Tuesday, December 06, 2005

The GIS Feed Community

Keeping current with the latest happenings and events in the GIS world has become very daunting.

The 'GIS Feed Community' is growing very quickly. There are just so many blogs entries, news items, discussions, and technology releases that are really, really interesting and fun stuff that I do not want to miss a moment of them.

So here is an overview of current resources as I understand them. This can serve as an introduction to the somewhat daunting task of keeping up with the GIS feed community, and especially good for folks (like students) first starting to venture out there...

The diagram below represents the sectors of the GIS feed community (Click to Enlarge)
Click to Enlarge
  • Aggregators
    • Aggregators pull the latest feeds from a variety of sources and display them on one page. They have been very useful in giving the spatial community a central gathering place.
    • There are three key aggregators, Planet Geospatial, Journey with GIS, and Planet GIS. Planet Geospatial is especially useful as James Fee does a fantastic job maintaining the aggregator and selecting sites for inclusion, as well as providing access to the XML feed and OPML.

  • GIS Editorials
    • These are blogs that comment upon, or editorialize on the state of the spatial industry or of particular aspects. They give us the big picture of things.
    • Examples include Vector One, EdParsons.com, and think.

  • GIS Technology
    • These are blogs that focus on GIS technology (in general). They are written/maintained by GIS users and developers and comprise the bulk of the GIS feed community.
    • Click here for a list of these GIS Technology blogs.

  • Links & Resources

  • Major Software Developer Blogs
    • These are blogs maintained by employees of major GIS software developer companies.
    • I have no idea whether ESRI is promoting this or not, but ESRI employees have really taken an interest in blogging. The entire list can be viewed here. Chandu Thota's WebLog is a good blog coming from a MapPoint developer.

  • Industry News
    • There are numerous happenings and releases within the GIS industry these days. It is possible to receive all the important news by using the resources listed above, but if you want to ensure that nothing slips through your grasp you can get your news directly.
    • Click here to access a list of industry news feeds.

  • Communities

  • ListServs with No Feeds
    • Unfortunately not all resources currently provide feeds and we are forced to monitor them via email.
    • ListServs that I monitor include ESRI-L/ArcView-L, Maps-L, and MapHist.

  • Podcasts
    • I forgot to include this sector in the image above, but podcasts are downloadable mp3 files that serve as GIS radio shows.
    • You must, must, must listen to A VerySpatial Podcast. It is great. Another new podcast whose first episode was very good is Where It's At....

  • Directory of GIS Feed Community
    • A directory containing these and other categories of available GIS-related feeds can be found here.
    • And please oh please do not forget about us librarians. :)

  • Other Topics of Interest

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

No Prescription medication Pharmacy. Get Cheap Medication online. Buy Pills Central.
[url=http://buypillscentral.com/buy-generic-cialis-online.html]Buy Cheap Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, Tamiflu[/url]. rx generic pills. Top quality pills pharmacy

eco vacation costa rica said...

Hello .. firstly I would like to send greetings to all readers. After this, I recognize the content so interesting about this article. For me personally I liked all the information. I would like to know of cases like this more often. In my personal experience, I really enjoyed reading about The GIS Feed Community, I think that this Is a very professional information

Firesales Costa Rica said...

Hello.. Firstly I would like to send greetings to all readers. After this, I recognize the content so interesting about this article. For me personally I liked all the information. I would like to know of cases like this more often. In my personal experience I might mention a book called Firesales Costa Rica in this book that I mentioned have very interesting topics, and also you have much to do with the main theme of this article.

Melvio Diaz said...

Nice post. I learn something more difficult on completely different blogs everyday. It is going to always be stimulating to learn content from different writers and follow a bit of something from their store. I'd desire to use some with the content on my weblog whether you don't mind. Natually I'll give you a hyperlink on your web blog. Thanks for sharing.

Grad said...

It is a growing community.