Slashgeo

Anonymous Voxel writes "From rajsingh.org blog: REST has been a hot topic this year in the geo world. There’s a discussion group, a geographic data server, many blog posts, and email discussions. I’ve been mulling over what this means to OGC over the last couple months, reading RESTful Web Services, and discussing with the various advocates around the community. After all this, I think I know what’s going on, but I don’t think there’s any one clear explanation (despite some nice pieces of the puzzle here and here) available, and there has certainly been little effort to analyze the REST architecture in relation to geographic information systems theory, so that’s what I’ll try to do now." See related stories below.

The OpenLayers blog mentions a generic article on OpenLayers from the GeoConnexion Magazine. From the blog entry: "The article talks a bit about the history of OpenLayers, and how it came to be developed the way it did:

OpenLayers was the first mapping framework to make an explicit statement that it was not an application at all, but a toolkit for building mapping applications. This different approach resulted in a somewhat long curve to acceptance. In its infancy, the project was used only by developers: people who had a strong knowledge of what they wanted to do, and needed to have more control over their tools in order to do it. This early audience helped to build a rapid development environment where many of the users of the code were also able to contribute fixes and improvements based on their needs. This developer-friendly environment may be one of the key differences that has allowed OpenLayers development to continue to grow.

More is included in the full article, available as a PDF from the GeoConnexion website." Previous OpenLayers stories below.

Spatially Adjusted links to a Dave Bouwman entry named Picking a "GeoWeb" Map Canvas. The paragraphs titles are: 1) Can I use Google Maps or Virtual Earth? 2) Can I use OpenLayers? 3) Can I use the ESRI Javascript API? 4) Must I use the WebADF? Hey - What about Flash/Flex/Silverlight? The conclusion: "Keep an open mind, and accept that to build compelling Web 2.0 app, you are going to get some javascript on your shirt. Use some good tooling (Aptana or Visual Studio have reasonable to good javascript support) and it's just not that daunting. Whatever you do, do not pick a technology because it's easier to "get started" with. Look at the longer term, and accept that you'll have to gain some new skills - it's actually pretty fun :-)" See also related stories below.

Steven Romalewski writes "Greetings, Just a heads up that we've moved the Long Island Index interactive map out of beta testing, and it's now available at longislandindexmaps.org. We've posted a news release (plus FAQ, screenshots, etc) at a separate tutorial page. Since the beta launch (covered by Slashgeo on Nov. 4, 2008) we've added some features including a print-to-pdf tool, more map layers (legislative districts, for example), and new navigation tools (back/forward buttons, etc). In January, we'll be adding more data such as Census updates, education statistics and maps, and brownfield sites to coincide with the next major LI Index report release. Thanks, Steve"

Despite we frequently mention OpenLayers here, some users might be interested by GeoWeb Guru's nice technical overview of OpenLayers. The introduction: "OpenLayers is a popular open source JavaScript library for displaying dynamic map data in a web page. The OpenLayers library can work as the client half of an AJAX map application, including modern features such as "slippy" maps. Most if not all of the map data is provided by servers running other software. OpenLayers supports a wide range of different map sources, making it a popular way to combine a wide range of different data types into one map." See also related stories below.

James Fee's Blog takes note of the newest release by the Openlayers team. The major enhancements are :

• Support for multi-layer vector feature selection
• Support for drawing text on vector layers
• Several new controls
• 5 new layer types, including OSM, ArcXML, and more.
• The long-awaited WFS protocol support, and related improvements

Visit the blog for the full details.

The mandown blog has a good write up on this. From their summary : "With the release of  the ArcGIS API for JavaScript almost a year ago, many users have been confused about licensing. Since then we have seen the introduction of the ArcGIS API for Flex and recently the ArcGIS API for Silverlight/WPF. It seems that many users are still confused about the licensing. So to clear this up. Until now the API’s were FREE for development and testing purposes ONLY. You were required to have an licensed ArcGIS Server or a Web Map API Licence."