Slashgeo

Ogle Earth reports "Last summer, amid much fanfare and little server capacity, the France's National Geographic Institute (IGN) released Géoportail, a 2D web mapping application that was (inaccurately) self-described as France's answer to Google Earth. A 3D version was promised for 2007. It has now arrived." Update: 08/01 13:24 GMT by S : We also got an anonymous user submission on the subject: "Géoportail is an initiative of the French National Geographical Institute (IGN). In spite of it's difficult beginnings, Géoportail is now the reference portal for access to all French state and private sector geographical data. The only thing which it missed compared to its competitors such as Google Earth or Microsoft Virtual Earth was the absence of 3D. This lack is now filled. The visualization of the 3D maps charts is done through a TerraExplorer plugin developed by Skyline Software. Actualy TerraExplorer is only available on Windows, although a version Mac OS and Linux are underway. Official announcement in French." See also previous related stories.

Ogle Earth is reporting about this development. From their page, here is snippet of the summary : "And while Géoportail is indeed the first portal made by Europeans for 3D mapping (albeit by licensing American technology), it is not the first portal to show Europe in 3D. In fact, it still doesn’t. (Google Earth, NASA World Wind and Microsoft Virtual Earth came before and do all of Europe. Géoportail shows nothing beyond France’s borders.)

Géoportail certainly is much more impressive that the UK Ordnance Survey’s “outreach” effort, but both are just as closed in a time when everything online is moving towards open, interoperable, mashable standards. KML is now an OGC standard, most recently embraced by Microsoft. Where is the support By IGN and OS? Why can’t I export anything to mash up? Where are the APIs? The USGS, on the other hand, gets it." Head on over there to get full details an links to the real story. See also previous stories about GeoPortail below.

I found this in an Ogle Earth news summary. Good news for Virtual Earth adopters. More coverage overseas is coming. The MapForums [Community of VE/MapPoint Users and Developers] reports about Mircrosoft latest partnership to get more imagery. From their summary : "Institut Géographique National (IGN), a French leader in cartography and aerial imagery, and Microsoft Corp today announced a five-year partnership at Geo-événement 2008, a leading trade show for geo-information specialists in France. The partnership will allow Microsoft to license IGN’s aerial imagery of France and make this available on the Microsoft Virtual Earth platform and through Microsoft Live Search Maps."

Head on over to MapForums to get the full story.

The Earth Is Square and the official OpenLayers blog brings us news about the just released OpenLayers 2.6. A huge release in itself. It closes over 294 outstanding tickets and has a lot of new features. Please visit any of the following links above to get the full list of features.

In case you've been under a rock, here is a little background info on OpenLayers. "OpenLayers makes it easy to put a dynamic map in any web page. It can display map tiles and markers loaded from any source. MetaCarta developed the initial version of OpenLayers and gave it to the public to further the use of geographic information of all kinds. OpenLayers is completely free, Open Source JavaScript, released under the BSD License."