Underdark at Free and Open Source GIS Ramblings reports of a great new addition to the QGIS Wiki – a set of step by step tutorials complete with graphics and categorized into tasks dealing with vectors, rasters, map projections, spatial analyses, format conversion and map making. This is a great reference for anyone just beginning to get their feet wet as well as for existing users trying to get a glimpse of the latest features.
LiDAR, acronym for Light Detection and Ranging is a remote sensing technique to capture precise elevation including any vegetation or buildings on the earth’s surface. Over from the Lidar News blog is a short video from the Department of Geosciences at Idaho State University, introducing the principle of LiDAR and its application in elevation modeling of Snake River, Swan Valley in Idaho.
With all the rave reviews that Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx has been getting over the past couple of months, I couldn’t help myself upgrading and checking out the exciting new features and the enhanced interface, which I think was a much needed overhaul for the best desktop Linux OS.
A new version meant fresh installation of all the open source GIS goodies starting with QGIS. The latest version 1.4.0-Enceladus for Lucid is already available in the Launchpad UbuntuGIS repository and with a new command (add-apt-repository) for updating /etc/apt/sources.list with locations of repositories, the installation is simple and straightforward.
Bring up the terminal and issue the following commands.
Add the repository using:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntugis/ubuntugis-unstable
Make apt aware of the new repository:
sudo apt-get update
Install QGIS
sudo apt-get install qgis
Once the installation is done, open QGIS from Applications -> Science -> Quantum GIS
This week marked the end of the 2010 ESRI Worldwide Business Partner Conference (BPC) and the 2010 ESRI Developer Summit at Palm Springs, California which was host to the largest gathering of GIS developers.
The BPC set the tone for the Developer Summit by showcasing features of the upcoming release of the ArcGIS product suite – ArcGIS 10. For those of us who couldn’t get to attend and see the demos first hand, the Plenary Session videos have been made available for viewing which cover the following topics:
ArcGIS.com
Desktop Usability
Server and Web Clients
Mobile Platforms
Editing Improvements
Imagery Platform
Analysis
Business Analyst Online
ArcLogistics
ArcGIS Server on Amazon
What started off as an overview of ArcGIS 10 during the BPC was picked up at the Developer Summit with demonstrations delving more into the new features and enhancements that ArcGIS 10 is going to support. ESRI has been quick to upload the Plenary demos which cover the following topics:
Opening by Jack Dangermond, President of ESRI and Jim McKinney, ArcGIS Program Manager
ArcGIS 2010 and Beyond
ArcGIS Online and Explorer
ArcGIS Server, Part One
ArcGIS Server, Part Two
Developer Community
Mobile GIS
ArcGIS Desktop, Part One
ArcGIS Desktop, Part Two
ArcGIS Desktop, Part Three
Jithen Singh on his blog http://geo.geek.nz has a detailed write-up summarizing the Plenary Session events of the Developer Summit.
This video has been doing rounds in the social media circles for some time now and is definitely worth the time. Watch the Fuhrer rant over the failure of ESRI and ArcGIS.
ESRI is at the forefront of GIS (Geographic Information System) development and technology. Be it modeling, analysis or development ESRI produces the best COTS (Commercial off-the-shelf) software for all GIS needs and having to keep up with the latest from this world leader is no simple task. With the evolution of Web 2.0 and syndication of site content via protocols such as RSS, RDF and atom it has never been so easy to stay updated on current developments.
By publishing several blogs pertaining to its products, developer tools, support, events and other relevant offerings ESRI makes it easy to receive up to date information in our news aggregators by subscribing to its feeds.
Here’s the list of blogs and podcasts with their subscription feeds http://www.esri.com/blogs/index.html
