GeoRSS for Google Maps

Slashgeo and O’Reilly Radar both cite the creation of MGeoRSS, an extension to GeoRSS that supports Google Maps/Local. Said another way, you can use tagged RSS feeds to populate a Google Map.

GeoRSS is an effort by several OGC types, among others, which in time, may become an approved standard. GeoRSS allows geographic tagging of RSS in a standard way, based on a (very simple) profile of GML. (I consult to OGC.)

Mikel Maron, who is behind it, notes that Yahoo and worldKit support GeoRSS and now challenges Google to do so, too. Cool!

More Open Source Standards Stuff

A press release from the Free Standards Group (the name made me nervous) caught my eye today. Recall I noted a wiki for gespatial standards for free software a few weeks back.

Per its website, the group “is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the use of free and open source software by developing and promoting standards. Key Free Standards Group projects include the Linux Standard Base (LSB), and OpenI18N, the internationalization initiative. Supported by leaders in the IT industry as well as the open source development community, the Free Standards Group fulfills a critical need to have common behavioral specifications, tools and ABIs across Linux platforms.” So far, it’s big project involves making a standard Linux, in fact, the organization’s tag line is: “safeguarding the future of Linux through standards.”

I get that Linux needs standards, if it has a chance of really growing. But beyond that, I guess I don’t get it. There are plenty of standards groups; they all push standards. So far as I know, they push standards for open source and non-open source software. Why does the world need a group to develop and promote standards just to push the use of free and open source software?

One Man’s Vision of Data Sharing

Jeff Perkel writes in his blog at The Scientist about two sites that reveal patterns in the distribution of fish and ants. They are Google Maps/Earth mashups and he notes that they are key in sharing scientitific information.  He goes on:

I expect we’ll see more specimen collections making their way onto Google Earth and Google Maps. That’s because they are, at heart, basically just data presentation tools, more akin to Adobe Acrobat than to desktop GIS systems.

I agree.

While I love that these and related mashups are seemingly easy to create and bring a new light to data, I’ll prod that scientists need to demand more. Why should they have to convert their data to KML, which is slowly becoming a de facto standard? Why should they not be able to reach out to any map server and overlay that data right on top, at will? That’s the vision of those who are looking further ahead. And, maybe Google is too, now that it’s joined the OGC.

C’mon scientists, let’s think beyond what Google has given us! Demand a higher level of interoperability.

NGA Requires OGC Standards

This is probably the biggest endorsement for OGC in its history: “The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has adopted the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) web service specification baseline, along with complementary international and industry standards, as requirements for use in all NGA production processes.”

I’ve only seen this announcement on our website (put there by NGA) so I want to be sure folks know about it.

Full disclosure: I consult to OGC.