All Points Blog

Podcast: Oracle's Spatial Game Plan

joe.francica@directionsmag.com (Joe Francica) — Fri, 16 May 2008 01:09:00 -0500

In this podcast sponsored by Oracle, the company's Spatial technology game plan will be discussed. Jim Steiner, Senior Director of Oracle's Server Technology and Dr. Xavier Lopez, Director of Oracle's Server Technology will provide an overview of Oracle's product status, its application strategy and future technology directions.

Listen to this podcast for the latest information on Oracle's spatial and location technology. Oracle product management discusses the Oracle Locator, Oracle Spatial and Oracle Fusion Middleware MapViewer, and shares their vision for how these technology tools will continue to play a larger role in enterprise business processes and applications.

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Listen Now (to download, right click on the link at left and choose "save target as")

Other resources mentioned in the podcast:

Oracle Spatial

Oracle MapViewer

Oracle Spatial 11g Book

The podcast lasts 20 minutes.

Missed any podcasts? Want to subscribe via iTunes, Yahoo, etc? Here's the index with all the info.

Quote of the Week

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 15 May 2008 08:31:41 -0500

"Google Maps is evolving from a driving directions and business search tool, to a comprehensive representation of all the world's information, on a map."

- An unnamed Google employee quoted on the Google Operating System blog in response to the addition of more options on Google Maps (houses for sale, Wikipedia entries, geotagged photos...). If Google makes more and more content available on Google Maps will that push mashupers to more analytic offerings?

Dangermond on TomTom Acquisition Approval

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 15 May 2008 07:59:26 -0500

"The world needs utility companies that create and manage geospatial data," he said. "And these are companies that have fought their way to the top and they're very good: they serve their data and sell their data to our users in the private domain."

That's part of an somewhat confusing article from C|net. The approval of the deal part is ok, but when the author mentions Google Maps being a company and the new deal between ESRI and Google, things get a bit mixed up.

One company that has teamed up with ESRI is Google Maps, which now use digital maps from both Navteq and Tele Atlas. John Hanke, head of Google Maps and Google Earth, said that there is a vast amount of geodata locked up in different government agencies that should be made publicly available.

FOSS4G2008 (Cape Town, South Africa) Call for Presentation Extended

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 15 May 2008 07:24:38 -0500

This from the Chair of the event. I generally don't post such notes at APB, but I feel strongly about this event. If you've not been to FOSS4G you are missing something. Further, if you've never been to South Africa, this is a great chance. Finally, GIS is now part of the curriculum in Joberg.

Due to demand, the Where 2.0 conference starting on our previous deadline and a website glitch with the original cut-off date, we are pleased to announce the EXTENSION of the deadline for Paper, Presentation and Poster abstracts AND the deadline for Workshop proposals to the *** 23 MAY ***. Go to http://www.foss4g2008.org and click on 'Call for Papers'.

You can also view the Call for Papers at: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G2008_Call_for_papers
and the Call for Workshop proposals at: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G2008_Call_for_workshops

Thanks to those of you who have submitted so far. As of 14 May we already have an exciting selection of Workshops and Labs (32), Academic Papers (50), Presentations (85) and Posters (10). The previous Announcement gave you a taste of the Workshops. As far as papers and presentations go, a small sampling gives us An Integrated Water Resource Decision Support System built from OSS tools, Characterisation of tsunami affected areas using remote sensing and GIS, Modus Operandi of a FOSS GIS project in India, Challenges in GIS education and training, Using Python and wxWidgets to build custom GIS applications, Using KML and Google Earth to interact with SA water resource data, Easing Transition to Open Source Geo-Spatial Data Manipulation in GML, A Free GIS Book, Open-source based market information systems - one option for Developing Nations, A year of full-speed FOSS- winning the hearts, minds, and business case, Senegalese land register modernization through OpenSource software, BeeGis: digital field mapping that just works, The use of FOSS GIS in Integrated GIS in Local Government in South Africa, GIS in the Geography Curriculum: Teacher Training. Topology support in FOSS4G solutions, TerraLib as an Open Source Platform for Public Health Applications, Google Earth Powered by MapGuide Open Source, GDAL/OGR Project Status Report and this list goes on.

Remember: Early-bird registration now closes on 20th June and hotel specials will be released soon after, so register soon!

Submit your abstract or proposal soon. Come and have a bash in Cape Town.

Gavin Fleming
FOSS4G 2008 Conference Chair
www.foss4g2008.org

Where 2.0 on Twitter

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 12:04:56 -0500

To my amazement there are very few folks following the where2008 thread on Twitter. Just 70. Perhaps folks are all all on the backchannel IRC? (IRC channel #where2008 on irc.freenode.net)

I guess this is reinforcing my sense of Twitter use in our community which is confirmed, thus far, by the current poll.

UK Starts to Map Every Plant & Flower in the National Trust

joe.francica@directionsmag.com (Joe Francica) — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:14:18 -0500

The BBC reports that the National Trust is mapping every plant in its gardens using a handheld device supplied by Magellan. Magellan tells us that gardeners of the National Trust are using their MobileMapper CX with DigiTerra Explorer software. Watch the video of how they will do it.

Dash Opens API

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:16:20 -0500

It'll be announced this morning at Where, but there's a blog post about first set of apps. Only a few are particularly spatial - WeatherBug weater, Caldwell Banker home search and speed traps from Trapster. As TechCrunch notes, it's odd that to get info on the API you must send e-mail rather than say read all the details then apply for a code or something. I guess Dash hasn't been watching how the rest of the tech community is doing APIs.

TomTom Acquisition of Tele Atlas a Go

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 07:57:29 -0500

The word came today from the EU. Basically the Commission said there was no reason fear unfair strategies:

"The Commission found that the merged company would be unlikely to pursue these strategies because its ability to restrict access to digital maps ... would be limited by the presence of an upstream competitor, Navteq," it said.

The new company "would have no incentive to restrict access to digital maps because the sales of digital maps lost by Tele Atlas would not be compensated by additional sales of personal navigation devices," it said.

- Bloomberg
- BusinessWeek

As we celebrate new options for finding geodata...Greenwich Stirs

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 07:51:00 -0500

Everyone remembers Greenwich, the town in Connecticut that went through a FOIA and several lawsuits only to lose its bid refuse sharing GIS data with a consultant. Now, even as we all ponder the goings on Google and ESRI and their vision to make geospatial data more findable and potentially useable over the Web, the court cases continue.

Fairfield County Weekly

Google/ESRI Announcement in Plain English

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 06:49:51 -0500

The announcements out of Where 2.0 from John Hanke of Google and Jack Dangermond regarding integrating neogeography with professional GIS (perhaps not the best terms, but I'm confident readers understand) are quite a lot to digest. (Video available here.) But that's ok, both companies are resetting their visions with regard to the other, to data and to services and it's certainly time for that.

Here's the substance of the relevant announcements teased out of coverage from Where 2.0, where the two geotechnologists shared the stage yesterday.

- ArcGIS Server 9.3 (available in about 4 weeks, per Dangermond) will make its metadata service "scrapable" into KML and thus findable via Google's geographic search (once known as KML search). Further, ArcGIS Server will be able to publish not only that data as streaming KML (and GeoRSS) but also related services. Dangermond showed finding data from a Portland, Oregon service, visualizing it and then performing analysis, all from Google Earth. Said another way, all data and services served by ArcGIS Server could potentially be findable and usable in any Google mashup. Further, the resultant KML can be used in app that supports the OGC standard.

Continue reading "Google/ESRI Announcement in Plain English"

Backpacker Goes to Where

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 06:00:00 -0500

So, if you are a bit bored of geo folks and tech folks covering Where 2.0, check out coverage from Backpacker Magazine. (I have to confess at one time it was my favorite publication; even borrowed the name of the editorial: The View from Here.)

Cell Tower Locating Coming to India Sparking LBS

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 05:59:34 -0500

Apparently the use of cell towers to locate cell phones is still very new in India. LiveMint (part of the Wall Street Journal) reports on Yalup, one of the first players to use the technology and its database of some businesses 150,000 in Bangalore alone to offer local search on cell phones. While the company is anticipating competition from Google, Microsoft and Nokia, the CEO claims its local data will help distinguish it.

Interestingly, the searches offered will use a static radius of 800 meters. "The listings you find would be (of those establishments) within a 800m (radius) of where you are located," says Gundaiah Sridhar, the 25-year-old chief executive officer of Yulop Websense Solutions Pvt. Ltd."

Where 2.0 Monday

(Adena Schutzberg) — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:57:00 -0500

Many product and company announcements have been made in just one day. I don't have all of them; it's surprisingly hard to track everything, even with many bloggers and journalists there. I've ranked them 1-5 for impact on geospatial professionals. 1 means little or no impact, 5 means quite a lot of impact.

Nokia will add Ovi support to its mobile mapping offerings. Ovi is Nokia's portal for Internet service and content sharing content. Later this years users can download maps (from the Internet I believe), mark them up and sync them to their phones. They'll also be able to capture routes while driving/walking and upload those to Ovi. In time users can share those maps with others and further enhance them with mashups of content from user generated content sites such as TripAdvisor. The app is expected, close to complete, in September. (Infoworld, Wired [with graphics])
Impact: 2 This is likely to be in the short term more of a social networking type of sharing.

Continue reading "Where 2.0 Monday"

Update: Google Maps Organizes More of Google's (not the world's) Information

(Adena Schutzberg) — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:53:00 -0500

Update 5/13/08: It seems The VentureBeat folks were ahead of the game. This new option is now seemingly more widely available. If you are not finding the option, try searching on Boston.

------- original story 5/9/08 -------

Now there's more to find when searching on Google Maps - including images (Panoramio not Picassa), user generated maps (MyMaps), videos (YouTube). The limitation, reports VentureBeat, is that only documents from Google properties are included.

Yahoo's New Internet Location Platform

(Adena Schutzberg) — Tue, 13 May 2008 09:41:37 -0500

I read a few news article about this new platform, the Yahoo Internet Location Platform, including Dan Katt's blog post but I didn't get it. Those articles, I think, are written for programmers, the folks who'll use the platform. Still, this is it's very cool and I think the rest of us should know what it does! And, frankly, I think too many people are too wrapped up in other platforms to see what's going on at Yahoo. I think Fire Eagle is killer, but I keep talking to people who don't know what it is. I don't want that to happen with YILP, so here's what this new platform is, as I (a non-programmer) understand it.

Yahoo has and uses a big database of location information. It's got points (places of interest), towns and cities, states, and countries in it. Each has an ID, called a WOEID (Where on Earth ID, Yahoo acquired WhereOnEarth a London company in 2005). Yahoo has opened up that database to the world complete with an API (application programming interface). That means programs can ask questions of and receives answers from this big database via a Web service.

Like what? Like:

Give me the WOEID of Boston, MA. (Why? Because maybe you to find pictures of Boston from Flickr. You'd use that value to ask Flickr for the pics.)
Give me the location of 2507854 (Where would you get that? you could get it from Fire Eagle!)
Give me the "next level up" (parent) geography for my point of interest, or in other words, in what city is the Eiffel Tower?
Give me the neighboring ZIP Codes to 12795711 (the WOEID of a ZIP Code).
Another cool one - the ability to ask for the name of a place in a specific language!

Many have already asked for a comparison to Geonames (a free online database with services built on it used by many location-based services to do some of these things). My sense is that Yahoo will tap into the wisdom of the masses to grow this database, just as Geonames does. And, since Yahoo's already aligned with OpenStreetMap, perhaps it can play well with Geonames? Could this database end up as the worlds single place coding database?