I want a programmers intro to GIS, sort of like the O’Reilly beginning bioinformatics for programmers book. Something that covers the basics like how to work with latitude and longitude and GPS, how to map points on map to their lat/long and back again, how to calculate lat/long convex polygon approximations, you know that kind of thing. Also a good over view of available data, and formats. Maybe something on transforming street addresses, and place names into meaningful data (and back again).

I guess this is more GIS for dummies, or GIS for webapps. So much of the data out there is about dealing with highly detailed projections of narrowly defined regions, where really I just want to add geographic info to my toolbox of metadata. (though there was one night, when I fantasized about getting an advanced degree in information sciences with a concentration in maps)