Google trumps Sourceforge by releasing Google Hosting.

It’s Open-Source project hosting, with what seems like very advanced issue tracking. Fast, easy to understand, simple.

There are already some projects up, like Rails App Installer and Biometric API for Linux.

I assume all/many of the Google Summer of Code projects will end up hosted here. Also, I could see Google providing something like a Krugle source-code search for finding specific files and code snippets. Then why not go ahead and toss in a Code Snippets where anyone could highlight/mark source code as useful, and pulled out for others to then see these snippets easily.

Google Hosting FAQ

Nomad Labs (geospatial blog) started a new hosting service particularly targeting to geospatial websites. Their GeoHosting has installed and configured numerous GIS services and applications ready for developers to tie into for their spatial applications.

This is a great idea, and also an example of how a company can build a business around open-source technology. Nomad Labs has done all the work of installing, configuring, and maintaining the large, and often cryptic, set of services for a developer to just begin working on their specific application, rather than having to spend half of their time just being a system administrator.

The GeoHosting is limited to Australia only currently, but I could see this being expanded to other worldwide locations (especially since the premise of Nomad Labs is that they are spread all over the world).

The feature list looks like:

• lighttpd + fastcgi
• lighttpd + mapserver
• mapscript
• gdal/ogr
• gdal bindings+
• sftp data upload
• postgis (requires higher-level hosting
• 5GB, 10GB, or 15GB data storage

I ran across GeoRuby, a Ruby gem for handling spatial data types in a database, awhile ago. However, I never sunk my teeth into how it worked and how to get it going.

In the meantime, I settled myself to using the adequate Cartographer Plugin to easily create Google Maps. I even went so far as to extend Cartographer to switch to Yahoo! maps and MapQuest Maps.

I just came across another mapping gem, YM4R (yellow maps for Ruby) which handles GoogleMaps v2 (there is a patch for Cartographer to do the same), and Yahoo! maps, local, and traffic. Wow!

Not only that, it’s by the same developer of GeoRuby, The Pochi Superstar Mega Show!.

Check out the very good, and complete Ym4r + GeoRuby + Spatial Adapter tutorial

Metacarta is a really cool technology that parses natural language documents for geographic locations. Think searching documents and webpages for words like:

“Today in Royal Oak a new business…”

where Metacarta can then pull out Royal Oak and try and continue searching the documentation for more location pertinent information that Royal Oak may be in Michigan, or Florida, or Australia, or wherever.

The examples use the OpenLayers, mapping agnostic, webmap tool.

For a great example of all these technologies, check out Gutenkarte, which maps the locations for any book found in the Project Gutenberg library. I wonder how it deals with imaginary places, and mixtures of real and imaginary places (like Nowhereville, NY)

Technorati Tags: where2.0, where2con

So, I’ll be making it to the Where 2.0 conference coming up in San Jose, CA, June 13-14. I’m super excited to meet a lot of people I’ve corresponded with, but haven’t had the chance to meet yet. The Where 2.0 program looks really good. Some developers are even offering various internal organs to go.

I agree with Matt Croydon’s take on the 5/15-minute presentation schedule. It seems very “lightning round”, but also a really good way to get lots of ideas out and then move the interesting discussion to the sideline and various nightly gatherings.

In particular, the Birds of a Feather (BoF) meetings should be great. There is a Microformats meeting to discuss the possible directions microformat. also hope to meet with some of the GeoRSS developers and bloggers.

I’ve even secured a place at the Google Geo Developers day on June 12 - so I should get a chance to show off my cool mashup projects. Not to mention discussing other possibilities of visualizing geo-specific driving simulations in GoogleEarth.

I think my biggest concern about attending is wanting to meet everyone and discuss all the current ideas and possibilities in location information & mapping.

Of course, to get to California, I’m heading out of Vienna early, by way of Detroit, then on to San Francisco. Yay lots of time on a plane. Here’s to hoping for flying on something nice like an Airbus 330.