Planet OSGeo

Fernando Quadro: Google Street View no Brasil

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:17:45 +0000

A Google fechou uma parceria com a Fiat para trazer ao Brasil as imagens provenientes do serviço Google Street View. Para quem não conhece, o serviço disponibiliza através do Google Earth e do Google Maps fotos em 360º na horizontal e 290º na vertical. Em cada local onde o serviço está disponível, uma frota de carros viaja pelas ruas da cidade fazendo as imagens. Em cada país o Google fechou parceria com uma montadora de carros para executar o serviço. No Brasil serão 30 Fiat Stilo que vão rodar pelas capitais dos estados de Minas Gerais, São Paulo e Rio de Janeiro. Uma câmera apara tomada de fotos panorâmicas será acoplada na parte de cima dos carros que irão circular em velocidade normal pelas ruas das cidades. Os trabalhos se iniciaram no dia de ontem (02 de julho) e ainda não possuem data definida para chegada ao usuário final.

Segundo executivos do projeto, a intenção é mapear todas as ruas das cidades, mas existem algumas exceções. Instituições públicas que se vejam ameaçadas por conta da segurança pública podem requerer que suas imagens não sejam mostradas. Apesar de garantir que não serão mostrados os rostos das pessoas, o Google garante que qualquer um que sentir a sua privacidade invadida pode pedir para que a imagem em que aparece seja retirada do serviço. Essa política é resultado de várias reclamações feitas nos países onde o serviço já está em pleno funcionamento.

Do ponto de vista do Google pode ser uma grande jogada para aumentar o seu domínio no Brasil, mas do ponto de vista da fotografia é muito mais interessante. Pode parecer coisa simples, mas fotografia em 360º é muito complicado. Exige equipamento, conhecimento e softwares poderosos para o processamento das imagens. Estou curioso para ver o resultado dessa nova empreitada no Brasil.

Fonte: MeioBit

Posts Relacionados

Dylan Beaudette: Summarizing Grouped Data in R

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:34:52 +0000

A colleague of mine recently asked about computing basic summary statistics from grouped data in R. These are a couple examples that I suggested. Additional documentation for the plyr package can be found here.

GeoServer Team: GeoServer 1.7.5 critical WMS patch

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:22:39 +0000

The latest stable GeoServer version, 1.7.5, was released with a small but critical bug that slows down rendering when a very small polygon or a line is displayed at a high zoom level (so that the displayed area is a very small fraction of the
whole). The slowdown increases as one zooms in, and eventually may lead the Java Virtual Machine to crash.
The bug also makes for non optimal rendering of cased roads (the typical highway display).

The issue is actually due to a Sun Java bug, but happily we have a workaround for it. If you find you’re affected by this problem, follow these simple instructions:

stop GeoServer
download this patch jar and save it under geoserver/WEB-INF/lib
restart GeoServer

Voilà, bug gone.

We want to thank Stefan Ziegler for the quick bug report and the other users that reminded us of how important this patch is.

Edmar Moretti: Encontro Latino Americano de gvSig

edmar.moretti@terra.com.br (Edmar Moretti) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:30:17 +0000

Será realizado na Argentina o "1º Congreso gvSIG en América Latina" no período de 30 de setembro a 2 de outubro no IGN, Av Cabildo 381, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires.

A chamada para trabalhos deverá começar semana que vem.

Muito bem, e viva o gvSig.

Edmar Moretti: Vaga para consultor em Geo no Pará

edmar.moretti@terra.com.br (Edmar Moretti) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:22:15 +0000

Divulgando:

TERMO DE REFERÊNCIA 002/2009

O Programa Pará Rural, executado pelo Governo do Estado do Pará, no âmbito do Acordo de Empréstimo 7414-BR, assinado em novembro de 2007, junto ao Banco Mundial, torna público que se encontra aberto até o dia 13 de julho de 2009, o processo seletivo de Consultoria Individual (pessoa física), objetivando o “Fortalecimento da Equipe Base da Coordenação do ZEE-PA – Especialista em Geotecnologia, nas suas atividades referentes ao processamento de dados geoespaciais e integração de banco de dados geográficos”. Esta atividade é referente ao Componente B - Ordenamento Territorial, descrita no Termo de Referência 002/2009. Todo o processo seletivo seguirá o que determina as Diretrizes de Seleção e Contratação de Consultores pelos Mutuários do Banco Mundial publicada em maio de 2004 e revisada em outubro de 2006. A solicitação de recebimento do Termo de Referência para a realização da Consultoria, bem como o envio de currículos podem ser solicitados pelo e-mail: consultoria@ngpr.pa.gov.br . Não poderão participar funcionários de órgão públicos municipais, estaduais ou federais conforme legislação em vigor.

Jody Garnett: Out in the World

noreply@blogger.com (Jody Garnett) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:34:00 +0000

I have managed to get out in the world a bit lately, as per this GeoServer blog entry. It was really interesting to catch up with the development team that has been doing so much excellent work on "application schemas". The game plan here is to enable geoserver to publish up data according to a strict format defined by a user community. In this case the event was even more interesting as there were real live users in attendance from LandGate, GeoScience Victoria and GeoScience Australia. It was really great to go over the issues with all those involved.

A little bit of team bonding.

GeoServer Team: GeoServer app-schema meeting in Perth, Western Australia

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:08:20 +0000

Last week AuScope hosted a GeoServer app-schema meeting in Perth, Western Australia, to bring together developers, information modellers, and users:

https://twiki.auscope.org/twiki/bin/view/Grid/AuScopeSissGeoserverMeeting2009

The meeting was attended by Jody Garnett, GeoServer developers Justin Deoliveira and Gabriel Roldán from OpenGeo, AuScope Spatial Information Services Stack developers, GeoSciML gurus, and AuScope participants including GeoScience Victoria, Geoscience Australia, and Landgate. Discussions included the history of GeoServer app-schema, background on AuScope, user perspectives, and future development priorities.

Future development options that received support included:

Graphical configuration for app-schema (Wicket UI)
Support for polymorphism in encoded app-schema XML
3D geometry support
GML 3.2
WFS 2.0

and more. See the minutes for details:

https://twiki.auscope.org/twiki/bin/view/Grid/AppSchemaMeetingMinutes

The developers stayed on for a code sprint and:

Implemented vocabulary operations in CQL
Got GeoServer app-schema working with an ArcSDE backend
Got GeoServer WMS working with a simple feature WFS backend
Demonstrated encoding failure of ISO 19107 geometries (3D support)
Debated polymorphism implementation approaches
Wrapped Justin in org.geotools.xml.Encoder
- http://svn.osgeo.org/geotools/trunk/modules/extension/xsd/xsd-core/src/main/java/org/geotools/xml/Encoder.java
- To be fair, Justin is only the most recent maintainer
- The source is 3.5 metres long when printed in 6 point DejaVu Sans Mono
- One method alone is 1.2 metres long

AuScope thanks all the participants, especially Jody who helped organise the meeting, and the international visitors Justin and Gabriel who travelled from North and South America respectively. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

Edmar Moretti: Novo relevo global (30 metros) - servidor abriu o bico

edmar.moretti@terra.com.br (Edmar Moretti) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:20:38 +0000

Nem bem foi anunciado a disponibilidade do GDEM (modelo digital de elevação que cobre o mundo todo com resolução de 30 metros) e o número de download entupiu o servidor de arquivos. Vejam em:

http://www.ersdac.or.jp/GDEM/E/index.html

.

Paul Ramsey: Working in the Cathedral

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Ramsey) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:21:15 +0000

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!

Paul Ramsey: Lies, Damn Lies...

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Ramsey) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:17:40 +0000

"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".

Tyler Mitchell: IMAP for migrating from OSX Mail to Thunderbird

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:05:06 +0000

There is a common online question about migrating from Apple's Mail app (Using .emlx format mail files) to Thunderbird (or any other non-Mail app). I looked at a few options and have decided, as strange as it may seem, that installing an IMAP service was the best solution.

Tim Waters: GeoExt BaseLayerContainer and OverlayLayerContainer together

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:55:13 +0000

If you want to use GeoExt widgets BaseLayerContainer and OverlayLayerContainer in the same tree, like this:

GeoExt BaseLayerContainer and OverlayLayerContainer

var layerRoot = new Ext.tree.TreeNode({ text: "All Layers", expanded: true }); layerRoot.appendChild(new GeoExt.tree.BaseLayerContainer({ text: "Base Layers", map: map, expanded: true })); layerRoot.appendChild(new GeoExt.tree.OverlayLayerContainer({ text: "Overlays", map: map, expanded: true })); var layerTree = new Ext.tree.TreePanel({ title: "Map Layers", root: layerRoot, enableDD: true, collapsible: true, height: 200, expanded: true });

GeoExt is now at 0.5RC1 and it is rather good!

Gwenael Bachelot: L'interopérabilité de la plate forme géospatiale Autodesk

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:45:00 +0000

Nous organisons un séminaire gratuit sur le web pour parler de l’interopérabilité de la plate forme géospatiale Autodesk.

Au menu, FDO, Oracle, ArcGIS Server (ArcSDE), SHP, MapInfo, et comment les outils Autodesk permettent une utilisation directe de ces données, sans copie ni conversion. Nous présenterons notamment ce type d’utilisation dans un contexte web.

Si le sujet vous intéresse, que vous disposez d’une connexion Internet et êtes disponibles pendant une heure le vendredi 10 juillet, n’hésitez pas à vous inscrire.

TANTO Team: Il codice di EveryBlock va in opensource

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:33:11 +0000

I miei siti di ispirazione di web-mapping sono diversi. Nella mia top five c’è sicuramente EveryBlock, perché unisce leggibilità, efficacia, eleganza e attenzione alle buone pratiche (non soltanto dal punto di vista tecnologico).

Risponde ad una domanda “necessaria”: cosa avviene attorno a me?

Sono raccolte essenzialmente tre tipi di notizie:

Informazione civica — permessi di costruzione, informazioni sulla criminalità, verifiche sui ristoranti, eccetera. In molti casi l’informazione è già sul web ma è dispersa in database dell’amministrazione difficili di individuare. In altri casi l’informazione viene pubblicata per la prima volta in collaborazione con gli enti pubblici.
Notizie — dai principali quotidiani, settimanali locali, TV e radio, pubblicazioni e blog. L’informazione viene classificata geograficamente in modo da evidenziare la copertura mediatica di uno specifico rione cittadino.
Divertimento — fotografie relative alle zone coperte pubblicate su Flickr, opinioni sulle attività commerciali recensite su Yelp, annunci di oggetti smarriti/ritrovati su Craigslist e altro.

E’ un servizio disponibile soltanto per alcune città degli Stati Uniti. Questo ad esempio l’URL per New York: http://nyc.everyblock.com/

L’interfaccia è raffinata e semplice allo stesso tempo, ed è notevole il numero di informazioni che trovate raccolte. Qui una lista di quelle del quartiere “DUMBO - Vinegar Hill - Downtown Brooklyn - Boerum Hill”.

Di ciascuno di questi report è possibile averne una visualizzazione cartografica e molto spesso anche un grafico che illustra l’andamento della variabile in oggetto (ad esempio la richiesta di rimozioni di graffiti!). Le città sono esplorabili per quartieri e per CAP.

Da oggi il codice che sta dietro EveryBlock è rilasciato in opensource, e già sogno di vederlo in azione per realtà a noi più vicine. Questo è quello che ci troverete dentro:

The main package (probably the thing you’re looking for) is the publishing system, known as ebpub.
Second, the packages ebdata and ebgeo contain Python modules for processing data and making maps.
Third, the packages ebinternal and everyblock round out the code that powers EveryBlock.com. They’re internal tools and are likely not of general use, but we’re including them to be complete.
Finally, ebblog and ebwiki are our blog and wiki software, respectively. Because, dammit, the world needs another Django-powered blogging tool.

Il codice è scritto Python sfruttando il framework web Django. Mi piacerebbe potermici sporcare le mani, ma in Python non vado oltre la dichiarazione di una variabile.

Se qualche lettore di TANTO dovesse fare qualche esperimento, ci contatti subito

Via O’Reilly Radar.

Allan Doyle: Service Discovery and Orchestration (in IEOS or elsewhere)

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:33:44 +0000

Has anyone ever run a service discovery and orchestration scenario like the one on page 7 of this document in any setting other than a demo? How far away from being able to do this in “real life” are we?

Tim Waters: Where 2.0 & Free our old maps!

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:50:37 +0000

Well over a month ago I went over to the Bay area for Where2.0 and Wherecamp 2009.

Presented at the Ignite Where on the Thursday evening, after the workshops, about Map Warper.

Map Warper Ignite Slides on slideshare.

Video is here!

I’m near the end at 34:15 minutes in.

In fact, http://where.blip.tv is where to go for all the presentations.

Ignite format was fun, the lights were quite bright on stage so it appeared that I was scowling!

Scowling, and not from slagging off the Ordnance Survey too. Rather I think the OS deserves the love that it’s maps generate – it’s the people who use them that deserve the criticism.

I gave the example of an anti-pattern used in local governments in the UK:

Councils have old map archives.
Councils have Ordnance Survey mapping.
Councils have statutory obligation to look at contaminated land, and the history of land for planning and development etc.
Councils use OS mapping to georeference and rectify old maps using OS mapping. Often at great expense, sometimes outsourcing to other countries.
Resulting rectified maps are derivative works from the OS, and cannot be shared, or given away for free because of this.

As a response to this, and knowing that all the councils probably had digital collections of (unrectified) out of copyright maps, I am proposing “Free our Old Maps” project.

Lets use crowd sourcing techiques to free these old maps get layers and layers of old historical maps for the UK.

–

The rest of the conference was good.

Michal Migurski had a nice slot entitled “Flea Market Mapping” where he showed off his own attempts at a map warper, but was mainly highlighting the love of old maps. He was unaware of and didn’t see Map Warper or my talk before at the very same conference! (But liked it when he did see it later)

Wearabale Haptics talk captured my imagination.

The horizonless map from Autodesk was v. cool too. Can’t find the relevant link though…

Ugotrade writes up a nice review: http://www.ugotrade.com/2009/06/02/location-becomes-oxygen-at-where-20-wherecamp/

OpenStreetMap was a given, no longer a new thing that people didnt know about, it was pretty much mentioned casually throughout. The Stamen fellas did a nice workshop with mapnik, cascadenik and OSM data, which was very well attended.

Also over from Leeds was my buddy Mohsin, fresh out of Leeds Met, and presenting at Wherefaire his Snapture project. Using Leodis images, location on a mobile app, we can view Leeds through time. V. cool project.

http://www.slideshare.net/chippy/map-warper-ignite-talk-where20-2009

Jachym Cepicky: Dobříšský Tvrďák 09

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:05:18 +0000

Celý svůj krátký (ale prodlužuje se nám to) život jsem si říkal, že bych si rád někdy zkusil královskou vytrvalostní disciplínu - triatlon. Když se ségra odstěhovala na Dobříš a začala navštěvovat akce klubu Vlaška, začala mě na akce lákat taky. Zahájil jsem tím, že jsem asi 2 měsíce po chemoterapii zúročil zbytky tréningu na pražský marathon (běžel se v době, kdy do mě řezali Na Františku) a zaběhnul půlmarathon. Atmosféra závodu mě nadchla, prostředí také a když jsem k narozeninám od sestry a Karla dostal startovné na všechny závody, které pojedu, Dobříšský Tvrďák se vysloveně nabízel. Hned po Malevilu druhá akce.

V březnu v Roudnci otevřeli bazén a já navázal na zimní přípravu - běhání na Říp s Chlupem - plaváním. Zvedalo se to docela rychle a za dva měsíce jsem plaval víc, než kdy před tím. Občas jsem se dostal na kolo a trénoval jsem výjezdy na Říp (resp. kroužil jsem okolo kopce a občas na něj vyjel). Oproti Malevilu byla cyklistická příprava trochu méně intenzivní, ale rozhodně systematičtější. Pro jistotu jsem si šel po plavání nebo po kole ještě zaběhat s Chlupem. Říkal jsem si, že víc pro přípravu nemůžu udělat. Poslední tréning v úterý (jenom silnice a běh, bylo těsně po dešti) a rozhodnul jsem se, že do pátku musím zregenerovat.

Cestou na Dobříš jsem se stavil na Suchdole v cyklu Adam a koupil jsem si zcela nové cyklistické botky s pevnou podrážkou. Dorazil jsem na Dobříš, nechal kolo u ségry, namontoval jsem si špunty na svoje nové botky a prošel jsem se v nich v obýváku. Konstatoval jsem, že to nějak půjde a šel jsem spát k tetě kousek za Dobříš.

Ráno jsme se sešli ještě s Karlovým šéfem a jeho dcerou. Oba mají dohromady asi tolik co já sám (tedy váhu) a musí celý závod jet na tubu s cukrem, protože si nedovedu představit, odkud jinak tu energii berou. Mája je spolu s Adélou vítězka závodu Brdman Cross, Míla odjel dlouhej (100km) Malevil - zkrátka zkušení borci.

Pomalovali nás čísly, zaparkovali jsme kola, počasí nám přálo. Se ségrou jsem se ani nerozloučil - holky startovali o 15 minut před námi. Dohodli jsme se ale už dřív, že jak doběhnu, hned se jí vydám na pomoc - na půlmarathonu jsem doběhl dost napřed, na Malevilu jsem dojel snad o hodinu dřív - to nebude problém. Výstřel startovní pistole a holky huply do Papeže a hnaly se kolem dvou bójek a zpátky. Mája se vynořila z vody asi 4, Áďa asi 7 a vyrazily na kolo. Bezprostředně potom jsme startovali my.

Adélka leze z vody

Na vodu jsem si hodně věřil. Jednak jsem dost trénoval a jednak Majk zkrátil trasu na 500m. Ale když jsem viděl borce v neoprénech, jak se štosujou do první řady, stáhnul jsem se do zadní. To byla chyba, protože jsem až po první bójku nemohl proplavat přes hradbu těl, nakonec se ale podařilo a já plaval - oproti svému předsevzetí, totiž šetřit síly - jako o život. Voda měla prý asi 17°C, ale mě přišla v pohodě. Vynořil jsem se z vody ve velice slušném čase - i s převlečením asi 9 minut a vyrazil ke kolu, provedl striptýz, a vystřelil směr kopec Kazatelna.

Jaja leze z vody

Oproti Malevilu jsem nedostal křeč až na 30km, ale už na 3km - hned na prvním kopci - Kazatelně. Naštěstí jsem měl preparátek od ségry, nějak jsem se vyškrábal nahoru, nepoblil jsem se (ale moc nechybělo) mezitím mě všichni předjeli a pokračoval jsem dál. Na 10 km mě dojel Míla a pak už jsme jeli spolu až do cíle. Cestou jsme si občas povídali, ale postupně jsem na to musel šlapat víc a víc, abych mu stačil. Kromě jednoho pádu (mého) nám cesta ubíhala celkem bez zádrhelů. Míla říkal, že má za letošek naběháno už 6 kilometrů, říkal jsem si - s přihlédnutím k jeho věku a mému dosavadnímu tréningu - že to bude v pohodě. Furt jsme si říkali, kdeže ty holky jsou…

Jaja na kole

Když jsme dojeli, Míla se sebral a po asi půl kilometru mi utek’. A mě začalo osmi kilometrové trápení, kdy jsem si přiznal, že jsem fakt prostě nemoh’. Alespoň jsem pomohl kolegovi s křečema, protože jsem měl ještě tabletku a jemu asi pomohla. Ještě jsem se v závěru zmohl na finiš, kterým jsem předběhl asi 4 lidi (náhoda) a posunul se tak na kulaté 60 místo asi z devadesáti účastníků v mé kategorii. Ségra už v cíli byla - sedmá. Nejlepší nakonec: byl jsem asi o 9 minut rychlejší (což na skoro 2 a půl hodině není moc), ale v běhu mě vzala o 2 minuty! :-)

Maja běží

Míla běží

Kája běží

Celkové zhodnocení akce 0,5k-30k-8k tedy velmi dobré: Teplo ale ne vedro, vlhko ale ne rozbláceno, jeden pád a všichni dojeli. Největší respekt jde Ádě a Karlovi. A já holt budu muset ještě potrénovat. A velký dík Majkovi za skvělou organizaci!

Yves Jacolin: Des logiciels libres aux données libres (partie 2 sur 3)

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:00:24 +0000

Modes de fonctionnement Parmi la multitude de projet libre les plus connus sont sans aucun doute les projets de logiciels libres. Cette section présente le fonctionnement des projets en tant que projet de logiciels libres. Ce qui me semble définir un projet de logiciel libre est l’existence d’une communauté de développeurs dont des règles écrites ou [...]

Luc Vaillancourt: La licence ODbL d'Open Data Communs : à considérer pour l'information géographique!

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:17:58 +0000

François Van Der Biest de CamptoCamp informait la communauté sur la liste osgeo-fr de ceci : Hier a été publiée la tant attendue licence "ODbL" (Open Database License) qui combine "Share Alike" (redistribution sous les mêmes termes du contrat) et "Attribution" (il faut créditer la source si vous redistribuez) sur la

Slashgeo (FOSS articles): 5th gvSIG Conference: We keep growing

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:16:00 +0000

News Office. gvSIG Project writes "The 5th Edition of the gvSIG Conference, organized by the Regional Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport (CIT), will be held from December 2nd until December 4th at the Feria Valencia Convention and Exhibition Center, and will once again host the eclipseDay.

In these difficult times when collaboration is most important, we cope with the adversities together with the aim of coming out strengthened by them. We continue moving ahead together. This is part of the gvSIG project and through this approach we keep on growing. This is our slogan for the fifth edition of the gvSIG Conference: We keep growing.

The call for papers for the Fifth Edition of the gvSIG conference is now open. As of today communication proposals can be sent to the email address: contacto-jornadas-gvsig@gva.es; they will be evaluated by the scientific committee as to their inclusion in the conference program.
There are two types of communication: paper or poster. Information regarding to regulations on communication presentations can be found in the report's section. Abstracts will be accepted until September 21st .

Organizations interested in collaborating in the event can find information in the section: How to collaborate?"
gvSIG has been mentioned several times in the past, see selected stories below.

Geoff Zeiss: New US Federal IT Dashboard

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:36:20 +0000

The new Federal IT Dash board is available. This is one of the first initatives of Vivek Kundra the new Federal CIO.

Geoff Zeiss: ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model Released by NASA and METI

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:23:55 +0000

NASA and the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) have released the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) global digital elevation model (DEM), which covers about 99% of the Earth's surface. The global DEM was built from 1.5 million individual scene-based ASTER DEMs. The global DEM is in GeoTIFF format with lat/long coordinates and a 1 arc-second (30 m) grid. It is referenced to the WGS84/EGM96 geoid. Accuracy is estimated to be 20 meters for elevations and 30 meters for horizontal data.

The ASTER GDEM covers land surfaces between 83°N and 83°S and is comprised of 22,600 1°-by-1° tiles. Tiles that contain at least 0.01% land area are included.

The ASTER global DEM is available at no charge to users from the Earth Remote Sensing Data Analysis Center (ERSDAC) of Japan and from LP DAAC.

Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo): OSGIS UK meetup

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:54:18 +0000

I've just got back from a trip to the UK and Italy last week for the OSGIS event and the OSGeo Hacking Event. It was a great time of connecting with so many people that it exceeded my expectations.

Before heading up to Nottingham I was able to meet up with Martin Daly from Cadcorp (a GDAL/OGR sponsor) in London. We hadn't met face to face before, so I was glad to get a firsthand chance to see their SIS GIS Desktop product in action. Our very own Mateusz also works there so it was treat to catch up with him as well. Of course he couldn't resist going to Nottingham too and overworking his camera - his flickr feed is always helpful after an event :)

From the word go, Suchith Anand, Mike Jackson and the rest of the University of Nottingham's Centre for Geospatial Science crew had us hopping. I didn't realise it was possible to pack so much into a single day event! Thank you for the opportunity to deliver a keynote there and for lining up so many good speakers and people to meet with the following day as well. Three cheers! I'm sure next year will be even better.

It was a truly international event with close to 20 different countries represented. It was really good to catch up with many of you from all over Europe, I'll be going through my notes this week, but still feel free to drop me if you remember anything in particular we should pursue together.

One recurring theme of interest from several groups and and individuals, was the interest to partner with OSGeo to write case studies relating to their domain. I'm really looking forward to following up on these. If you want to help write, please let me know.

The OSGeo UK Chapter held a meeting as well, with Jo Cook leading the charge. It's always fascinating to see how different each chapter is - each with their own interests, strengths and local challenges. This was only the second time they met...sort of. Last year there were less than a dozen who met up to discuss the idea of forming a chapter. This year it was more like 50 or more people with broad interest from around the UK. Coming from a Canadian, it might seem strange to say that the UK chapter is spread out over large distances, but it is large enough that some more regional local groups are likely to pop up. There were contingents from Scotland and Wales talking about meeting and I know there are some Irish interested as well.

They have high hopes, so if you are the UK, join their list and find a good reason to get together and chat.

(Photos from mlsoskot's photostream under under these terms - good job Mateusz!)

Andrew Turner: Reboot into Action

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:42:32 +0000

So I just finished attending my first Reboot – and as many people tried to explain before hand, “it’s weird”. Not just European Conference weird with completely different crowd, most attendees speaking in a foreign language (their own, or in English which is foreign to them), varying minor variations on “what matters”, and of course dealing with wall plug adapters.

No, Reboot is weird in a different way. In attempting to learn if it was more traditional conference, or unconference, the answer was never clear and often just “yes” to the multiple choice question. Now I know why they said that, it actually makes sense. But let me hopefully be slightly more lucid.

What is Reboot?

Reboot asks for anyone to submit topics ahead of time, and these are then chosen both by a committee as well as public voting – so it’s a very open system, BarCamp-like, but these talks are then chosen with a speaker and assigned times. So then Reboot becomes more traditional conference with many “stage talks” in a face-forward audience setting. There are some side rooms that will have sessions scheduled that are discussions, but that definitely isn’t something to plan on. So the presentations are more traditional.

But then where Reboot was really surprising is the amount of the conference that happens outside of the sessions. This isn’t just a “hallway track” discussions – they are full-fledged, conference long sessions working on projects. People are dedicated to building things, gathering together information, creating, ideating, collaborating, advising – all during the conference. I’m quite sure a sizable number of Reboot attendees never go to a ’session’ but merely use the venue as a mechanism to gather together many like-minded people who are driven to do something, and leverage the brain-power and thoughts that are coming out of the sessions to act on something bigger.

I love BarCamps – they’re discussion-centric, synergistic, and connect people in networks to carry forward and achieve great things in the future. What Reboot does, by comparison, is not wait. Have an idea? Get started on it now. Or at least be very good in capturing the idea, disseminating it widely and getting it moving as quickly as possible.

Now perhaps with a little better, or at least verbose, explanation of what Reboot was like from my perspective – it also makes the name itself more meaningful. The conference is Reboot, not “Reinstall”, or “Start-over”, or “Redo”, just “Reboot”. When you Reboot something you retain some measure of the longer-term state it was in; applications are installed, configurations are set, and so forth. But what Rebooting does is to go back to a fresh state, with the long-term memory and skills and infrastructure, and get up and running and back into business.

So the conference is about considering what’s around you, what you’ve built and have, and through the sessions, collaborations, projects, whatever, to take a fresh perspective and jumpstart on moving forward.

Action

The theme, or topic, of Reboot 11 was “Action”. Simple, single word: Action. Take action, make something happen. There is a parellel in Tim O’Reilly’s “Work on things that matter”.

The proposed reasoning behind having Reboot focus on “Action” was that we are in a global economic crisis, there are short-term issues such as disasters, corrupt governments, and long-term problems of environmental quality, health, and education. It was a push for us to work on these issues and figure out how we can help enact change.

However I found through talking with many people that had attended several Reboots that there was “nothing new”, or “revolutionary” in many of the topics and that the individual felt they already had a good grasp of what was going on in the space. It was this malais of “amazing things” that made me realize why it’s really time to take action – and Bruce Sterling to cast just enough “Gothic Hi-Tech” to make it solidify”"

We have the tools, we have the power

The tools we’re all using and building with have been in active use for several years now. We have our wikis, blogs, social networks, mobile devices, media devices, connectivity, realtime communications, hardware interfaces, API’s, and more. We have all created an amazing toolset that has been used to create many varied, and some quite crazy, applications, worlds, communities, or systems.

And if we have these mature tools, with many choices and the ability to quickly pull them together to accomplish nearly everything – we have to grow up and realize that these are not just toys or hacks nymore. These are the very tools that can, and are already, making the world of the future.

And we, the technologists, designers, thinkers, citizens of the next generation that are now in control. We have grown up with these tools, and in many ways we’re already using them to change governments, raise communities, run businesses, and live in our world.

Act now

For me, what I took away is to take responsibility and consideration for what I choose to do. Hacks and toys are fun – but as Bruce said, “if it’s not beautiful enough to show your friends, and doesn’t have a narrative attached to it, throw it away”.

Work on things that matter, and make them work by focusing on them like they matter. Your actions will make a difference, and if they don’t – you’re doing it wrong. Put it down, and move onto something else. Collaborate and work together to achieve great, actionable outcomes. You’re an amazing person with many talents, and we can all use amazing people like you. What action are you going to evoke?

Just van den Broecke: OSGeo Hacking Event Bolsena

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:42:08 +0000

Attended OSGeo Hacking week in Bolsena. To get an impression you can watch the media mix I made from various photo's/videos made by me and other participants.