Special Announcement
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Thursday, May 15. 2008
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"The world needs utility companies that create and manage geospatial data," he said. "And these are companies that have fought their way to the top and they're very good: they serve their data and sell their data to our users in the private domain."
That's part of an somewhat confusing article from C|net. The approval of the deal part is ok, but when the author mentions Google Maps being a company and the new deal between ESRI and Google, things get a bit mixed up.
One company that has teamed up with ESRI is Google Maps, which now use digital maps from both Navteq and Tele Atlas. John Hanke, head of Google Maps and Google Earth, said that there is a vast amount of geodata locked up in different government agencies that should be made publicly available.
This from the Chair of the event. I generally don't post such notes at APB, but I feel strongly about this event. If you've not been to FOSS4G you are missing something. Further, if you've never been to South Africa, this is a great chance. Finally, GIS is now part of the curriculum in Joberg.
Due to demand, the Where 2.0 conference starting on our previous deadline and a website glitch with the original cut-off date, we are pleased to announce the EXTENSION of the deadline for Paper, Presentation and Poster abstracts AND the deadline for Workshop proposals to the *** 23 MAY ***. Go to http://www.foss4g2008.org and click on 'Call for Papers'.
You can also view the Call for Papers at: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G2008_Call_for_papers
and the Call for Workshop proposals at: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G2008_Call_for_workshops
Thanks to those of you who have submitted so far. As of 14 May we already have an exciting selection of Workshops and Labs (32), Academic Papers (50), Presentations (85) and Posters (10). The previous Announcement gave you a taste of the Workshops. As far as papers and presentations go, a small sampling gives us ‘An Integrated Water Resource Decision Support System built from OSS tools’, ‘Characterisation of tsunami affected areas using remote sensing and GIS’, ‘Modus Operandi of a FOSS GIS project in India’, ‘Challenges in GIS education and training’, ‘Using Python and wxWidgets to build custom GIS applications’, ‘Using KML and Google Earth to interact with SA water resource data’, ‘Easing Transition to Open Source Geo-Spatial Data Manipulation in GML’, ‘A Free GIS Book’, ‘Open-source based market information systems - one option for Developing Nations’,’ A year of full-speed FOSS- winning the hearts, minds, and business case’, ‘Senegalese land register modernization through OpenSource software’, ‘BeeGis: digital field mapping that just works’,’ The use of FOSS GIS in Integrated GIS in Local Government in South Africa’,’ GIS in the Geography Curriculum: Teacher Training’.’ Topology support in FOSS4G solutions’, ‘TerraLib as an Open Source Platform for Public Health Applications’,’ Google Earth Powered by MapGuide Open Source’,’ GDAL/OGR Project Status Report’ and this list goes on.
Remember: Early-bird registration now closes on 20th June and hotel specials will be released soon after, so register soon!
Submit your abstract or proposal soon. Come and have a bash in Cape Town.
Gavin Fleming
FOSS4G 2008 Conference Chair
www.foss4g2008.org
Wednesday, May 14. 2008
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To my amazement there are very few folks following the where2008 thread on Twitter. Just 70. Perhaps folks are all all on the backchannel IRC? (IRC channel #where2008 on irc.freenode.net)
I guess this is reinforcing my sense of Twitter use in our community which is confirmed, thus far, by the current poll.
The BBC reports that the National Trust is mapping every plant in its gardens using a handheld device supplied by Magellan. Magellan tells us that gardeners of the National Trust are using their MobileMapper CX with DigiTerra Explorer software. Watch the video of how they will do it.
It'll be announced this morning at Where, but there's a blog post about first set of apps. Only a few are particularly spatial - WeatherBug weater, Caldwell Banker home search and speed traps from Trapster. As TechCrunch notes, it's odd that to get info on the API you must send e-mail rather than say read all the details then apply for a code or something. I guess Dash hasn't been watching how the rest of the tech community is doing APIs.
The word came today from the EU. Basically the Commission said there was no reason fear unfair strategies:
"The Commission found that the merged company would be unlikely to pursue these strategies because its ability to restrict access to digital maps ... would be limited by the presence of an upstream competitor, Navteq," it said.
The new company "would have no incentive to restrict access to digital maps because the sales of digital maps lost by Tele Atlas would not be compensated by additional sales of personal navigation devices," it said.
- Bloomberg
- BusinessWeek
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