Urban Mapping has created a multi layer paper map called Panamap. Powered by their “MapAction Technology,” users can view different layers of the map in different angles. The map provides three images that “are interlaced by alternating horizontal strips from each. The resulting compound image is calibrated to a specially designed polymer lens substrate. Lenses contain between 60 to 200 micro-lenses per inch, depending on the desired outcome. This is mounted to a backing, die cut and packaged.” Currently, you can get Panamaps for Chicago and New York City.

The world’s leading technology firm for GIS software, ESRI, has been named an approved prime contractor on the SeaPort Enhanced (SeaPort-e) online portal by The Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC). ESRI can now provide the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Marine Corps, and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) a broad range of engineering, technical, and programmatic services related to GIS and IT

MapQuest released a new beta version of their site in response to the growing competition from other mapping sites like Google Maps. The new MapQuest added a map on the home page, and now offers a “copy and paste address field.” Despite their efforts, users are still not satisfied with the “zoom in and out” function. Many question if this is “too little, too late?”

The London’s Metropolitan Police launched the first crime mapping test site. Based on Google Maps, the beta displays crime stats for neighborhood levels in a user-friendly interface. Users can also find local cops, report a crime, and learn about crime prevention, victim support, and details of their local criminals. The creation of the crime map brings ‘hope that this new service will continue to evolve for a long time as the ability to filter by crime type, hotspots, and trends would be exceptional. You can also get the raw data as well as look at the mashup on the UK site from Finder!

Google launched their Gears Geolocation API. This new service provides “a way to get a more precise estimate of a user’s location using the cell-ID of nearby towers or on-board GPS.” Mobile devices with Gears will be able to access their location more accurately. This new tool allows “third parties to plug into their sites and automatically take advantage of both tower and GPS-based positioning.” Currently, Gears only works on Internet Explorer and WinMo.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Are paper maps no more? GIS Lounge reports that the cartography division of the California State Automobile Association is slowly being phased out. The cause for the demise is the widespread availability of online map directions and in-car navigation units which cut demand for the paper maps by 13% in 2007.

The Geospatial Semantic Web Blog shares some good news for the semantic web community. The U.S. Security and Exchange Commission recently proposed a timetable requiring 500 of the largest public companies to begin filling their financial data using XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language). This will create a mass amount of free and real-world data for research.

Speaking of data, Anand at DataWocky answers the question of why the world needs a new database system. He discusses high volumes of data that are not being utilized due to scalability. He points to the newly launched Aster Data which is a database system natively designed and architected from the ground up for a new hardware platform: commodity clusters.

Google Earth has a new browser plug-in, which continues its roll out of Google Map API for Flash and Google App Engine. Released with it is the very extensive Google Earth JavaScript API for writing 3D map applications. Moxie thinks that this has opened a new page for GeoWeb visualization.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Frank at the Google Earth Blog just leaked that Google will be announcing an API for Google Earth that will run in a browser. The short of it is you will be able to get GE’s 3D rendering capabilities and KML support to run in a browser. The first release will be just Windows, but will support IE, Firefox and other Mozilla flavors.

This looks to be a direct shot at Microsoft’s 3D Virtual Earth that also runs in the browser. The question mark in my mind will be if the Google Earth version has the same performance issues as MSVE. It is also interesting that Google released an API instead of a new version of GE that ran in a browser. Will this be a case of Google testing the waters with the API then releasing a product?

From a personal perspective I’ll be very interested to see how the new Google Earth API handles KML. Frank says the new API will be a, “subset of the Google Earth 3D graphics rendering engine and interfaces with KML support”. The question is will that KML support be robust like Google Earth allowing thousands of geometries to be drawn or less robust like Google Maps where you are limited to the low hundreds. I’m sure we’ll see soon enough, but congrats to Google on porting the technology to a browser, surely not an easy task. Although it begs one last question – does this herald the end of thick client geobrowsers?

Popularity: 12% [?]

We’ve been playing around lately with some new data visualization techniques, so I started poking around to see what approaches have been generating buzz of late. In the process I came across Stamen Design’s very cool “Oakland CrimeSpotting” via Brady’s post on O’Reilly Radar. We’d been really impressed with what they did at Where 2.0 with Trulia and their latest further pushes the frontier.

Once I was done being wowed by the visual I found, Stamen had some thoughts similar to ourselves on the importance of public data being more accessible to…well the public. Specifically,

“We’ve found ourselves frustrated by the proprietary systems and long disclaimers that ultimately limit information available to the public. As citizens we have a right to public information. A clear understanding of our environment is essential to an informed citizenry.”

That is the biggest mission of GeoCommons and it is encouraging to see other folks feel similarly. The sad thing is that in order to gain easy access to much of this data folks pay third party providers. One of our developers, Minh, passed along a list of data you can buy from Pushpin, including ESRI supplied Census data. Census data comes from the government, all our tax dollars pay for it – why do we pay twice? I’m not intending to pick on ESRI or Pushpin – the whole industry does it, and for many free data sources other than Census.

The good news is there has been a real ground swell to change the market. Whether it is OpenStreetMaps, ShapeWiki, or OpenAerialMaps crowdsourcing geodata or Swivel and WeoGeo opening up public data for easy consumption there is some real momentum to change the market place and business model. Specifically on the Census front Bill, aka Mr Data McFindsAlot, just posted up Census tract level data for the entire US by state. You can download any of it as KML or access it through our data and mapping API’s. Census data, though, is just the tip of the iceberg of whats out there. My latest favorite “Pirate Attacks” a detailed dataset with lat long locations of real deal pirate attacks last year.

Popularity: 18% [?]