open source basecamp

I’m now a big fan of OpenStreetMap. The speed of data creation is incredible: http://www.geofabrik.de/gallery/history/index.html. It will be soon a very good global geodata source… for free… Let me explain the steps I use to generate new data with my Geoko 201:
1. I ride my mountain bike (GPS acquisition interval is set to 5s) or I drive my car (acquisition interval: 1s)
2. I use EasyGps to create a gpx file (http://www.easygps.com/)
3. The gpx file is then uploaded into OpenStreetMap
4. Then potlatch is used to digitize the roads and to define the streets name
5. … and I have to wait until next wednesday to see the data in OpenStreetMap…
That’s it !

MapFish proposes now widgets to recenter the map. The recentering can be based on a coordinate submitted by the user. It can also be based on information provided by a REST service, with auto completion, like a city or address searcher. We already implemented such REST services for customers.
You can find the widget code under: https://trac.mapfish.org/trac/mapfish/browser/trunk/MapFish/client/mfbase/mapfish/widgets/recenter.
If someone wants to create a specific widget for recentering the Map based on GeoNames, you are welcome to do it.

Jeoren Ticheler just announced (http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_name=2B3161B5-005D-4D03-AFFB-5A78FDFFAEF2%40geocat.net) some developments related to MapFish in Geonetwork.
Two main things are currently developped: the integration of MapFish as “Geonetwork viewer” and the usage of CSW for the communication between MapFish and Geonetwork.

R.T. Hicks Consultants is building a web map application using MapFish to diffuse GIS information: http://webmap.rthicksconsult.com.
MapFish will allow environmental professionals to characterize an area impacted by contamination by evaluating geology, depth to groundwater, groundwater chemistry, and topography.

It’s quite obvious to say that the web users like to have fast applications. This is also true in the web mapping area. We present in the MapFish HowTo Optimize some tips regarding performance in MapFish. I’d like to highlight some of these tips:
- In OpenLayers, the “buffer” is per default 2. This means that 2 tiles are downloaded around the viewport. If you reduce this setting, then less tiles will be downloaded.
- Of course, use tilecache to cache the tiles on the server side. We have just commited a nice function that is able to merge tiles on the server sides (if you have several layers). In this case, the browser has not to do the merge.
- With Web 2.0, a lot of functions are developped in Javascript. This code has to be transferred to the browser. You can activate the mod_deflate module in Apache to compress the web server output.
- And of course, the performance of you mapping server (MapServer or GeoServer) can be optimized, for example by using persistent database connection or by avoiding complex styling. But I let you google that