Same same, but different

When searching for “geo data”, the GEO Data Portal appears on fourth
position.
Good!
When
searching for “data download”, then the GEO Data Portal displays only somewhere
between the 180th-190th position.
Bad!

Cool
new app:
Locations of the photos from Flickr which are geotagged can now be displayed
with GoogleMaps. I was always thinking about something like that for my photos
& locations for places to stay overnight with our van.

Entscheidungsbaum zur Bestimmung des
Kartentyps

Interesting
application. And from the point of view of the design: excellent! Lot’s of
information brought down lively but still possible to oversee.

I have an eye for composition, I didn’t mind schlepping the gear
around and I loved working in the darkroom

Are you in need of showing geographic information? But don’t own a
server? Or don’t wonna struggle to set-up some fancy mapping tools? Well, here
you go: HostGIS is in the business of helping the global
GIS community get their Geographic Information Systems online. They provide
MapServer hosting, GIS groupware, and custom development services.

While I by no means speak for Declan, we?ve had conversations
about presenting datasets by integrating PostGIS with the Google Earth
interface. In addition to easy uploads of new data via simple web forms, the
Network Links allow for immediate broadcast of the data or a user could choose
to download the data as a standalone KMZ file (which with the new Regions
functionality could contain a hefty quantity of features). Going the WMS route,
you could throw a MapServer instance that hits on the same PostGIS database. As
for geoprocessing, one could use PostGIS? native capabilities and provide
buffering, intersecting, and distance querying tools. (We demonstrate those
capabilities at our GulfImpact.com site).

How much does it cost? Well, our good friends at HostGIS will set you up
with your own dedicated server with a full suite of open source apps and you pay
a $300 setup fee plus $100-$170/mo based on hardware/transfer needs. And Gregor
provides top drawer support. That?s a very attractive value proposition
for us at least.

First
sample application using the famous AJAX language. Became known due to
GoogleMaps fantastic capabilities of panning. This is the
tutorial of how to set up such an application.

An
extract from the UNHCR Donors page. It’s just one piece out of a
dozen or so on that page. At first glance I didn’t react, but then it attracted
my. I guess, it’s because it’s so often spoken about money, donors and UN, but
one gets hardly any real numbers. And here is it: something you can hold your
fingers on and transform vague ideas into reality.

Just
discovered all these icons listed under the title of a blog article. What’s
that? Hmm, try the following links… One thing I liked with one of these icons
(respectively the story behind) is that you can save the web page as it is now.
Imagine that it will be changed or that it will be taken offline… you’ll still
have it in the original form. I like that idea, as I see that regularly
bookmarks taken a while ago won’t work anymore or don’t display anymore the same
thing then why I saved it.

http://del.icio.us – Èkeep
your favorite websites, music, books, and more in a place where you can always
find them. Èshare your favorites with family, friends, and colleagues.
È discover new and interesting things by browsing popular & related
items.
http://digg.com – Digg is all about user powered content.
Every article on digg is submitted and voted on by the digg community. Share,
discover, bookmark, and promote the news that’s important to
you.
http://reddit.com – 1. post links to new and interesting sites
you find around the web 2. comment on other people’s links 3. vote for the
stories you liked or disliked.
http://yahoo.com – Move beyond
bookmarks. Never lose a web page again. Save exact page copies, not just links.
Search My Web to instantly “re-find” a page. Share pages with friends and
colleagues.

Source

Something
I like with this listing of “buzz” words (actually, these are categories of
blog): The colors, the style (although the “dirty red” looks a bit ugly); it
makes a blog page more lively. What I realized only later is that these words
are really categories, on which one can click to display all articles filed
under that word. So, perhaps at the end it’s a nice design, but does not deliver
the message? A way to improve it would be to list the number of articles behind
each of these categories…
Source

Hey, suddenly many sites do not work anymore without paying. Here
is a list where at least some of them seem to work freely.

What is that? I am not too sure, but sounds interesting and promising,
but still a bit abstract and difficult to grasp. Lot’s of information on the
Net. Here is a link to W3C resource.

If you require a more specifically defined table than that created by
CREATE TABLE AS (e.g., one with column constraints), you can replicate
the effect of the CREATE TABLE AS technique by issuing two SQL
statements rather than one. You can achieve this by first creating the new table
as you ordinarily would with CREATE TABLE, and then populating the
table with data via the INSERT INTO command and a valid SELECT
statement.

Example 4-15. Restructuring a table with CREATE TABLE and INSERT
INTO
booktown=# CREATE TABLE new_books
(
booktown(# id integer UNIQUE,
booktown(#
title text NOT NULL,
booktown(# author_id
integer,
booktown(# subject_id
integer,
booktown(# CONSTRAINT
books_?id_?pkey PRIMARY KEY
(id)
booktown(# );
NOTICE: CREATE
TABLE/PRIMARY KEY will create implicit index 'books_id_pkey'
for
table 'new_books'
CREATE
booktown=# INSERT
INTO new_books
booktown-# SELECT id, title,
author_id, subject_id
booktown-# FROM
books;
INSERT 0 12
booktown=# ALTER TABLE
books RENAME TO old_books;
ALTER
booktown=#
ALTER TABLE new_books RENAME TO
books;
ALTER

(create table
"public"."countries_2" ( "gid" int4 not null , "name" varchar(49) ,
"official_name" varchar(255) , "sovereign" varchar(49) , "iso_2_code"
varchar(11) , "iso_3_code" varchar(11) , "un_code" int4 , "id" int2 not null ,
"geo_region" int8 , "geo_subreg" int8 , "the_geom" public.geometry , primary
key("id")) WITH OIDS;

INSERT INTO countries_2 SELECT gid,
name, 'NULL', sovereign, iso_2_code, iso_3_code, un_code, id, geo_region,
geo_subreg, the_geom FROM countries;)

Source

Interesting place to get the locations
(lat/long) of cities, plus information about the population. It’s some kind of
collaboration with UN and
Worldbank.

But
it has not only cities, but some country data
too.

This
site comes as close as it can to what I would like to set-up (if I had
the time and money): a collection of names for places, with lat/long and some
other info, editable for everyone,
downloadbale…

And
some cool additional features:
Country
listing:

The name of a country in different
languages:

And
a webservice for country information, which lets
you specify the
language:

Just
look for populated places (and not other entities like
train stations
etc.).

And
a list of
webservices:

Nice Widget for the weather(forecast).

Quick summary/listing (constant update):

ISO 3166: County
Codes
It contains a two-letter code which is recommended as the
general purpose code, a three-letter code which has better mnenomic properties
and a numeric-3 code which can be useful if script independence of the codes is
important.

ISO 639: Language Codes