Comparison of geographic information systems software

Some of you might find this interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_geographic_information_systems_software

Regional GIS in Oregon

Here's an example of an interesting Regional GIS in the US:

http://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/winter0910articles/portland-oregon.html

A Nifty Metadata Tool from your friends at Miistakis!

Hi everyone;

As I mentioned at the last Technical Committee Meeting, I recently re-discovered a handy tool that Ken (Miistakis' GIS Programmer / all-around genius) developed a while ago, and I thought I would share it with you.

If you download GIS data from the internet, you will frequently see metadata published in html format (here's an example) that is not readable/importable to ESRI ArcCatalog. Your only option if you wish to attach this metadata to your downloaded spatial data is to either copy & paste data from the html file into your metadata editor, or to re-write the metadata from scratch. If you have never done either of these things, just trust me when I say that they're not very palatable options.

Lucky for us, Ken has created this tool for more or less automatically converting web-published html metadata files to ESRI-readable xml format.*

Here is a link to the Miistakis ftp site, from which you can download the tool:
ftp://goliath.rockies.ca/public/greg/RGISBlog

Please copy the zip file into a new folder, and follow the instructions that Ken has laid out in the handy "convert html files help.txt" documentation file.

I hope you all find this as useful as I have (especially those of you working on web-based resources for the RSDF). I'm sure Ken would appreciate feedback if you try the tool and have any questions or comments.

Have a good day,
greg

* The tool only works on html files created using "mp" - see Ken's help file for more details.

Open Access to Data

More news on Canadian data:

http://blog.gisuser.com/?p=7111

Stefan

Ottawa Opens Data

The City of Ottawa has joined others in making data available:

http://vector1media.com/spatialsustain/ottawa-opens-data-starting-with-geospatial.html

Stefan

OneGeology - Free World Geological Map Data

Some of you might find this souce of information useful:

http://www.onegeology.com/

Cheers,

Stefan

Plotter looking for loving and caring home

Miistakis has a HP DesignJet 2500 CP that we currently do not use enough to keep the ink lines from drying up. It works, as far as we know, but has been idle long enough that it will need a cleaning at the least.

Please email me: ken at rockies dot ca if you are interested.

Ken

Atals of the Biosphere - free data resource

Hi everyone;

I subscribe to a blog with weekly(ish) posts on the subject of free GIS data, and this week's post is about a new initiative by the University of Wisconsin called the Atlas of the Biosphere:
http://www.sage.wisc.edu/atlas/maps.php

The Atlas provides access to maps and associated data related two four main themes: human impacts, land use, ecosystems, and water resources. I encourage you to take a look and see what's available.

The data sets are global scale and hence may be too coarse for some finer-scale analysis or applications, but may be useful for providing a general overview, or for filling gaps where no finer-scale data exists. It's also a great example of a simple, well-designed web site that allows free access to data - something that many of us would likely be happier to see a lot more of.

A more detailed description of the Atlas of the Biosphere is available at the above mentioned blog:
http://free-gis-data.blogspot.com/2009/04/atlas-of-biosphere.html

Take care,
greg

Out with Hawth's Tools, in with GME

Hi everyone;

I don't know how many of you previously used the Hawth's Tools extension in ArcGIS - for those of you who haven't, it was (is) a free extension with all kinds of really valuable analysis, conversion, and data management tools.

Unfortunately, many of the modules in Hawth's Tools stopped working in newer versions of ArcGIS.

Luckily though, Hawthorne has developed a replacement for Hawth's Tools, called GME. It's still free, though there is an option to make a donation to support the Tool's continued development.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with this extension and its capabilities, but I think it might be of general use/interest to many of you.

Have a great Friday and weekend,
greg

Example of GIS Data Consolidation

The City of Houston recently began the move to a more centralized system. Read the details here:

http://www.govtech.com/736224