geomantic

Last week, I blogged about Open Street Map over on my company’s blog, The Viewshed about Open Street Map and touched briefly on the subject of data quality. I cited the study by Muki Haklay that compares (favorably) the quality of data found in OSM with Ordnance Survey data. More on the subject of OSM [...]

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This is a good thing for both the standards setting community and the open source community:
OGC and OSGeo Sign Memorandum of Understanding | OGC®
With respect to goals and objectives, both communities have an obvious  natural affinity. I’m encouraged to see this finally happened.

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With the frenzy of the elections past, I’m gradually returning to normal life. Here are some things that have recently caught my attention.
Fuzzy Tolerance calls attention to a slew of recent open source software releases. Shiny new toys!
From the Google Geo Developers Blog comes word of a snazzy new KML Manual. (Must add this to [...]

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Here’s another sign (as if we needed one) that geospatial information is rapidly merging with mainstream IT. Linux.com published a nice article on getting started with Geoserver.
Linux.com :: Serving and styling maps with Geoserver

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For the last 18 months, more and more of my work is getting done on the Ubuntu platform. And as a self-described geospatial propeller head, I’m always quite interested in using the Ubuntu platform for GIS and other geospatial applications. Just in the nick of time, Matt Perry has updated his Ubuntu GIS how-to for [...]

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Several recent posts I want to call attention to…
First, a very interesting discussion on the OSGeo-discuss list kicked off by Tyler Mitchell, who posted a request to the list for examples of how open source software has made employees more valuable in their jobs. The discussion was gently steered to whether one can conduct the [...]

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I want to draw attention to a post by Sean Gorman on the GeoCommons blog outlining a proposal for a lightweight metadata schema for geospatial data. I have long felt that the FGDC and ISO standards sacrificed a lot in the way of flexibility and agility in exchange for completeness. The emphasis on data quality [...]

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The source code for the latest release candidate of GRASS is now available at the OSGEO site. I’ve always thought the analytical capabilities of GRASS were quite robust, but could never quite get used to the old interface written in TCL/TK and so I never had the patience to ascend the learning curve. This new [...]

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Here’s an example of the kind of analysis that compelled me to get in to GIS:
Matt Perry blogs about a recent research project modeling the human-induced stresses on the oceans. The graphic is quite compelling and reveals patterns that almost seem counter-intuitive (e.g. open areas of the north Atlantic, islands in the Caribbean). The analysis [...]

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I’m just coming round to nice general interest interview with Tyler Mitchell in Linux Journal. Tyler is the Executive Director (and chief evangelist) of the Open Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). For those of you who have been attending FOSS4G for the last few years, you won’t find much (besides a concise summary) that you weren’t already [...]

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