When Is a GeoPortal Not a GeoPortal?

When it’s really a desktop application.

Over the past few weeks, I have been reading with conflicted agreement the posts of Brian Timoney and Bill Morris about the nature of geo-portals and what they should or should not be and do. I say that I am in conflicted agreement not because I take any issue with anything they have said. Their posts represent what should be considered best practices in terms of building web mapping applications. In Brian’s posts, the counter-examples he highlights represent some of the worst practices to be avoided.

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Comment Period Open for GeoPackage Specification Draft

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has published a draft GeoPackage specification for comment. The GeoPackage specification attempts to create a non-proprietary means for packaging and exchanging all geospatial data in all its forms (vector, raster, and tiles). A couple of things that jump out at me:

  • It calls out SQLite as the reference implementation of a GeoPackage container
  • It calls out SpatiaLite 4 as the reference implementation of a vector feature store
  • It does not call out a reference implementation for rasters or tiles
  • It does not mention exchange of cartography.

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Center for Spatial Law and Policy Announces Geospatial Data Licensing Workshop

Kevin Pomfret announced this morning that the Center for Spatial Law and Policy will be hosting a workshop on geospatial data licensing. Centre for Spatial Law and Policy to host a Geospatial Data Licensing Workshop http://t.co/rYFXysrK — Kevin Pomfret (@kpomfret) December 27, 2012 Data licensing has always been an important issue but seems to be … Read more

Wilson Center to Discuss FCC National Broadband Map

One of the most compelling recent success stories for open-source geospatial tools in the Federal Government has been the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) National Broadband Map initiative. It has been a very visible example of the stability, scalability, flexibility, and power of open-source geospatial tools. The Woodrow Wilson Center will be hosting a case study … Read more