Slashgeo

ragnvald writes "Tried getting PHP Mapscript to work with your favourite Linux distro? Gone through hell trying to set up PostgreSQL, MySQL, Python, WMS and some modest test webpages? HostGIS provides a very nice out-of-the-box-too-good-to-be-true slackerware-based distro which will make you the instant king of serverbased GIS using Linux. These guys make a living out of providing serverbased GIS services. The rest of us are free to download their distro and install it for work or play: http://www.hostgis.com/linux/ I should mention that I am in no way affiliated with the good guys at at HostGIS. I am just an extremely happy user."

The last poll results gave surprising results, and I fail to interpret the numbers. We asked you about using Linux and MacOS X in geospatial technologies. Out of 113 answers, 15% said their software are Windows only, 15% restrain themselves from looking for trouble, 6% simply don't choose their operating system. Now the surprises; 7% claim geosoftware on Linux/MacOS X is not up to par, 22% say it works well, and... 31% claim it works better! That makes 53% of users claiming geospatial software works well or works better on Linux/MacOS X than on MS Windows. Am I the only one surprised? The new poll ask you whether you break the Google Earth license at work, in the context that you can't legally use Google Earth Free or Plus at work.

A friend wrote to inform me that within the new MacOS X Leopard (10.5) to be available in 9 days, there seems to be some geospatial awareness at the operating system level, well, more precisely GPS metadata support directly in Preview, the default small application that open any PDF and image file: "GPS Metadata Support: Get real information from your photos. If your image has embedded GPS metadata, Preview will show you exactly where that perfect photo was taken. Open the Image inspector and select GPS. Preview pinpoints the location where you took the photo on a world map. From there you can even open the GPS location in Google Maps." Not exactly groundbreaking, but still nice to see such integration. See also related stories below.