Slashgeo

And so it begins! SlashGISRS is a new slashcode-based weblog for news and discussions about GIS and Remote Sensing. Please read the faq if you're not acquainted to this system. It is very simple: you can read stories (e.g. on this page), share your comments on the story's page, and submit stories and questions you think are worthed. There is much more: we'll keep you updated with Tips of the Day. You can also customize the entire site by visiting your prefs after you created an account.

After numerous live discussions, reader emails, reader comments and the poll itself, we are happy to welcome you to slashgeo.org! This is our new official name. It wasn't an easy decision and the name won't change again. The old URL will work for at least a year, but please update your bookmarks and mail rules if necessary.

We'll make the site reflect that change in the coming weeks as time allow. Time is also the new poll topic as some have already noticed. Expect a lower quantity of stories published during the holidays. We'll be back with replenished strengh in January! I sincerily wish great holidays to all :-)

Today slashgeo.org takes another step towards openness and transparency. We are providing our financial report to anyone interested as a demonstration of our willingness to be a truly open and a community-driven tool.

In short, it cost us about 2.50$/day to maintain the website. slashgeo's added value should come from the aggregated news and from user comments: if you can divert some time to participate by sharing comments and submitting stories, please do so. It is more important than money to us. We shared some slashgeo.org statistics a few weeks ago - go see them if you missed it.

In a few days I'll be away from computers and Internet until June, this means feeding this site with stories is in your hands. Other slashgeo moderators will attend to the site. If you took a look at our Hall of Fame, you know there's a race for slashgeo's proficient submitters, user geognerd and LKS are our top contributors and front runners... Amongst good news, starting in June, I believe I'll be able to feed the site even more regularly. Keep up posting and have fun!

Last week several blogs started discussing the state of online exchanges occuring on the geospatial blogs. This subject is very dear to me and important to Slashgeo's future. How will online communications evolve within the geospatial community? Is Slashgeo pertinent and what role should it have? Are there too many geobloggers? Read more below for my opinion and personal analysis.

Slashgeo.org is at a crossroad. The new poll asks your feelings about the introduction of ads on Slashgeo's main page. The ads would be Google AdSense text-only ads. Why ads while I clearly said before I wanted Slashgeo to be ad-free? The administrators of the non-profit organization behind Slashgeo have no problem being a few thousands dollars in red, but despite regular efforts of attracting new members in the Slashgeo "editors" team, I'm mostly alone feeding the site. After nearly two years alive, the site is going well, with now about 20,000 daily hits (about 6,000 known unique daily users, 3.8M hits since launch) with however relatively little user participation (e.g. comments, submissions), and most important, providing users with 3-6 aggregated geospatial news daily. I know I'll have to significantly reduce my involvement next fall, jeopardizing Slashgeo's story feeding. Money, it seems, is the most effective incentive: if we can generate enough money with ads, this may allow us to pay someone to feed the site? Money has never been the center of this project, we want to serve the geospatial community, but we have come to wonder if money would help save the project itself. I find it awkward the solution to Slashgeo's manpower problem being serving ads, but we're welcoming any alternative suggestions you have. Having additional regular contributors would doubtlessly make the whole Slashgeo experience much more pleasant and beneficial to all.

The previous poll about breaking the Google Earth license at work it has been one of the least popular. Out of 51 votes, 29% do not look aware of the license at all, 19% said the license made them purchase the Pro or Enterprise version, 5% switched to NASA World Wind because of it and 28% are simply ignoring the license and breaking it.

Stats don't matter. What matters is the geospatial community finding slashgeo.org useful. A little more than 9 month after launch, crossing the 1,000,000 hits mark tells us our efforts are not entirely meaningless :-) However, let's not over rejoice.. I annoyingly keep repeating to the Slashgeo Team that we have not reached the maturity we envisioned. By maturity I'm referring to the, hopefully growing, number of comments and user submittals. We must also thank many individuals within the geospatial community. Some people write great content worthed to be shared with slashgeo users. Read more below in order to get an overview of slashgeo's most meaningful stats.