Slashgeo

All Points Blog links to two interviews with ESRI's Jack Dangermond, one with O'Reilly (part 1/3 focusing on web mapping) and the other with GovTech. A Dangermond quote from the APB notes of the second interview: "The integration in an analytic environment of many types of geographic data - those [Google Earth and Virtual Earth] platforms are not designed for that. What is designed for that are GIS servers. We now have about 40,000 of these servers that are running in the open Web. I like to call this "Web GIS," and it's a similar architecture in the sense that it's server-centric and serves out freely to thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people views, page views or intelligent views of geographic data." See previous Dangermond stories copied below.

In the latest ArcNews publication, ESRI's Jack Dangermond shares an article named GIS: Designing Our Future. From the article: "GeoDesign brings geographic analysis into the design process, where initial design sketches are instantly vetted for suitability against a myriad of database layers describing a variety of physical and social factors for the spatial extent of the project. This on-the-fly suitability analysis provides a framework for design, giving land-use planners, engineers, transportation planners, and others involved with design, the tools to leverage geographic information within their design workflows. Fully leveraging geography during the design process results in designs that emulate the best features and functions of natural systems, benefiting both humans and nature through a more peaceful and synergistic coexistence." See also related stories below, including Are Geospatial Tools Design Tools?

First round of catching up the geonews for my holidays. There's a new service for accessing OpenStreetMap data from LinkedGeoData.org: "LinkedGeoData is derived from the OpenStreetMap database and includes over 350 million spatial RDF descriptions. This data is available as 'data dumps', linked data, a REST interface, and links to DBpedia.There is also a prototype user interface for data browsing and authoring." To continue on yesterday's Google round-up, there are now more maps and geolocated photos for Google search results. APB also runs an entry on how Google Maps uses the W3C Geolocation API and Google Location Services. Here's how to do animations and dynamic updates with KML. There's also macros for converting data between AutoCad format to kml and the inverse. Kurt links to a U.S. congressional report on GIS: Geospatial Information and Geographic Information Systems (GIS): Current Issues and Future Challenges. On a side note, Everyblock's code is now open source. ExtMap gets a website: "ExtMap is a geo framework for web based applications." James Fee, who is moving to WeoGeo, shares interesting bits about ESRI, including non-ESRI databases support, iPhone support for later this year and technical certification program from ESRI. Ericsson are developping a web and mobile maps API. As for recents maps, there's a greenhouse gas map for Kyoto parties, map of cancer rates vs. cancer risks in the U.S., an interesting BBC audio map of the world, the U.S. animated weather radar with OpenLayers and in kml is now available. Here's freely available map symbols initially developed for disaster response. Finally, there's a ongoing vote for who the most influential individual in geospatial! See also related stories below.

The OpenStreetMap State of The Maps 2009 conference took place in Amsterdam last weekend. I plan to publish at least one separate related story, meanwhile Stefan Knecht, who submitted a story named "You shall not remit OpenStreetMap", writes "from the do-not-bash-the-crowd-department: Ed Parsons recaps the SOTM '09, citing Muki Haklay's updated comparison of OSM (OpenStreetMap) vs UK OS (Ordnance Survey) Meridian 2 data. The original article from August 2008 was widely cited as a proof of feasibility for OSM and misleadingly shortened as "the quality of the [OSM] data is comparable and can be fit for many applications". To make a long story short: OSM is getting better compared to 2008 but still OSM is far from professionally reliable. Read on at United Maps' blog." Also related, Yahoo! will "have removed all proprietary place data by 2010 and will make their data open". See also numerous related stories below.

We mentioned the new Mapzen application from CloudMade earlier this month, now Geoweb Guru shares an overview of CloudMade, which shares the same founders than OpenStreetMap: "CloudMade was founded to provide a "range of innovative tools and APIs that allow you to make the most of map data". They source their data from OpenStreetMap data, and all of their tools are clearly designed to work primarily with OpenStreetMap data. CloudMade products are generally open source, but are currently classed as alpha or pre-alpha. Pre-alpha web services are currently available free of charge, but CloudMade will be charging for some services and service levels as they are developed. The CloudMade web services all require API keys. These are currently free. Presumably they will be used to track usage when fees are charged. They are currently used for performance monitoring, and to ensure the terms of the Creative Commons license are respected where necessary (eg. for tile rasters)."