Until new sources of funding are found, OpenDragon continues to be available but with much reduced activity. New software development is halted, and the website has been moved to a new host which is much less expensive, but also much less convenient for Asian users.

We are continuing to actively seek new funding. Furthermore, software development of the commercial Dragon/ips is also continuing. (For information, see: http://www.dragon.rsgis.net). Meanwhile, we apologize for any delays in replying to your communications.

OpenDragon Release 5.10 was officially released on Feburary 27, 2007. Minor improvements were added up through release 5.10.5 in July 2007. Highlights of this release include automated image import, georeferenced vector support, and range of new raster modelling operations including slope and aspect calculation, buffering, and conditional layer combinations.

• OpenDragon will share exhibition space with Dragon/ips (r) at the HealthGIS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand January 14-16, 2008.
• OpenDragon shared an exhibition booth with Dragon/ips (r) at the 28th Asian Conference on Remote Sensing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in November 2007. Because OpenDragon has no source of funding at that time, the space was donated by Goldin-Rudahl Systems, Inc.
• The OpenDragon Project had a booth at the exhibition of the American Association of Geographers annual meeting in San Francisco, CA, USA, from April 17-20, 2007. For more information, visit http://www.aag.org.
• Dr. Sally Goldin presented a paper entitled "OpenDragon: A Platform for Teaching Geoinformatics Software Development" at the 27th Asian Conference on Remote Sensing in Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia, October 9-13, 2006. The paper focused on how OpenDragon and the Programmer's Toolkit can be used by students learning doing thesis or project research, or working in courses on geoinformatics programming.
• The ISPRS Commission VII Mid-Term Symposium held in Enschede, The Netherlands, from 8-11 May, 2006, included a special session entitled "OpenDragon: Free Geoinformatics Software for Education in Developing Countries". This session included demonstrations of the software and discussions of how to expand its distribution to other regions. Dr. Sally Goldin, assistant director of the OpenDragon project, also spoke speak in one of the symposium's plenary sessions.

Kurt Rudahl, director of the OpenDragon Project, presented a paper on the project and its goals during the 20th Towson University GIS Conference, which took place March 20-21, 2006 in Towson, Maryland, USA. This conference has a major focus on geoinformatics education and is one of the longest running and best attended regional GIS conferences in America.

OpenDragon Version 5.8 was released on March 6, 2006. This version provides more automatic image conversion, enhanced image metadata, and a variety of functional improvements.

On March 6, 2006, members of the OpenDragon Project participated in a meeting with other members of the KMUTT community to discuss whether there was a need for and interest in some kind of cross-departmental center to house geoinformatics engineering research and projects. You can find the slides from Kurt Rudahl's presentation about the OpenDragon Project here.

The OpenDragon Project was invited to participate in the exhibition associated with the Thailand National Conference on Mapping and Geoinformatics, December 14-16, 2005. More than 500 attendees had the opportunity to learn about the project.

From November 7-11, 2005, the OpenDragon team attended the 26th Asian Conference on Remote Sensing, in Hanoi, Vietnam. We met many members of the Vietnam geoinformatics community, including the Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, Prof. DrSc. Dang Hung Vo, who was a keynote speaker at the conference. We were particularly interested in informing people about the Vietnamese translation of Dragon, which will be included in Dragon 5.8.

For more information about the Asian Conference on Remote Sensing, visit http://www.aars-acrs.org. The complete proceedings from ACRS 2005 as well as the 2004 conference, which was held in Chiang Mai, Thailand, are available here