I’ve been friends with Andrei through my work on Mapufacture and he has clearly done ground-breaking work in developing visualization and mapping platforms. He built AFComponents and developed the first ActionScript compatible mapping library for modern mapping providers such as Google, Microsoft, and others. This evolved into UMapper which continued to grow and add features for simple map creation and embedding that’s been used by numerous media and enterprises such as USA Today, National Geographic, and a place we’ve been featured as well, the Huffington Post.

As his role of head of visualization, Andrei will continuing to evolve our map, and non-cartographic, visualization components. We’ve worked with some of the best in the industry such as AxisMaps and Stamen Design, as well as the incredibly bright engineers at FortiusOne to develop some great capabilities you’ll be seeing soon. But we’re really excited about the ideas and energy that Andrei will be bringing to the team – so definitely expect some even more amazing things soon!

Tim has many accomplishments, from Geocodr, the first geocoder based on Flickr photo tags that let you search for “happiness in New York” (map), even before you could download the shapefiles – to his more recent and well known efforts in building MapWarper in use by the New York Public Library for georectifying and sharing out their historic map archives.

In addition, Tim was responsible for the first uploads of the Haitian GIS data from CNIGS almost one year to the day before the earthquake this past January. He stood up a MapWarper specifically for relief efforts as thousands of volunteers around the world rectified and traced historics maps of Haiti from the 1990′s. He has also been an active member of OpenStreetMap, including hosting worldwide mapping parties.

We’re excited to have Tim joining the FortiusOne team – and definitely expect to see some great new geospatial features from him in GeoCommons in the very near future.

This week some of the other engineers are off to Google I/O, look for plenty of GeoIQ and Geocommons goodness in the Developer Sandbox there.  FortiusOne is a Google Enterprise Partner and we’ve performed integration with Google applications on both the Geocommons and GeoIQ side.  On Geocommons we’ve integrated with both the Google Earth Plugin and the Google Maps API.  Geocommons and GeoIQ both support KML for upload and download of Finder overlays as well as download of maps as KML.  Specifically On the enterprise side GeoIQ allows you to hook into your organization’s Google Earth Fusion Server.  This enables you to use tiles from the Fusion Server as well as globes with the Google Earth Plugin.

Also in the Sandbox we’ll be demonstrating our REST API and JavaScript API.  Our documentation and some sample code is available on Github. For questions about either API join our API Google Group.   As a company that believes in eating our own dog food Map of the News is built utilizing these APIs.  To see the most current dashboard in action checkout maps of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill.

If you stop by look for Matt Dew or Andrew Semprebon, tell them “wonderchook” sent you!

Here is the dropdown of my search providers in Firefox. In order to add an Finder! As an OpenSearch provider you navigate to http://finder.geocommons.com and open the Search Engine dropdown. Select Add “GeoCommons Finder Data” to add overlay search support to Firefox.

Now when you select Finder! as your active Search Engine in Firefox you can search overlays.  To add the ability to search Maker! maps go to http://maker.geocommons.com and perform the same steps. Now you can search Maker! as well.  To search overlays and maps at the same time you can go to http://www.geocommons.com and add GeoCommons as a search provider.

To add GeoCommons as a Search Provider in Google Chrome navigate your browser to both Finder! and Maker! respectively and it will be added.

Chrome additionally allows you to create keywords to various search providers to edit the keyword go to your preferences in Chrome and click the “Manage” button.  Double click on the provider you want to edit and you can then edit the keyword.  I made my keyword for Finder “F!” so I can quickly search for datasets in Finder by typing “F!” and then my search terms.

Adding OpenSearch to Internet Explorer 8 is straight forward as well.  When you navigate to Maker or Finder click arrow in the IE search box and select “Add Search Providers” and select to add Finder Data or Maker Maps as a Search Provider.

Windows 7 supports OpenSearch from within Windows Explorer.  To add Finder download the Finder OpenSearch Specification File and rename the “.xml” file extension to “.osdx.”  Next right click on the file and select “Create Search Connector.”  To search Finder now open “Searches” and select Finder as your Search Connector.

OpenSearch is not only awesome for end users of applications though, it is also great for developers.  FortiusOne’s own Map of the News is built using the GeoCommons OpenSearch API and JavaScript API.  For example in the Afghanistan Election Dashboard the menu where which map to display is chosen a tag is added for each group of maps.  ”2009 Afghanistan Election Results” is all of the maps tagged “afghanresults” on the http://news.geocommons.com GeoIQ server.  The results are returned in json and then displayed in the menu.

For more information on Geocommons Search API please see our documentation and our OpenSearch description document.  More information on OpenSearch is available at OpenSearch.org.

For those not familiar with SpatiaLite it is SQLite with spatial function goodness added. GeoCommons exports the geometries from your overlay into Well-known text. To download your Finder overlay as SpatiaLite you can go to a you overlay details page and click the Spatialite Download link or you the URI to access it from the API is http://finder.geocommons.com/overlays/#your_overlay_id#.sqlite. Once downloaded you have functions such as Overlaps(), Touches(), Union() and Buffer().

Is SpatiaLite a GeoCommons’ feature you’d like to get to know better? Download SpatiaLite from here.

For those not familiar with the “Better Know a District” series here is my favorite episode with Eleanor Holmes Norton.

GeoCommons is unique among most web applications – it isn’t just deployed to the public web, but also to intranets, the cloud, and to the field. We have servers running in Jalabad, Afghanistan and Nairobi, Kenya, we help develop technology solutions within the Federal government and Intel, and work with Academia, disaster response, and major corporations.

Are you an engineer who likes playing with new technology and solving hard problems? Do you love writing Linux scripts that can deal with massively horizontally scaled servers or compressing systems to run on USB sticks? Do you have a passion for open data, open-source software, collaborative government, and cutting-edge technologies that help the world? An interest in mapping is obviously a plus.

Ping us through the blog, twitter, LinkedIn, email, or stop by our offices in Arlington VA to chat directly. And no, we don’t need any recruiters.

Following that announcement we’ve integrated our geocoder into GeoCommons.  When you upload a CSV file and define columns that contain address, city, state or postal codes within the United States latitude and longitude is appended to your data.  The process that appends that information is the same geocoder you can download from the Geocommons Github Repository.  We’ve even deployed it with a modified database on a Mac Mini to Afganistan.  There files can be uploaded with Afghan village names and location is appended to them. Some of you have also started utilizing it for your own projects.

Without you we would not have added

1. Support for Ruby 1.9
2. Geocoding of P.O. Boxes to ZIP Centroid

We also wouldn’t have necessarily found some bugs as well.

Up until this point I’ve been helping people individually through all means of communication; Twitter, Instant Messenger, Email and Github. Let’s centralize that communication starting today in a Google Group.  That way everyone’s questions/solutions are public and we can all help each other.

So to summarize: use it, fork it and if you need help ask.

Have you written something using the Geocommons Geocoder?  We’d love to hear about.

To say FutureRuby is another tech conference would be to sell it short. From it’s edgy theme to it’s widespread evening venues it’s a conference designed to inspire rubyists towards the ideals that have made Ruby the language of choice for thousands of startups.

So I’ve seen the Future of Ruby, now what is it?

The Future of Ruby is Javascript

Javascript, not to be confused by Java, is the language used to enrich the UI of many web applications. It takes what used to be static pages that load one at a time and makes it possible to turn them into fully dynamic desktop-like applications. One of the stars of the conference was Cappuccino, presented by Francisco Tomalsky. Cappuccino is a Javascript framework and development environment that allows programmers to create applications in a way similar to building applications for Apple’s OS X. It is generating excitement among developers who are seeing the fulfillment of a vision of creating truly desktop-quality applications using open web standards.

Why so much Javascript at a Ruby conference? Because the languages complement each other very well. Ruby for the back-end, Javascript for the front-end.

The Future of Ruby is the Mobile Web

JavaScript starred in another role in the PhoneGap presentation by Brian LeRoux, Brock Whitten and Rob Ellis. Say you want to create a iPhone App. All the cool kids are doing it. But you spent your career building web applications and you’re not too bad at it. Until PhoneGap your options were a bit limited. Go learn ObjectiveC and the closed source ideologies of Apple and in the end, you’ll have a beautiful app that runs on one smartphone.

The PhoneGap team has shown another way. Using the open web technologies developers have already mastered, Javascript, CSS and XHTML, PhoneGap makes it possible to build mobile apps that are indistinguishable from native apps. Oh, and that app you just made? It’ll run on a Blackberry, and an Android smart phone too.

Adam Blum of Rhomobile showed us another way. What if you could write a mobile application in Ruby and have that application translated to the native language of an iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian or Android phone? Rhodes aims to make that possible. While not quite as fully developed as PhoneGap, Rhodes is well on the way to providing another option for Rubyists to build mobile apps.

The Future of Ruby is Failure

If you want to succeed, fail faster. So goes the motto of FailCamp which set sail a day prior to FutureRuby at the beautiful Queen City Yacht Club. FailCamp provided a venue to express our failures. Only by understanding and accepting our failures can we find what truly works.

Back on land, Avi Bryant dazzled the attendees by showing in painstaking detail, all of the screenshots that lead to the gorgeous and refined UI in Trendly. We witnessed a downright ugly interface evolving through hundreds of failed experiments into a masterful and thoughtful page design.

Joseph Wilk brought us an entertaining look at an often dull subject, automated testing. Joseph demonstrated a technology called Cucumber which allows programmers and non-techies to come together to write easy-to-read stories about how a web application ought to work. These stories are then executed and initially result in great failure. Line by line, sentence by sentence, developers then write the code that makes the story come alive in a fully realized web application.

The Future of Ruby Will Not Be Stored in a Relational Database

Relational Databases, the venerable database methodology employed in computer systems since the early seventies will always exist. But their dominance for all tasks large and small is increasingly challenged. Ilya Grigorik introduced us to the fascinating world of Tokyo Cabinet, a database that eschews many traditional constraints and provides a wealth minimalist data structures.

It’s worth noting, that much of the power of the GeoCommons platform is derived from a custom object store that in a way similar to Tokyo Cabinet, surpasses the limitations of traditional relational databases.

The Future of Ruby is Eclectic

Not many tech conferences would you find a room full of programmers creating noises together. In a much needed mental recess, Misha Glouberman, a Toronto based performer and artist lead the attendees in a sort of improvisational audio experiment.

The FutureRuby curators included a number of presentations on diverse topics related to the culture of programming. Jon Dahl spoke on Programming and Minimalism drawing parallels between the history of art, music and writing. Brian Marick renewed the call for the kind of unconventional ideas that displace industry giants. Jesse Hirsh focused that call towards ending what he terms the Imperial Californian Ideology. Nathaniel Talbott showed how personal responsibility can save Ruby from loosing it’s vitality to soulless corporations.

The Future of Ruby is Bright

Every programming language depends on an active and vibrant ecosystem to keep it alive and ready for tomorrow’s challenges. FutureRuby provided a bright glimpse into the future of that ecosystem. It is clear that the Ruby community will continue to serve up cutting edge innovations enriching the products built on it for years to come.

Behind it all is our amazing team of engineers that track the latest technologies, and build amazing components, libraries, and applications. We utilize a variety of tools, many open-source. And where there are key pieces missing, we have developed solutions and even open-sourced them to the greater benefit of the community.

In addition, we spend much of our time thinking about how to bring geospatial techniques to non-geospatial users. We focus on how to make simpler interfaces, faster services, and deploy to a variety of platforms: from the web, through the cloud, to intranets, and even far flung corners of the world.

So what has been missing from the FortiusOne blog has been this voice of our engineers. To date we have not shared as much as we would like about some of the valuable lessons learned developing GeoCommons and other products and services. Insights that can hopefully help other developers, as well as users and customers.

To address this, our engineering team will start blogging as well. We have a lot to talk about – and not all of it geographic. Underneath the hood we’ve done a lot of intriguing things with the Ruby on Rails framework, deploying web applications in offline environments, open data federation, usable metadata interfaces and standards, efficient data storage and retrieval, and high-volume visualization.

Expect a mix of geospatial technology as well as broader web and technology development. Let us know if there is something in particular that you are interested in learning about.