GeoRSS: Atom and RSS for Geographically Encoded Objects

GeoRSS Buzz Permeates Location Intelligence Conference

Wayland, MA, USA. May 03, 2006.

During the recent Location Intelligence 2006 conference, an emerging standard for geo-enabling RSS feeds, GeoRSS, garnered much positive attention. Currently sponsored by several organizations, including the OGC, GeoRSS embeds location into RSS feeds. With this information included, the feed can be mapped by a GeoRSS-enabled client. GeoRSS is detailed at www.georss.org.

OGC staff and members, RSS experts, map hackers, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and geospatial professionals collaborated on GeoRSS, hoping to unify the various methods to location to pictures, blogs, web pages and e-mail messages. The result was a simple XML format for associating a point, line, boundary or bounding box with an RSS item. Several members are considering submitting GeoRSS into the OGC standards process for discussion.

A number of organizations have already implemented GeoRSS in open source and commercial mapping, blogging and other software products. Yahoo and Microsoft have expressed interest. Raj Singh, Director of OGC's Interoperability Programs and one of the original team that created GeoRSS explains why, "We designed GeoRSS to be easily implemented in software. Once GeoRSS is part of an application, it allows just about anyone to point a GeoRSS enabled feed at GeoRSS enabled software and instantly make a map."

Mikel Maron, who was among those involved in developing GeoRSS and is the developer of mapufacture and worldKit, sees significant possibilities for the encoding. "RSS makes unanticipated connections possible, giving rise to a flexible and fluid service architecture for the Web. GeoRSS leverages this teeming ecosystem for geospatial technology, and with OGC support, GeoRSS is on firm conceptual ground and gains exposure across the industry."

The OGC is an international industry consortium of more than 300 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available interface specifications. OpenGIS Specifications support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. The specifications empower technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org.

Contact

Sam Bacharach
Executive Director, Outreach and Community Adoption
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc
Tel: +1-703-352-3938
Email: sbacharach@opengeospatial.org

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. General references in "Geography Markup Language (GML)."

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