Geospatial Semantic Web Blog

GeoS 2007 — Mexico City, Mexico.

The second edition GeoS 2007 www.geosco.org aims at providing a timely forum for the exchange of state-of-the-art research results in the areas of modeling and processing of geospatial semantics. Geospatial semantics play an important role for next-generation spatial databases and geographic information systems, as well as specialized geospatial web services. This conference will bring together researchers whose expertise will address such issues as:

• Theories for geospatial semantic information
• Formal representations for geospatial data
• Models and languages for geoontologies
• Alignment and integration of geoontologies
• Integration of semantics into spatial query processing
• Similarity comparisons of spatial datasets
• Ontology-based spatial information retrieval
• Ontology-driven GIS
• Geospatial Semantic Web
• Multicultural aspects of spatial knowledge

Important dates:

• Paper submission: June 15, 2007
• Submission of camera-ready papers: August 30, 2007
• Conference: November 29-30, 2007

Snap Preview is a little widget that webmasters can embed in web pages for create link preview pop-ups. Snaps.com was running a contest called Snap Preview Anywhere Extreme MakeOver Contest.

1st Prize Winner ($2500 + Snap T-Shirt)

Title: SnapMap
Idea: Snap adds value by reducing the frictions of web navigation. Visual previews of link landing pages are attention optimizers that increase the efficiency of a user’s content consumption. I believe Snap’s success will be directly correlated to the degree in which they can further optimize the “attention allocation” of users. Most blogs have more content for which metadata would be useful than just links. When a certain other search engine detects place information (addresses, place names) in search or in one of their apps, it provides one-click mapping to geo-locate that place. I propose a mapping feature for Snap. Double-click on addresses or place names on snap-enabled web pages and get geographic information without leaving the page. Another friction point removed, and another user intention instance captured by Snap for potential conversion to search or other use of the service.

Another killer-app idea based on maps.

Microsoft Live Maps announced the support for GeoRSS. An announcement was sent to the GeoRSS mailing list by Steve Lombardi of Microsoft.

Many thanks to those on this list that have assisted with this feature! We launched a new version of Live Maps today with GeoRSS publishing as a top feature. When viewing another users public Collection, there is a ‘classic’ RSS button (I saw the proposed GeoRSS Icon a little too late for this release! We’ll update next time) to pluck a GeoRSS feed for the collection. Points, lines and Polys are supported. As an example, here is my collection of bike trails around Seattle:

http://maps.live.com/?v=2&cid=546E7E30AC2C5011!1749

And here is its GeoRSS feed.

Live Maps also received several functional updates:

• Firefox support for 3D mapping
• Enhanced ratings and reviews of business listings
• Subscribe to a Collection via RSS
• Area calculations and drawing enhancements

Live Maps’s support for GeoRSS comes only few days after a similar announcement from Google Maps. This is interesting. Microsoft was not typically known for its enthusiasm in supporting community standards — think JavaScript in IE 6. Since there is no immediate financial profits for Live Maps to support GeoRSS, I wonder what caused Microsoft to suddenly support this community standard?

Read the rest of this entry »

In an email to the GeoXG mailing list, Carl Reed points us to the Wiki of the XMML project. The site has a set of excellent resources on GIS standards and their background history. For example, you can find answers to

• What’s ISO/TC 211?
• What’s GML? How does it relate to OGC Web Services?
• Why is it important to define languages for expressing an explicit representation of geographic information?

You can also find an overview of GIS standards: General Feature Model, Coverage Model, Feature Type Cataloguing, Maintenance and Governance, Spatial, Temporal and Coordinate Reference Systems etc.