All the emerging standards for simple markup and syndication of location are Earth-centric (and sometimes just US/North American-centric). Granted, most people are probably only interested in locations that they can actually go to anytime soon.

However, with the increasing number of interplanetary rovers, observations of moons, and perhaps future excursions, it is still useful to define how to properly handle these other reference frames. Luna and Mars are two suggested Microformats that are starting the discussion on how one might mark locations on the two bodies. Additionally, the OGC is working now on determining standards for scientists and developers to publish and share data sources of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, ‘oh my’.

And why does the Earth have to be the only one with cool, “slippy maps”. I quickly put together a map of Mars. It uses the powerful OpenLayers Javascript mapping library to display the tiles from a NASA WMS server.

To produce the locations for the map, I put up a Space Blog, using WordPress and a slightly modified GeoPress to publish Mars lander locations and landing dates. I altered the published Microformats produced by GeoPress to make the class “geo mars” as a suggested way to markup Mars coordinates. The published GeoRSS feeds from the Space Blog then produce the locations and layers automatically on the OpenLayers Mars Map.

To Do: CRS and You

So this is all very neat, and in the end, really easy to setup. However, this is just a demonstration and in no way should be construed as “the way to do it”. Specifically, there are these questions left unanswered:

1. How to define the Microformat and GeoRSS for non-Earth (and non-WGS84) reference frames
2. How to define the Microformats and GeoRSS/Geonames location for non-Earth locations (like “Ares Vallis”)
3. More sources for interplanetary map servers
4. Ways to syndicate, and subscribe to, specific bodies
5. Support for publishing, consuming, and drawing lines - in order to plot out mission profiles
6. Support for publishing, consuming, and drawing areas - in order to plot out mission profiles, landing sites, and expected areas of “mission failures”

I’m sure there are more issues, so please speak up. You know who you space geeks are.

When Flickr added built-in mapping of photos, many rejoiced. However, it can be tedious to go through hundreds/thousands of photos and dropping them on a map. The User Interface for the Flickr Maps is really great - however, with this many photos, it would just take forever.

In addition, your photos are only geotagged in Flickr - and therefore not easily usable outside the service. The better way to geotag your photos is to actually write the Geo data to the EXIF of the photo. Then the metadata is carried around with the photo itself (until you pass it through some mean, metadata chomping machine like Photoshop).

The way I geotag my photos is to first get the coordinates of photos:

1. Carry around a GPS and store the tracks as GPX files - then you can mesh the GPS with the photos using WWMX (Windows), GPSPhotoLinker (Mac), or various scripts in Linux (fend for yourself, but check the geowankers mail archive)
2. Mark GPS Waypoints - or lookup addresses of locations and use MultiMap to get the latitude/longitude of these points
3. Guess

After I’ve either meshed up my coordinates, or have a list of locations, I fire up iView Media Pro, or iPhoto, and use my Applescript scripts in addition to ExifTool to actually write the GPS metadata. Because photo editing applications (like the aforementioned Photoshop) are usually very mean and don’t restore geo-metadata on edit and save, I suggest you edit all your photos first, and apply the geo Exif as the last step before uploading.

Now that you’re going to upload your photos, you first need to make sure Flickr uses these geotags for actual mapping. Enable Flickr to read your Geo EXIF tags. If you already have uploaded photos with geo-coordinates in the Exif data, Flickr will add these to the map (after a short wait - queueing and all).

You can my Flickr Photo Map, and you should go take some photographs! (especially for Pentax Day)

Dan Karran has been working on making a Geospatial Content Management System (GeoCMS) using Drupal and using the existing location modules which adds location information to any node. Additionally, he’s written GeoRSS and KML modules, that allow for consuming and publishing these geospatial feeds. In Drupal, everything is a node. So when consuming feeds, new nodes can be created for locations that are consumed. Then information, links to other nodes, and various other metadata can be associated to this node, and it is then aggregated back out for other services to consume, display, and reaggregate.

This work is a perfect example of the point of my talk at FOSS4G, Enabling Users to Produce Personalized Geodata. It’s more important for developers to add geographic capabilities to existing, and widely used tools than to make geo-specific tools and expect users to come and use them. People are already using Drupal for their content, and now they can easily add location data and share it with their users and consume feeds.

Check out his GeoRSS and KML Drupal announcement here.

O’Reilly Radar was the first to announce the release of GeoPress, a WordPress blog engine plugin that allows you to easily add location to blog posts, embed dynamic maps, and add GeoRSS encoding to your RSS output.

There have been other geo plugins before. However, they usually required you to make your own modifications to your template and provided a fairly arcane interface. The goal of GeoPress was to make adding location as simple as possible. Once you install GeoPress (copy and unzip to a wp-content/plugins/geopress directory on your WordPress site), and activate it (on the plugins panel), your configuration is done. Then go to write a blog post and you’ll see a new area with a map and boxes underneath the post.

You can enter an address, or a city, or just a country, or even click on the map to set the location. You can then add a name which will be saved and can later be used for quick reuse. If you want to insert a map into your post, just type INSERT_.MAP somewhere in your post. You can also use INSERT_.ADDRESS and INSERT_.COORDS, which will insert the address and coordinates, in appropriate adr and geo Microformats. Since GeoPress uses Mapstraction, you can switch between displaying Yahoo, Google, or Microsoft maps with just a quick select in your settings.

There are also some PHP functions for modifying your template to embed maps or post locations. Using geopress_map() you can embed a map of all your locations. the_address() can be used in your post metadata to always automatically output something like “this post was written by Bob from Waikiki, Hawaii”.

Lastly, the part that will be most useful in the future, is that the locations your write about will be embedded as GeoRSS in your RSS feeds. Aggregators like Mapufacture or FoFRedux will now be able to aggregate your geographic data and allow others to easily find interesting places, and build mashups.

Please let me know what you think!

Really it’s day 3 of the Free and Open Source Software for Geoinformatics, but today is the first day of presentations. The previous days were workshops and meetings.

GeoBliki

This morning, Pat Cappelaere demonstrated GeoBliki, an effort to aggregate and publish the EO-1 (Earth Orbserver) satellite imagery and sensor data using GeoRSS, Wiki pages, a Blog, Chat notifications, and a bunch of other cool tools. What is great is seeing all of this valuable, informative data coming from NASA satellites being easily accessible and disseminating to interested researchers and the public.

The GeoBliki publication system is a great use of a sensor web to publish location information connected to sensor data.

Abstract & Materials: EO1 GeoBliki - OGC Sensor Web Enabled Data Node

MapChat

The next presentation was by Michael Leahy who is working at the University of Waterloo to develop MapChat. MapChat is an online, realtime chat tool for discussing maps, and geographic materials. Users can share map views, highlight and comment areas, and directly work through discussions and issues by working with the actual map data.

Abstract & Materials: Implementation of Synchronous, Spatially-Referenced Discussions Between Multiple Users with Open-Source Web GIS and Database Tools

Geospatial Server Appliance

Allan Doyle, from MIT and fellow GeoRSS blogger, presented some excellent work on creating a Mac-mini computer preloaded with Geospatial tools and data that can be given to NGO’s and groups to quickly get up and running without being Geo-experts. By prepackaging the software, and various sets of scripts, users can just plug in the ‘appliance’ into power and their network and get instant access to maps, geospatial wikis, and analysis tools.

KyngChaos is a full set of ported Geo-tools that one can use to quickly get up and running with geo on a Mac/Unix machine.

Abstract & Materials: How to fit 5 Kilos of Software into a 1.3 Kilo Box

GRASS LEED

Right now, I’m learning about how GRASS can be used in Sustainable development and analysis, specifically when applied to LEED certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). Helena Mitasova is proposing means to get Open-Source Geospatial tools adopted into the upcoming LEED-ND for modeling and verification of sites meeting certificate requirements.

GRASS tools support Environmental Preservation, Resource Efficiency such as solar radiation modeling and photovoltaic potential of locations. Imagine using something like Univ. of Waterloo’s MapChat to gather environmentalists, planners, administrators, and possibly the public to discuss and present various environmental anayses.

Unfortunately, it appears that geospatial tools, especially open-source tools, are not properly introduced and taught to University students who could really use these tools to do effective research and analysis.

Abstract & Materials: GRASS4LEED: Building geospatial support for Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design

More updates soon…