Thursday, November 5. 2009

Tuscany's Open Source GIS Evolves

Officials of the Tuscany region (Italy) have published a new version of its GIS website built on SagaDB (Sistema di Accesso Georeferenziato alle Banche Dati).

The development effort began back in 2001and originally used GRASS. The latest version, released under GPL does't use it anymore. The solution supports "the creation of dynamic or pre-processed maps, where the graphic attributes can be processed by either the client or the server."

Why is app open source? "According to [dev team member Viviana] Cossi, the Tuscany regional administration decided to publish Sagabd as open source for two reasons. "Making it available as open source makes it easy to incorporate existing code into a project", she says. Secondly, the region as a matter of principle has a policy to select open source software wherever possible."

- eGov Monitor

Toronto Data Sharing: The Rest of the Story

I saw on Twitter earlier this week that Toronto had made some of its data available for download. Torontoist attended the Toronto Innovation Showcase where the announcement was made. The report describes the data, its limitiaatons and focuses on the open data lab, where attendees "had the opportunity to talk with City experts about the data, and brainstorm ideas for new applications and mashups." Bottom line: the data release is just a stating point and the details for updates and future dataset releases are still up in the air.

St. Joseph County Election Maps Confuse Voters

The maps (a series of PDFs) had shaded and non-shaded areas and dots noting voting locations. Many residents looked at the maps and ended up at the wrong location. At least one voter could not vote because by the time he was at the correct location, the polls had closed. So, what was the issue? Apparently some shading was at fault.

A closer look at the map revealed McFarland's neighborhood wasn't shaded at all. It was in a white area surrounded by the darker tone.
...

Both Brunette and Silcott said the white area was an area in the county where there were not homes, but industries and businesses. WSBT News cameras found a well-established housing development.

The GIS official John Carlson explained that existing boundaries were used and consolidated into polling places, created by the County Voter Registration. He said he can fix the problem. He also noted that maps were to be used as references and were not warranted for accuracy.

- WSBT
- county voter maps (pdf)

Wednesday, November 4. 2009

More on How Google Does 3D

Martin Daly (Lost in Spatial blog) summarizes Ed Parsons latest talk (at BCS) and I grabbed these tidbits about how the 3D building data is captured.

- Street View uses LIDAR to get the building shapes, for the fancy navigation, and bespoke cameras because the high number of images captured broke the shutters in consumer digital cameras. [I'm almost tempted to make an analogy with consumer slippy maps and bespoke GIS there, but I'll refrain.]
-Google use their own plane to capture the oblique images for Building Maker.

Quote of the Week

"Satnav maps from Tele Atlas AND Navteq incorrectly show Ashdown Terrace in South Tidworth as a through road with a connection to Station road, see here when in actual fact it is a dead end."

The story is from PocketGPSWorld and details how locals have put up sign to help prevent trapped trucks. The funny part? "Tele Atlas AND Navteq." Why is it not "and" or "and" - since AND is Automotive Navigation Data, yet another data provider! Or, did they mean that AND also has it wrong?

Guinness Promo: Create your own terrain

The interactive bit is described this way: "Guinness has also teamed up with Google Earth to create an online world that users can help bring to life by creating their own terrain."

It's an add-on to a new video advertisement that shows a team of men bring the world to life after a Guinness is poured. The ad will run on TV, in theaters and be accompanied by a press and online campaign. It's quite an enjoyable ad filmed on several continents.

- Campaign