Free Geo Software Tools
Viewer - Dynamic Maps gives you easy access to data and information and the ability to create intelligent maps and presentations. Dynamic Maps is powerful software that helps you see what's happening where and how. In summary, Dynamic Maps links map features with databases, documents, pictures, web site links -- anything. Publish your map in PowerPoint. Anything on your screen can be a detailed PowerPoint slide - ready for editing, animating, and annotating! Link maps with Excel. Import Excel spreadsheets and "map" them by linking their records to map features on the fly. Work in Excel and see the results of your work on the map! (http://www.dynamicplanet.com/html/DynamicMapsFeatures.htm for more information.) Below are demo projects for use with this software.
Shapefile Viewer - Shape Viewer is a free tool, which you can use to view ESRI® Shape files. Shape viewer can open (.shp) files that contain the geometry information of the shape file. With Shape Viewer you can also create new (.shx) file, and new empty (.dbf) file for your shape file. If you have hundreds of shape files, and you want to view their contents rapidly, and you don't want to open each shapefile in heavy software like ArcView or ArcGIS, then Shape Viewer will be your choice. Shape Viewer is a free and light viewer, which can be used to browse and view the shapefiles easily. You can modify and edit the files at http://www.mapshaper.org/test/demo.html online. Good for one set of data at a time.
TatukGIS Viewer - The free TatukGIS Viewer opens most GIS/CAD vector, raster image, and grid file types and most ArcView®, ArcExplorer®, and MapInfo® projects. Besides just opening and viewing files, the Viewer supports an extensive set of features including visual layer properties control, legend control, thematic mapping, spatial and attribute querying, custom labeling, on-map measurements, hyper-linking, PDF export and much more. The user interface is available in 16 languages. (Downloaded from http://www.tatukgis.com/products/viewer/viewer.aspx). Allows for multiple files and outputs.
OssimPlanet - OssimPlanet is a cross platform, open source, virtual Earth. It differs from other implementations in its focus on accuracy, native ingest of a wide range of geospatial formats, and peer to peer communications mechanisms that provide remote collaboration. It allows for the fast merging of various data formats (raster and vector data). The user manual can be downloaded here as well. (Downloaded from http://ossim.telascience.org/ossimdata/)
GIDB® Clients - The Digital Mapping, Charting and Geodesy Analysis Program (DMAP) team is part of the Naval Research Laboratory's (NRL) Mapping Branch and is especially focused on advanced object-oriented modeling, database design, advanced geospatial portal implementation, environmental data dissemination, emerging digital mapping standards, and technical reviews for Navy usage of geospatial information. The Downloadable (Thick) Client is our full-featured client aimed at the power user. The thick client allows many more capabilities (e.g., unlimited number of layers, 3D visualization, importing of local shape and other data, extensive flexibility on input formats, output formats (e.g., shape, geotiff, png, etc.), and drawing options (symbology such as Geosym 4)). The thick client is downloaded to your machine and auto installs for use. (downloaded from http://dmap.nrlssc.navy.mil/dmap/ ) Patents: 6,684,219 , 6,950,828 and 6,985,929 Trademarks: 2,957,434 , 2,852,412 and 3,121,688
Wikipedia List of GIS Tools - This is a list of notable GIS software applications.
WikiMapia - WikiMapia is a Web 2.0 project to describe the whole planet Earth. It was created by Alexandre Koriakine and Evgeniy Saveliev, inspired by Google maps and Wikipedia. Sites are uploaded and described and geocoordinates are returned. This is a good site for collecting information about a certain region - locations of hotels, features, etc.
Crimestat III - CrimeStat is a spatial statistics program for the analysis of crime incident locations, developed by Ned Levine & Associates under the direction of Ned Levine, PhD, that was funded by grants from the National Institute of Justice (grants 1997-IJ-CX-0040, 1999-IJ-CX-0044, 2002-IJ-CX-0007, and 2005-IJ-CX-K037). The program is Windows-based and interfaces with most desktop GIS programs. The purpose is to provide supplemental statistical tools to aid law enforcement agencies and criminal justice researchers in their crime mapping efforts. CrimeStat is being used by many police departments around the country as well as by criminal justice and other researchers. The new version is 3.0 (CrimeStat III). The program inputs incident locations (e.g., robbery locations) in 'dbf', 'shp', ASCII or ODBC-compliant formats using either spherical or projected coordinates. It calculates various spatial statistics and writes graphical objects to ArcViewAE, MapInfoAE, Atlas*GISTM, SurferAE for Windows, and ArcView Spatial Analyst(c). (downloaded from http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/CRIMESTAT/about.html). For a detailed description see also http://www.nedlevine.com/nedlevine17.htm The manual "Mapping Crime" from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) is also available for download. Crime is not spread evenly across maps. It clumps in some areas and is absent in others. People use this knowledge in their daily activities. They avoid some places and seek out others. Their choices of neighborhoods, schools, stores, streets, and recreation are governed partially by the understanding that their chances of being a victim are greater in some of these places than in others.