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OSGeo Journal
posted by Satri
on Monday May 21, @06:36PM
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from the first-of-a-long-series dept.
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Tyler Mitchell writes "The first volume of the OSGeo Journal has now been released. This is a major milestone for spreading the word about open source geospatial applications in general and for helping build communication between projects and users involved with the OSGeo Foundation. The Journal provides news, event summaries, project introductions, case studies, topical articles and more. Volume 2 is currently under development. For more information see http://www.osgeo.org/journal or download the 71 page (15MB) Journal directly from: http://www.osgeo.org/files/journal/final_pdfs/OSGe oJournal_vol1.pdf"
Related Stories
First Anniversary of the Open Geospatial Foundation
[+]
Tyler Mitchell, OSGeo's Executive Director, announced the rather quiet first year anniversary of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. The interesting blog entry summarize what that year has been all about. From the entry's introduction: "February 4th, 2007 was the first anniversary of OSGeo. One year ago 25 people met face-to-face, and many more via phone and IRC, to discuss the possibility of starting an umbrella organisation. These participants represented over 13 different open source projects. The foundational purpose of the organisation was to help promote and continue to develop open source tools in the geospatial sphere. Since that time, much has happened and momentum around OSGeo continues to develop. Here are only a few highlights from that first year."
OSGeo Welcomes 16 Students to the Summer of Code
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chorner writes "This just in via Frank Warmerdam: 'OSGeo has selected sixteen students to participate in development efforts spread across the GDAL, GRASS, GeoTools, PostGIS, uDig, and GeoServer projects as part of the Google Summer of Code for 2007.
Google is providing funding for the selected students, while the
project communities are providing mentors to assist the students. A
full list of students, mentors and planned developments is available
at:
http://code.google.com/soc/osgeo/about.html
OSGeo thanks Google for it's support of this great program, and looks
forward to the participation of these students in our community.'"
Open Source Geospatial Foundation Service Provider Directory Launched 1 comment
[+]
The OSGeo discuss mailing list announced the new Service Provider Directory for OSGeo open source geospatial software service providers. From the announcement: "We (OSGeo WebCom) are finally bringing the Service Provider Directory
online. It is essentially a web list of consultants, service organizations
in the open source geospatial realm. We are currently seeking consultants
and service organizations to register themselves in the directory. In a
few weeks, assuming this goes fairly well, we will start trying to publicise
the directory to potential clients, and work it into our "VisCom Messaging"
at conferences and so forth."
The Generic Mapping Tools
[+]
I discovered the Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) described below, while reading this article on GRASS GIS and GMT integration [pdf, 450k] from the new OSGeo Journal. On its website, GMT is introduced as: "GMT is an open source collection of ~60 tools for manipulating geographic and Cartesian data sets (including filtering, trend fitting, gridding, projecting, etc.) and producing Encapsulated PostScript File (EPS) illustrations ranging from simple x-y plots via contour maps to artificially illuminated surfaces and 3-D perspective views. GMT supports ~30 map projections and transformations and comes with support data such as coastlines, rivers, and political boundaries. [...] So far, over 1500 such blocks have been registered, representing more than 15,000 individual GMT users."
Reviews: OGC's Web Processing Service (WPS) for Use in a Client-Side GIS
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The OSGeo Journal offers a nice article named "Evaluation of the OGC Web Processing Service for Use in a Client-Side GIS" by Christopher Michael and Daniel P. Ames [pdf, 330k]. The abstract: "The Open Geospatial Consortium Web Processing
Service proposed specification is intended as a solution
for developing web-based geoprocessing plugins,
and for easily sharing algorithms and geoprocessing
functionality. This paper seeks to evaluate
the WPS proposal with respect to feasibility and potential
utility, and to identify areas for improvement.
Challenges with the WPS proposal are discussed together
with potential solutions. Several potential
enhancements to the WPS proposal are introduced
and considered, including a mechanism to guide
client applications in prompting for correct data and
a means to list the data available on a server."
OSGeo Updates 1 comment
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The OSGeo blog shares updates on their blog, first topic is the financial and fundraising issues, then recent membership elections and membership management and finally a reminder on the OSGeo Journal and the upcoming FOSS4G conference. From the first link: "We've never had any real commitment to revenue targets - how many donors, how much from grants, who is responsible for doing it all, etc. - so it is hard to show that we have a plan for meeting our budget expenditures. Autodesk is still committed to helping fund the start-up of OSGeo in the short term but to be truly sustainable we must augment that with additional funds. [...] I have spoken to several members who have grant-writing experience and I believe we have some great opportunities out there - especially for developing educational material and developing/delivering workshops across many domains." See also related stories below.
OSGeo Journal Volume 2 Available
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The OSGeo announced the availability of their second journal on open source geospatial solutions. You can download it here in pdf [10.8 Mb]. Here's a part of the table of content: "Project Spotlight: - MapWindow
- GeoNetwork. Case Studies: - FAO GeoNetwork
- Winnipeg Neighbourhood
- Industrial Fishing." From the GeoNetwork article: "GeoNetwork "opensource" is a standardized and
decentralized Geospatial Information Management
System, based on the concept of distributed data
and information ownership and is designed to enable access to geo-referenced data and cartographic
products through descriptive metadata. Collections
maintained at different organizations are accessible
through a single entry point. This approach of geographic information management enhances easy
and timely access to existing spatial data for a wide
community of users, supporting informed decision-
making in a variety of application fields." Also interesting is an article on geospatial topology basics.
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