via the official Google Maps API Blog:

"As an important reminder, we plan to shut down API Version 1 in the first week of November. If you haven't upgraded yet, please visit our upgrade guide. The Incompatibilities section contains a helpful list of known incompatibilities between Version 1 and Version 2 of the API. We did not preserve many of the undocumented functions between Version 1 and 2 of the API. Please join the Maps API discussion group if you have any problems.

"The quickest way to upgrade is to update your Maps API <script> URL to refer to 'v=2' instead of 'v=1.' Since Version 2 preserves the old GMap interface, your site should theoretically continue to work without any further changes. However, in practice, you may have to spend some time debugging. Once we shut down Version 1 of the API, we will serve Version 2 to your site, even if you are still specifying 'v=1' in your <script> tag. For this reason, it is important that you test your site with 'v=2' before November's transition."

→ read the entire post

On 15 November 2006, during UW-Milwaukee's GIS Day, schiller labs will be teaching a hands-on workshop on Google mashups. Here's what you need to know:

Internet GIS: Google Maps + Mashups
15 November 2006 . 1:30 pm–4:00 pm
Lubar Hall N234A
After a brief introduction to mashups [web applications that combine content from more than one source], learn how to create your own Google Maps mashup. You'll be amazed at how fast and easy it is!
free [registration required]

we hope to see you there!

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Mill Valley, CA: Boundary Solutions, Inc. is pleased to announce that it has been awarded U.S. Patent 7,092,957, entitled "Computerized National Online Parcel-level Map Data Portal" for multi jurisdictional search and display of digital parcel map boundaries. The patent relates back to the date of the original provisional patent application filed January 18, 2002.

Boundary Solutions, Inc.'s, National ParcelMap Data Portal, or NPDP, is a turnkey online geoinformation resource. We are pleased to obtain this patent award in recognition of the seminal work BSI has performed in this field explained the company's CEO and founder, Dennis H. Klein.

Under this patent, an entered street address, ZIP Code and/or Assessor Parcel ID Number returns a display of the pertinent parcel boundary feature highlighted to differentiate if from the surrounding parcel boundaries. A jurisdiction look up table is referenced to determine which jurisdiction(s) are accessed to retrieve and display the pertinent polygons. Among other features, spatial data is linked to non-graphic property tax records to act as a spatial database model. A metadata profile describing the pertinent data is displayed as needed. Queries can be applied to all parcels on the screen to highlight ones with matching spatial and/or attribute characteristics.

Customers purchasing digital parcel map data from Boundary Solutions receive a limited license to use this patented technology in conjunction with the acquired content.

→ National ParcelMap Data Portal
→ USPTO Patent Full-Text and Image Database

schiller labs to teach a workshop on Google Maps and mashups for UW-Milwaukee's GIS Day, 15 November 2006. I believe this workshop will be free and I know it's open to the public, but registration will be required.

The tentative title and workshop blurb:

INTERNET GIS: GOOGLE MAPS + MASHUPS
After a brief introduction to mashups [web applications that combine content from more than one source], learn how to create our own Google Maps mashup. You’ll be amazed at how fast and easy it is!

collective machinery is a website dedicated to exploring and facilitating collaborative multimedia, internet-based, and locative production. Toward that end, our site is an open "forum" (wiki-powered). Anyone can add pages, edit existing content, and ask questions.

Conceptually, collective machinery is divided into two areas:

1. General topics—Discussion area for people to share information and tips on topics such as phonography, photography, APIs.
2. Specific projects—Actual collaborative projects that want to use collective machinery to organize/promote their collaboration.

→ collective machinery
→ how to play
→ all recent changes

While doing a printable map for Conflux, we received a request to number the points and create a key. While this isn't a difficult task, it does require a set of numbered icons and we were in a bit of hurry, so didn't want to create our own. Enter Brennan's Blog.

Brennan has created several icons in red, green, and blue, which are numbered 1 to 25 each. He's also included an empty one as well as the Photoshop master. Visit his post to download the .zip. Thanks, Brennan!

After batch-geocoding the tour stops for Orphan Productions and plugging it into Google Earth, Stephanie turned to the labs for help. Her request: a Google Maps mashup and an explanation of how we did it. The map should display all of the band tour stops and a continous line should connect all of the points.

As you wish:

• → the map
• → the explanation

Wayland, Mass., July 20, 2006—The membership of the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) has approved and released the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) White Paper as an official public OGC White Paper (OGC Document 06-046r2 [http://www.opengeospatial.org/pt/06-046r2]).

A sensor network is a computer accessible network of many spatially distributed devices using sensors to monitor conditions at different locations, such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure, motion or pollutants. A Sensor Web refers to Web accessible sensor networks and archived sensor data that can be discovered and accessed using standard protocols and interfaces.

In the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) activity, members of the OGC are defining, testing, and documenting a consistent framework of open standards for exploiting Web-connected sensors and sensor systems of any type. Sensor Web Enablement presents many opportunities for adding a real-time sensor dimension to the Internet and the Web. This has extraordinary significance for science, environmental monitoring, transportation management, public safety, facility security, disaster management, utilities' SCADA operations, industrial controls, facilities management and many other domains of activity. The OGC voluntary consensus standards setting process coupled with strong international industry and government support in domains that depend on sensors is expected to result in SWE specifications that will become established in all application areas where such standards are of use.

The OGC^® is an international industry consortium of more than 300 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available interface specifications. OpenGIS^® Specifications support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. The specifications empower technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. Visit the OGC website at opengeospatial.org.

At the June meeting of the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC^®) in Edinburgh, Scotland, Simon Cox received OGC's eighth annual Kenneth D. Gardels Award. The Gardels Award, a gold medallion, is awarded to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to advance OGC's vision of geospatial information fully integrated into the world’s information systems.

Simon Cox is a Research Scientist, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Exploration and Mining, Perth, Australia. He has been for many years a highly respected and enormously important contributor in the OGC Technical Committee, where he has made significant contributions to the OpenGIS Geography Markup Language (GML) and Web Feature Service (WFS) Implementation Specifications as well as the Sensor Web Enablement effort. His work in ISO has been of great value in helping OGC standards receive ISO standing, and he has been a strong advocate of OGC in Australia for a decade. Simon is well known in industry outside of OGC. He developed an application profile of GML for the mining industry, he is an active participant in Australian geology and standards organizations and he is the author of scores of journal articles, conference papers, reports and abstracts. In 1994 he launched one of the earliest and most successful geoscience websites including web-mapping.

Mark Reichardt, president of OGC, said, "Simon has provided extraordinary service to the OGC in our Technical Committee, in ISO, and in Australia. Few have done more than Simon to help fulfill the OpenGIS dream. We all owe him our greatest thanks."

The award is given annually in memory of Kenneth Gardels, one of the founding directors of OGC and OGC's former director of academic programs. Mr. Gardels coined the term "Open GIS," and devoted his life to the humane and democratic uses of geographic information systems. He died in 1999.

The OGC^® is an international industry consortium of more than 300 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available interface specifications. OpenGIS^® Specifications support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. The specifications empower technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications.