This is the Geopard’s very first blog post. What is Geopard ?

To introduce the project a little, Geopard aims at enabling anyone to map, view and geoposition oneself inside indoor and outdoor stuff – with an emphasis on indoor stuff -. Indoor and outdoor implies: being able to see à la Google Maps/OpenStreetMap both street level and buildings’ per-level indoor geographical objects and information. Some application places for this would be : university campuses – both indoor and outdoor (ouch !! the team members are almost over with engineering studies !), malls, hospitals…

Several non-open source initiatives exist and already what we have been working on, and managed to prototype successfully amongst which MapUme, Ekahau, Micello and AeroScout. We just want to do what we do in an open-source way, building on innovative business models both under technological and social aspects (relying on the patenting of stuff is and old-old business model which does not help you love others nor yourself correctly – this is my personal opinion, which does not reflect the team’s).

Development activity on hold

Development is on hold on our three main components: Geopard Admin, User and Server. Some of us are doing internships, others still trying to land one or… to launch a business !

We are doing some exploration on using something else than OpenStreetMap for the server side in order to feel more standardish and have clean ways to integrate additional web services. The ZOO project works on a (soon open-sourced) OGC kit comprising a server (which they call the ZOO Kernel) revolving around MapServer and OpenLayers-based clients. The ZOO tribe is building a kernel administration and end-user clients. ZOO seems to be a very good alternative for the standards & service side and should be open source “in the near future” per their About page.

Whichever server backend we’ll use in the end, we know that all in all, we’ll have to hack the rendering software code in order to have it do compositing or transform stylesheets on the fly before rendering (in order not to have L*B stylesheets for B buildings having each ~L levels).

The end-of-studies video has been released !

At last, Geopard end-of-studies project video has been posted !!

Check it out below or in the Media section:

Want to try out Geopard ?

Hey we can show you in real life that what the above shows works for true ! Just ask us for a demonstration !

While we are slowing packaging the end-of-studies code to put it online with coherent open-source licenses, you can still ask us for a demo (over the web with a simple HTTP OpenLayers client… or in the Paris area for now, if you are ok to meet somewhere), put us under pressure so that we release stuff quickly or join us to help us do this.

We are also looking for developers for small and big tasks… which you can guess from the Geopard Take part page and the Geopard Wiki page from now. Tell us that you are interested, this will motivate us !!