Slashgeo

The OpenLayers mailing list announced the release of OpenLayers 2.3. Here are the release notes. OpenLayers is in the OSGeo incubation process. From their about: "OpenLayers makes it easy to put a dynamic map in any web page. It can display map tiles and markers loaded from any source. MetaCarta developed the initial version of OpenLayers and gave it to the public to further the use of geographic information of all kinds. OpenLayers is completely free, Open Source JavaScript, released under the BSD License." To be honest, I'm enthusiastic about OpenLayers since it makes it very easy to generate mashups, and allows you to keep using Google Maps tiles, and to map GeoRSS feeds (this is still under construction).

All Points Blog offers an clear and to-the-point entry on the relationship between data and API licenses for webmapping apps, specifically Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! data into other webmapping apps such as OpenLayers. Meanwhile, The Earth is Square wonders if a workaround could revive a NASA World Wind plugin to access Google Maps data. From APB: "I had in my head that somehow OpenLayers was "doing something wrong" since it could pull in data sets from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, MultiMap into its own interface (go play with that!). With quite a bit of patience Frank explained that OpenLayer is doing everything correctly. It has an API key for each of the API providers (if needed) and follows all the rules of the license. So, how is this different from the Gaia team noted above that got shut down? That group was accessing the data directly from Google servers and not, as stipulated in the license, via Google software. (Google Earth has no API like Google Maps does.) Frank even showed me the code where OpenLayers dutifully uses its API key to pull in tiles from Google Maps. Google, he noted, even contacted the MetaCarta team to ask if there was any thing needed to further their implementation!"

st_0x0ef writes "From openlayers.org : "After almost two weeks of work on OpenLayers, 2.5 featureset is finally starting to come together [...]

Some of the new features for OpenLayers 2.5:

• Better Vector Format Support, including GeoJSON in its current incarnation and better cross-browser XML parsing support.
• Better Feature Editing — with support for ‘virtual vertices’ a la Google My Maps for extending out a shape and keyboard support for removing vertices from it.
• Spherical Mercator support, to better support overlaying other data on top of commercial data sources. This means that vectors and TileCache over Google Maps baselayers will work.
• Regular Polygon drawing and creation: allowing users to specify a center, radius, and number of sides to create a polygon around an origin.

(Note that the above URLs are likely to change/go away as they move into trunk.)

Already in trunk for this release:

• Combination of gridded/untiled layers to limit code duplication
• NaturalDocs powered documentation: already up and running on the apidocs, this complete rewrite of OpenLayers documentation is a huge step forward.
• Debug support: In numerous places in the code, when a function can’t fail gracefully, it will now report to the user via the Firebug or Firebug Lite console when switched on.
• Rotating Vector Features
• Over 100 other bugfixes and minor changes to the OpenLayers code.

All in all, this release is going to bring together many of the small things that had been left over from the 2.4 release, and I’m looking forward to moving forward with many of the exciting new features."

Stefano Costa writes "A List Apart has an interesting article by Paul Smith of EveryBlock about open source software for creating webmapping applications. From the article snapshot: "Rolling your own maps need not be an intimidating affair, provided you understand the problem and the tools to fix it."" I included below several related previous stories. Thanks Stefano for your submission.

Late last December the Fuzzy Tolerance blog ran a nice demonstration of building a geoportal with open source software such as OpenLayers, TileCache, GeoServer, PostGIS, jQuery, REST and AJAX. Here's the resulting geospatial portal. From the blog: "From a developer’s perspective, the biggest advantages I’ve found with OpenLayers-Tilecache-jQuery-REST is speed and simplicity. The beta site went from an empty text file to release in only a few weeks of actual development time nestled in between other projects, with a lot of that taken up by a jQuery/OpenLayers/GeoServer/SLD learning curve, design, web service work, software setup, etc. It is also marvelously simple, being nothing more than Javascript and HTML. From an end-user perspective, you get a much more responsive application, a nicer map interface than I usually give people via OpenLayers, and everything is free and open source." I copied below some of the previous Slashgeo stories regarding the software used in the demonstration.

Here's a few recent geoblog entries that I found interesting on the topic of tools to share information. First is the ability to use OpenLayers as a data converter: " OpenLayers Data Conversion is a new service that allows easy conversion from any of the formats that OpenLayers supports to any of the formats that OpenLayers supports. Simply paste your data, choose your format, and hit convert." Next is the capacity of GDAL 1.5 to import spatial references from URLs using, as an example, the SpatialReference.org website. And finally, PerryGeo demonstrate a quick way to publish a point shapefile to html, using a single command.

The OSGeo mailing list tells us the OpenLayers project graduated from the OSGeo incubation process: "Graduating incubation includes requirements for open community operation, a responsible project governance model, code provenance and license verification and general good project operation. Graduating incubation is the OSGeo seal of approval for a project and gives potential users of the project added confidence in the viability and safety of the project." Here's the OpenLayers website, see also related stories below.

All Points Blog discuss (screenshot included) the just announced CartaLens, a "geospatial digital asset management solution", which they say is Flickr on steroids. From the press release: "National Geographic Maps and MetaCarta®, Inc., the leading provider of geographic search and referencing solutions, today announced CartaLens, an innovative geospatial digital asset management solution for georeferencing, managing, retrieving and delivering digital assets. Unlike other digital asset management solutions that only manage structured content, CartaLens is able to search and retrieve location-based information from both structured content and a broad base of digital content such as photos, video, audio and documents, enabling users to fuse digital assets with maps and metadata in a collaborative and interactive viewing environment. [...] Updated maps, imagery, and geographic information are provided through ESRI, and are made available through ESRI's ArcGIS Server and ArcWeb Services." MetaCarta launched their Local Alerts service recently. MetaCarta also developed the initial version of OpenLayers, which surprises me rega4rding the use of ArcWeb Services.

Several recent entries have discussed the newly available demo of WPServer, a web processing server which allow geoprocessing over an Internet connexion. Here's the must-read followup entry: "Want your shapefiles on a map? Use FeatureServer. Want to buffer each of the points in your FeatureServer-served data? Serialize them, and pass them up to WPServer, then display the data that comes back. Want to mix in KML data, to see the intersections? Add a KML layer to OpenLayers, and use WPServer to do the intersections. Crap. I think what OpenLayers can do now might actually be something people would refer to as GIS." Spatially Adjusted discuss this demo and is impressed. Random Nodes also shares his thoughts on this web-based GIS solution. import cartography even claim this open source approach may beat ArcGIS Server directly, this tells you how important the matter is. See also the two previous stories on WPS in the related stories below. Related, there's the release of PyWPS 2.0.

Still recovering from my recent accident I was not able to provide a timely coverage of last week's Free and Open Source Software for Geomatics (FOSS4G) 2007 conference in Victoria. With open source geospatial software being widely used nowadays, even by behemoths such as Google, Autodesk and ESRI, this conference is doubtlessly important. Here's a wrap up of the most interesting entries on the event that I could find, see also the previous related stories below. Let's start with the official program and OSGeo's Tyler Mitchell and Autodesk's Geoff Zeiss preemptive notes. If you have only time for one wrap up to read, here's Peter Batty's extensive review of FOSS4G 2007. From this entry: "The quality of the sessions I went to was consistently high, and there was a real energy and buzz around the whole event (much more than at most of the more established geospatial conferences I have been to recently). Adena Schutzberg said in her closing comments that her overall impression of the conference and the open source geospatial community was one of maturity [...]. The event reaffirmed the belief I had before coming here that the role of open source software in the geospatial industry will continue to grow quickly." All Points Blog offers an excellent coverage of the whole event, here's their entries: on the opening/lightning talks, tidbits I, tidbits II and exhibit highlights. Other entries include GeoServer news and tutorials, a short entry on an OpenLayers talk, Autodesk's announcement of code donation (covered last week), Andrew Turner's Beyond GPS slides, Archaeogeek one, two and three interesting accounts of the event. Update: 10/03 19:24 GMT by S : OSGeo's Tyler Mitchell just provided it's own overview of FOSS4G's success.

The Earth Is Square and the official OpenLayers blog brings us news about the just released OpenLayers 2.6. A huge release in itself. It closes over 294 outstanding tickets and has a lot of new features. Please visit any of the following links above to get the full list of features.

In case you've been under a rock, here is a little background info on OpenLayers. "OpenLayers makes it easy to put a dynamic map in any web page. It can display map tiles and markers loaded from any source. MetaCarta developed the initial version of OpenLayers and gave it to the public to further the use of geographic information of all kinds. OpenLayers is completely free, Open Source JavaScript, released under the BSD License."