The DC GIS department has teamed with the DC Department of Public Works, to do this animated map of snowplows. Despite the fact that the animation leaves tracks, it gets the point across, and it's kinda neat. Basically, it's recorded real-time plow data superimposed over the map of the District.

Google has announced via their LatLong Blog, the Google Earth Engine. Access is not yet available, but they do have some screen shots and will be making available access to the system for computational analysis of satellite imagery.

ClueTrust has released the first changes in LoadMyTracks in almost 18 months. This new beta, the beginning of the 1.4 release cycle, contains a number of fixes for bugs in the previous 1.3 releases and contains updated libraries. Because of these changes, 1.4 will not be supported under 10.4. At this point, we expect to continue supporting LoadMyTracks under 10.5 for a while longer, as none of the new features we're looking at currently take advantage of specific 10.6-isms. Software Update in LoadMyTracks is the easiest way to keep up to date. And, we …

We are pleased to announce general availability of Cartographica version 1.1.1. This bug fix release contains important performance and stability enhancements and a small number of new features. We would like to extend a special thanks to those folks who helped us test the software before general release. More details on the changes in the main article. Features and UI changes for 1.1.1 Add Australian Datum specifications to EPSG and datum databases Add Australian grids and projections Add support for AGD66 and AGD84 translations Add support for overriding default character sets on vector file load Update …

ClueTrust is happy to announce that Cartographica 1.1 is now shipping! There are improvements throughout the software, and if you haven't had a chance to take a look since 1.0 (or before), it's worth taking a another look. To make this easy, we've re-enabled keys for everyone who has tried Cartographica in the past (even if you don't get our emails), so go on over to our lost key page and request a replacement key if yours has expired already. These new keys last until October 15th, 2009. Among the big changes are support for very large images …

ClueTrust is happy to announce that version 1.1 of Cartographica has finally reached beta phase. This means that all significant features are in the product, and it is ready for feedback and testing by users at large. As part of the beta program, we've reactivated keys for everyone who has signed up to try Cartographica in the past and we hope that everyone will take advantage of the opportunity to try out our new features and changes. We believe this is a great step forward for Cartographica and GIS on the Macintosh. After the release of 1.1, we …

It's been a really exciting week here at Apple's WWDC! There's a lot of information now available from the Keynote of the conference which is public, and there was a lot more disclosed in sessions that we can't talk about. However, the most important pieces of user news are that Snow Leopard will be available in September for $29 (USD) as an upgrade to Leopard, and that Snow Leopard will not support the PowerPC processor-based Macintoshes. This has very important implications for Cartographica—specifically, we will be discontinuing new feature support of 10.5, and thus the PowerPC, in new …

Fresh from his master's degree, all of us here at ClueTrust would like to welcome Rick Jones to the team. He's going to be posting on this blog (more often than I do) and doing a lot of other work here, now that we've got Cartographica 1.0 out the door. Welcome to the team, Rick!

Some of you may already know that ClueTrust (the folks who run this site) has been located in the National Capital Area since 1989 (over 30 years now), and during that time, DC has gone through a lot of changes. The District's new mayor is nothing if not high tech, and to that end announced an amazing level of data openness through the CityDW (City Data Warehouse) program this over the last couple of years. Not surprisingly, this includes a lot of geospatial data. And this continued with a large release of data about the transit system in the last …

ClueTrust is very, very pleased to announce general availability of Cartographica, the Macintosh GIS. After a 6 months of testing and enhancement, we're finally ready to put our name on a 1.0. Today, Cartographica brings with it the ability to import and export data in a huge number of formats, create detailed maps with highly-evolved styles, and access geospatial data from across the Internet. However, version 1.0 is just the beginning. Users of Cartographica can look forward to quick evolution of features in the months and years to come. In comparison to commercial packages on other platforms, Cartographica …

For those in the DC region looking at maps of DC, there has been (since Google Maps came out) a large blurry hole between Wisconsin and Massachusetts Avenues NW. It was circular and pretty darned large. In fact, for the short period in time when the White House was somewhat blurred out, the Naval Observatory was a much larger "missing piece." The White House was made visible years ago, but the Naval Observatory had been blurred until just recently. Looking at some maps for the area yesterday, I noticed that you can now see the home of the Vice President …

Just in case we were wondering how much mapping is making it into the mainstream, check out the new features in Apple's iLife '09 products. For starters, they've added support for manual geocoding (type a place name and drag a pin around on a map) and maps for navigation of photo data. This is all encapsulated in a new feature they refer to as "places". And, the support has been extended from the photo management side to photo book production, providing nearly effortless map addition to a photo book. Pretty neat. On the video side, Apple's iMovie has map templates …

ESRI has announced the 1Q09 availability of ArcPad 8, their mobile system for GIS tasks running under Windows Mobile. Highlights include: new included streetmaps, synchronization with ArcGIS Server, and a new UI.

Google has quietly announced that Google Earth Plus is no longer available. Previously, this version of Google Earth contained the ability to speak with GPS devices (although it was never very flexible about talking to a wide variety of them). According to the blog entry, they'll be offering that feature in the free version of the software "in the near future." In the mean time, Google Earth Plus customers can get an extended (2 month instead of 7 days) evaluation license for Google Earth Pro, which has the ability to import GIS data.

Well, general writing on the site has slowed to a crawl as we've been working hard to enhance Cartographica, our Macintosh GIS, for those people participating in the preview release. Today we announce the availability of Preview Release 2, the second release to the public of Cartographica. There's more detail on what we've changed and what we're working on by following the link. We've been pretty busy for the last few weeks stomping out bugs and adding features in some important areas with some concentration on data generation. Details of many of these changes are in the release notes and …

ClueTrust is very pleased to announce today, GIS Day 2008, that we have released as a Preview Release, Cartographica, a brand new GIS package for the Macintosh. Please head over to our dedicated MacGIS site for more details and to download a copy. Ever since my brother, Derek, started working in GIS, he's been complaining about the lack of good GIS software for the Macintosh. In fact, he did a popular Mac GIS Software review of the topic on this site a couple of years ago. In the intervening time, not a lot has happened for the Macintosh GIS community …

Ogle Earth has a very interesting article about the ban on GPS devices in Egypt. Egypt, Syria, and North Korea are said to be the only countries in the world that still have consumer GPS bans. The key impact appears to be on local GIS organizations that need to use other means to gather data.

If you are interested in GIS for the Macintosh, we have some exciting news for you. ClueTrust, makers of LoadMyTracks, and owners of this site, are preparing for the first preview release of their GIS software for the Macintosh. In preparation, we've put together a survey that we'd like you to take in order to help us hone the message and features. If you get all the way through it and leave your name and email, we'll provide you with an online coupon for a discount on the final release (expected some time in the spring). Thanks in advance!

Google, this morning, announced that Google Earth is available for the iPhone via the iTunes AppStore. There doesn't appear to be any way to use your own layers, but maybe that's a feature that we'll have to do a bit more searching for or will come in a future release...hopefully. Having downloaded and tried out the application, I can say it certainly is a slick piece of work. The options dialog seems to be a bit quirky (I can't tell whether it's crashing or just running afoul of the iPhone guard timer), but the zooming, panning and search functions …

OneGeology is a new web site with the mission to "Make web-accessible the best available geological map data worldwide at a scale of about 1: 1 million, as a geological survey contribution to the International Year of Planet Earth." It's an exciting endeavor and one that might mean more data and easier to find data on the Internet. The effort is to accumulate a comprehensive list of available WMS servers and make those servers available through their portal. They are currently (as of today) claiming 94 participating countries, including many that are already making data available. They are also working …