Lauren had a great idea for a project. We are making a simple, curated search / browse filled with GIS information. We'll categorize the information by location, region, type of information, source, and all that juicy metadata.
The idea of this new site was a simple search, managing and curating all the different sources available. Like a directory site. Some sort of Geographic pages. We ended up with Geoportal. Sounds like a great name!
Unfortunately, I completely forgot to google other claims to the GeoPortal title.
Geoportal: Software
Geoportal is an open source Metadata Management Server. Created by Esri, ArcGIS sofware creators, Geoportal can be used to setup your own Geographic Information Server. Not exactly the same as our intended product. Ours is a basic service that Name is a bit of a concern. How about other services that are similar?
OpenGeoPortal: Website Search Service
Now OpenGeoPortal provides a similar service, but their Java program is in beta. It provides live feedback for users to explore, touch and check out the results of the data live. Since they're basically serving up a repository of information right at the fingertips of the customer, with even a checkout (Shopping cart downloads!).
Geoportal.org: More search prowess
Geoportal.org has a preview for finding geospatial data through a search box and a graphical preview. It runs a bit slow, but has a lot of awesome visual features.
Geoportal.us: Obscure data and reviews
Our site, which shares the similar names, would be a minimalistic but smart search and browse. We are aiming to solve a problem that these monolithic search applications fails to address: finding quality obscure data.
Life as a Geography student is tough. Sometimes you need to research some random topics and areas, but the data listed is mislabeled, irrelevant, inaccurate. We're here to help. We'd like to help with the data labeling process to get those Geography students from wasting many hours just looking for data.
But maybe we need to find another name for the service.