Open Data on Malta Coming and other International GIS News

A plane will be scanning the island to build a three-dimensional map that will allow the planning authority to monitor environmental changes over the years.

The photographic map will carry information such as on air and water quality and noise levels. All data will be available online for free, explained Saviour Formosa, who is heading an EU-funded environment project being carried out by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority.

I guess it's LiDAR + other sensors?

- Time of Malta

The Philippine government has made geo-hazard maps, which outline areas prone to natural disasters, publicly available in a bid to reduce vulnerability at community level. 

They are jpegs.

- IRIN Asia

February 1 is the cut-off for companies with onine mapping websites to have a license from the  State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping. Google has applied for one, but does not yet have approval. That suggests its ok to keep running as is, but can't launch anything "new."

- China Daily

Google is guilty of abusing its dominant position with Google Maps per a court in France. It was ordered to pay  €500,000 in damages and interest to the plaintiff and a €15,000 euro fine against Bottin Cartographes. The company, until it was put out of business, offered online maps.

- GPS Biz News

Google Open Sources Sky Map and other LBS News

Google is open-sourcing Google Sky Map, an app created by employees at Google's Pittsburgh office who wanted to put the sensors in Android phones to the test. While the app has seen more than 20 million Android phone users since 2009, the app will now be used in student projects at Carnegie Mellon University.

A number of other apps and API are to be shut down entirely.

- eWeek

Hertz Global Holdings Inc. has acquired from Thales Navigation the remaining 35 percent of Navigation Solutions, the operational arm behind its in-car global positioning systems, known as NeverLost.

- AP

The highlight of the [latest ChaCha] upgrade is the exciting all-new Real-Time Map feature, which allows users to see questions recently asked by others using the application. For the first time ever, ChaChees will visually see on a real-time map what questions are being asked where.

Why "visually see"? Why not just "see"?

- press release

Rentenna.com -- the free, groundbreaking rental tool that condenses everything a renter would want to know about a rental building into a single score -- releases its interactive "Rentenna Score Map" to the public today.

MIT Researchers Working on 3D Data Capture/Gesture Interface for Cell Phones

3D data capture and gesture recognition are hot and that' what Vivek Goyal, the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, and his group at MIT’s Research Lab of Electronics are working on. Two of his colleagues Kirmani and Colaco were selected as one of eight winners (out of 146 university applicants) of a $100,000 grant through its 2011 Innovation Fellowship program. The detail of how the sensors can be made small enough and cheap enough are worth reviewing if you want the gory details.

- MIT

Google Gets Patent for Self-driving Car

The patents is titled, Transitioning a Mixed-mode Vehicle to Autonomous Mode.

Abstract:

Disclosed are methods and devices for transitioning a mixed-mode autonomous vehicle from a human driven mode to an autonomously driven mode. Transitioning may include stopping a vehicle on a predefined landing strip and detecting a reference indicator. Based on the reference indicator, the vehicle may be able to know its exact position. Additionally, the vehicle may use the reference indictor to obtain an autonomous vehicle instruction via a URL. After the vehicle knows its precise location and has an autonomous vehicle instruction, it can operate in autonomous mode.

Experts confirm the patent is only for Google's specific method; it does not restrict development of rival self-driving cars.

- BBC

NYC’s Belt-mounted GPS-enabled Radiation Detectors and other Government GIS News

The New York Police Department is launching a mobile radiation detection system equipped with location-tracking GPS technology that it says could help avert a so-called "dirty" bomb attack.

Two hundred ten officers stationed around the World Trade Center will wear the belt-mounted detectors said to be the first to use GPS (hard to believe, isn't it?). Permanently mounted sensors will also be used to help identify and locate dirty bombs.

- Reuters

The WHYY News and Civic Dialogue Director has partnered with GIS shop Azavea, the Daily News and others on Fix Philly Districts, an awareness campaign featuring a mock redistricting plan competition and civic engagement forums.

...Later this month, Azavea will host webinars on their sleek DistrictBuildersoftware, which will drive the contest, during which you, John Q. Public, will envision what the city’s legislative boundaries should look like and compete for $1,000, official presentation of your district plan and, you know, civic pride. TheDistrictBuilder software has been used nationwide for federal redistricting campaigns, an interest of Azavea founder Robert Cheetham.

It seems every state is having such a contest just using different software packages. What does that say about interest in redestricitng and the state of GIS?

- TechPhilly

It's a mess in the areas of the Civic Center in NY with lots of construction, but soon a city block sized map will be there to help locals and visitors find key buildings included court houses.

To help the wandering masses help themselves, Williams has been working for more than a year on a solution — the first comprehensive street map of the entire Civic Center to be posted in the area.

The map, slated to arrive later this month, will take up the length of a city block, and will hang as a series of banners ringing the construction site outside 26 Federal Plaza. It was designed by Poulin + Morris Inc.

It will be more thorough than some other posted street maps in the area, most of which only show a portion of the area around the Civic Center — for example, only showing the area south of Reade Street and not including the northern area near the courts.

- DNA Info