Slashgeo

All Points Blog links to a ZDNet Asia article on Korea building an open source national map system. From the article: "Its largest scale open source mapping system project GIS (Geographic Information System), will meet international standards on the use of digital street maps and addresses. [...] The South Korean Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs has formed a team that assigns street names and building numbers and it is in the process of updating the database (until Nov. 2006). The database is expected to be ready by year 2007."

Declan Butler allows us to view Reporters Without Borders's data on press freedom in Google Earth. From the Reporters Without Borders blog: "“Unfortunately nothing has changed in the countries that are the worst predators of press freedom,” the organisation said, “and journalists in North Korea, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, Cuba, Burma and China are still risking their life or imprisonment for trying to keep us informed. [...]" Update: 10/30 20:28 GMT by S : Story promoted to main page.

All Points Blog links to a China Economic Net article on the importance of home-made GIS software in China. From the article: " China's domestic GIS software has blown the bugle call for domestic software to break through. At present, the market share of most domestically produced software accounts only about 5 percent in such fields as operating system, database, and office software while domestic GIS software outshines all the others in the market of GIS software with a high proportion of over 35 percent, thus having broken the monopoly of foreign software in that field."

All Points Blog tells us China has successfully launched their first Compass GNSS satellite which will compete with other GPS systems. From the short article: "The Chinese Compass Navigation Satellite System will provide positioning signals across China by 2008, and will eventually be extended worldwide. Experts said that the system is operating well and has played a significant role in cartography, telecoms, water conservation, transportation, fishery, prospecting, forest fire monitoring and national security." There's the orbit technical details in the JSR space report. See also related stories.

AnyGeo links to a short article that confirms a previous story on China tightening control of surveying, mapping by foreigners. From the article: "A new regulation restricting surveying and mapping by foreigners will be implemented in China on March 1. "The regulation will strengthen China's management of surveying and mapping by foreign organizations and individuals, protect national security, and promote economic and scientific cooperation between China and other countries," said an official from the State Bureau of Survey and Mapping on Thursday."

All Points Blog links to an article named "Advanced 3D GIS engine exceeding Google Earth capabilities erects urban planning information system in Seoul". From the article, which provides a few screenshots: "Seoul plans to benefit from using the system to promote participation to city plans by providing 12 million city residents public web access and in turn boost tourism sector to bring in more foreign visitors. And to reach that goal, new parks will be put into places to aid tourism operations and boost tourism. [...] "We will also support advanced 3D engine technology in open source environment in 2008. Our future goals are to be the premier global leader as an optimized 3D virtual world solution provider in the areas of application development and system integration. [...]" See below other stories related to Korea.

Ogle Earth discuss the censorship of the Chinese edition of Google Maps. From the blog: "He concludes that there is censorship in the Chinese version of Google Maps (and the omission of the disputed Arunachai Pradesh area between China and India is a clear giveaway), but notes that both versions are available in China — so you can always use the international version if you want. [...] The more likely answer is that Google is bending to demands of the Chinese government as a price for being able to operate in the country." In another entry, OE discuss new imagery censorship in France for Google data. See previous related stories below.

Ogle Earth talks about an article from South Korea's mainstream news site. "South Korea's government has long been unhappy with the transparency that Google Earth and Maps provides over South Korea (though it doesn't mind the view of North Korea one bit). Now South Korea's mainstream news site Chosun.com carries an article that seems to indicate things are coming to a head:"

An interesting thing this editor noted about the United States with concerns of privacy is that New York's GIS Clearing House restricts access to "sensitve content" since 911, while they are freely available at even greater detail through services such as Google Maps and Local Live. Is this another failed attempt at trying to control our data access, or should these free services be monitored closer as to not pose a threat to national security?

Slashdot covers a story on China wanting to deploy the largest people-tracking network in the world, using geospatial technologies such as RFID chips. Their summary: "News.com reports that China is building the largest and most sophisticated people-tracking network in the world, all to track citizens in the city of Shenzhen. This network utilizes 20,000 intelligent digital cameras and RFID cards to keep track of the 12.4 million people living in the Southern port city. The key to the system is the new residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips. 'Data on the chip will include not just the citizen's name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord's phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China's controversial "one child" policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.' While I lived in Shenzhen, there indeed were (and still are) plenty of crimes. One of my friend who lived at the 20th floor of a condo building in a nice neighborhood saw an intruder in the middle of one night while he was sleeping. Still, this will clearly raise the fear of human rights abuses. And ... ' one of the most startling aspects of this plan is that this project is mostly made possible by an American company with solid venture fundings.'" See also related stories below.

The Geopatial Semantic Web Blog shows a 3D street map service for China: "Unfortunately, this [Google street view] service is only available for major cities in the US. [...] City8.com is Chinese web map service that shows street level photographs of major Chinese cities. The site also features some social web functions. Users can vote on popular city locations and recommend places to eat, shop and play." In addition to previous related stories below, the GeoCarta blog links to a recent article saying: " China's geographic information industry has registered 400 billion yuan in aggregate output value last year and hired more than 300,000 people, according to Zhong Ershun, deputy president of the China Association for Geographic Information System."

Cnet is currently running an article detailing this. From their summary : "Microsoft has launched Live Search 地图, the China branch of its Virtual Earth project. Compared to Google's ditu.google.cn and Sogou's (搜狗) map.sogou.com, the seems about the same, if a little faster--though traffic may still be low. What Google and Microsoft have in common is that the maps contain listings for restaurants, banks, and other locations rendered as icons on the map. Sogou has no such advantage, but sometimes it resolves addresses better than Google."

For more detailed information and links to the live site, please visit the cnet article link.

Slashdot discuss a Space.com article on the upcoming Chinese GPS/Glonass/Galileo competition named Beidou. Their summary: "Unsatisfied by the reliance of American GPS navigation system and not feeling much security joining the European Galileo system, China will expand its 4-satellite Beidou navigation system to a full-fledged, competitive, and encrypted system by 2010." See related stories below, Beidou, also known as Compass, was discussed several times before.

Slashdot discuss a story named China to Regulate Internet Map Publishing. We discussed the censure of maps in China on many occasions, see related stories below. Ogle Earth provides an AFP article on the new China efforts to bring down illegal maps. Spatial Sustain links to a China Popular Computer Week article translation. The Slashdot summary: "After text, pictures, and videos, China starts regulating Internet map publishing (here is the google translation.) The government believes that Internet maps can represent the state's sovereignty and its political and diplomatic positions in the international community — and consequently, inaccurate maps could harm national interests and dignity, produce bad political influences, reveal national secrete and harm national security, in addition to harming consumer interests. So from now on, publishing maps would require approval and (yet another) license from the state survey bureau. That means Google, Yahoo, etc., need to remove China from the map; or maybe they just pay up some officials and their agents to acquire yet another license. And our newest 80Gbps DPI monsters need to be upgraded to identify maps together with porn."

High Earth Orbit shares a short interesting entry named Lessons Learned from Neogeography Applied to GIS. FRom the entry: "What we realized was that these criticisms are reflections that GIS itself is facing: * lack of metadata, * amateurs doing analysis, and * the loss of cartography [...] Beyond the common criticisms, I identified three primary areas that neogeography is going beyond traditional GIS focus. Usability, Interoperability, and Participation are all aspects that GIS has struggled with, and in fact any inwardly focused domain has difficulty achieving." See also related stories below.

Couldn't do it last Friday, here's your dose of recent geonews that did not make it as full stories (but this does not mean they're not interesting! :-). Spatial Sustain informs us China wants to control even more mapping on its territory, something we discussed in the past. The same blog informs us that Intermap has now completed data collection for 3.1 million square miles of the contiguous United States and Hawaii. The SatNav blog informs us of the successful launch of the GPS L5 satellite today. The same blog comments on the defense of eLoran, since its future is in jeopardy. The FGT blog details a free kml tool to display grids in Google Earth, such as Lat/Long, UTM, etc. Mapperz presents OpenStreetBrowser that "allows anyone to view the information behind the tiles of OpenStreetMap" (I have failed to make that site work myself). The same blog also informs us that maps are now available for Nokia Sports Tracker v2.05. APB informs us that, it's no surprise, GeoSynth will probably stitch together user photos to generate StreetView-like panoramas. We mentioned GeoSynth a while ago. The same blog informs us of the use of geotargeting for malware distribution. The same blog also introduces WikiMapAid, a tool enabling humanitarian workers to put information on Google Maps, a topic frequently covered here. The JGrass blog show how he succeeded at connecting a GRASS GIS map to NASA World Wind. Finally, Vector One lists the characteristics of GIS professionals.

Here's the recent geonews in batch. There's a new release of the open source geometry engine GEOS, now at version 3.1.1. There's an essay on the comparison of the most suitable single multi-purpose map projections out there, with a focus on Fuller and Cahill map projections. There's an hour-long interview about Bing Maps internals. All Points Blog informs us about Garmin and Linux, conclusion: forget it for now. The iPhone supports location sharing in its browser. There's even a pay-as-you-go iPhone turn-by-turn app, VS informs us most major navigation companies are going to the iPhone, plus there's surprising augmented reality such as Layar (also for Android). You can now talk to Android maps. Henri Bergius argues that browser geolocation without GPS is quite accurate enough, this all related to GeoClue and Gnome's Empathy. Mapperz has an entry named OpenStreetMap & FireFox 3.5 (RC1) Geolocation. Off the Map tested Google Table Fusion for geospatial capabilities (mentioned last week). If you're looking for a map of Tehran, use OpenStreetMap or Google. TMR shares an entry on mapping of North Korea, FGT also discusses topographic maps of North Korea. There's a NYC interactive homicide map. On the ESRI front, there's a whitepaper on ArcGIS Server and virtualisation. SA continues on his critics of the ESRI Web ADF 9.3. GWG offers a two-parts article on Plug & Play Maps, a free tool to design thematic maps. Ed Parsons informs us SPOT Image is ambitious with their future satellite launches. The EiS offers an entry on 3D building in NASA World Wind. You can see this example of using Google Earth for urban development projects. SS shares an interesting NASA interactive Climate Time Machine. There are a bunch of new cities in Google Transit and Refugee mapping efforts. APB has several entries on Integraph recently, one on GeoMedia 6.1 and an entry about Loran has funds now and will stay alive for some more time. See also some related stories below or perform a search.