QGIS 1.7 is Officially Released

June 20, 2011 Leave a Comment

So this awesome happened over the weekend:

We are pleased to announce the latest release in our 1.X series of releases. To download your copy, please visit the QGIS download page. This release is named after the town of Wroclaw in Poland. The Department of Climatology and Atmosphere Protection, University of Wroclaw kindly hosted our last developer meeting in November 2010.

The release has some great new symbology and data management improvements continuing the push of QGIS as a full fledged GIS client.  I use QGIS much more than any GIS client these days[ref]Most of that has to do with me being on Mac OS X but it is a reality.[/ref] and coupled with FME, there isn’t anything I can’t do.

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GRASS GIS 6.4.1 Goes Native on Windows

April 14, 2011 Leave a Comment

GRASS GIS 6.4.1 released

GRASS 6.4 brings a number of exciting enhancements to the GIS. Our new wxPython graphical user interface (wxGUI) is debuted, Python is now a fully supported scripting language, and for the first time since its inception with a port from the VAX 11/780 in 1983, GRASS runs natively also on a non-UNIX based platform: MS-Windows.

I know right, you thought the same thing I did.  If only you had known in 1983 that there was a VAX port think of where you’d be today.

Cue the dramatic prairie dog!

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FOSS4G 2011 Call for Presentations

February 9, 2011 Leave a Comment

The FOSS4G 2011 Local Organizing Committee has opened the call for presentations for the FOSS4G 2011 Conference September 12-16, 2011. All you open source geospatial users (which is pretty much everyone out there since almost every GIS program has some sort of OSGeo project in it) need to take note and submit your presentation before the April 15th deadline.

Gimme Some OSGeo Lovin’!

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QGIS 1.5 is now out

August 2, 2010 7 Comments

Good news for those using open source GIS desktop clients.  QGIS 1.5 has hit the servers and users can now download it and start using it.  These is a great “visual change log” that gives the details.  For me the Spatialite and symbology improvements are going to make QGIS much more usable as a desktop GIS application.

Hello – is that open source desktop GIS that I’m looking for?

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GDAL/OGR 1.7.0 Released

January 30, 2010 5 Comments

Good news from the gdal-announce email list:

The GDAL/OGR Project is pleased to announce the release of GDAL/OGR 1.7.0.

Yep, you can stop there and get your GDAL/OGR on.  Or maybe you want to know what is new, copied directly from Frank’s email:

  • New Raster Drivers: BAG, EPSILON, Northwood/VerticalMapper, R, Rasterlite, SAGA GIS Binary, SRP (USRP/ASRP), EarthWatch .TIL, WKT Raster
  • GDAL PCIDSK driver using the new PCIDSK SDK by default
  • New Vector drivers : DXF, GeoRSS, GTM, PCIDSK and VFK
  • New utilities: gdaldem, gdalbuildvrt now compiled by default
  • Add support for Python 3.X. Compatibility with Python 2.X preserved
  • Remove old-generation Python bindings.
  • Significantly improved raster drivers: GeoRaster, GeoTIFF, HFA, JPEG2000 JasPer, JPEG2000 Kakadu, NITF
  • Significantly improved vector drivers: CSV, KML, SQLite/SpataiLite, VRT

I did a little highlighting up there to list what I think is noteworthy at least for me. You can either build it yourself or keep an eye out for an update of FWTools.

 

The Leningrad Cowboys will play us off, have a great weekend folks!

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Portable GIS Version 2 Released

September 1, 2009 Leave a Comment

I’ve been a long time fan of running GIS applications on flash drives.   Now that I’m rolling around with a flash drive that you can’t tell is a flash drive, I always have my GIS apps with me.  That said, there is a much easier way to do this than rolling your own apps, Portable GIS.  Version 2 was released today and if you have any interest in having GIS apps in a small package, save yourself the time and just go with Portable GIS.

OSGeo gets mobile with Portable GIS

OSGeo gets mobile with Portable GIS

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GeoServer 1.7.2 continues improvements to Cartography

January 27, 2009 4 Comments

As with GeoServer 1.7.1, the latest release improves some cartographic rendering capabilities of the Open Source server product. 1.7.2 brings wrapped labels and hatching to render some impressive maps. Other new additions include HTML image mapping, OGR extension to output WFS as any supported OGR output formats (I get chills thinking of the possibilities), and improvements to GeoExt Styler. If that still doesn’t get you interested, this little tidbit at the end of the post should catch your eye:

Stay tuned for the 1.7.3 release, slated for release in the next month, which will include improvements to Geo Search, and the official release of the REST configuration API.

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OpenLayers, ESRI and ArcGIS Server Resource Page

December 8, 2008 9 Comments

The ArcGIS Server REST[ful] API has been a wonderful addition to the ESRI developer world.  I’ve seen more people talking and deploying RESTful API applications since it was released than I did with 9.2 (YMMV of course).  One thing about it though is there still isn’t a community built around it.  Sure the forums are there, but even those are not as dynamic as they should be.  The Server Resource Page is very static and developers cannot add comments or suggestions to the code examples or the API reference for others to learn by.  I’ll be bringing this up yet once again at the ESRI Developer Summit at what will hopefully be a JavaScript SIG (Not at the same time as the .NET SIG please).

That brings me to OpenLayers and ArcGIS Server.  The RESTful API gives easy access to ESRI ArcGIS Server services to OpenLayers and other APIs, yet there is no way to collaborate such development on the ESRI community pages.  I’d like to see ESRI adopt OpenLayers as readily as they have adopted Flex, Google and Microsoft APIs so that ESRI developers can deliver the applications their clients demand.  There is some really good code floating around there for using ArcGIS Server REST API with OpenLayers, just not where it probably belongs to get ESRI developers started.  For now just head on over to the OpenLayers email list or IRC and get involved.  

Being RESTful with ESRI Server

 

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Concerned about stacks?

November 4, 2008 5 Comments

I’ve been hearing much about stacks these last few weeks.

“We want an all ESRI stack”

“We want to break out of the ESRI stack”

“I want an all OSGeo stack”

“Bill Gates’ stack is the work of the devil”

“I want to avoid the [INSERT LEAST FAVORITE SOFTWARE COMPANY HERE] stack at all costs”

Why concern yourself with branding stacks?  OK, maybe if your corporate IT department dictates that you must go a route you have to worry about it, but otherwise concerning yourself with an overarching stack just distracts you on matching your needs with the best hardware/software.  Stack away, but focus on the individual parts, not the whole suite.  Leave the marketing terms such as LAMP/WAMP/XXXX to others and pick what works.

Be careful with stacks

Be careful with stacks

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GeoServer gets a new UI

August 11, 2008 3 Comments

I’ve always thought of GeoServer as a great way to get introduced to open source web mapping servers because its Admin page was much easer to use than MapServer.  It looks like at 2.0, the Admin page will get even better as the GeoServer team announced that the new UI is in the 2.0 alpha release.  I can’t wait to see how this develops until the “final” 2.0 release.

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