month bug fixing period – anything you would like to ask for help on from the QGIS community?

KN: As Sunil was mentioning he is overall comfortable with QGIS and its development process. To start with we have advised him to pick up bugs which are not more complicated so that he can understand the API first and gradually as he progresses he can pick up more complex bugs and resolve the same. Currently he is doing his development under ubuntu environment. If you have any other development environment suggestions you can let us know. Also currently we were trying to set up a integrated Debugging environment to debug issues for QGIS Code base. We would like to know from you on how the core team does the debugging? Do you use any IDE based debugging or is it through message displays?

TS: Qt4 Creator is probably a good option for you – personally I am using command line tools – vim, gdb etc. which allow also interactive debugging, variable inspection, backtracing etcwith qt-creator you can do the same but in a point and click way. Ubuntu linux makes a very good development platform – in fact almost all QGIS developers are working on linux as far as I know as the development tools are great.

KN: We would certainly need the help of developer community to make this a success as and when we hit road blocks we to get the required help
TS: Many thanks to both of you for agreeing to this interview – on behalf of the QGIS community, we would like to thank you both for the awesome contribution you are making to the project. I would like to do a follow up interview at the end of this six month period so that we can reflect on how things went.

KN: Its our pleasure Tim to be part of this great QGIS team who have been doing an outstanding job. We will send you monthly reports on how bugs are progressing which you can also share with the community.

11:29
Tim Sutton: An interview with kCube Consulting
sur Planet OSGeo

I have previously posted here about kCube Consulting’s donation of 6 months developer time to the QGIS project. Today I took the opportunity to interview Kumaran Narayanaswamy and SunilRaj Kiran from kCube to find out more about their plans and motivations.

Kumaran Narayanaswamy

SunilRaj Kiran

TS: Welcome Kumaran and SunilRaj to this interview. Could we start by asking each of you to give us a brief introduction to yourselves?

KN: Let me give a brief introduction about myself and kCube. kCube is a Startup company founded in year 2006 by myself and my college buddy (Senthil Kumar) and we specialize in providing Geospatial Services. I did my Engineering in Geoinformatics and graduated in 1999 and have been working in the industry mainly Logistics domain. I was working with Cognizant after graduation and have been executing projects for Logistics clients based out of US. I moved back to India in 2006 and started kCube along with my college buddy Senthil Kumar.

We did a market research before starting and we realized that Open Source want not being leveraged to a larger extent in India as it was being in western countires and we felt that Open Source Services is a huge market in India kCube is not a exclusive Open Source Company but we push Open Source as our first priority.
We try to sell the benefits of Open Source to the customers and if they buy in our ideas we go ahead with the open source based solutions if the client already has a technology preference and if he wants to stick with that we go ahead and implement based on his technology preference. We started in 2006 as a 2 member team and now we have a team of 15 members. We provide Application Development,Data Management and Capacity Building Services.

SK: I did my undergraduation B.E in the department of Geoinformatics right now im doing my masters in Geomatics. I have been doing various C++ applications and projects right from my college days. I joined Kcube as an employee last year and i have been dealing with Qgis since then. Initially started with building the source from trunk on various platforms and was analyzing all Qgis tools. resently I’m looking into the Qgis API for understanding. Also have developed simple plugins on Qgis to make sure I have understood the API properly.

TS: Kumaran, are you able to say what the split is in your business between FOSS GIS and Proprietary GIS solutions? In otherwords, how much demand is there for FOSS GIS solutions?

KN: All our Application Development Projects have been completely Open Source projects only for Data Projects some of the clients prefer to do their work using their infrastructre which is proproetary. We do lot of Classification work for which we use GRASS. Our target customers are NGO’s, Smaller Enterprises and Governement Agencies. We have been able to sell FOSS GIS easily in this segment. We also do a lot of Capacity Building Programs on various FOSS GIS products. In India we are the first to start on this segment.

TS: Sunil, did you learn C++ and programming as part of your undergrad course or are you self taught?

SK: Although it is a part of my curriculum, I always had a passion towards C and C++ programming.

TS: Recently kcube caused some excitement in the QGIS community when you announced that you would be donating 6 months of developer time to the QGIS project. What prompted kcube to do this?

KN: We have generated revenue through QGIS and we felt it is our time to give back to the community and make QGIS product even better. We do Capacity building programs on QGIS and we are promoting QGIS in India. We started working with QGIS from 2006 - I think it was 0.98 version – and from then we have been closely following QGIS more as an end user.

I have been doing training [with QGIS] and the feedback that we have recieved for QGIS is overwhelming, especially [since]these are the users who are currently with proprietary GIS packages. Open Source is always a community based development and we felt that also should be part of the development community and hence this initiative.

TS: SunilRaj, you have been appointed as the developer to work on QGIS for 6 months. Can you tell us something about yourself from a QGIS perspective? Are you new to the project, have you done any coding on QGIS before? What kinds of development work do you usually do?

SK: As I have mentioned earlier , I have just started developing small QGIS plugins for understanding purposes. During my college days I have used Arc Objects to customize ArcMap. Other than this I was doing only non Gis C++ development. Now I am getting familiar with QGIS API and it is very interesting.

TS: Kumaran, what did you think of the process we followed to decide what the SunilRaj should work on? Are you happy that his time will be spent on bug fixing?

KN: As I said earlier Open Source is always a Community driven approach and we are perfectly okay with what Community has decided. At the end of the day they are going to use the product and if we deliver what they want it will be a huge success for the product. Also during the training [sessions we hold] the bugs crop in and sometimes I also feel that we need to trash these bugs first and that was the same answer which we got from the community.

TS: SunilRaj – are you happy to work on bug fixing for six months? Often people arriving on the project are more interested in working on cool new features rather then maintaining existing code. Can you see personal benifits to working on bug fixing?

SK: From my view, bug fixing is a good point to start with. Since I am a learner of QGIS API, it is good that I start with bug fixing so that I will come to know as many API functionality as possible. Once I successfully fix some of the bugs, I will get the confidence to look into new features development.

TS: As a general question: How well is FOSS GIS being adopted in India? Are there any good success stories of it being taken up in government and industry?

KN: There is a huge adoption for Open Source in general in India but for FOSS GIS there is not much of awareness. One of our first plan is to create awareness on various Open source GIS products. We are running road shows along with NRCFOSS and OSGeo India chapter NRCFOSS is the [government agency] set up by Indian government to promote FOSS at Government and Academia. I would say the movement at GIs has just got started and will take a while to get the momentum but people who are exposed to FOSS GIS get fascinated from day one and give us the feedback that these packages are [more] user friendly than proprietary.

Coming to Case studies, we have implemented couple of webGIS and desktop GIS for NGO’s and government agencies. We have used mainly GeoServer, MapServer, OpenLayers, GeoExt, PostgreSQL/PostGIS stack for Web GIS and for Desktop we go with QGIS Customization.

TS: Is there anything else you need to make a success of this 6 month bug fixing period – anything you would like to ask for help on from the QGIS community?

KN: As Sunil was mentioning he is overall comfortable with QGIS and its development process. To start with we have advised him to pick up bugs which are not more complicated so that he can understand the API first and gradually as he progresses he can pick up more complex bugs and resolve the same. Currently he is doing his development under ubuntu environment. If you have any other development environment suggestions you can let us know. Also currently we were trying to set up a integrated Debugging environment to debug issues for QGIS Code base. We would like to know from you on how the core team does the debugging? Do you use any IDE based debugging or is it through message displays?

TS: Qt4 Creator is probably a good option for you – personally I am using command line tools – vim, gdb etc. which allow also interactive debugging, variable inspection, backtracing etcwith qt-creator you can do the same but in a point and click way. Ubuntu linux makes a very good development platform – in fact almost all QGIS developers are working on linux as far as I know as the development tools are great.

KN: We would certainly need the help of developer community to make this a success as and when we hit road blocks we to get the required help
TS: Many thanks to both of you for agreeing to this interview – on behalf of the QGIS community, we would like to thank you both for the awesome contribution you are making to the project. I would like to do a follow up interview at the end of this six month period so that we can reflect on how things went.

KN: Its our pleasure Tim to be part of this great QGIS team who have been doing an outstanding job. We will send you monthly reports on how bugs are progressing which you can also share with the community.

4:42
AnyGeo - GIS, Maps, LBS, Geo and Social Location Technology: Nokia N8 Unboxing Images – A First Look
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

I was held up sick at home today, however, on the upside I was around to receive a special delivery package from New York – a nice, new Nokia N8 smartphone (trial). Unboxing the Nokia N8 smartphone… images from inside and outside the attractive package. High res shots of the popular 12 mega pixel camera [...]
4:02
AnyGeo - GIS, Maps, LBS, Geo and Social Location Technology: EDU Tip – The Google Science Fair is coming (Online)
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

This via Google regarding an upcoming, Global, online Science Fair. From the website… If you’re an educator and you’d like to receive classroom materials (posters, stickers, bookmarks, etc.) and a registration reminder notification when GSF registration opens, click the button below to send us your contact info – see [www.google.com]

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4:00
Podcast: Too Many Terms for Geospatial Technology?
sur Directions Media - Podcasts

Enclosure: [download]

How many terms can you think of to describe a narrow or broad aspect of geotechnologies? Geospatial? LBS? Geolocation? Location Intelligence? Geodesign? Why do we have so many? And, do all these terms interfere with the growth of the community? How do you answer when someone asks what you do?

Download audio file

More about: education, elevator pitch, geodesign, geospatial, jobs, terminology

2:21
geo.geek.nz: ArcGIS Server Success Stories Published In 2010
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

Sometimes it’s good to reflect on the past and last year was a very successful year with many users and organisations adopting ArcGIS Server. During the year Esri published many press releases showcasing how users and organisations made use of...
1:43
AnyGeo - GIS, Maps, LBS, Geo and Social Location Technology: CES Brands and Tweets on the Map
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

Monitoring CES Tweets on the Map Originally uploaded by GISuser.com GIS and Social, Mobile Tech Images

An interesting map mashup via elifemaps tried making a splash last week taking advantage of all the hype surrounding the annual CES lovefest. Here’s the premise… Elifemaps.com shows where tweets are originating and which companies and/or products are mentioned most on [...]
0:48
MapDotNet Blog: Version 8.1.2000 Released Today
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

The MapDotNet Product Team is pleased to announce the release of version 8.1.2000 today. Several minor fixes and features were added. Support for PNG8 is one of the more important additions along with upgrading PostgreSQL to version 9. I

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Enclosure: [download]