52North, Atlas, AtlasStyler, FlightGear, AVPython, GeoPublisher

Free GIS new additions 03/12/2010

52°North Initiative for Geospatial Open Source Software GmbH is an international research and development company whose mission is to promote the conception, development and application of free open source geo-software for research, education, training and practical use.

Atlas aims to produce and display high quality charts of the world for users of FlightGear, an open source flight simulator.

AtlasStyler is a user-friendly application to style geodata. The resulting styles can be saved to XML files that follow the OGC SLD/SE standard 1.0.

AVPython - By embedding Python within ArcView GIS, we can break through most of the barriers to interoperability, scalability, and extensibility that the Avenue developer faces when trying to build a modern application. Unlike Avenue, Python is a real programming language suitable for large-scale collaborative development, yet like Avenue it is easy to use, and very easy to read.

FlightGear is an open-source, multi-platform, cooperative flight simulator development project. Source code for the entire project is available and licensed under the GNU General Public License. This is not GIS software but may be of interest to some. Atlas creates free charts of the world for FlightGear.

Geopublisher Software allows you to quickly create digital multimedia atlases and publish them. Visit the demo atlases page to take a look at some publically available atlases or check out the features list to get an impression about the possibilities.

Hope these prove useful. If you are new to GIS, check out the Learn2Map GIS Tutorial and Atlas. We have more free GIS software available and there is plenty of free data and shapefiles that will work with these programs. More to come!

Mike

Saga GIS, SDTS Dem, Spring, Thuban, TNTmips Free

Free GIS and Geospatial Software Part 9

SAGA - System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses - is a hybrid GIS software. The first objective of SAGA is to give (geo-)scientists an effective but easy learnable platform for the implementation of geoscientific methods, which is achieved by SAGA's unique Application Programming Interface (API).

sdts2d is a Translator for SDTS DEM Files. The sdts2dem program translates USGS DEM files from SDTS format to "native" format. It is in the public domain and may be freely redistributed.

SDTS Public Domain Software - Although these programs have been used by the USGS, no warranty, expressed or implied, is made by the USGS as to the accuracy and functioning of the programs and related program material, nor shall the fact of distribution constitute any such warranty, and no responsibility is assumed by the USGS in connection therewith.

SPRING is a state-of-the-art GIS and remote sensing image processing system with an object-oriented data model which provides for the integration of raster and vector data representations in a single environment.

Thuban is an interactive geographic data viewer. Main features are its cross-plattform GUI, extensability and flexibility for deriving individual GIS applications. Thuban is implemented with wxPython which allows its GUI to blend in with desktop on different platforms.

TNTmips Free is a free version of TNTmips Pro for small-scale projects. TNTmips Free is not a demo, but a large, full-featured geospatial analysis software package. TNTmips Free is the same program as TNTmips Pro except that the license to use it free-of-charge limits the size, number, and complexity of the geodata layers you can use in your project.

Hope these prove useful. If you are new to GIS, check out the Learn2Map GIS Tutorial and Atlas. We have more free GIS software available and there is plenty of free data and shapefiles that will work with these programs.

Mike

Free GIS Software: OpenMap, Orbit EOS, Post GIS, Quantum GIS, Orbit Explorer, RevPG

Free & Open Source GIS Software Part 8

OpenMap is a Java Beans based toolkit for building applications and applets needing geographic information. Using OpenMap components, you can access data from legacy applications, in-place, in a distributed setting. At its core, OpenMap is a set of Swing components that understand geographic coordinates.

Orbit EOS Lite Free GIS Map Server - EOS is the scalable, extenable Orbit Server system, used for corporate and internet GIS data sharing. EOS supports most popular data formats, and can be extended with functionalities such as geoprocessing or gis-data related database access and transaction control.

Orbit Explorer GIS Freeware - Orbit Geospatial Technologies presents Orbit Explorer Freeware 4.4 for Windows 32 and 64bit, 4.1 for Linux and Unix 32 and 64bit, and 4.3 for Mac OSX systems on G4, G5 and Intel Dual Core machines. The Orbit Explorer Desktop solution now comes with full OGC WMS supportover 50 new and improved functionalities.

PostGIS adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL object-relational database. In effect, PostGIS "spatially enables" the PostgreSQL server, allowing it to be used as a backend spatial database for geographic information systems (GIS), much like ESRI's SDE or Oracle's Spatial extension. PostGIS follows the OpenGIS "Simple Features Specification for SQL" and has been certified as compliant with the "Types and Functions" profile.

Quantum GIS (QGIS) is a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, and Windows. QGIS supports vector, raster, and database formats. QGIS is licensed under the GNU General Public License. QGIS lets you browse and create map data on your computer. It supports many common spatial data formats (e.g. ESRI ShapeFile, geotiff). QGIS supports plugins to do things like display tracks from your GPS. QGIS is Open Source software and its free of cost.

RevPG (Revision and Product Generation software) - RevPG is a collection of ARC/INFO Arc Macro Language (AML) programs, C routines, shell scripts, and interface menus that support the revision of digital line graph (DLG) data with ARC/INFO.

Hope these prove useful. If you are new to GIS, check out the Learn2Map GIS Tutorial and Atlas. We have more free GIS software available and there is plenty of free data and shapefiles that will work with these programs.

Mike

Google Public Data Explorer: Embed Animated Maps and Charts in Your Website, Share Your Geospatial Data

Google has just come up with a new tool that helps further the creation and sharing of open source geodata with their Public Data Explorer. Here is some information from their website and one of the animated maps that I have embedded in this page. There is also a link to more embedded maps. Note that each embedded map is animated so that changes over time can be viewed and that each map has a link to more data and visualizations on the Google website.

Google Public Data Explorer: Data visualizations for a changing world

The Google Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate. As the charts and maps animate over time, the changes in the world become easier to understand. You don't have to be a data expert to navigate between different views, make your own comparisons, and share your findings.

Students, journalists, policy makers and everyone else can play with the tool to create visualizations of public data, link to them, or embed them in their own webpages. Embedded charts and links can update automatically so you're always sharing the latest available data. Here's an example of an embedded visualization:

The above embedded map: Unemployment in the U.S.

Monthly estimates of employment and unemployment for all States, metropolitan areas, counties and cities. National employment and unemployment of the population classified by age, sex, race, and other characteristics. This dataset was prepared by Google based on data downloaded from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Data from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics - Last updated: March 7, 2010.

Learn more about Google's Public Data Explorer and access animated maps.

Free GIS and Graphics Software - NCAR, NRDB, OGR, OpenDMTP, OpenLayers

Free GIS Software Programs Part 7

NCAR Graphics Software is comprised of a library containing Fortran/C utilities for drawing contours, maps, vectors, streamlines, weather maps, surfaces, histograms, X/Y plots, annotations, an ANSI/ISO standard version of GKS, a math library containing a collection of 1,2,3-D interpolators and approximators, applications for displaying, editing, and manipulating graphical output, map databases, many FORTRAN and C examples.

NRDB (Natural Resources Database) is a free database and mapping application for developing and distributing environmental databases. Its aim is to provide people in developing countries with a powerful yet simple tool to assist in the managing of their own resources.

OGR Simple Features Library is a C++ open source library (and commandline tools) providing read (and sometimes write) access to a variety of vector file formats including ESRI Shapefiles, and Mapinfo mid/mif and TAB formats.

OpenDMTP, is a protocol and framework that allows bi-directional data communications between servers and devices (clients) over the Internet and similar networks. OpenDMTP is particularly geared towards Location-based information (LBS) such as GPS, as well as temperature and other data collected in remote-monitoring devices.

OpenGTS - The "Open GPS Tracking System" is the first available open source project designed specifically to provide web-based GPS tracking services for a "fleet" of vehicles.

OpenLayers is a pure JavaScript library for displaying map data in most modern web browsers, with no server-side dependencies. OpenLayers implements a (still-developing) JavaScript API for building rich web-based geographic applications, similar to the Google Maps and MSN Virtual Earth APIs, with one important difference -- OpenLayers is Free Software, developed for and by the Open Source software community.

Hope these prove useful. If you are new to GIS, check out the Learn2Map GIS Tutorial and Atlas. We have more free GIS software available and there is plenty of free data and shapefiles that will work with these programs.

Mike

Free GIS - MapEdit, MapGuide, MapIt, MapServer, Mapstraction, MapWindow

Free & Open Source GIS Software Part 6

MapEdit, a low cost solution (free to educational and non-profit organizations) for making image maps come alive. Simple image maps and html still outshine many mapservers.

MapGuide Open Source is a web-based platform that enables users to quickly develop and deploy web mapping applications and geospatial web services. MapGuide features an interactive viewer that includes support for feature selection, property inspection, map tips, and operations such as buffer, select within, and measure.

MapIt! is a serverside web-application for rastermaps. Navigation and points of interests are easily configured.

MapServer is an open source development environment for building spatially-enabled web mapping applications and services. It is fast, flexible, reliable and can be integratated into just about any GIS environment.

MapServer Workbench is a set of cooperative tools for development of MapServer web mapping applications. The tools are written in Tcl/Tk, and use the Mapscript/Tcl interface.

Mapstraction is a library that provides a common API for various javascript mapping APIs to enable switching from one to another as smoothly as possible. Developers can code their applications once, and then easily switch mapping provider based on project needs, terms and conditions, and new functionality.

MapWindow - Uses most standard GIS data formats including shapefiles (.shp) and ASCII grid files (.asc). Data in these formats can be downloaded from many Internet sites including GIS Data Depot, USEPA, USGS and many others. MapWindow can also handle georeferenced GIF, and BMP image files.

Regards,

Mike