Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] StackOverflow like GIS website
I am a user at stackoverflow too. And it is my personal opinion that I am not interested in separating GIS from the rest of the topics on their site, I have recieved great result asking programming questions, postgis/postgres related questions and in return I often answer GIS related questions. It is especially the fact that everything is in a single place that makes me a fan of stackoverflow. The stackoverflow search options are excelent. Thanks to tags for gis, postgis, openlayers and others; finding questions or answers in my fields of interest is easy. It would in my opinion, be better to move us GIS folks into the crowd of regular programmers and IT specialists. We might learn from them and they from us. Integrate, don't seperate is my personal advice. Please don't feel offended, it is just the way I look at this. Kind regards, Milo van der Linden George Silva wrote: Thanks for the complement Alexis. Very important information. George On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 6:15 AM, Alexis Guéganno a9e...@gmail.com mailto:a9e...@gmail.com wrote: On 1 June 2010 23:45, George Silva georger.si...@gmail.com mailto:georger.si...@gmail.com wrote: The guys at StackOverflow are promoting some new QA websites in the molds of StackOverflow, ServerFault, etc. http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/1425/geographic-information-systems?referrer=u45zxtCru4U%3d There is a propose for a GIS website like it, which I created - containing aspects of all areas of GIS (database, programming, cartography, map design, geography, etc). Check it out. The proposition needs to be accepted by a large number of users to move on, so if you guys feel that should exist, follow the proposal. Thanks -- George R. C. Silva Desenvolvimento em GIS http://blog.geoprocessamento.net Hi ! I just want to add something : if you have some time after subscription, feel free to vote for the question if you think they are on-topic or off-topic. We need users AND clearly identified on-topic and off-topic questions. I think the idea is great. Thanks for it, George :-) Sites promoted by stack exchange are nice, and are a good place to share infos. I've been saved sometimes by stack overflow and server fault ^_^ Greetings, Agemen. -- Les objets quantiques sont complètement dingues, mais au moins ils le sont tous de la même façon. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org mailto:Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss -- George R. C. Silva Desenvolvimento em GIS http://blog.geoprocessamento.net ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Comparison of Mobile GIS applications
I have been using navit and osm2go on moblin. There is a debian build for osm2go which is targeted at maemo, I managed to get it up on moblin and will try to get it running on meego. If you are interested in me filling the blanks for these 2 apps on your feature list, let me know. Kind regards, Milo van der Linden Miguel Montesinos wrote: Hello to all, I'm preparing a presentation for the FOSS4G, with title Comparison of Mobile GIS applications. I know some, but I think that the best way to make an objective analysis is to offer the chance for anyone to collaborate, in order to define common feature lists as well as perfomance or usability check lists. Is anyone developing or using a mobile geospatial application interested? Regards, - Miguel Montesinos CTO PRODEVELOP, S.L. mmontesinos [at] prodevelop [dot] es www.prodevelop.es ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] StackOverflow like GIS website
Hello George, I completely agree that there aren't a lot of questions that are GIS related on SO, but most come from people not familiar with GIS at all entering either from a developer (google maps api, openlayers) or a dba perspective. And these roles are interesting; Often they are the guys that are asked by management to put a map in their app and often they strand on geometry or projection related topics. I believe that is where we fit in. We help them out, point them to the fact that there ARE people specialized in GI and maybe one thing will lead to another: The managers grow in understanding that Geo IT is a profession too... Especially now, with the crisis, IT managers are looking at programmers being able to work in the whole spectrum of options. I believe it is our task to show them that using specialists might speed up development. That is why I always advice customers to hire me for the map and the geodata, and designers for the website look and feel. I cannot (and will not) design websites, and a designer shouldn't try to master maps, he/she should master design! GIS related topics pop up more and more thanks to openlayers and google maps. And it offers opportunities. SO is an environment to spot these opportunities whereas a GIS specific SO would lead to segregation, keeping us away from the rest of the world. I would strongly opt to put effort in gettting GIS related topics on the map on SO instead of copying SO for a limited audience. It would surely show our presence to the people out there. George Silva wrote: Hello Milo, I'm not offended in any way. My experience with SO is that there are way too few questions related to GIS in that website. Questions about projections, webmapping, gis programming are perhaps way too specific for the use of SO as a website to the GIS community. If you check that website you will be able to see what kind of question we are planning to have and vote them as on-topic or off-topic. But thank you for your opinion :P. George On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 9:39 AM, miblon mob...@dogodigi.net mailto:mob...@dogodigi.net wrote: I am a user at stackoverflow too. And it is my personal opinion that I am not interested in separating GIS from the rest of the topics on their site, I have recieved great result asking programming questions, postgis/postgres related questions and in return I often answer GIS related questions. It is especially the fact that everything is in a single place that makes me a fan of stackoverflow. The stackoverflow search options are excelent. Thanks to tags for gis, postgis, openlayers and others; finding questions or answers in my fields of interest is easy. It would in my opinion, be better to move us GIS folks into the crowd of regular programmers and IT specialists. We might learn from them and they from us. Integrate, don't seperate is my personal advice. Please don't feel offended, it is just the way I look at this. Kind regards, Milo van der Linden George Silva wrote: Thanks for the complement Alexis. Very important information. George On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 6:15 AM, Alexis Guéganno a9e...@gmail.com mailto:a9e...@gmail.com mailto:a9e...@gmail.com mailto:a9e...@gmail.com wrote: On 1 June 2010 23:45, George Silva georger.si...@gmail.com mailto:georger.si...@gmail.com mailto:georger.si...@gmail.com mailto:georger.si...@gmail.com wrote: The guys at StackOverflow are promoting some new QA websites in the molds of StackOverflow, ServerFault, etc. http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/1425/geographic-information-systems?referrer=u45zxtCru4U%3d There is a propose for a GIS website like it, which I created - containing aspects of all areas of GIS (database, programming, cartography, map design, geography, etc). Check it out. The proposition needs to be accepted by a large number of users to move on, so if you guys feel that should exist, follow the proposal. Thanks -- George R. C. Silva Desenvolvimento em GIS http://blog.geoprocessamento.net Hi ! I just want to add something : if you have some time after subscription, feel free to vote for the question if you think they are on-topic or off-topic. We need users AND clearly identified on-topic and off-topic questions. I think the idea is great. Thanks for it, George :-) Sites promoted by stack exchange are nice, and are a good place to share infos. I've
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Comparison of Mobile GIS applications
Hello Bob! I started out using moblin as my en route OS of choice. On my asus 1005HA eee pc, it turned out to be the fastest, easiest to use (even on bumpy rides) and flexible enough. I managed to connect moblin via bluetooth to my gps and to my mobile phone. I use my mobile phone as 3G modem. Then I started using it for openstreetmap work by getting osm2go up. My goal is to get meego up to the same task: an excelent mobile solution for communication and (lightweight) geodata collection. Besides that I am waiting for the nokia device that will follow up on the N900, rumours has it will be called the N9, but those rumours haven't been confirmed by nokia. Why meego and not android? Because I am always looking at alternative products that will prevent single parties to become dominant. This has nothing to do with reason, it is purely out of ideology ;-) I am now running the 1.0 release and believe it or not, it is a small step down from moblin 2.1. Although it boots faster, the interface looks like a candystore and not all components have a synced look and feel. Chromium for instance is not integrated in the panels as much as the moblin browser was, and some apps suddenly have gray window decoration while others have black. With moblin I would have people ooh and aah when I did a business presentation with it, meego with its OS for kids look has to stay in the box a little while longer. For me meego == choice. I don't intend my eee pc it to be a desktop replacer, I cannot imagine myself programming on 1024x600 resolution. But it is my companion on the road and since I travel by train a lot, the best companion I had so far with almost 8h of battery power. And even for business meetings, I don't need to bring a heavy 15 or more anymore. The eee will do perfect and run like a charm Bob Basques wrote: Milo, You mentioned MEEGO in your post, I just ordered a N900 to do some testing for GIS related stuff on the N900. What types of functionalities are you focusing your efforts on for MEEGO? bobb miblon mob...@dogodigi.net wrote: I have been using navit and osm2go on moblin. There is a debian build for osm2go which is targeted at maemo, I managed to get it up on moblin and will try to get it running on meego. If you are interested in me filling the blanks for these 2 apps on your feature list, let me know. Kind regards, Milo van der Linden Miguel Montesinos wrote: Hello to all, I'm preparing a presentation for the FOSS4G, with title Comparison of Mobile GIS applications. I know some, but I think that the best way to make an objective analysis is to offer the chance for anyone to collaborate, in order to define common feature lists as well as perfomance or usability check lists. Is anyone developing or using a mobile geospatial application interested? Regards, - Miguel Montesinos CTO PRODEVELOP, S.L. mmontesinos [at] prodevelop [dot] es www.prodevelop.es ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] fastest option of serving huge imagery on web map on the fly
In my opinion (but of course Karsten needs to answer that himself) he needs wms as I think he mentioned before. I may be wrong assuming that mapproxy caches every unique wms request as a unique image. I totally agree that he shouldn't preseed everything in advance, especially when budgets are to low to consider serious diskspace. Oliver Tonnhofer wrote: On 20.05.2010, at 22:10, miblon wrote: If mapserver is to slow, almost everything else is to slow... I also noticed your crosspost on the mapproxy list. mapproxy will even cache to more then the 60TB youve estimated, because it will cache every wms request instead of square, stitched tiles. I don't understand that. MapProxy does cache square tiles and if 60TB are a valid estimate for TileCache and GeoWebCache, than this should also apply to MapProxy. But, you don't want to cache everything in advance, that would be a waste of resources. Caching the lower resolutions, the common parts where more users will access the same images would take of the load of the WMS server. Karsten mentioned OpenLayers, so i guess tiled services like TMS are an option. MapProxy, TileCache and GeoWebCache should all be able to handle that without caching in advance. MapProxy comes with full HTTP cache control, you can limit the resolution till images should be cached (other requests will be passed to the WMS) and if some clients require full WMS you can use MapProxy's WMS and benefit from the cached tiles. All points that are quite useful in this scenario. Regards, Oliver ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] fastest option of serving huge imagery on web map on the fly
If mapserver is to slow, almost everything else is to slow... I also noticed your crosspost on the mapproxy list. mapproxy will even cache to more then the 60TB youve estimated, because it will cache every wms request instead of square, stitched tiles. If I where you and caching is an issue, I would invest in a (small) farm of fast cgi mapserver servers with for instance a squid proxy in front. One single machine will always be to slow. You say nothing about the hardware. I for instance use i7 950 servers with 12Gb ram and 3Tb diskspace for €89 a month. - Search for the best hardware at acceptable price - Consider setting up less servers with more diskspace per server and concider using cache if you find out that the cost of individual high end large disks (with in total enough space to hold 120Tb or so) are lower then setting up 4 individual machines with less diskspace barely fitting your initial dataset, consider that too. - Upscale when needed. You say you have 4.7 Tb of imagery, how big is the target audience? Will they be viewing the entire image set up to the highest detail or will there be a limited Area of interest? I would say that it is pointless to create a infrastructure capable of holding the highest level of detail given the amount of disk space when only a hundred users will be active.. - Find an investor In my opinion, you are on top of imagery that is of invaluable worth to your audience. Why would they want to cut on the infrastructure costs? Sounds a bit like; we want a money-transport truck, but we would not want to invest in armoring it and giving it an engine to outrun any bandits. I think someone needs to do some good presales work here and set up an excellent business case. Good luck! Kind regards, Milo van der Linden karsten vennemann wrote: Hi All, I am seeking some advice/ alternative ideas about the following project I am working on... I have been tasked with researching the best and fastest options serving huge raster datasets on a web map using OpenLayers o the fly (using all Open Source software). We want to serve the US NAIP Aerials in 1m resolution (which are a total of about 4.7 TB of MrSid/Jp2 data) on a interactive web map as an optional map background. The are using MapServer to serve our other (vector) data such as roads, rivers etc as WMS to overlay onto this. Of course there are many ways to go about this but one of the things we determined early on is that MapServer is too slow to serve compressed imagery such as the native MrSid Jp2 imagery on the fly for our needs. Thus, one option would be to spare MapServer from having to decompress the images. We can then also avoid having to convert them to tiff and adding overviews (using gdaladdo for example). This would also blow up the total data volume to something about 60 TB ... Thus, we are in the process of researching options on how to serve the compressed data as fast as possible on the fly and without the need for caching them on disk (that means no TileCache nor GeoWebCache should be used because that also would involve having to set up huge storage spaces ... One option I came about was using IIpimage server and this would then involve converting the MrSid all to Jp2 format. One advantage is that OpenLayers 2.9 already has natively the Zoomify layer support so that we can easily add the images coming out of IIPImage Server Zoomify + JPEG2000 server http://help.oldmapsonline.org/jpeg2000/ I also found that another option is the Djatoka Jpeg 2000 Image Server http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/djatoka/index.php?title=Main_Page and the J2K Tiler Renderer: http://dltj.org/article/introducing-j2ktilerenderer/. None of the above seem to enable output as WMS (correct me if I'm wrong). One draw back is that all of those above are using the Kakadu library which is great but not free for commercial use. I also wanted to research how the use of this new proxy server http://mapproxy.org/ could improve our speed in combination with e.g. IIP Image server... Anybody has experiences with any of the above or comments ? Any input what you think would be the fastest option to serve the compressed US NAIP onto a web map on the fly (without caching tiles on disk) ? Cheers Karsten ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] are there any unpaid developers?
I am selfemployed since january 2007. In the years 2008 and 2009 I spent a lot of time on OpenStreetMap. Developing small tools such as the mod_osm for joomla, the poi-editor and some minor fixes here and there, and mapped large parts of the Island of Aruba. I still spend about 6 hours a week on OpenStreetMap and I use GeoServer at my own webserver, not (yet) paid by any customers for hosting maps there. I also answer questions on the lists and IRC channels for mapserver, osgeo-discuss, osm. Basically, about 20% of my time is unpaid. But it helps me to gain knowledge and it caused me to get hired here and there. As an example AND Automotive Navigation Data got tipped by Steve Coast (OpenStreetMap founder) that I might be able to help them with setting up map20.org, So they hired me for 3 months and then offered me a year contract for two days a week. Indirectly I think it is well worth the time invested in myself and yes, I am able to feed myself and my family thanks to Open Source! Ian Turton ha scritto: One of my students was asking today about the open source development process (with special reference to geospatial projects). One question I'm left with is are there any OSGEO developers who are doing this just for the fun and fame? I know that a lot of us have fun developing but everyone I could think of (GeoTools, GeoServer, uDig) gets paid to have that fun. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] How OSGeo helps you?
Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) wrote: Hi all, I'm working on responding to some questions relating to our 501c3 application with US govt and would really like your opinion, stories, examples to make sure I hit the nail on the head. I'd like to describe two aspects of what OSGeo does and how it helps the public. In particular relating to education and to charitable activities. I know how I'd answer, but what about you? 1. In what areas/topics/information do we teach to new users or educate the public in general? Basically, what is the 'content' of our education endeavours? It is funny, but in my opinion most teaching is done without clear presence. I learned a lot from OSGeo, most things are simple rules of engagement OSGeo teaches people to: - Approach each other with respect. No matter where you come from or how you communicate with the OSGeo community, responses are always polite, good and to the point, helpfull and pointing you in the right direction. By communicating in such a way, I notice new users automatically follow these unwritten guidelines and act in the same way. - Standardize programming methods - Be open to other (sometimes controversial) perspectives. Discuss but do not judge. - Be open! Following OGC (Open GIS consortium) Standards has always been of great importance to the OSGeo projects. It is my personal opinion that this is encouraged by the OSGeo foundation and in a lot of ways better standarized then with commercial vendors. We are all watching and guarding interoperability. 2. How does OSGeo provide a charitable benefit to the public? Don't link it directly back to education, but think about how our features, abilities and products get used to benefit the public. Take it beyond just having free access to software generally, and share in particular the charitable ways it helps the public (charitable as in helps people, the world, etc. not as in just being free). Directly? Not that much. Indirect through it's projects? Substantial! OSGeo projects: - Open up Geodata to a larger public - Integrate Geodata across borders - Provide alternatives! We all have a choice - Give people the tools to communicate almost anything with others through maps Yes, somewhat vague questions, but I really want them to know the details about these not just a cursory mention of our workshops and our no-cost software :) I only have a day or two to get my answers together, but a longer thread is also welcomed to help share your perspective. Take care, Tyler ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] New OSGeo Mailing List: jQuery for geospatial development
Wooh! Great! I have been using jQuery in combination with openlayers for about a year now and feel this is finally a osgeo project I feel confident enough about to see if I can sign up as a developer! C and C++ are way to scary for me and with java I am just a beginner, but jQuery; that is my playground! Kind regards, Milo van der Linden Arnulf Christl wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Folks, if you use jQuery and want to extend it for geospatial then this might be the right place to find like minded people, add your own hack and point to other web sites with similar development. Feel free to join the mailing list at: http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/geojquery Hack the Wiki at: http://geojquery.org/ Tweet it, blog on it. Maybe this is a chance to get the attention of spatially unaware developers. Thanks to Till for starting this and to Jan for bringing it into the Spanish speaking worlds. Best regards, - -- Arnulf Christl Exploring Space, Time and Mind http://arnulf.us -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkuStYYACgkQXmFKW+BJ1b04MgCeLLCFP52IFQjAm2J9ZRN1MLyC KlYAnj/1IwDPuVOBcA9Lwv3qFuj0QwQn =qh78 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] SAP Maps
For a customer of ours, we created this construction: The customer uses SAP with an integrated Bentley viewer. They also want to share their data through opengis services. This is our toolchain: - SAP generates a csv and the customers GIS environment (Bentley based) generates a shapefile. - These files are written daily to a shared directory on a centos server running geoserver and postgresql/postgis - a cron job uses ogr to parse the shapefile and the csv into postgis and do a variety of checks - the same cronjob then does some sql magic to parse the previously generated tables into tables that are used by geoserver - geoserver exposes the result table(s) as wfs and wms I don't know how SAP generates the csv, but I assume this is some Abap logic. Anyway, it is a construction that works and we retrieve the right results. Open GIS tools used: - GDAL/OGR - Postgis - Geoserver Kind regards, Milo van der Linden Mauricio Miranda wrote: Hi guys, Does anyone have experience getting data from SAP for mapping porpoise? I need to generate a layer with all the company customers and to show them in a map. Does anybody know about a middleware, tool, something that could help me with this? Thanks in advance. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
[OSGeo-Discuss] density maps
Hi there folks, I am currently investigating the open source options for generating density maps. I currently have some php code that could form the bases to do this, but I would prefer to use more general available api's such as geotools if that would be possible. From a j2ee developers point of view; I am looking for functionality that I can feed with a dataset of irregular point(jts) geometry and that will generate a layer like the one shown here: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ZSuJiQ9ztA8/SmIM9yD-tYI/BlM/FOyoqcie7Cc/s1600-h/Shootings+heat+map+Baltimore+July+2009.jpg or http://rbnhw.com/media/epp-ShakeProbability.jpg preferably, the image should be georeferenced so it can be handled as wms, but the latter I can fix. Any ideas or references on where to look would be great! kind regards, Milo van der Linden ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
