Tuesday, August 25. 2009

Bing Maps via WMS

Jeff Harrison at The Carbon Project let me know about a new beta offering from On Terra Systems that makes Bing Maps data available via a WMS. You can join the beta and test it out for free.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Microsoft, Standards at 08:40 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |

Tuesday, July 21. 2009

Podcast: First Half of 2009: State of the Industry

We are halfway through 2009. Directions Media editors have been to about a dozen user and specialty conferences in the U.S. and around the world, including ESRI's huge event last week. What themes are emerging? What can we tease out about the future? Our editors try to make sense of five key themes they've identified.


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Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Open Source, PBBI [MapInfo], Autodesk, Standards, GIS Jobs, Directions on the News Podcast, Geospatial Business, ESRI UC 09 at 01:00 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Thursday, July 9. 2009

How Google Maps uses the W3C Geolocation API and Google Location Services

There's a lot of excitement (sample) about browsers (notably Firefox and Chrome, but actually any implementation that include Google Gears) implementing the W3C Geolocation API. Why? In the past few days Google announced that Google Maps (desktop) can now take advantage of it. All good. My concern: all this discussion may be "fuzzing up" what the API does and does not do.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Google, LBS, Standards, Wi-Fi at 17:13 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Tuesday, June 2. 2009

Podcast: A Geospatial Look at Data.gov

Last week the federal government launched data.gov, a data portal to enhance transparency. What's in it for geospatial practitioners and how will the new offering evolve? Our editors share their thoughts on the current offering and some possible paths forward.


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Posted by Adena Schutzberg in ESRI, USGS, Standards, Directions on the News Podcast, Data at 01:00 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Tuesday, May 26. 2009

Census Shape files to KML (and more)

This from Bruce [corrected from Brian] Ralston, Professor and Associate Head of the Department of Geography at the University of Tennessee:

I have released a program called AFF Mapper. This is a Windows based package that was specifically designed for creating KML based mapping files from TIGER shapes and tables available from the Census Bureau's American FactFinder web page. While it was designed for these files, it can be used to create KML files for other shapes (that are in decimal degrees with NAD83 or WGS 84) and external attribute files. The resulting KML files can be viewed in several free mapping packages such as Google Earth and ArcGIS Explorer.

To download a copy of the program and the user manual [visit this page].

This is freeware, copy till you drop.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Google, ESRI, Standards at 13:10 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) |

Tuesday, April 14. 2009

Podcast: The State of GeoData Formats

This week we look at geodata formats - what's new, what's needed, what's working and what's not. Among our topics: Google's newly announced Map Data API, the Shapefile 2.0 Manifesto, SpatiaLite and the state of KML in the wild.


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Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Google, ESRI, Open Source, Microsoft, Oracle, Autodesk, Standards, Databases, Directions on the News Podcast, Data at 01:00 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |