Free Geography Tools

Been a long field season this year, which has kept me away from this site. Not over yet – still have one more session left, running through the end of next week. Then I’ll be back home, and h...

https://freegeographytools.com/2011/back-soon

So I mentioned to a friend that I had just received a review copy of the new second edition of Making Maps by John Krygier and Denis Wood, and she exclaimed, “Oh, our university GIS department ...

https://freegeographytools.com/2011/making-maps-a-visual-guide-to-map-design-for-gis-a-review-of-the-second-edition

Note: PhotoFly is now 123D Catch; click here for the main product page. A few years ago, Microsoft make a big splash with Photosynth, a program that analyzes 2D photos of an area, computes their ...

https://freegeographytools.com/2011/3d-textured-models-from-2d-photos-with-photofly

gvSIG is a full-featured open source GIS program, written in Java; I’d go so far as to call it one of the two leading open source GIS programs currently available (Quantum GIS is the other). Ve...

https://freegeographytools.com/2011/portable-version-of-the-open-source-gis-gvsig

Two weeks ago, I posted about a web app from Metzger and Willard that offers useful info like PLSS data and a topo quad index in a Google Earth plugin interface. Poking around their site further,...

https://freegeographytools.com/2011/geodetic-tools-for-google-earth

A while back, I posted about a free web app from Metzger and Willard that shows National Geodetic Survey control points (benchmarks) near a specific area, and lets you view data for those landmar...

https://freegeographytools.com/2011/earth-survey-plugin-ngs-benchmarks-plss-data-usgs-quad-data-and-more

I’ve done a long series of posts on this site about various tools you can use for creating custom vector maps for Garmin GPS units, one of the most powerful features for these models (even if G...

https://freegeographytools.com/2011/free-tools-for-garmin-custom-garmin-vector-maps-xix-typwiz-the-best-typ-file-editor

Back in February, I had a long post about the FCC’s conditional approval of LightSquared’s wireless broadband proposal. This waiver was vigorously opposed by the GPS industry because tests by...

https://freegeographytools.com/2011/lightsquared-and-the-fcc-still-doing-their-best-to-destroy-gps

I first heard about the crowdmapping platform Ushahidi a few years ago; it’s an open-source app/platform that can collect/collate geotagged data in real-time from mobile observers, or delayed r...

https://freegeographytools.com/2011/real-time-crowdsourced-mapping-with-crowdmap

The National Geodetic Survey has a set of links online conversion utilities for performing some basic geodetic conversions, including: High-accuracy state plane coordinate system (SPCS) conversio...

https://freegeographytools.com/2011/national-geodetic-survey-online-toolkit