Slashgeo

The c.spanring blog shares his experience running ArcGIS on MacOS X with virtualization. From the blog: "Actually I was positively surprised by ArcGIS’s performance in Parallels Desktop. I expected it to be sluggish and painfully slow, but it wasn’t at all. To complete basic tasks and do some map editing it’s quite ok and useable. [...] Along with Apple’s switch to Intel it’s now easier than ever before to use Windows-only applications (like most GIS and GPS software) on Mac OS X. There are various virtualization products available which deliver good Windows perfomances."

For those using Macs, Ogle Earth have a nice entry on running virtual globes using virtualization software on Macs. First, virtualization is not like emulation. From the post: "The big question: Is the 3D graphics support compatible with the Windows virtual globes that have no Mac counterpart — NASA World Wind, Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D, SkylineGlobe and ESRI ArcGIS Explorer? Alas, in a word: No. Despite trying all possible configurations for RAM and graphics memory, most of these applications either won't run at all or run unstably." He was successful at running ArcGIS Explorer and Skyline Globe with caveats. See also related stories below.

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.

Ogle Earth informs us Apple Leopard's Dashcode supports KML and GeoRSS directly: "MacOS X 10.5 Leopard comes with DashCode, a tool for developing widgets to populate the Mac's dashboard... One of the pre-made templates is for a Google Map, and all you have to do — literally — is add a GeoRSS or KML URL, get a Google Maps API key, and publish." See also related stories below. Update: 11/21 17:12 GMT by S : Due to a surprisingly high popularity of this story, I moved it from section to main page.

Here's a few recent Apple related geonews. First is the capacity for Mac owners to run Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D using the new VMWare Fusion: "Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D doesn’t yet run in a Mac OS X browser. Until recently, your only option was to install a copy of Windows on a different partition using Apple’s Bootcamp tool, and boot into it. [...] Sometime in the last few months, however, competitor VMWare came out with an update of their virtualization tool for Mac, Fusion, that does support VE3D." Additionally, The Map Room shares a complete guide to geotagging photos on the Mac. And finally, APB informs us Apple is encouraging iPhone users to help update the Skyhook wifi location database. On a side note, mentioning Apple products looks reasonable since they are increasingly popular even within geospatial professional, with now 14% of computer sold last February and almost a monopoly on portable music devices. Related previous stories added below, including an old one on running ArcGIS on MacOS X, but I admit omitting the numerous previous stories on geotagging photos.

A short note on old summer geonews (while I was away) which were not yet featured on the site. First the release of QGIS 0.11.0, GeoJSON 1.0 and the graduation of GeoTools as full fledge OSGeo project. See also related stories. Not directly related, FOSS4G 2008 is going on this week. We'll share the best summaries we'll find.

Today at MacWorld's keynote (ongoing at time of writing), Apple announced the new version of iPhoto which includes geotagging support and, of course, much more. From the MacOSRumorsLive feed: "Third way to organize: Places. Click on "Places" in iPhoto to see a map with pins for your photo locations.. Uses GPS geotagging. More and more cameras (including the iPhone) have built-in GPS. Automatically adds a location to your photos. Gives latitude and longitude. iPhoto converts that into a plain English location. What about photos that aren't geotagged? That's easy...you can enter an event location for photos. Tell it "Yosemite" and iPhoto adds a geotag to your entire set from there. Based on Google Maps...can zoom in, satellite, street maps. Find a pin, and it'll take you to your photos from there. We've also added support for Facebook and Flickr to iPhoto. [...] Automatically inserts maps with pins to show where your photos were taken. Can also print on the hardcover of the new books." There's also map overlays in iMovie '09 too. You'll sure soon be able to learn a lot more on the official Apple iLife page. And related, Google released Picasa for MacOSX in Beta, which already has geotagging support. See also related stories below.

I found out about Ortelius from MapDiva, a MacOSX-only software described like this: "It is a dedicated map-making illustration program exclusively for Mac OS X that knows geography. Instead of building maps from lines and primitive shapes, you draw directly with roads, railways, boundaries, buildings, woods and streams. Generate contour lines from elevation points. Label items using a consistent style. Roads (for example) know how they connect to each other and junctions are drawn properly, fully automatically. If it needs moving, it will move all of its connected feeder roads, labels and symbols with it, maintaining junctions as it goes. Want to insert a bridge? Highlight the road and insert a bridge - no need to fiddle about trying to build one from tiny bits of curves and lines. Ortelius isn't a GIS. [...] The intention is to release standard and “pro” versions with a starting price of $79."