The third international State of the Map (SOTM) conference is happening now in Amsterdam NL. This seems like a good time to take stock of the progress made in adapting the open source model of production to the creation and maintenance of geospatial data.

From humble beginnings in August 2004, the OSM project recently passed the 100,000 user milestone, of which a large number of are active contributors. The platform has expanded to include not just a data repository and display, but also a RESTful software… Continue Reading

If I’ve taken anything away from years of software development efforts I’ve witnessed it’s this: know thy customer .  And I’m not speaking strictly about packaged software for the masses, I mean ANY project, ANY size, for ANY market.  Software and systems architectures are developed by engineers who in most cases are not vertical industry subject matter experts.  Customers (users, stakeholders, pick your own term or endearment) bring that all important knowledge of their business processes and their industry.  And since they pay the bills, it probably makes sense to get to know them and their needs very well!

Software development … Continue Reading

The OpenLayers JavaScript map viewing client has been translated into ActionScript . The demo is a bit clunky, but overall this is a "Good Thing". Having another free and open source alternative to the Yahoo and Google ActionScript map components really gives us more of a choice for those projects that can’t meet the licensing terms of the portal companies for whatever reasons.

Traverse committed to using Flash and ActionScript over 4 years ago as a rich client alternative even though I knew we were going to have to roll our own map … Continue Reading

I attended the NC GIS Conference last week. For those of you who are not familiar with this event, this is consistently one of the best regional conferences in North America. There are good reasons why I’ve only missed one conference in the 22-years it’s been in existence. First, it’s always smoothly run and well organized. Secondly, the range of content is drawn from a broad range of geospatial topics, including municipal parcel/cadastral mapping, data standards and interoperability, intergovernmental data sharing, governance, and open source software. I was astonished that … Continue Reading