Cartography, Geovisualization & GIS on Mastodon
A huge list of geo people and organisations on Mastodon, manually curated by Florian Ledermann. Comes with a handy export tool so you can bulk-follow everyone.
Industry News
Two New Initiatives from Radiant Earth: Source Cooperative and Cloud-Native Geospatial Foundation
Radiant Earth announced two initiatives to further the development and sharing of machine-learning models and the adoption of cloud-native formats for geospatial data.
Source Cooperative aims to provide a marketplace for machine-learning models and training data:
Source Cooperative builds upon Radiant MLHub’s legacy as a neutral and trustworthy data publishing platform and will enable the publication of a wider variety of datasets in addition to machine learning training data products and machine learning models. For anyone who has any kind of data or machine learning models that they need to share, Source Cooperative will allow them to upload it, define how open they want it to be, and even charge for it if they want to.
It sounds a bit like GitHub, but for machine-learning models and training data, with integrated monetisation. The new platform will replace Radiant MLHub, which will end operations in October 2023, and all data will be migrated to Source Cooperative.
Cloud-Native Geospatial Foundation aims to advance the adoption and development of cloud-native geospatial data formats through educational materials and supporting software development efforts.
Both activities are in very early stages with very little detail. You can contribute by participating in community surveys for each initiative.
Felt Now Supports Raster Data, Too
Felt added support for raster data like GeoTIFF, XYZ tile services and images:
Today we are announcing three new features that make raster files easier to work with than ever before:
- The ability to upload raster files as layers on your map.
- The ability to add any XYZ URL from sources such as Planet, or other imagery providers, which will dynamically load external imagery.
- A set of purpose-built OSM layers, such as streets and building footprints, to complete your map quickly.
There’s a real danger that this is becoming a Felt fan blog but they keep delivering well-designed and useful features that strip away a lot of the complexity that comes from working with geospatial data. While we have seen most Felt’s functionality before in traditional GIS, their approach to reimagining known functionality to make map making more accessible to non-GIS crowds is truly ground-breaking.
Virginia Norwood, Mother of Landsat, Has Died Aged 96
Dylan Loeb McClain, New York Times:
Ms. Norwood, a physicist, was the person primarily responsible for designing and championing the scanner that made the program possible.
[…]
Ms. Norwood, who was part of an advanced design group in the space and communications division at Hughes, canvassed scientists who specialized in agriculture, meteorology, pollution and geology. She concluded that a scanner that recorded multiple spectra of light and energy — like one that had been used for local agricultural observations — could be modified for the planetary project that the Geological Survey and NASA had in mind.
Felt Becomes Flagship Sustaining Member of QGIS
Imagine what the open-source world could look like if the Amazons and Googles of the world would do the same for the open-source software they use.
Ride-Sharing Startup Via Acquires Citymapper
Rebecca Bellan and Ingrid Lunden, reporting for TechCrunch:
Last month, when transportation startup Via raised $110 million at a $3.5 billion valuation, CEO Daniel Ramot said it planned to make acquisitions to grow its transportation technology stack. Now, a piece of that strategy is falling into place: today the company is announcing its acquisition of Citymapper, the London startup that produces a popular urban mapping app.
I always loved Citymapper. When it came out, it offered a better experience for public-transport routing than Google Maps. I remember moving to London, and Citymapper was a lifesaver; I could not imagine how anyone would navigate the city without it.
But then, I never understood how they were making money—if any. Citymapper offers memberships, which enable additional routing modes, but I don’t think bus-only routing convinces many people to pay for the service. They also sold public-transport passes in London at discounted rates and, more recently, the app’s free tier contained ads. This acquisition is about talent and technology rather than removing a competitor from the field.
AWS launches "Open Data Maps"
AWS is extending Amazon Location Service, their range of geospatial products, with “Open Data Maps”. It offers four base maps developers can use as background maps in their applications: A light and dark standard map, plus a light and dark monochrome design as a background for data visualisations. The maps were designed by Stamen and are mainly based on OpenStreetMap data via Daylight.
Open Data Maps will be a serious option for organisations with high usage, which serve more than 200,000 tiles each month. The pricing for map tiles is quite competitive and lower than that of similar products from Mapbox or MapTiler.
| Number of tiles served | AWS | Mapbox | MapTiler |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100,000 | $3.50 | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| 200,000 | $7.00 | $0.00 | $25.00 |
| 300,000 | $10.50 | $25.00 | $25.00 |
| 500,000 | $17.50 | $75.00 | $25.00 |
| 1,000,000 | $35.00 | $200.00 | $75.00 |
MapRoulette becomes OpenStreetMap US Charter Project
After OSMCha, OpenStreetMap US now also supports MapRoulette as a Charter Project.
MapRoulette is a vital tool within the broader OpenStreetMap ecosystem, guiding mappers to areas needing contributions.
MapRoulette serves the mapping community as a user-friendly tool for systematic improvement of completeness, quality and accuracy of map data. Mappers from over 70 countries review more than 40,000 tasks a month. More than 330,000 changesets in 2022 alone can be directly attributed to MapRoulette.
With Charter Projects, OpenStreetMap US aims to ensure long-term stewardship of critical open-source tools for OpenStreetMap. It provides projects with a home and the ability to raise funds for further development.
Geospatial Projects at Google Summer of Code 2023
The mentor organisations for this year’s Google Summer of Code have been announced. Amongst other open-source household names, Google Summer of Code 2023 features various organisations and projects from the geospatial world, including:
Google Summer of Code is an internship program which pays aspiring software developers to contribute to open-source projects for three months during the summer. The application phase for this year’s cohort of interns opens on 20 March and closes on 4 April.
Say what you want about Google, but you have to appreciate their ongoing commitment to open-source software and their efforts to connect young programmers with projects.
The Washington Post Ditches Mapbox for Open Alternatives
For a recent story, instead of Mapbox, The Post used OpenMapTiles, Maputnik, PMTiles, and MapLibre to produce interactive web maps.
Kevin Schaul:
For some projects, I’m sure we’ll continue using Mapbox. But for most of our use cases, we don’t need the latest and greatest. And Mapbox has gotten expensive.