pEven if you already know, you'll likely appreciate Ryan Tomayko's explanation of the a href=http://tomayko.com/writings/things-caches-do class=referencethings caches do/a. Show it to your boss, your marketing people, your GIO. After a href=http://www.bullyingawarenessweek.org/ class=referenceBullying Awareness Week/a ends, I'm going to come back and write about GIS services in this context./p

Kosmo es otra de las aplicaciones SIG de escritorio relativamente populares, basada en OpenJUMP aunque con bastantes modificaciones. La Junta de Extremadura utiliza indistintamente gvSIG y Kosmo, así que nos han encargado que implementemos también SEXTANTE en Kosmo, de forma que puedan disfrutar de las capacidades de análisis del programa en ambos SIG.br /br /Por el momento, la parte vectorial está resuelta, ya que es muy similar a la de OpenJUMP y existían bindings que se han podido aprovechar bastante. Ahora falta la conexión con la parte raster y algunas piezas genéricas, y esto lo iremos haciendo poco a poco a lo largo de las próximas semanas.br /br /El encargado de desarrollar este enlace entre Kosmo y SEXTANTE no soy yo, sino que por primera vez en la historia de SEXTANTE tenemos un programador más. El nuevo miembro del equipo SEXTANTE, que esperemos que pueda seguir trabajando con nosotros durante mucho tiempo (inicialmente van a ser 3 meses), es Nacho Varela, perteneciente al a href=http://cartolab.udc.es/index.htmlCartolab de la Universidad de A Coruña/a. Nacho estuvo por aquí en aquel curso de programación de SEXTANTE que organizamos hace algún tiempo, así que esto de SEXTANTE no le resulta desconocido.br /br /Ademas de esto, tiene también a href=http://libresig.blogspot.com/su propio blog sobre SIG/a, y seguro que irá comentando las novedades de su trabajo con SEXTANTE, así que no lo perdáis de vista porque la cosa promete ;-)br /br /Si hay suerte y el trabajo se da bien, se publicará un paquete de instalación de SEXTANTE para Kosmo antes de fin de año, probablemente cuando lancemos la nueva versión (0.15). Ésta irá acompañada de novedades como la ayuda en inglés o algunos algoritmos nuevos, y corregirá todos los errores que se han detectado en la primera versión de la librería.

div class=snap_previewbr /pI have removed the menu items and replaced them with these relatively large buttons. What we can see here is a WMS service (orthophoto, JPG) plus another WMS server (Cadastre, blue lines and numbers, PNG) plus a shapefile (red lines):/p pa href=http://gvsigmobileonopenmoko.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/2wms_plus_shp.pngimg src=http://gvsigmobileonopenmoko.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/2wms_plus_shp.png?w=480amp;h=640 title=2wms_plus_shp height=640 width=480 alt=2wms_plus_shp class=aligncenter size-full wp-image-83 //a/p p‘MAP’ is the name of the active tool bar. Pressing on the toolbar’s name causes the toolbar to be replaced by the following toolbar./p       a href=http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/gvsigmobileonopenmoko.wordpress.com/82/ rel=nofollowimg src=http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/gvsigmobileonopenmoko.wordpress.com/82/ alt= border=0 //a a href=http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/gvsigmobileonopenmoko.wordpress.com/82/ rel=nofollowimg src=http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/gvsigmobileonopenmoko.wordpress.com/82/ alt= border=0 //a a href=http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/gvsigmobileonopenmoko.wordpress.com/82/ rel=nofollowimg src=http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/gvsigmobileonopenmoko.wordpress.com/82/ alt= border=0 //a a href=http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/gvsigmobileonopenmoko.wordpress.com/82/ rel=nofollowimg src=http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/gvsigmobileonopenmoko.wordpress.com/82/ alt= border=0 //a a href=http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/gvsigmobileonopenmoko.wordpress.com/82/ rel=nofollowimg src=http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/gvsigmobileonopenmoko.wordpress.com/82/ alt= border=0 //a img src=http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=gvsigmobileonopenmoko.wordpress.comamp;blog=4115232amp;post=82amp;subd=gvsigmobileonopenmokoamp;ref=amp;feed=1 alt= border=0 //div

pimg src=http://highearthorbit.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/gc-logo.png alt=gc_logo.png height=70 style=float: right; padding-top: 5px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 5px; width=70 / Excited about the GeoWeb? Want to help build the next generation social mapping tools and work on some really awesome technology?/p pThe a href=http://www.geocommons.com/ title=GeoCommons - Visual Analytics through MapsGeoCommons/a team is expanding and we’re looking for some cutting-edge developers and designers to join us. We’re using a wide range of technologies to build an easy-to-use and incredibly powerful a href=http://finder.geocommons.com/ title=GeoCommons Finder!geodata sharing/a, a href=http://maker.geocommons.com/ title=GeoCommons Maker!visualization/a, and a href=http://www.geocommons.com/ title=GeoCommons - Visual Analytics through Mapscollaboration platform/a that is being used in organizations from the government, to enterprise, to international NGO’s, to local communities and groups./p pimg src=http://highearthorbit.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/gustav-maker-storm-surge.jpg alt=gustav_maker_storm_surge.jpg height=161 style=float: right; padding-top: 5px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 5px; width=250 /With GeoCommons, we’re integrating Neogeography with GIS to provide powerful tools to users: if you can make it fun on the web where users aren’t required to stay, then customers will love you. And by integrating with other tools that each user is comfortable with, whether it is Excel, Notepad, GoogleEarth, or ArcGIS Desktop and QGIS; we help bring GeoCommons to them rather than making them come to GeoCommons. We’re also pushing the next generation of GeoWeb standards: KML, GeoRSS, GeoJSON, and making them more powerful and supported. These are ideas we started with a href=http://mapufacture.com/ title=Mapufacture - helping build the geospatial webMapufacture/a and are quickly integrating with a href=http://finder.geocommons.com title=GeoCommons Finder!Finder!/a, a href=http://maker.geocommons.com title=GeoCommons Maker!Maker!/a and the rest of the GeoCommons suite./p pAs a part of our team, you would investigate large-scale data sharing and linking, geospatial and data visualization mechanisms and tool development, web native API integration and community building. We’re working with many other groups in the open-source as well as GIS communities to help integrate data and tools to broadly disseminate all this quality data that has otherwise been inaccessible and make it easy to visualize and use in decision-making./p pWe’re looking for developers with real programming chops - you should be comfortable considering Mongrel and Nginx versus Passenger, know when to use unobtrusive Javascript or call ActionScript Flash hooks, have played with ActiveMQ and Stomp, beanstalkd, Starling or other queueing systems, read technology news and blogs and preferably have a site yourself where you share your experiences and code with the world. We’re looking for community members and developers that like working in teams, attending programming groups, and are comfortable sharing their ideas. We encourage you to have hobbies and side projects - we’ve built quite a few ‘lab’ tools ourselves such as context-free music and touchscreen whiteboards. And you don’t stronghave/strong to be an Apple user, embut it helps/em./p h3Welcome to Washington, DC/h3 pimg src=http://highearthorbit.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/airforcememorial.jpg alt=Air Force Memorial height=250 style=float: right; padding-top: 5px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 5px; width=166 /a href=http://www.fortiusone.com/ title=FortiusOne - Next Generation MappingFortiusOne/a is located in Arlington, VA - directly above the Courthouse Metro on the Orange line into DC, and a short walk into the district directly. The a href=http://openstreetmap.org/?lat=38.8885amp;lon=-77.0512amp;zoom=12amp;layers=B000FTF title=OpenStreetMapDC area/a is on an incredible spike of growing technology community. Where else can you live in a “metro area” that encompasses at least 3 states, all of which are metro accessible? The area is also renowned for it’s a href=http://www.outsideindc.com/bikes title=DC Bikesbike accessibility/a. The recent election has cast a spotlight on the future of technology in the government with President-Elect Obama’s a href=http://change.gov/ title=Change.govChange.gov/a initiative. The upcoming inauguration is sure to be an incredibly historic event and you could be here to help map it./p pAs for the community, there are at least three a href=http://novarug.org/ title=NovaRUGRuby/a-a href=http://groups.google.com/group/potomac-ruby-hackers title=Potomac Ruby Hackers | Google Groupsspecific/a a href=http://groups.google.com/group/DCRUG title=Washington DC Ruby on Rails Users Group DCRUG | Google Groupsgroups/a, a a href=http://www.novalang.org/ title=Nova LanguagesNOVALang/a where learning new programming languages is the prime objective, a href=http://refresh-dc.org/ title=Refresh DC | The best and brightest new media professionals in the DC metro areaRefreshDC/a, TwinTech, and one of the most a href=http://data.octo.dc.gov/ title=Data Catalogopen governments/a to geodata standards and a href=http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/ title=Apps for Democracy - An Innovation Contest by iStrategyLabs for the DC Government and Beyondsharing/a. We’re also quite big fans of the local beer selection and hard to beat the food variety./p h3Let us know/h3 pSo if this sounds exciting to you, and you’re interested in joining the team - please a href=mailto:careers@fortiusone.comlet us know!/a You can also a href=http://www.fortiusone.com/careers/?page_id=24 title=FortiusOne Careers: Application/Systems Engineercheck out the formal listing/a./p p/p img width=1 height=1 src=http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/highearthorbit/GSef/~4/457615890 /

ShapeLib is a C library for development of applications to read/write ESRI ShapeFiles. It’s used by many FOSS-GIS projects and at its website you can also find bindings for Perl, Python, Ruby, Delphi, Tcl, .NET and PHP. ShapeLib package also include some nice tools for Shapefile handling. These tools are simple and powerfull command line [...]

Take the following situation: a large shapefile. E.g.: municipalities for a given country or, in my case, a collection of forestry stands grouped by projects - all stands for a given region the need of spliting this shapefile per a given column ( e.g.: state, forest project ID) What to do? ArcMap-gt;Load large shapefile-gt;Set Defintion Query-gt;Export to new [...]

Before Microsoft SQL Server 2005 comes up, users of this database wanting to handle spatial data had basically 3 options: ESRI ArcSDE - which means purchasing SDE licenses and probably some other ESRI product for data maintenance TerraLib - an OpenSource option including TerraView as default user interface. But, just like ArcSDE, TerraLib has its own data [...]

Seattle, Washington/U.S.A., 2007-09-19 [pt-BR] The Open Source Geospatial Foundation proudly announced that version 5.0 of MapServer web mapping platform is available for download from the project website. MapServer 5.0 is the first major release since version 4.0 in July of 2003. While there have been regular releases every 6 months or so this is the first [...]

pYesterday, I received in the mail my grandfather's cloth escape maps of France, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany. He flew a Piper Cub for the US Army, mainly shuttling brass between England and France. Never used, the maps went from a pocket in his jacket to an envelope in a foot locker; they're in great condition./p a href=http://flickr.com/photos/27621672@N04/3041406288/in/set-72157609326070849 class=reference image-referenceimg src=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3185/3041406288_2d4eaf05bd_d.jpg alt=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3185/3041406288_2d4eaf05bd_d.jpg style=width: 500px; height: 494px; class=figure //a pAbove is a 1:2,000,000 scale map entitled Zones of France, second edition, and dated MAR 44. Silk or rayon. I know little about the origins of this one./p a href=http://flickr.com/photos/27621672@N04/3040723569/ class=reference image-referenceimg src=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3042/3040723569_f403e6e398_d.jpg alt=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3042/3040723569_f403e6e398_d.jpg style=width: 500px; height: 375px; class=figure //a pIt features 4 hand-drawn placemarks South of Cherbourg. Positions of forces? Airfields supplied with beer?/p a href=http://flickr.com/photos/27621672@N04/3039466501/in/set-72157609326070849 class=reference image-referenceimg src=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3292/3039466501_5c36eab3f0_d.jpg alt=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3292/3039466501_5c36eab3f0_d.jpg style=width: 500px; height: 431px; class=figure //a pI've quickly found a href=http://www.escape-maps.com/history_of_wwii_british_cloth_escape_maps.htm#F.___The_43_Series class=referencemuch/a a href=http://www.escape-maps.com/map_list_wwii_uk_43_series.htm class=referencemore/a a href=http://www.escape-maps.com/wwii_uk_43c_43d.htm class=referenceinformation/a about the 1:1,000,000 scale 43 Series map above. It is most likely rayon, as silk was then in short supply. Map C on one side, D on the reverse./p pI'll be having these framed soon./p

Dans le cadre de son Agenda 21, Le Grand Lyon a élaboré un Plan environnement sonore pour la réduction des nuisances sonores (Plan de Protection du Bruit): a href=http://bruit.grandlyon.com/http://bruit.grandlyon.com//a

From Paul.  Here’s my sentence: “This comes down to how SOA is defined”. Thomas Erl, Service-Oriented Architecture: Concepts, Technology, and Design. 2005 This phrase is part of a section which discusses what SOA is (and isn’t). Rules of this meme: Grab the nearest book. Open it to page 56. Find the fifth sentence. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along [...]

It's quite obvious to say that the web users like to have fast applications. This is also true in the web mapping area. We present in the a href=https://trac.mapfish.org/trac/mapfish/wiki/HowToOptimizeMapFish HowTo Optimize/a some tips regarding performance in MapFish. I'd like to highlight some of these tips: br /- In OpenLayers, the buffer is per default 2. This means that 2 tiles are downloaded around the viewport. If you reduce this setting, then less tiles will be downloaded.br /- Of course, use a href=http://tilecache.org/tilecache/a to cache the tiles on the server side. We have just commited a nice function that is able to merge tiles on the server sides (if you have several layers). In this case, the browser has not to do the merge.br /- With Web 2.0, a lot of functions are developped in Javascript. This code has to be transferred to the browser. You can activate the a href=http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_deflate.htmlmod_deflate module/a in Apache to compress the web server output.br /- And of course, the performance of you mapping server (MapServer or GeoServer) can be optimized, for example by using persistent database connection or by avoiding complex styling. But I let you google that ;-)

div class=admonition-update-2008-11-19 admonition p class=first admonition-titlestrongUpdate/strong (2008-11-19)/p pemStill/em having problems with 1.0.10 + Ubuntu (Debian) libgeos-c1 2.2.3-*, but at least I understand what's a href=http://trac.gispython.org/lab/ticket/178 class=referencebroken/a and have a 1.0.11 a href=http://trac.gispython.org/lab/attachment/ticket/178/Shapely-1.0.11.tar.gz class=referencerelease candidate/a. You can try it like so:/p pre class=last literal-block $ easy_install http://trac.gispython.org/lab/attachment/ticket/178/Shapely-1.0.11.tar.gz?format=raw /pre /div pWell, let's try that again: a href=http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Shapely/1.0.10 class=referencehttp://pypi.python.org/pypi/Shapely/1.0.10/a. Somewhere along the way I became too lax about testing compatibility with GEOS 2.2.3, and it was broken in the 1.0.8 release. I've mentioned before how handily zc.buildout makes isolated repeatable environments, and am now using a href=http://trac.gispython.org/lab/browser/buildout/shapely.buildout/trunk class=referencethis one/a with GEOS 2.2.3./p pUpload of Windows installers to PyPI seems to be broken at the moment. The 1.0.8 installer bundles GEOS 3.0 and remains free of the recent problem: a href=http://pypi.python.org/packages/2.5/S/Shapely/Shapely-1.0.8.win32.exe class=referencehttp://pypi.python.org/packages/2.5/S/Shapely/Shapely-1.0.8.win32.exe/a./p

pIn the November issue of the GeoConnexion magazine, (”Geo: International”), an article I wrote was published in OSGeo’s Monthly Column, “Open Sources”. The article talks a bit about the history of OpenLayers, and how it came to be developed the way it did:/p blockquotepOpenLayers was the first mapping framework to make an explicit statement that it was not an application at all, but a toolkit for building mapping applications. This different approach resulted in a somewhat long curve to acceptance. In its infancy, the project was used only by developers: people who had a strong knowledge of what they wanted to do, and needed to have more control over their tools in order to do it. This early audience helped to build a rapid development environment where many of the users of the code were also able to contribute fixes and improvements based on their needs. This developer-friendly environment may be one of the key differences that has allowed OpenLayers development to continue to grow./p/blockquote pMore is included in the full article, available as a a href=http://www.geoconnexion.com/uploads/opensource_15_intv7i10.pdfPDF from the GeoConnexion website/a. /p

I have had a couple of positive experiences with a href=http://mapguide.osgeo.org/MapGuide /a over the last year. I took part in a training course in in February ata href=http://www.sejong.ac.kr/ Sejong University/a and MapGuide was well represented in recent series of GITA workshops.br / br / The good news - it is time (for me at least) to take MapGuide seriously.br / br / Is it the source code? Not really - I expect that of an open source project. I find the PHP code examples easy to follow; and the applications I have seen built up around this base seem to be clear and straight forward. A few things came across as difficult: I listened to tails of how hard it was to change selection color from blue to anything else (apparently it was hard coded).  More troubling was a constant theme of difficulty building (both in February and on the recent GITA workshops). Making a project easy to build is always a priority for me - if a developers is willing to build the code they are *exactly* who I need to produce and submit patches to my project. So the source code could use some work.br / br / Is it the license? Well I always admire an LGPL project - generally less hassle for me as a consultant to find work with. But I am willing to work with anything so it is not the license.br / br / Is it the product? The demo provided during the GITA workshop was well suited to the audience and really illustrated a point I often try to make - namely that open source projects need to be fast to try out and see results. If you are spending tens of thousands of dollars on a product chances are you going to try and use it for a couple of days; and perhaps read the documentation. An open source project operates under no such illusions - installation needs to be quick; and the applications as straightforward as possible. So I am afraid the product is what I have expected (it actually reminds me a lot of the Deegree experience).br / br / What changed this time around for me was this ... the people.br / br / Or more to the point one person; a href=http://zacster.blogspot.com/Zac Spitzer/a was an real live developer overjoyed to get things done; and enthusiastic as all get out. He had the usual tails of grabbing patches from trunk and applying them to a system just in time to make delivery; all the kinds of things that we forget are amazing in the open source community.br / br / An advocate such as Zac was exactly what was missing from my previous experiences with Map Guide.br / br / Zac it was nice to meet you; I look forward to seeing what trouble we can cause in the future.

From a href=http://sgillies.net/blog/833/nearest-book/Sean Gillies/a. My excerpt:blockquoteAutomobiles were getting larger as the station wagon and van yielded to the supremacy of the sport utility vehicle (SUV), an expeditionary car based on a light trick chassis and therefore exempt from legislated fuel efficiency standards./blockquoteThe rules are: grab the nearest book; turn to page 56; find the fifth sentence; post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.br /don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.br /br /I'm sitting next to my bookshelf, so the closest in this case was an artifact of what was where in shelving order: The Long Emergency, by James Howard Kunstler. Ground zero of Kunstler reading is The Geography of Nowhere, which I would heartily recommend to anyone and everyone – he is still living off the particular style he honed in Nowhere. For example, sentence number two on my page 56:blockquoteMeanwhile, South Korea, Malaysai, Thailand, Singapore, and especially China were becoming the world's manufacturing workshops as America outsourced heavy industry and focused its energies on hypertrophic suburban land development and the consumer infrastructure that went with it – malls, so-called power centers, and the vast highway strips with their fried food shacks, tanning huts, and muffler shops./blockquoteKunstler translates into visceral language his thesis that the automobile (whether it runs on gas, vegetable oil, electricity or magic) has hopelessly degraded the public realm of most of North America, creating a cartoon architecture and a land-use and life-style pattern utterly hostile to normal human relationships.br /

pShapely a href=http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Shapely/1.0.9 class=reference1.0.9/a works with a MacPorts libgeos. No need to upgrade otherwise./p

A recent post on a href=http://blog.cleverelephant.ca/2008/11/what-is-osgeo-becoming.htmlclever elephant/a has touched on a topic near and dear to my heart - the value (or lack there of) of OSGeo as a brand. This discussion; and the importance of it, was one of my initial passions with the idea of OSGeo (and one aspect that interested the GeoTools community in the process).br /br /I find that the current web site is very much focused around the foundation itself and the member projects. I would like to see a different approach namly to focus on the products and the abilities of the open source geospatial software.br /br /I started just such a discussion with the web committee in 2007 - before the prospect of getting GeoTools through graduation sucked up all my time and energy. My understanding is the marketing committee currently has the mandate in this area.br /br /Here is the a href=http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/WebCom_OSGeo_Site_FocusWebCom OSGeo Site Focus/a wiki page where I gathered up my ideas last time.  The idea was to profile example users - where each user has an answer they are looking for:ulliGovernment: Dave is checking out OSGeo after hearing good things during a recent visit by members of GeoConnections Canada. He is impressed with the public / private partnership represented by this government policy and wants some more information on how it is done.br //liliGovernment: Mary is a volunteer from a small non governmental organization wanting to do local planning/liliGovernment: Josh works for a municipal government, and is highly constrained by both staff time and budget. He has looked at open source geospatial before, but was unable to dedicate the time to figure out how the pieces fit together./liliEducation: Sebastien is a graduate student starting research into his thesis and wants a platform to base his work on./liliEducation: Sarah is an undergraduate looking to have her homework done/liliUsers: Peter is into Geocaching. He wants to have tools to help with his hobby. Ultimately he wants to share these tools with his friends./liliUsers: George is an ESRI Professional who has been told by his manager to look into what is going on./liliUsers: Lui is GIS Professional looking for cheap way to try out an open standard./liliDevelopers: Chris is established developer will be annoyed at any change that slows him down./liliDevelopers: Adrian is starting out wants to know what is here and how/if it works. Really wants to get working but cannot make sense of the documentation spread across 5 standards, three projects and apparently communicated via Zen/li/ulThat is probably enough direction for a reorganization ..the really hard part here is to motivate the production of content for the website - in the past I had two hopes for content production:br /ullidivConsulting Organizations (similar to Refractions, Camp2Camp etc...) that wish to demonstrate expertise in a particular area. We can ask such organizations to submit white papers; case studies, tutorials and so on. However to preserve the OSGeo Brand we really need to make sure the wordbr //div/li/ululliIncubation Committee really needs to communicate what information is expected from projects as they join up. For projects that are already out the gate we will need to catch up with their PSC representative and beg for source material./li/ulI am less hopeful now - seeing the recent a href=http://blog.geoserver.org/2008/10/03/geoserver-rebranded/GeoServer branding exercise/a I am going to have to add:br /ulliGraphic Designer - we probable need to hire someone. Or if the marketing committee can scare up a passionate volunteer/li/uldiv style=margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;In doing the research for the wiki proposal mentioned above I went through several websites; a href=http://apache.org/apache.org/a , a href=http://www.eclipse.org/eclipse.org/a and the a href=http://www.opengeospatial.org/OGC/a site. There was a contrast in approaches; apache reduced their branding to single logo stamped on each web site; eclipse.org and the OGC site were much more user aware providing common navigation; background papers and such like to help people make informed decisions and not lose their way./divdiv style=margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;br //divdiv style=margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;/divdiv style=margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;The idea of OSGeo as a brand has also come up with respect to sponsorship and project participation. I have gone over the same three websites with a prospective sponsor - with the idea of seeing what they would get for their money with each a approach./divdiv style=margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;/divdiv style=margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;br //divdiv style=margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;Several interesting observations were made - on our website currently sponsors are safely sheltered on a href=http://www.osgeo.org/content/sponsorship/sponsors.htmlsmall web page/a. This approach can be contrasted with the OGC site where a rolling banner shows sponsor logos. /divdiv style=margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;/divdiv style=margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;br //divdiv style=margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;A second difficulty was that it was hard for a sponsor to communicate their expertise in a given area or with a given product. The pages for each product had no room for sponsor logos for example. In this the eclipse.org site shares our bias - on eclipse.org the only way to figure things out are to look at who members of the steering committee work for. /divdiv style=margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;/divdiv style=margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;/div

I picked up Malcolm Gladwell's a href=http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/The Tipping Point/a for a plane ride last month, and it was a fun read. About 25% of it I had read before, as he gets double duty out of much of his writing by serializing bits of it into the New Yorker.br /br /Anyways, he has a new one coming out, a href=http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/nov/15/malcolm-gladwell-outliers-extractOutliers/a, a study of exceptional people, and one of the theses is:blockquoteThis idea - that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice - surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours./blockquoteWhich got me thinking – what skill did I hone enough before the age of 20 to become world class? I did a fair amount of music, but not anything close to 10,000 hours. Then I remembered.br /br /I have all the makings of a world class reader. So, if you want a book read, send it along, I've got the mad chops to get it read for you.br /

Don't miss a href=http://erilem.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/featureserver-versus-mapfish-server/Eric's clear explanation/a related to the differences between the FeatureServer and the MapFish Server.