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

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