The editors look outward to find technologies that will impact how geospatial products and practices will change in the next 12 to 24 months. Some of the suggested technologies are already appearing in cutting edge products, others are not yet implemented in geospatial solutions, but we expect to see them soon.

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The incumbent is pro GIS having invested in it quite a bit. The Gary Post-Tribune describes it as "a computer mapping system similar to Google Earth that can put large amounts of information into an interactive map."

Two others want to cut back on the GIS budget. One candidate wants "to "slash" spending on the GIS, and build it with free software, rather than the proprietary software used by the county's consultants."

Another wants the focus to be on flooding thus he said, "I don't think (GIS) should be a priority."

It says quite a lot about the state of geospatial that such issues should be raised to the public during a local election.

Andrew Ross at Ingres passed on this event invitation. This sounds great - and I think it's time to have such meetings in other locations... any takers?

I would like to announce a free ($0) geospatial event on June 2nd and 3rd in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. This event hosted at the campus of Carleton University. It is an outreach event to showcase the best of open source geospatial software and give attendees the opportunity to listen to industry speakers.

The event is being organized by OSGeo, Ingres, and Carleton University. It is known as Geocamp2008 (also known as osbootcamp6). More information can be found at the osbootcamp web site under osbootcamp6. It can also be found under OSGeo's events calendar for June. This event takes place the day before the Geotec conference in Ottawa.

Geographic Business Solutions (GBS) doesn't want to compete with GPS players like Navman and Armada. The good news: they can offer up flexible, on-off solutions. The company took eight weeks to deliver a tracking system.

[It] allows Urgent Couriers' dispatchers to pinpoint the location of every courier on a map, zoom in on couriers and view all relevant job information. The allocation of jobs to each of the company's 85 contractors is also assisted by GPS ensuring that couriers closest to jobs are efficiently assigned to pick-ups, preventing the need for them to double back to jobs, and saving on time and fuel.
...
The new GPS system for Urgent Couriers is based on open source database PostgreSQL (with PostGIS) and an open source mapserver, UMN Mapserver. GBS built the interface and web functionality in Internet Explorer (7) and configured it to fit Urgent Couriers' dispatch system.

- m-net.com

For those who've not been following, Sun [corrected, originally said Oracle, oops] acquired MySQL, the folks behind the open source database, that among other things, supports spatial. Today word that IBM is part of a funding round for EnterpriseDB, one the big companies involved with PostgreSQL, another open source database. PostGIS adds spatial functionality to PostgreSQL.

via SlashdotI

"Oracle, Microsoft and open source look likely to fight it out for a GIS project to serve users in both the Justice Department and Te Puni Kokiri [New Zealand Government's principal adviser on the Crown's relationship with iwi, hapu and Maori]." The two groups are looking to work together on one set of requirements.

- Computerworld New Zealand