April 22, 2011 – Anything Geospatial

Officially rolled out at last year’s Esri USer Conference, Esri’s editor for OSM has received a substantial update according to the Esri Resource Center. Recall, The add-on allows ArcGIS users to download data from OpenStreetMap, store it locally in a geodatabase, and use the advanced editing environment of ArcGIS Desktop 10 to create, modify, or delete data. Once the edits are complete, the changes can be posted back to OpenStreetMap and made available to the OpenStreetMap community.

The OSM data collection/editing tool allows you to download data from the OSM servers and store it locally in a geodatabase. To stay informed of updates follow Esri’s own @martenhogeweg on Twitter. See esriosmeditor.codeplex.com

ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap

Originally uploaded by @gletham GIS, Social, Mobile Tech Images

Surprising many at Where2.0 was Matt Galligan of Simplgeo (See @mg on Twitter). Feeling in a generous mood, SimpleGeo announced that their Places data is now open – really open, as in Creative Commons Zero (CC0) and copyright free. Galligan referenced their stance on open data, in particular with reference to the open knowledge definition – a piece of content or data is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share-alike.

On the SimpleGeo blog Galligan discussed the company’s philosophy on the open data and their position as a services company not a data company… ” take our data, use it, make it your own, and make it better”. Obviously the idea here is to focus on the services the company offers and to encourage developers to leverage location and location-aware data to create cool apps and services. While on stage at Where2.0 Galligan noted how we are all sensors, gathering data in real time and cited the importance of developers having access to data. With access to real time data developers are helping provide tools that are working on real problems in real time.

See More:

SimpleGeo blog
http://blog.simplegeo.com/2011/04/20/open-places-data/

SimpleGeo Plcase
https://simplegeo.com/products/places/

Where2.0 Videos
http://where2conf.com/where2011/public/content/video