Thematic Mapping

Thematic Mapping Engine (TME) enables you to visualise global statistics on Google Earth. The primary data source is UNdata.

The engine returns a KMZ file that you can open in Google Earth or download to your computer.


http://thematicmapping.org/

The World's Best GIS at an Unbeatable Price

Manifold® System Release 8 delivers the world's most powerful, most full-featured and most modern Geographic Information System (GIS) package as a fully-integrated application at one low price. By using modern software technology and leveraging mainstream Microsoft standards, Manifold System can deliver more capabilities, more power, greater quality and greater ease of use in the $395 Manifold Enterprise Edition than old-fashioned GIS products costing tens of thousands of dollars.



Manifold also includes a world-class Internet Map Server (IMS), full object library and development environment to create custom applications and GIS-enabled web sites. No need to buy expensive extras or to struggle to integrate separate products. One package, Manifold System, scales from personal use on the desktop to enterprise use within the largest organizations deploying thousands of users simultaneously editing terabytes of data. Get Release 8 now, from $245 for Personal Edition!

WorldKit - easy web mapping

worldKit is an easy to use and flexible mapping application for the Web. Light weight GIS. It's a SWF based app, configured by XML, data fed by RSS. Stand-alone use or integration in larger projects.


Features
Check out the Documentation for more detail on features. Features include ...

* Ubiquitous use in the Flash Player and with RSS feeds.
* Highly configurable look and feel. Can use images for marking annotations.
* Integrates with weblogging tools, and any software producing RSS.
* Displays photos within the map.
* Zoom & Pan. Integrates with Zoomify for high resolution images, and WMS Sources.
* Lines and Polygons. Time Navigation.
* Accepts input for Collaborative Cartography & GeoWiki.
* Annotations are categorizable. Javascript interface for GIS layer functionality.
* GPS track routes.

Did you ever wish you could display a Google Maps map view—with custom data—on your own web page?

Did you ever wish you could display a Google Maps map view—with custom data—on your own web page? No? Well, maybe you should go take up geocaching or something. On the other hand, if it sounds like something you'd like to do, read on...

New: myGmaps enables you to create, save and host custom data files and display them with Google Maps.
Visit www.myGmaps.com for custom Google Maps.

Note: The Unofficial Google Maps Embedding How To now demonstrates how you can embed or include a Google Maps viewer widget in your own web page. In most cases you will probably want to use the base technique described there. This page still has useful information though.

First up, read the disclaimer, no web page should be without one! Then, check out the Gmaps standalone mode demonstration (Update: New demo--also features two views on one page) featuring custom XML data and XSL stylesheet.

[content taken from http://stuff.rancidbacon.com/gmaps-standalone/]

Cartographic Boundary Files

Download Generalized Cartographic Boundary Files
Click on the year/vintage next to the boundary file type you want to download.

Alaska Native Regional Corporations: 2000
American Indian Areas/Alaska Native Areas/Hawaiian Home Lands: 2000 | 1990
American Indian Tribal Subdivisions: 2000
Census Block Groups: 2000 | 1990
Census Divisions: 2000
Census Regions: 2000
Census Tracts: 2000 | 1990
Congressional Districts: 110th | 109th | 108th | 107th | 106th | 105th | 104th | 103rd
Consolidated Cities: 2000
County and County Equivalent Areas: 2000 | 1990
County Subdivisions: 2000 | 1990
Incorporated Places/Census Designated Places: 2000 | 1998 | 1990
Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas: 2003 | 1999 | 1998 | 1996 | 1990
New England County Metropolitan Areas: 2000
New England City and Town Areas: 2003
Oregon Urban Growth Areas: 2000
Public Use Microdata Areas - 1 Percent: 2000
Public Use Microdata Areas - 5 Percent: 2000
School Districts - Elementary: 2000
School Districts - Secondary: 2000
School Districts - Unified: 2000
State and State Equivalent Areas: 2000 | 1990
State Legislative Districts - Lower/House: 2006 | 2000
State Legislative Districts - Upper/Senate: 2006 | 2000
Subbarrios (Puerto Rico Only): 2000
Traffic Analysis Zones: 2000
Tribal Block Groups: 2000
Tribal Census Tracts: 2000
Urban Areas: 2000 | 1990
Voting Districts: 2000
3-Digit ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs): 2000
5-Digit ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs): 2000

The above information is taken from : http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cob/bdy_files.html
This information is only targeting gis developers across the web.

Mapserver Kick start for newbies :)

I met many mapserver enthusiasts (esp students) who wants to see a map quickly by using mapserver. All though mapserver has an abundance in terms of docs and tutorials, I never found a sinlge straightway solution which can help you to do this :

AIM: Write your first map file, and see the rendered map on the browser.

I suggest few easy steps to show a map using your shapefile. Remember YOU WILL HAVE TO WRITE ONE AND ONLY ONE MAPFILE. nothing else :)

Steps:

a. Download ms4w(For windows). Else install FOSS for Linux
b. Open a notepad (or anyother text editor). Write your first map file which will look like this:


MAP
NAME "mapfilename" #write your map file name here
STATUS ON
SIZE 512 512
imagetype png
SHAPEPATH "/ms4w/data" #path where you kept your shapefiles
EXTENT 68.1271 6.75621 97.4023 37.0675
#(extent of shapefile. you can get this info by using arcgis, qgis, etc)
FONTSET "C:\ms4w\YourDirectory\fonts.txt"
PROJECTION
'proj=longlat' #projection
'ellps=WGS84' #ellipsoid
'datum=WGS84' #surface of the earth
'no_defs'
END
DEBUG ON
CONFIG "MS_ERRORFILE" "C:\Temp\mapserver.log"

OUTPUTFORMAT
NAME png
DRIVER "GD/PNG"
MIMETYPE "image/png"
IMAGEMODE RGB
EXTENSION "png"
END

WEB
IMAGEPATH "/ms4w/YourTempDir/tmp/"
IMAGEURL "/tmp/"
END

LAYER
NAME "your_layer_name"
DATA "/ms4w//data/shapefileName" #name of your shapefile
TYPE POLYGON
STATUS ON
PROJECTION
'proj=longlat' #projection
'ellps=WGS84' #ellipsoid
'datum=WGS84' #surface of the earth
'no_defs'
END #projection
CLASS
Name 'your_class_name'
COLOR 0 0 0
OUTLINECOLOR 0 0 0
STYLE # thick outline (could use a circle symbol with size too)
OUTLINECOLOR 255 218 185
WIDTH 2
ANTIALIAS FALSE
END #style
END # Class
END # Layer

END#map end



3. Save this map file (eg. test.map) in ms4w/apache/cgi-bin/
4. On command line, run this command:
C:\ms4w\apache-install.bat
C:\ms4w\apache-restart.bat
5. Open up a browser (IE,Opera,FF) and write this url :

http://localhost/cgi-bin/mapserv.exe?map=test.map&layers=your_layer_name&mode=map


Thats all !! You will see a map rendered using the shapefile you wished.

Reading Recommendations:
1. Mapserver
2. OpenLayers
3. PostGIS
4. Mapserver tutorial

MADEIRA GPS

MADEIRA GPS, a company that started in 2005, with a simple project in mind: Deliver PDA-based navigation, with autorouting, for Madeira Island's tourism. We've achieved that goal and more... Since then our company evolved to provide full fleet management solutions and is currently making business as far as Brasil. All thanks to PostgreSQL and, of course, PostGIS.

All our geographic data (maps) is stored with PostGIS and it serves hundreds of requests per minute providing street name resolution for vehicles locations.

We used OpenJump as our preferred application to edit our geo-data. This application, combined with the PostGIS plugin, capable of reading/writing to/fro PgSQL DBs, proved to be a 'killer' combination.

Why did we choose PostGIS? Simple enough:
-Power
-Robustness
-Effectiveness
-Extendability
-Speed
-Free

Globexplorer

GlobeXplorer provides web services access to satellite and aerial imagery over the internet. GlobeXplorer manages relationships with dozens of source imagery providers and then provides simple web access to a multi-terrabyte unified collection of images.

GlobeXplorer clients range from individual end-users with Web Map Server (WMS) clients to consumer-oriented web portals serving millions of hits a day. This high-load, high-volume environment requires a very reliable technical solution that scales up efficiently to support millions of requests per day.

The GlobeXplorer (GX) architecture does not store imagery inside the database itself, but uses the database to store metadata about available imagery. The GX middleware handles incoming image requests by first querying the database to determine image availability, then retrieving the actual images from storage and delivers them to the client. So, each image request generates one or more database hits on the database metadata.

Mapnik

Mapnik is a Free Toolkit for developing mapping applications. It's written in C++ and there are Python bindings to facilitate fast-paced agile development. It can comfortably be used for both desktop and web development, which was something I wanted from the beginning.

Mapnik is about making beautiful maps. It uses the AGG library and offers world class anti-aliasing rendering with subpixel accuracy for geographic data. It is written from scratch in modern C++ and doesn't suffer from design decisions made a decade ago. When it comes to handling common software tasks such as memory management, filesystem access, regular expressions, parsing and so on, Mapnik doesn't re-invent the wheel, but utilises best of breed industry standard libraries from boost.org

holyApp

holyApp is a pure javascript framework for building desktop-like applications in a browser. It provides a rich environment of services, an ever-growing library of constructors for complex GUI elements, and some big ideas that tie them all together. It was released under the Clear BSD license by MetaCarta in November of 2007.

This framework - and the rich client applications built with it - follow a set of general principles:

1. The UI works like a desktop app, not a Web site. There is one rich and dynamic workspace, not multiple pages.
2. The code is object-oriented software, not dynamic HTML. Instead of generating HTML strings and injecting them into the document with document.write and innerHTML, holyApp uses the Document Object Model's ECMAScript bindings to directly create, destroy, and manipulate interface elements.
3. Data, logic and UI are separate. There are distinct data and UI layers in the code. UI components known as Viewers are coupled with data structures to allow users to view and interact with data.
4. The 2 Trees: Javascript and the DOM. We create a Javascript reference to every DOM element as it's created. That way, DOM elements will persist while added and removed from the DOM. These JS references are organized in a JS tree - with enough resemblance to the DOM tree that the connections between the 2 trees are intuitive.
5. Because all elements are referenced through the JS tree, there is no need to reference by their HTML id property, as is the common practice. This is a big improvement because HTML ids are a one-dimensional namespace, and the multidimensional namespace of the JS tree is very well suited to the complex components being generated by constructors. Also, using getElementById() can slow down processing.
6. All layout data (images, colors, dimensions and properties) is defined in CSS. Having it all in one place is organized. And we can change skins on the fly by swapping stylesheets
7. The client runs the show, not the server. The server does not sent commands to the client. It sends only libraries and data. The server should know nothing about the client's internal workings. It should act only as a data store, network proxy, and occasionally a Web service for processes that cannot be done on the client.

CartoWeb : Advanced Geographical Information System for the Web

CartoWeb is a comprehensive and ready-to-use Web-GIS (Geographical Information System) as well as a convenient framework for building advanced and customized applications.

Developed by Camptocamp SA, it is based on the UMN MapServer engine and is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Written using innovative language PHP5, CartoWeb is highly modular and customizable thanks to its object-oriented architecture. It runs evenly on Windows or Unix-like platforms and shows its real power when associated to PostgreSQL/PostGIS.

* Beginners can follow a simple workshop on CartoWeb by follwoing this link : http://cartoweb.org/cwiki/Foss4g07Lab

This is supported by good documents and presentations.

spatialnews on www.opengeospatial.org

This blog have a footprint on www.opengeospatial.org

http://www.opengeospatial.org/pressroom/newsletters/200710/#C3


NEWS AND OPINION FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE

Below are some of the discussions of OGC specifications in the blogosphere since the last edition of this newsletter:

17 October: Ed Parsons blogged that, based on Microsoft rejoining OGC, "Along with the new support for KML in virtual earth, I would say that the geoweb is beginning to develop quite nicely!"

10 October: Ritesh Ambastha identified a tool, "Explore Our Planet," to search for public WMS layers. 30,000+ WMS layers from 200+ servers are indexed. Predefined searches are available for a quick look.

30 September: Johannes Kebeck posted his paper "Integrating OGC-Compliant Web Mapping Services into Virtual Earth" online for public access . His example is for Virtual Earth used as a WMS client (not server).

Set Map Web GIS Solutions

SetMap is evolving as one of the best Web-GIS solution.

Evolution of SetMap can be understood by looking at the evolution of Blogger. SetMap is planning to release the first version of Web-GIS solution with limited feature set. The way you feel your own space in a blog site, the way you can customize your blog site, you can do the same on SetMap.

Features of SetMap:
1. For GIS-Data Providers. Now they can host their own web-based GIS solution using SetMap. They can customize L&F of their map, can share UGC's, etc.
2. No need of Google maps, Yahoo maps, etc. Enjoy the freedom of your "own maps"
3. Freedom of sharing Inter-user-generated-content
4. Host your mapping site with 4-5 clicks. Add your GIS data in few clicks, and feel the freedom
etc

SetMap is set to launch the product free-of-cost in next couple of months.