Well, you can now watch me fumble around installing a new Ubuntu system and getting it all ready for development using much of the Open Source GIS stack, including QGIS, PostGIS, GDAL/OGR and many others…

Of particular interest:

1) Demo of installing new 0.9 branch of QGIS on Ubuntu Linux

2) Demo of using Python bindings for QGIS

I have a habit of installing from source, and most of the demos I am producing are walking through the install process doing just that… beware!

Enjoy, and I would be interested if there are things in the Open Source stack that people are interested in seeing a demo of…

NOTE: you can link to the video page from the right pane of the blog window under GIS How-To’s -> Video

When you have Second Life making headlines in the business section of CNN. I guess it is time to sign up

http://money.cnn.com/2006/12/08/technology/sl_lindex/index.htm?postversion=2006120812

A local group here at Portland State University has just announced a new mapping interface into the mix. Check out the live demos and download the code. Looks to be a great resource! Thanks guys…

We are delighted to announce a new open source framework for web-mapping, your personal Ninja of web-mapping, ladies and gentlemen, it’s:

*Map-Fu*

Available for download, contribution of code, or reporting of bugs at our not-so-secret location on sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/map-fu/

It features a true object-oriented PHP-Mapscript backend, with a variety
of classes and interfaces, ease of extensibility, and other
configuration zoink-zoink.

On the front end is a fat Javascript client, using XMLHttpRequest to communicate with the server for updating the map and map-related data. It employs JSON for messaging and goes for a Web 2.0 feel. Some features on the front-end include pop-up tabs for reference map, legend, map information and query results. We try to maximize screen area for the map, since that’s what we are interested in visually!

Based on Minnesota Mapserver (of course) and PostGIS, we developed this interface to satisfy actual needs of clients for creating web-mapping applications that served SPECIFIC needs and required SPECIFIC tools.

Some production sites that are using the Map-Fu or related codebase (formerly known as YAMI (Yet Another Map Interface)):

http://glaciers.us - A database of glacier change in the Western US, including a linked assets database of aerial and oblique photos from the last century

http://www.oregongeology.com/sub/ogdc/index.htm - The most up-to-date geology compilation for Oregon, soon to be used for other states!

http://oscdl.research.pdx.edu/ - Oregon Sustainable
Communities Digital Library, a temporal database of regional planning for the Portland Metro area (ten years of regional planning data, plus links to documents tied to spatial objects)

We look forward to collaborating with a larger group of developers, and receiving feedback on our efforts! We’re interested in incorporating the OpenLayers interface, and “through the web” feature editing via WFS-T.

In the current vacuum of viable enterprise GIS solutions, we see this as a ripe time for rapid development!

The Map-Fu development team,
Morgan, Cris, Tim, Percy & Will
Portland State University
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Started to work this evening to organize all of the papers and presentations I have done in the last couple of years dealing with Open Source GIS. I will be adding more as I clean things up and fill in the blanks.

Here is a link to the Presentations and Papers