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Sorry, here's the link: http://www.opengeospatial.org/resource/products#MsSqlSpatial

http://www.opengeospatial.org/resource/products

According to OGC's list of compliant products, no Microsoft products comply with the Simple Features: Types and Functions v.1.1 specification...
http://www.opengeospatial.org/resource/products/byspec ...regardless what codeplex says. OGC has a fairly rigorous specifications test.

There is an open standard, infact several open standards and a complete standards organization for publishing geographical data on the web. How you access the various sets of data however is your problem. In the USA at least the goverment collected data is free, not necessarilly so in Europe.

Google Earth is essentially a Web Map Server (WMS) The OGC http://www.opengeospatial.org/ has all the specifications for Web Map Severs and Clients. As others have mentioned, NASA WorldWind is a good example.

A blog to follow would be http://freegeographytools.com/

Those interesting in the topics should take a look at the Google Maps Hack book (review here).

Anyone whom have interest in Google Maps API must take a look at the numerous alternatives. Which includes OpenLayers.org (which just released v2.0). There are various other alternatives, all with different levels of interoperability and compatibility with OGC standards. On the subject, see slashgeo's web mapping section.
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The story is misleading. I feel like the submitter does not know what GeoRSS is. Which reminds me, there has never been any story on slashdot regarding GeoRSS at all, which surprises me (and yes, I did submit some but they all got refused :-)

The first place to start is on georss.org, but you can also read the buzzy OGC press release. From which you'll learn: "A number of organizations have already implemented GeoRSS in open source and commercial mapping, blogging and other software products. Yahoo and Microsoft have expressed interest. Raj Singh, Director of OGC's Interoperability Programs and one of the original team that created GeoRSS explains why, "We designed GeoRSS to be easily implemented in software. Once GeoRSS is part of an application, it allows just about anyone to point a GeoRSS enabled feed at GeoRSS enabled software and instantly make a map.""

But this doesn't tell you what GeoRSS is and why the story's summary is misleading. You can read this article about GeoRSS and read more about the georss standard woes here.

GeoRSS is geospatially-aware RSS. There is a lot of applications, see the links above, like geotagging news items or sensors or podcasts or... I haven't seen any georss in the links above, only mashups and funny pictures. (maybe I should look harder? :-)

Your applications may be different from those I've worked with (being that I am a geographer, not a programmer). When you mention geodatabases the first thing that popped into my head was GIS ( http://www.gis.com/ ). And my first solution was to recommend taking a night class twice a week and get your company to reimburse you upon succesful completion of the course. If GIS is what you are interested in interfacing with there should be a university in your area that will cover what you need to know. If not, look into http://www.opengeospatial.org/ Assuming it is GIS that you are working with. Good luck.

Currently the geographic community is working with in the OGC to develop DRM for geographic products. The plan is to get in early and define a standard to prevent cosy vendor mapping agency tie-ins.

So if we all get behind an open source open standard method of DRM then may be we can avoid the problems which are dogging DRM in the music industry.

Ian

You sir, are in luck.

I'm a special projects programmer (read: code monkey who has to make stuff work that was due yesterday), and I recently researched the living hell out this very problem.

Geocoding is the keyword here thats really worth a google. Basically, it should be noted that in the majority of the world, avalible geocoding data sucks.

Ireland is an prime example. Only about 30% of the transportation networks are geocoded.

That being said, what you should really get is a good geocoding kit (I have a link to the hardware at work, which ill post if there's intrest). It might be overkill, but take it from me, the information you gather with it is worth a freakin lot of money.

Some links:

http://www.travelbygps.com/authoring.php

http://www.opengeospatial.org/

you're not up to an easy task. I'd recommend grabbing a book on basic mapping/surveying at your library, but here's som questions you should answer before you start:

* What will the map be used for? Registering houses? Digging sewers? Mapping roads? Plotting land? 3D landscaping?

* What's the budget? Surveying grade GPS equipment can easily cost you $50.000. A steel measuring tape costs $50 and can get you just as far depending on the job. Maybe you'll be better off with tradidional surveying instruments (total station, prisms etc.).

* Which accuracy do you need? If it's 10 - 30 meters, you can use a normal handheld GPS. If it's 2-10 cm, you can use a differential GPS system, but you'll need a base station.

* Which coordinate system? Is this a local project, or do you need to hook the map up to a global coordinate system, eg. UTM? Do you need to join your measurements with other maps?

* And finally: which maps do you have accessible already? Satellite imaging? Local maps - paper or digital?

Mapping programs could be anything from a spreadsheet and Pythagoras to fullblown ArcInfo or specialty software, eg. Trimble Geomatics Office. Open source GIS solutions also exist. See http://www.opengeospatial.org/

Erik

It is ludicrous to claim that Google invested that much in the original content, since everyone just gets it from US Geological Survey.

So, go to the National Atlas and download and use to your heart's content. If that is not good enough, then go download all the data you can imagine. Still not enough, you can access all the layers via web services that comply with specifications published by the Open Geospatial Consortium at run time from your own web pages.

Now, write your congressmen and tell them how you appreciate that they made all this available to you, the citizen, for free, instead of spending all that tax money only to add a fee that makes it prohibitive for all but corporations who can be gatekeepers to keep you out. And hope that this doesn't become another casulty of Iraq budgets.

While you are at it, start a USGS support mailing list and an open source project to keep this sort of alive.

It seems like neither Google nor MS is really innovating much on this; granted the scrolling ability is cool with Google, but web-based GIS systems have been around for a long time, such as ESRI's ArcIMS, Autodesk's MapGuide and myriad others that support Web Mapping Services (WMS)

If I wanted to, I can download ortho photos of the entire United States from the USGS or from the USDA's NAIP program.

I guess is seems that these days it's actually pretty easy to build and manipulate web based GIS systems, so I'm curious to see what the next Big Thing will be. Maybe better integration with mobile devices?

The OGC has been developing ways of sharing and displaying geographic data for some time now. This allows (at its simplest) a user to request an image of a set of vector data (see demo ). If you need a bigger image change the size params. There are many useful WMS available for the US and some for the rest of the world where we don't give data away as freely. It should be well within any slashdotter's ability to write a modfied html form to grab a bigger map. There are also java clients available for free.

To answer questions about where places are check out the alexandria digital library gazeteer again there is a simple html interface or a java client is available.

Finally if you need more maps than are available its pretty easy to down load a server that can be used to publish date using the same protocols (for example the US statistical atlas files).

These ideas will obviously only help users with some sight. How to provide map data to the blind is a much harder problem which geographers are still working on.

Ian, (Computational Geographer)

Im not being funny here, i always thought that OGC was the hax bot that existed for counter-strike (ewww). As i ran a lan gaming center and thats what they would always be claiming was being used.

As im from the same(ish) background as most other slashdot users, i went walkies on google and found:

"Welcome to OGC
The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) is a non-profit, international, voluntary consensus standards organization that is leading the development of standards for geospatial and location based services. Through our member-driven consensus programs, OGC works with government, private industry, and academia to create open and extensible software application programming interfaces for geographic information systems (GIS) and other mainstream technologies. Adopted specifications are available for the public's use at no cost. Learn More."
http://www.opengeospatial.org/

So anyone that thought that CS had finally made its way onto slashdot, think again! (and praise the lord!).

P.S. Not going to post AC as im not taking the mick, just hope i dont get modded down for it =/