You are no doubt all aware of the barbaric shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over the Ukraine. Mashable is compiling information as it arises, and even has an Esri webmap of the flight path of the doomed plane.

In an interview with Geospatial World Weekly, founder and President of Esri, Jack Dangermond, has said that he wants “GIS to be as easy as iPhone,” brining spatial information capabilities to millions of people across the world.

The IB Times has an article discussing China’s newest official map, designed by the government-approved Hunan Map Press, which (unsurprisingly) boldly shows the disputed islands of the South China Sea as belonging to the nation.

Also over in China, the People Daily is claiming that a new drone flying endurance record has been broken by a UAV designed by the Chinese Academy of Surveying & Mapping – 30 hours between landings, beating the previous 16 hour record.

GIS and Science reports on the OGC’s call for Public Comment on Candidate Standard for Encoding Coverages in JPEG2000. Quite a mouthful, but there is more information on just what it entails at the original post.

Google Maps Mania outlines a few isochrone APIs that make it a snap to add travel times to your Leaflet, Here, or Google Map.

The Hexagon Geospatial blog highlights a fascinating series by TIME magazine – dubbed Timelapse – that, unsurprisingly, shows a timelapse of specific areas of Earth over the last 30 years. Equally unsettling and amazing, especially given that it’s our irreplaceable natural environment that always gets the short end of the stick.