free data resource

Hi everyone;

Just thought I'd pass along this nifty resource I found the other day:

www.naturalearthdata.com

It's a collection of public domain, global GIS data sets. The catalogue is pretty extensive and very current.

It's probably too coarse to be of much use to many of you for municipal level mapping, but may be of value if you're looking to make smaller-scale maps (e.g. reference maps to show where in the world you're located).

Hope to see you all tomorrow at the RGIS Strat Plan Workshop.

Take care,
greg

More on Open Data

Hi everyone;

Check out this post from Cybera, my neighbours in the Research Park - they're launching an online biogeoscience portal, and a campaign to open us access to water data.

here's the link!

Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority Releases Real Time Data

What is quite amazing about this example of publicly available data is the number of mobile applications that have been developed by the public.

http://blog.gisuser.com/?p=8142

City of Calgary Public Data Catalogue

FYI

http://calgaryonlinestore.com/publicdata.asp

Free CAD Editing Software

If any of you do not have CAD software and need to edit CAD files this free application might be for you:

http://giscadblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/free-cad-editing-in-draftsight-and.html

Online Community for GIS Users

For anyone interested in a spatial social networking site:

http://www.gisdomain.com/

GNSS 3D Mission Planning Tool

For anyone doing GPS field work a new free tool:

http://www.vector1media.com/vectorone/?p=6704

GIS / CAD Interoperability

Hello Everyone,

This might interest some of you:

http://giscadblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/arcgis-for-autocad-250-and-other-new.html

Cloud Computing

Since we've had dicussions on this topic at our last meeting this article may help some of you. Some GIS vendors are now offering "GIS in the Cloud".

http://www.govtech.com/gt/articles/769253

Comparison of geographic information systems software

Some of you might find this interesting:

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