GIS Day 2008 is coming, November 19! Mark it on your calendar and make sure you come back here for a special announcement from ClueTrust. The GIS Day web site allows you to search for events near you, and provides historical context for the celebration, which is always held on the Wednesday in the middle of Geography Awareness Week (sponsored by the National Geographic Society). A sample of some of the things going on this year include: National Geographic's continuing Geography Action! ESRI always has something going on at their site. and the USGS is usually doing something at each …

GeoEye has posted the initial picture taken from the new GeoEye-1 satellite. This is the high-resolution satellite co-sponsored by Google and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Thanks to Gizmodo and Wired for noting this.

A good thought piece from Ed Parsons' blog today about the half-life of geodata. Using the announcement (thanks to All Points Blog) this weekend that 35-years of Landsat data would be available to the public on the web as an impetus for discussion, Ed muses about the useful life of data.

There are a lot of things about algorithmic patents that just seem wrong, and I'm not going to sit here and debate the obviousness of the work in patent application 10/631611 by Bryan Kendall Beatty via Microsoft, however I think there is an interesting lesson in how innovation helps us defeat patent lockout. I'm making a series of assumptions here on how the patent rulings are actually going to come down, but we'll see how this goes. There are really 3 algorithms and two patents at play in this story (assuming for the moment that none of the patents …

Thanks to Gizmodo, Reuters, and Derek (no link), we're now aware that TomTom has a working version of their navigator for the iPhone. It's going to be an interesting couple of months.

Just in time for Memorial Day, Google announced (using the LatLong blog) a new Google Earth Browser Plug-in, which "[brings] the full power of Google Earth to the web." Unfortunately, it works under Windows only, so those of us on Macs will presumedly have to wait a while.

For those of you who use our LoadMyTracks program along with the Sony CS-1 (or similar) device, you'll have noticed that for a large portion of the last year, it has been nearly useless. From 10.4.9 on the device hasn't worked correctly on some machines, and as of 10.5 it didn't work with any. Well, the waiting is finally over as Apple's new 10.5.3 works great with LoadMyTracks and the Sony CS-1.

This is more art than science, but there's an article from CNET that describes an attempt to create the largest "drawing" in the world by using a GPS device in an package shipped around the world. Followed by today's article that it was a hoax.

My brother Derek pointed me at this article from CNet about a move by ESRI to more directly and easily support export from ESRI formats to "the geoweb." Now, considering that this is mostly KML, I'm not particularly surprised, since KML is basically a presentation and not analysis format. Would that they were adding more support for WFS!

It's been a while since we talked about LoadMyTracks, software from ClueTrust (our sponsor) and there've been a lot of changes in the past few months. Since March, we've been doing a lot of development, and adding support for a lot of new devices, including the latest from Garmin, and some old standbys from Magellan (serial-based receivers now), as well as a new crop from GlobalSat, including the GH-615 Sport Watch and the DG-100 Data Logger (which US GlobalSat was kind enough to send us for development purposes). Click the link for more... We've also improved the scripting capabilities of …

The folks who keep Open Street Map thriving are having a conference in Limerick, Ireland in July to discuss the State of the Map. If you aren't familiar with Open Street Map, I'd encourage you to check it out, and then to get out your GPS and digital camera and get some data on the map! Most of the current US data is from the TIGER/Lines data set, and in my area of DC is pretty out of date.

A very interesting map from Ben Fry's website, including detail on the meaning and origin in this article. The map itself is made only of roads, no terrain features, no boundaries, just roads... all of the roads in the US. Best use of the TIGER/Line data set I've seen in years. A thumbnail of the real map is used by gracious permission of the author. Thanks!

With all of the recent move to put cartography and GIS data on the internet, it should come as no surprise to readers of this blog that there are a lot of web sites out there with nice looking maps and data that everyone expects to be real. This is where people should stop to think about the source of the data. A beautiful map is a beautiful thing. And, once upon a time, a nice looking map with data on it was a sign that some dedicated organization had paid a lot of money to create it. Nowadays, that …

Real estate web site Zillow has announced that they are making the shape files that they use to indicate neighborhoods across the US available under the Creative Commons license. That's right, a commercial data provider who is willing to make data available for free. As they'd say in New Zealand, "Good on you!" The license requires attribution only, and that you make future versions available under the same license if you change the data.

In the Google Maps blog yesterday, they carried an announcement that Google Maps will be adding support for the hCard microformat in Google Maps. What does this mean for you and I? More machine-usable data in Google Maps. The hCard microformat is a way of taking normal HTML (or XHTML) and putting additional contextual information into it so that software looking at the codes will be able to recognize the information for what it is. An example of this would be the following: Gaige Bradley Paulsen ClueTrust 11654 Plaza America Drive Reston , VA , 20190 USA This hCard created with the …

According to an article in MacWorld today, Garmin has announced that Training Center for the Macintosh is "now available" (although they also indicate that the software will be available for download in Late January, it will be distributed on CD at MacWorld in a week and a half). No word on firmware upgrading and support of non-training devices, but this is a step. Congratulations, Garmin.

If you know your geography and are from the UK or the US, then click on over to Geography Cup and help your team win! The contest lasts until December 31, 2006 and has been going on since November 12. The UK is clobbering the US in terms of score per participant, but the volume of US participants is keeping them in the lead. Show your team spirit and help out!

In mapping-related personnel news, Ed Parsons, the CTO of Ordnance Survey, will be leaving effective December 22, 2006 to pursue other interests. Having met him, he's a nice guy with a lot of good ideas and it's going to be interesting to see where he ends up. Best of luck, Ed!

Worldmapper is a site that uses Cartograms (maps that have been distorted to show non-geographical data in interesting ways. Public Health Spending, as an example, shows how much of the world's health care dollars are spent in the US. Compare that with Population, and you get an idea how distorted spending is relative to population. It's an interesting way to view information, using maps as a reference point instead of an accurate rendition, like so much of online mapping. There are some 227 cartograms and they can be looked at online or downloaded in PDF form. Further, they provide extensive …

As an ESRI customer, I've been interested in getting my hands on 9.2 to check out the new features. Yesterday (annoyingly close to Thanksgiving here in the US) my package arrived. Expect some commentary on the advances and changes in 9.2.