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Couldn't afford free Really?

There's plenty of free GIS data out there.

Does that include high quality data for South Africa (near Johannesburg) or were you planning to ask that prehistoric man be relocated to near San Jose so can take advantage of the free GIS data for California?

You've got to map things where they are, not where it's convenient for you to map. Moreover, Google's data is free to use, global in scope, and their application is easy to use too.

... I think it's because many departments run on shoe string budgets, and GIS was often an expense they couldn't afford.

Couldn't afford free Really?

There's plenty of free GIS data out there.

I'm not sure what cave you were living in in 2003, but;
a) SARS was hard to detect, it looked like a lot of other bugs
b) as of Apr 25, 2003, there were suspected SARS cases in atleast 1/2 of all the US states
http://spatialnews.geocomm.com/features/sars/sars_ apr252003.pdf

I don't know how many of those suspected cases turned out to be the real thing, but saying that it never made it to the US is a crock and you should get your head out of the sand.

I'm all for it as well. Just make sure that Barbra Streisand's house isn't in your picture. :)

http://spatialnews.geocomm.com/features/bsphotos/

I work for the Scientific Imaging Systems group at Eastman Kodak. http://www.kodak.com/go/scientific. Several years ago I conceived of, and wrote the software for a product we called the Field Imaging System FIS265. It was based on the DC265 which was the first Kodak camera to run the DigitaOS. I wrote a suite of scripts that ran in the camera and a plug in for the popular GIS mapping software ArcView. Another group at Kodak developed a nice bracket that held the camera together with a Garmin GPS III+. When you pressed the shutter button, the script captured the current GPS data and added a tag to the EXIF image header. Images could be transmitted anywhere and the GPS data would not be lost. The ArcView plug-in made it easy to add point symbols to any map at the location of each image capture. Click on a symbol and you would instantly see the image taken at that location. Pretty slick (IMHO). A very complete review, with pictures of the FIS265, and a tour of how it is used, can be found here: http://spatialnews.geocomm.com/newsletter/issue12/ demofis265.html The same scripts would also run in a DC290. But the DC290's rev of the DigitaOS also made it possible to parse NEMA output from any GPS (I wrote scripts for that, too.) For other reasons, Kodak decided not to use Digita in its future cameras, so the FIS265 was eventually discontinued: http://www.kodak.com/US/en/health/scientific/produ cts/fis265/ This was a shame, because shortly after that, the US military dropped SA and the system performance was about 5 times better at no extra cost! -Doug

There is a /ton/ of 'free' GIS data available on the internet.

I say 'free' because in reality the US taxpayers have paid for it, but take a look at things like:

Kansas DASC,

Census Bureau TIGER data,

collection sites like Geo Community,

and an almost limitless number of other sites. Most states now have GIS sites of one form or another, with downloadable data.

Jim Deane

I do a little work with environmental data, and in my travels I found this site. It has a huge amount of GIS data collected from various sources for the purposes of mapping various parameters, such as political boundaries, vertical relief, drainage networks, rail/road/piping networks, etc. The only downside is that the data is aging, and the free stuff only goes down to 1:1000000, but its a neat repository if you need a rough map drawn.

Have fun.

If you are looking for data (the original askslashdot doesn't mention needing any, but jic) EROS Data Center and the GIS Data Depot are my favorite spots. Oh, yes, and the data are free.

While there is a lot of "open source" map data out there, there aren't a whole lot of free tools that will help you use it.

The tools and data fall under the GIS heading. Check out these sites to get started:

• FreeGIS - A good index of available stuff.
• MapServer - A tool mainly targeted toward serving map data on the web, but I've used it to make one-off images.
• Data Catalog - I've downloaded free USGS topo maps here. The files are large and it takes some effort to know what you're looking for.

I've used these tools to build maps of GPS tracks on my website. A couple examples:

• Smoky Mountains Hike
• Swamp Kayak Trip
• River Kayak Trip

I've done most of these maps with a lot of manual labor...if anyone knows of open source/free ways to improve the process, I'd appreciate it!