MapFish 1.2 has just been released. This is described as a major release, and new features include:

• Based on Pylons 0.9.7 and GeoExt 0.6
• Attribute Filtering in the MapFish Protocol
  
• Python 2.6 support for Linux
• Simplified installation on Linux and Windows
• Server unit tests.
  

The official announcement and further information can be found here.

Today, UMapper are announcing that they are supporting custom maps. Any static map image can be uploaded to UMapper to be converted into an interactive map. The new functionality is already active, and the official announcement is due in the next few hours.

Google have started to publicly move their maps away from Tele Atlas to their own multi-sourced data. There has been some speculation that Google would move from commercial suppliers to their own data sources, and it now appears to be happening. As of today, the copyright message for the USA no longer says "Tele Atlas" but "(C) 2009 - Map Data (C) 2009 Google". The message is dynamic - so Canada and Central America still show the Tele Atlas copyright.

The Google blog announcement can be found here. Data sources appear to be varied and include the USGS as well as individual universities for their campus maps. The reference to the USGS suggests TIGER/Line. This might be freely available, but tends to be dated. Google have a map editing interface where users can update map errors. If they are updating TIGER/Line with their own (eg. from StreetView acquisition) and user changes, then I hope they will follow the spirit of TIGER/Line and release it into the public domain.

The blog post also explicitly describes trails, paths, and cycle paths. To me, this suggests to me that Google sees OpenStreetMap as significant competition in terms of mind share.

The blogosphere (OpenGeoData; James Fee incl comments ) is already full of theories that much of this data has been acquired from local governments and transport authorities with deals along the lines of "we provide free Google Earth / Maps licenses, and we get your data for free". The problem here: Most of these organizations charge the public for this data. If Google have amended the data, what will they be doing with it? Will they be making it public for free? Charge for it? Give it back to the original organizations?  Although it is easy to dismiss these posts and comments as conspiracy theories, Google have already set a bad precedent when it comes to walking all over copyright holders and data providers with their proposed book deal (thanks to James Fee for the Nancy Sinatra simile). It looks like the book deal won't make it through the US court. We shall have to see what happens about the map data.