Nomad Labs - GeoLabs - Latest Comments

Re: Building a real-time mapping app at Random Hacks of Kindness Berlin

Shoaib Burq — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 07:50:51 -0000

Hey thanks man, thanks for the comment! How are you doing? We should meetup sometime. Will try to plan a trip to your end of Europe some time :-)

Re: Building a real-time mapping app at Random Hacks of Kindness Berlin

Ahsen Ejaz — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 10:54:54 -0000

Congratulations to you and your team :)

Re: Building a real-time mapping app at Random Hacks of Kindness Berlin

Saqib Rasul — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 03:18:17 -0000

Very nice, very nice...

Re: postgis template database

Shoaib Burq — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 16:35:00 -0000

Jean, we have just loaded a large amount of data into the template_postgis database. To make sure that the query planner has up-to-date stats its generally good practice to run Vacuum after making a large change to a database. Secondly we are also locking the database to prevent any further changes. So its a good idea to do it at this stage.

Re: postgis template database

Jean — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 15:55:36 -0000

This is a good tutorial on how to create a spatial database template, but I don't understand the need for a vacuum freeze or even a vacuum full. Could comment on why this would be important.

Thanks

Re: What is a SDSS and how is it different from a GIS?

Shoaib Burq — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 08:29:40 -0000

Alexander, the main tool for manipulating Geographic data in the open source world is GDAL (http://gdal.org/). Now depending on what you are trying to do the optimization would vary. For example if you are looking at spectral imagery you can have a number of configurations for storing the pixels (like BIL, BIP, BSQ http://tinyurl.com/ndr9mj). If you tell me what you are doing I might be able to help more.
Shoaib

Re: Pakistan at the State of the Map, Amsterdam

ZAB — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:05:23 -0000

Too much.

Re: FOSS4G 2009 Schedule Hack – Part 2

James Lindeman — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:28:58 -0000

Was this tutorial/hack finished somewhere else? I'd like to see your process.

Re: What is a SDSS and how is it different from a GIS?

apraca — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:44:04 -0000

Hi and thanks for the nice and helpfull information. If I understood correctly what you said about domain specific data models, they derive from geodata models.
As I am a newbie in such field I would like to ask you some questions: 1) What are the best known open source repositories of geodata (you had mentioned Shapefiles) ? and, 2) How can I optimize such data? Are there any software tools to do it? How can I define my optimization criteria using such tools?

Thanks a lot and best regards from Brazil.
Alexandre

Re: Documenting Drought (Beyond Reasonable Drought)

Shoaib Burq — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:47:06 -0000

Thanks for the comment Julie - the photographs very were impressive. Do get in touch if you happen to be in Canberra.

Re: What is a SDSS and how is it different from a GIS?

Shoaib Burq — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 05:25:51 -0000

@avi that's a good question.

The word "model" can be used in a number of contexts.

I have used it in the context of application or domain models.

Geodata models are different to domain specific models. Geodata models can be generic, the Shapefile vector data model would be one example. Shapefiles are not limited to a particular application.

Having said that For example sometimes we can get geodata that have been optimized for particular applications. Such geodata models would be regarded as domain specific.

Furthermore we find geodata models that are proprietary. These are often designed to lock people into particular vendors software or gain some other competitive advantage.

Re: What is a SDSS and how is it different from a GIS?

Avi — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 20:00:47 -0000

Hey,

Great post explaining the difference.. I have a question: How is a geodata model different from a SDSS? I understand that we can design an SDSS using a model. A model may also have a user interface.

Re: Solutions

Resource Management Software — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 03:10:31 -0000

Good points here - you don't really think about the benefits of open source software this way.

Re: Documenting Drought (Beyond Reasonable Drought)

Julie Bowyer — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:13:29 -0000

Hi, just found your site! very interesting. I am one of the photographers in the exhibition at Old Parliment House, and I did geoscience at Sydney university. I was so happy to see people out there using our images to learn something 'geographical'.
cheers
Julie Bowyer
MAP Photographer

Re: Goodbye National Mapping, G’day Google!

Shoaib Burq — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 08:26:11 -0000

Jude, my answer would be yes, however it really depends on what you want to do and by when.

If you look at the evolution of Web based mapping applications over the last 5 years they have been adopting functionality of conventional GIS. But compared to a GIS product like ArcGIS, web mapping still has a long way to go before it can replace a desktop GIS.

So if you wanted to replace say ArcGIS with a web-based application then the amount of work required to replicate the functionality of a GIS package is so much that you are better off starting from scratch and building a system with GIS in mind.

However if your definition of GIS is simply combining data layers, querying data, basic geoprocessing and spatial queries (e.g. buffering, spatial predicates like overlap, interesect, etc) then I would say Google Maps can easily be adapted for that.

Having said that ESRI are looking to make their products more web friendly with the arrival of ArcGIS Server, etc.

Re: Goodbye National Mapping, G’day Google!

Jude Mwenda — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 05:32:06 -0000

I would just like to ask a general question. Wheather it is possible to have a geographic information system that is web based but based on google maps platform. I am a newbie in GIS

Re: taking GDAL/OGR ruby bindings for a spin

shoaib — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 20:16:24 -0000

Sadly there is no documentation for the ruby bindings and infact they are not being actively maintained. When I work with them it usually involves diving into the C/C++ sources. However I would like to start documenting the API for the gdal/ogr bindings.

For your immediate needs of manipulating a shapefile have a look at GeoRuby which has tools for reading/writing shapefiles, eg.:
http://georuby.rubyforge.or...

Re: taking GDAL/OGR ruby bindings for a spin

Jan — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:04:33 -0000

Hi,

I am trying to use this library on one of my project. I would love to locate the sources and at least generate documentation for them. Using this API without any sense of what which method expects as parameters is rather no funny.

Thanks for any response!

Re: Goodbye National Mapping, G’day Google!

Shoaib — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:44:29 -0000

Thanks Mikel yea I hope so too. I wonder how governments in these countries feel about the whole thing

Re: Goodbye National Mapping, G’day Google!

Mikel Maronoo — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:36:40 -0000

Good analysis of usability Shoaib. Yes, OSM can learn from MapMaker .. Google has certainly learned from OSM, and hopefully will continue their study with regards to openness.

Re: Barcamp Canberra & Australia 2020 Summit

shoaib — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 08:03:19 -0000

Nice, I prefer the smooth curves. Thanks for working on this.

Re: Barcamp Canberra & Australia 2020 Summit

Simon Pascal Klein — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 00:36:56 -0000

Thanks for the kind words and of course coming along! We had lower expectations and it was great to see over 60 people attend the event.

The openstreetmap logo I submitted can be found at http://wiki.openstreetmap.o... – I’m not whether it’ll be adopted, edited or whatnot (I don’t particularly mind either way). :)

–Pascal

Re: Bremerhaven

shoaib — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 20:01:37 -0000

I'm on to it, just downloaded geopress :)

Re: Bremerhaven

Andrew Turner — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 19:51:01 -0000

No GeoRSS output for your locations or GeoPress for map insertion? :)

Re: Trying out Geoserver + Googlemaps

Danish Ali — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 08:10:46 -0000

I was wondering if you (or anyone you know) has been able to integrate the street information with a program like Google Maps so that driving directions can be made available online say?

I know Google has started an initiative called crowdsourcing to map the streets in India- but think that the same is atleast a few years away for Pakistan.