Planet Geospatial Reboot is Here

Planet Geospatial Reboot Is Here

May 23rd, 2008 · 40 Comments · GIS

My policy on Planet Geospatial has been if you want in, just ask, and you’ll be added. I’m not sure this can continue as the noise is just too much to make Planet Geospatial of any value. So I’m in the process of cleaning out the feeds and reducing it from the 144 that are currently in Planet Geospatial to about 60 50 (it ended up being 50 blogs). I know many bloggers will be unhappy that they got dropped, but the value of Planet Geospatial is at stake here. Those who blog original content should get precedence of those who blog news that has been covered elsewhere.

The end result will be something that I think will be of more value to the community at large than just an echo chamber.

If you want to grab all the feeds that made up the old Planet Geospatial list, you can do so by downloading this OPML file:

http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/media/gis/GISFeeds.opml and import it into your favorite RSS Aggregator.

Tags: Planet Geospatial

40 responses so far ↓

1 Thematic Mapping Blog // May 23, 2008 at 8:19 pm

blog.thematicmapping.org is out! So if anyone wants to receive more ideas of how geobrowsers can be used for thematic mapping (which I think is quite original), please subscribe to my feed directly!

Bjorn
2 Guillaume // May 23, 2008 at 8:37 pm

Thanks for this, it was really hard to keep up lately.
3 James Fee // May 23, 2008 at 9:21 pm

I got an email from someone who was dropped and I’ll say what I told them. Just blog some good material and then ask to be added again. I’m not trying to be a jerk here, just trying to keep PGS valuable. So much noise is good for no one.

@Bjorn: Didn’t mean to drop your blog so let me add it back in.
4 Gary // May 23, 2008 at 10:00 pm

I think a lot of blogs with good material were dropped. So what constitutes good in the mind of James Fee?
5 Dave // May 24, 2008 at 6:59 am

Good call James - Drop some of the echo, and focus on creators of quality content.

Maybe you can put up the old OPML file, and gently suggest that anyone can follow all of the feeds directly in their feed reader.
6 James Fee // May 24, 2008 at 7:39 am

Good idea Dave, I’ll do that. Planet Geospatial isn’t an RSS Aggregator and that is what it became.
7 James Fee // May 24, 2008 at 8:04 am

I put the old full list of Planet Geospatial blogs in the post above.

http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/media/gis/GISFeeds.opml

Get a Google Reader Account and import the OPML.
8 AlbertW // May 24, 2008 at 8:06 am

Very welcome change James. PlanetGS became very difficult to read. Keep up the great work.

@Gary: I think the way forward is more focused “Planets” like Planet OSGeo than a huge unorganized list. I get your point, but James seems to not want to set up a committee to decide on this stuff.
9 James Fee // May 24, 2008 at 8:16 am

No committee, no wiki. This is a zero maintenance thing for me. If it becomes a PITA, it gets killed off.

Anyone wants to start their own Planet feed, I’ll be glad to assist them and link to it.
10 David Davis // May 24, 2008 at 9:18 am

THANK YOU! PGS is a valuable resource and reading 5 posts about the same thing is very annoying especially since geobloggers don’t seen to add any commentary other than:

1. Its cool
2. Its awesome
3. So and so lets us know

Freaking depressing reading geobloggers….
11 Doug // May 24, 2008 at 11:11 am

I think that this is a good thing. Lately PlanetGS has had way too many code blocks lately. Code blocks are noise. I’d prefer to see more commentary, and human readable text, not stuff that is written for compilers.
12 Bill // May 24, 2008 at 1:58 pm

@Doug

Code blocks aren’t noise if you’re trying to figure out how to do something. It depends on you’re point of view and PlanetGS serves a pretty broad audience. James was correct that there were a lot of “me too” blogs on PlanetGS and it will make things a lot easier to sort through now that he’s culled it down.

Thanks, James, for keeping this going.
13 Bull // May 24, 2008 at 3:03 pm

Ah well at least we still have one World Wind blog on the list (even if it is Chad who causes most of the echo :P), but I do agree the site needed a clean up.
14 James Fee // May 24, 2008 at 3:04 pm

@Bull: Gotta have one Google hater there.
15 Gary // May 24, 2008 at 4:19 pm

More than the “me too” bloggers were cut—some with real but perhaps sporadic content. But in the end it’s James’ site—he can do with it what he wills.
16 James Fee // May 24, 2008 at 5:38 pm

Hey Gary, what got cut that you think shouldn’t have been?
17 mentaer // May 24, 2008 at 7:21 pm

on your question to Gary I would answer:

lin-ear-th-inking.blogspot.com

sporadic but usually unique comments. But it is on the one-side sometimes a bit off-topic and on the other side sometimes too technical and in-depth for the average GIS guy (maybe…). And if you add all back…
18 Gary // May 24, 2008 at 7:59 pm

@James: mapping hacks, perrygeo, and casoilresource to name a few…
19 Matt Priour // May 24, 2008 at 8:44 pm

Look’s like I’ll have to play my way back in.
However, I think it was a good idea for the community at large to cut the noise and have a little higher bar for inclusion.
Thanks James
20 James Fee // May 24, 2008 at 9:23 pm

Gary: Mapping Hacks and the CA Soil blog were ones I was on the fence about. Bringing them up is good enough to add them back in.

PerryGeo wasn’t dropped, but the line in the ini file was formatted incorrectly.

@Matt You still blogging?
21 Francesco // May 24, 2008 at 11:24 pm

Google Earth is a very good application to be used to walk around the whole earth. With the help of this application we are able to see anything in the world. But the limitation of this is that the images are not updated on daily basis.
22 Martijn van Exel // May 25, 2008 at 12:25 am

Although I didn’t make the cut, I’m still happy with the cleanup. This is a valuable resource for all of us.

And one day…I’ll be back
23 Mateusz Loskot // May 25, 2008 at 2:59 am

James, cleanup is a good idea. Geospatial word covers very wide range of technologies and it’s as meaningless as IT (everything and nothing specific). I expect there will be more geo planets in future, like Web Mapping planet, ESRI Technologies planet, Google Geo Technologies planet (KML, GE, GMaps) etc.

For those who haven’t found it yet, we have already forked new planet devoted to OSGeo Foundation and FOSS4G: http://planet.osgeo.org/
24 Brian Peasley // May 26, 2008 at 11:51 am

Thanks James… I was beginning to get a bit too comfortable with my ‘mark all as read’ button.
–Brian
25 Regina // May 27, 2008 at 5:31 am

I’m a bit irritated that I was cut, but given that I haven’t blogged on GIS in a while I guess it is only fair.

Does bring up the point that maybe there should be some segregation by subject. E.g. those who like tutorial like blogs and those who like commentary or something along that line.

Although I guess for those that do both - it would be hard to split up.
26 James Fee // May 27, 2008 at 5:49 am

Regina: I think more “planets” is a great idea. I don’t want to get involved with any more personally, but if people want to set them up, I’ll be glad to put links to them on Planet Geospatial.
27 Dan S. // May 27, 2008 at 11:45 am

Well, that was fun while it lasted. (From someone who was dropped, justifiably: I’ve been very sporadic / infrequent about publishing.)

James: Maybe I’ll petition for a re-add once I manage to stick to a “once a week” schedule…

On the other hand, I now have less pressure to always have a geospatial topic/tie-in for every post; being dropped may end up being nicely liberating. (On the other other hand: I’ve got a lot fewer viewers now, too; alas.)
28 Chris C. // May 27, 2008 at 2:33 pm

I was dropped too

With Free and ESRI in my blog title I seem to attract a lot eyeballs in any case.

I might be actually posting something after attending the Manifold UC in Salisbury this week.
29 Regina // May 28, 2008 at 7:28 am

All of us who were dropped should form a “Not good enough for James” planet and start a war against Planet Geospatial for world supremacy
30 Matt Perry // May 28, 2008 at 9:06 am

No need for any more planets … just submit your stories to Geospatial Reddit . Let the magical hand of free-market democracy decide
31 James Fee // May 28, 2008 at 9:32 am

@Regina: What do you care, you are still in Planet Geospatial…
32 Regina // May 28, 2008 at 9:40 am

Alright never mind. Now I have an identity crisis. I guess I was expecting it to say Boston GIS on it. I guess I don’t need to form an army against you now
33 Sean Gillies // May 28, 2008 at 10:00 am

Worth a shot, Matt. Hopefully the geo noise machine doesn’t find it.
34 James Fee // May 28, 2008 at 10:02 am

One mans noise is another mans news Sean. That is what I’ve learned from this whole thing.

No one is happy with anything.
35 KoS // May 28, 2008 at 10:10 am

James: it’s more….damn if you do, damn if you don’t! The essence of life.

KoS
36 Casey // May 28, 2008 at 11:20 am

I find it amusing that the reason for consolidating the Planet GeoSpatial feedlist was to decrease on duplicates and ironically (or is it coincidence?) it seems that today EVERYONE has a blog entry about the new GE browser plugin!

Ah life should be about smiling : )

Thanks for keeping Planet GS running!
37 SEWilco // May 29, 2008 at 8:03 am

Some of the GE browser plugin entries are much more informative than others, so at least they’re not echoing exactly the same thing.
38 Chad // May 29, 2008 at 6:45 pm

@SEWilco: But they are all “Drinking the koolaid” posts though… So far, I am the only one playing Devils Advocate about it.

Hey James, since there is only one WW blogger in there now.. don’t we only need one GE blogger as well? You read ogle earth.. you have already read googleearthblog then.. and vice versa
39 James Fee // May 29, 2008 at 8:53 pm

@Chad: I think there is only one Google Earth fanboy blog in there now. And one WW fanboy blog as well….
40 Anon // May 31, 2008 at 9:27 pm

Note to all the folks out there thinking they will create a new Planet Geospatial that is better, or more open, or cooler….

Everyone already goes to Planet Geospatial and we don’t have enough time to visit 5 aggregator sites.

Look if your blog got dropped, it was probably for a good reason. Blogging about blogging is bad enough, but blogging about aggregating is nothing more than a turnoff.