OpenStreetMap, MapQuest and BingMaps

During the State of the Map 2010 in Girona, MapQuest announced that they will start supporting OpenStreetMap as well as using the open-source map in their portals. The recent opening of the US portal (http://open.mapquest.com/) completes the previous European versions (http://open.mapquest.fr/ for example).

The interesting point is thatMapQuest also provides an API to integrate some OpenStreetMap magic in your applications as well as a new version of the OpenStreetMap Potlach editor :

http://open.mapquestapi.com/

The latest big news came from Microsoft which has allowed access to its BingMaps aerial imagery in OpenStreetMap editors (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bing). This will allow to create new open-source content over places that needs mapping but where fewer mappers are active.

This interesting application provides information about the date of each image at various zoom level of the BingMaps content : http://mvexel.dev.openstreetmap.org/bing/

The final point about all this is the integration of BingMaps (including IGN and DigitalGlobe imagery) in a new version of Potlatch edited by MapQuest enabling volunteers to update the OpenStreetMap data :  http://open.mapquestapi.com/dataedit/index_flash.html?lat=43.5532223109707&lon=1.48675752408545

 

Pretty cool and showing an interesting convergence between commercial companies and the open source community :-)

The Story of Electronics

The Story of Electronics, released on November 9th, 2010 takes on the electronics industry’s “design for the dump” mentality and champions product take back to spur companies to make less toxic, more easily recyclable and longer lasting products.

View it here : http://storyofstuff.org/electronics/

FOSS4G 2010 in Barcelona

I was at the last FOSS4G (Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial) Conference in Barcelona. It was a fantastic conference with more than 800 participants from all over the world and 3 days of technical talks and trainings (http://2010.foss4g.org/program_print.php). It was great to meet major figures of the Open Source for Geospatial like Paul Ramsey (founder of PostGIS - see http://blog.opengeo.org/2010/09/08/foss4g-day-2/) or Frank Warmerdam (founder of GDAL). CampToCamp (http://www.camptocamp.com/) and 52north (http://www.52north.org) were very well represented in the talks and there was interesting new projects like GeoNodes (http://geonode.org/) founder by OpenGeo (http://opengeo.org/), ZOO Project and MapProxy from OmniScale.

Speeches during the plenary sessions were more about the spirit of Open Source and the sense of Community. As a contrast to the ESRI User Conference, the focus was not on technical stuff as most of the audience were tech-sawy but more on the philosophy of Open Source. Ivan Sanchez made an interesting comparison with the game theory showing that in software development the only winning move was to share. The conclusion was that happiness rather than money helps people create better products because it helps them to take better decisions (see the “prisoner dilemna”). His conclusion was that : Happiness leads to better software and maps :-)

During the closing session, Helena Mitasova received the OsGeo 2010 prize for her implication in Open Source and GRASS. She presented how GRASS has been used over the past 20 years to develop the geospatial research and education. It was inspiring how she spoke greatly about the community and about the energy that it gives her.

Crowdmap from Ushaidi !

The guys at Ushaidi have been busy working on a new concept : a platform to automatically instanciate the Ushaidi software for a specific deployment. Just create our account, select a deployment name and your own Ushaidi server will be instantly online !

Great ! You are now ready to :

1.     Collect information from cell phones, news and the web.
2.     Aggregate that information into a single platform.
3.     Visualize it on a map and timeline.

The OpenStreetMap Mug and the tag concept

Last week, I have received my OpenStreetMap Mug !

The mug serves as a reference for the most important and most popular tag/value combinations used on ways and nodes within the OpenStreetMap project. While it cannot explain the fiddly details it serves as a reminder and a quick help while mapping. Here is a complete flat view :

The tag concept and the fact that it is completely free and easy to expand is a key concept for OpenStreetMap. It enables the OpenStreetMap community to map anything they encounter anywhere in the World ! For example, among all the very popular tags displayed on this mug, a new one has been added : "amenity=mug, access=private".

You can buy the mug from Kernel Concept and a donation will be made to the OpenStreetMap Fundation ! For more information on OpenStreetMap tags, visit the Wiki !

FOSS4G in Barcelona !

I was at the last FOSS4G (Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial) Conference in Barcelona. It was a fantastic conference with more than 800 participants from all over the world and 3 days of technical talks and trainings. It was great to meet major figures of the Open Source for Geospatial like Paul Ramsey (founder of PostGIS - see http://blog.opengeo.org/) or Frank Warmerdam (founder of GDAL).

Speeches during the plenary sessions were all about the spirit of Open Source and the sense of Community. Ivan Sanchez made an interesting comparison with the game theory showing that in software development the only winning move was to share. The conclusion was that happiness rather than money helps people create better products because it helps them to take better decisions :-)

During the closing session, Helena Mitasova received the OsGeo 2010 prize for her implication in Open Source and GRASS. She presented how GRASS has been used over the past 20 years to develop the geospatial research and education. It was inspiring how she spoke greatly about the community and about the energy that it gives her.

Aragon and 360° photos

Back from a fantastic one week-holiday in the Aragon region of the Spanish Pyreneas, I had the time to stitch some pictures together to create four 360° panoramas : http://www.faudi.net/category/tags/aragon Enjoy !

Motivation Posters

I love this one !
Discovered through Allez, fais pas ton geek and Village of Joy

Compare GoogleMaps and OpenStreetMap

If you like map comparison websites, you will love this one !

GeoFabrik's Map Compare allows you to view several OpenStreetMap layers side by side with different Google Maps map types. The two maps are synchronised so zooming or panning one map will zoom or pan the comparison map. Geofabrik is the work of two active German OpenStreetMap contributors, and the Map Compare tool was developed to allow Geofabrik to compare OpenStreetMap map offerings to Google Maps maps and aerial imagery.

From GoogleMapsMania

Ushahidi :: Crowdsourcing Crisis Information

An interesting platform that I have discovered recently, after the Haiti and Chile events. It is good thing that such an open source initiative exists :

http://www.ushahidi.com/

The Ushahidi Engine is a platform that allows anyone to gather distributed data via SMS, email or web and visualize it on a map or timeline. The goal is to create the simplest way of aggregating information from the public for use in crisis response.

The World Biggest Image

How many pixels does your camera got ? 8 megapixels ? Think the images are big on your hard drive ? Well, look at this 26,000 megapixels image of Paris: http://www.paris-26-gigapixels.com/ 

Provided by the company that release the stiching software that I use : http://www.autopano.net/en/

Is Social Media a Fad ?

This video circulated several months ago but I feel I wanted to share it here. It is very nicely done and is a very good tool to use in a presentation for example. And for the non english native speakers : fad = fashion !

Starship in the Pyrennees

Last week I spent one night at the Pic du Midi Observatory. You need to take two cable cars to reach the observatory which is at 2877 m. The view from there is breathtaking. We had a lot of luck as the night was clear and chilly (-17° !) and we have seen many wonders of the sky. The Observatory is now more a  Museum and a touristic place although a dozen professionals and amateur astronoms still work there. The association called "The Star Farm" that organize event there call the place the "Star Ship".

I took this photo with my iphone :

The cool thing with ihpone is that they integrate a GPS and if you know how to do it, you can export the photo with the latitude and longitude in the EXIF parameters of the JPEG file. If you download this picture, it should locate itself here.