Spatially Adjusted » QGIS

Developer needed

James Fee — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 02:54:43 +0000

Lets make this simple. If you have experience with:

Python
PostgreSQL
PostGIS
GDAL/OGR
OpenLayers

and at least some knowledge of:
GeoJSON
FeatureServer
GML
KML
dealing with the above on Windows (Linux may come down the line)

and live in either Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, or New Mexico; email me

james.fee at gmail.com

Position can be contract or full time work.

Create GIS workstation using Ubuntu and open source GIS software

James Fee — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:41:54 +0000

I get tons of emails from people asking where they can get free ArcView licenses for home use. People really want to work with GIS at home as well as at work which makes sense to me. I’ve always pointed folks to QGIS and other tools, but Matt Perry has a wonderful and easy way to most of the important open source GIS tools on Ubuntu with just a couple of commands.

just keeps getting easier and easier to get a fully functional open source GIS workstation up and running thanks to Ubuntu. The following instructions will take your vanilla installation of Ubuntu 7.10 and add the following top-notch desktop GIS applications:

Postgresql/PostGIS : a relational database with vector spatial data handling
GRASS : A full blown GIS analysis toolset
Quantum GIS: A user-friendly graphical GIS application
GDAL, Proj, Geos : Libraries and utilities for processing spatial data
Mapserver : web mapping program and utilites
Python bindings for QGIS, mapserver and GDAL
GPSBabel : for converting between various GPS formats
R : a high-end statistics package with spatial capabilities
GMT : the Generic Mapping Tools for automated high-quality map output

Download Ubuntu, install, run a simple command, enjoy GIS for free. Seems like a great solution to me!

Look how fun OSGeo is!

Open Source on the beach at Waikiki

James Fee — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 01:48:47 +0000

I’m “stuck” in Waikiki this week at our Honolulu office helping them get back on track with their GIS after our GIS coordinator resigned to join her husband in the peace corps on Tonga. The new GIS person is really excited about GIS and that is always nice to be around. Sometimes even I need my GIS Kool-aid recharged.

Anyway I was hanging out at Duke’s Waikiki and randomly started talking to the group next to me at the bar. Turns out that they are all readers of my blog and have been migrating their GIS from an ESRI only shop to a combination ESRI/open source shop. It was interesting to hear how they were picking and choosing the best products from ESRI and open source to help them better get their work done. What was also interesting is that they didn’t decrease their maintenance costs, but reallocated. They’ve replaced most of their ArcView seats with QGIS, replaced all but one license of ArcSDE with PostGIS and in turn used those savings to buy more licenses of ArcInfo and extensions. They’ve been able to give their high end GIS analysts the tools they feel that they need to get their work done, but still increased their GIS production. Every person at their company has either an ArcInfo or QGIS license on their desk that they can connect to WMS services hosted by MapServer and PostGIS.

I wish I could have spent more time with them talking about this, but they were heading to China in the morning so they needed to get to bed. I liked how they were able to give better tools to everyone by prioritizing what they needed and picked the best tools for the job.

QGIS at FOSS4G2007

James Fee — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 17:38:38 +0000

Gary Sherman has posted a couple documents on his blog that may be of interest to those trying to learn more about QGIS. First off he’s got his slides from his FOSS4G presentation as well as the workbook from the “Shuffling Quantum GIS into the Open Source Software Stack” workshop. Both are a great introduction to QGIS and show you how to use QGIS with existing datasets to make a map as well as perform GIS analysis with GRASS (that is the killer feature of QGIS, using the power of GRASS with easy to use GUI). In addition, you can download the QGIS Live CD that was used at the FOSS4G2007 conference. That way you can give QGIS a spin without having to install anything on your computer (Mac/PC/Linux).

We are getting really close to the 0.9 release of QGIS so there isn’t a better time to get familiar with what is becoming the choice in open source desktop GIS (to be fair I like what I see in gvSIG as well).

QGIS 0.9 Splash Screen

QGIS 0.8.1 has been released

James Fee — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:11:13 +0000

Tim Sutton just announced on the QGIS blog that 0.8.1 has been released.

It is our great pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Quantum GIS (QGIS) Version 0.8.1. Quantum GIS (QGIS) is a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, and Windows. QGIS supports vector, raster, and database formats. QGIS is licensed under the GNU General Public License. QGIS lets you browse and create map data on your computer. It supports many common spatial data formats (e.g. ESRI ShapeFile, geotiff). QGIS supports plugins to do things like display tracks from your GPS. QGIS is Open Source software and its free of cost (download here).

The release notes are here.

BTW, what is up with the new icon? Seems a little retro to me…

Windows Build of QGIS 0.8 available

James Fee — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 03:14:18 +0000

Since I know most of the people reading this site are on windows, you’ll be happy to know that Quantum GIS 0.8 now has the Windows package built and ready to be downloaded. Make sure you use the torrent if possible. The Mac OS X Universal build is also available (torrent).

Quantum GIS 0.8 “Titan” Released

James Fee — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 22:16:38 +0000

Gary Sherman announces on the QGIS developer blog that the open source desktop GIS QGIS 0.8 has been released. The average QGIS user will have to wait a couple days though:

At present this is primarily a source release for those that want to build QGIS. Packages for most Linux distributions, Windows, and Mac OS X are being assembled and should be available in the next few days.

Keep an eye out on the QGIS 0.8 download page for the package releases (Windows, OS X, etc).

For those who have forgotten why QGIS 0.8 is an important milestone, here are a few of the new features:

WMS support
Improved vector and attribute editing
Improved measure tools with area measuring
Attribute searching
New legend structure
Refactoring of API to allow the use of QGIS libraries in mapping applications
Improved MapServer export tool
Vector layer transparency and antialiasing
GRASS support in all platforms
Enhanced GRASS support and toolbox commands
Enhanced vector editing, including copy, cut, paste, snapping and vertex editing
Shapefile/OGR layer editing

Some screen shots of the windows version:

click for larger view

Python and Desktop GIS

James Fee — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 23:20:42 +0000

Want more proof that Python and GIS just seem to go together like peanut butter and chocolate?

The new era: QGIS and Python

Open Source GIS is about the users

James Fee — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 00:48:37 +0000

Steve noticed a post by Asa Dotzler about Paul Ramsey assertion that open source GIS is about developers, not users.

You may have failed (or decided not to even try) to build a product for users and to attract users to that product, but that hardly qualifies you to hand down edicts about what open source is or isn’t about.

Read the whole post here.

Paul responds:

It is just straightforward observation that if you aren’t adding code, documentation, bug reports, or user support to a project, if you are just downloading and using the software, you are not adding any value to the project.

Actually, very true. See Gary Sherman’s post on diminished expectations. Just downloading uDig or QGIS and complaining that it isn’t ArcGIS helps no one. Open source GIS needs users to be involved by providing feedback to help grow the software. That said, you don’t have to do anything if you don’t wish, but complaining about the software without helping the developers doesn’t help anyone.

QGIS Ramblings

James Fee — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 04:33:15 +0000

For those who haven’t seen, the QGIS team has a blog called QGIS Ramblings.