James Fee GIS Blog

I’m heading down into the basement for a week.  Enjoy the greatness that is David Hasselhoff, Gary Coleman and of course KITT.

What a moment of zen...

Well kudos for FortiusOne for getting the word out on Maker! especially since the launch was delayed from the original PR blitz.  As with most GeoBloggers, I’ve had access to Maker! since last week and have really been impress with its output.  Sean has been teasing us for months it seems with the cartographic output of Maker! in his blog posts, so I was glad to finally get my  hands on Maker!. (side note, do you put a period after a product name that ends in a punctuation mark?)

Maker! is the map production portion of GeoCommons and Finder! is the search engine for geospatial data.  Together they allow users to create web maps that can be shared with the world.  So to get information in Maker!, you first upload your data to Finder! and then add it to your map.  The byproduct of this workflow is more data gets added to Finder! and in turn more data is available to the community at large.  Freely sharing data is one the core components of GeoCommons (compared to WeoGeo which is more of a marketplace).

Stefan Geens does a good job of showing how the map is created and how you set what we usually refer to the symbology of layers.  What I like about this approach is you can bring to light the data in ways that before Maker!, required custom programming to achieve good looking results (if even possible).  FortiusOne, according to Sean, worked with cartographic professionals to create the rich (I’m sorry) map production tools.  These tools are so good in fact that I’ve heard a couple GIS professionals lament that they’ll be out of a job soon (of course we all know that Maker! will only increase our workloads to produce data for public consumption).  What we have here are two really simple tools that allow anyone to upload geospatial content, combine that information with other datasets and then create a wonderful looking map that visually tells a story.

You can argue all day and night about what the GeoWeb is or isn’t, but I think we have an excellent example of what the GeoWeb should be right here.  Finder! has discoverable web services of data (with metadata to boot) and Maker! allows you to leverage those services together to create derivative value content to share with the world.  Moving forward, the data of GeoCommons should support more OGC services (beyond KML) for those who need that support and the maps created with Maker! should be more easily shared beyond just an web map.  But the groundwork is there for sharing data with the world.

Despite the lack of monkey maps, the GeoMonkey approves of Maker!

The Amazon Web Services Blog says that Amazon will be bringing Microsoft Windows to EC2 this fall.

The 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows Server will be available and will be able to use all existing EC2 features such as Elastic IP Addresses, Availability Zones, and the Elastic Block Store. You’ll be able to call any of the other Amazon Web Services from your application. You will, for example, be able to use the Amazon Simple Queue Service to glue cross-platform applications together.

This is on the heels of the Oracle/Amazon EC2 release from a couple weeks ago.  Now that the tools are here, we’ll have to see how well they are adopted by corporate IT administrators who aren’t always open to giving up control of their servers to others.

Mr. Gates saw the value of the cloud early on

I was thinking the past week about a project that we will start working on soon. Simply put, it is updating a MapObjects IMS application we deployed almost 10 years ago, that is still working. When I saw that it was not only still running, but it was still a critical part of their business workflow, it started me thinking about why such an application was so successful. It obviously wasn’t the technology. Sure the back end runs on Oracle, but even the most ardent MOIMS supporter can’t claim that the Visual Basic application was cutting edge even back then. So that must mean there was something else going on that kept it running when most MOIMS sites are long gone.

Won't someone please think of the users?

History of GIS applications tells us one story that repeats itself again and again.  There is a horrible habit of pushing over-engineered applications that are not used by the target audience because no one has time to figure out complicated tools.  GIS vendors have not discouraged such habits and in some cases encourage them.  The GIS world is really good at writing GIS applications for GIS professionals.  I think this used to work before GIS and mapping became important in our everyday lives, but now that everyone everywhere is looking at deploying spatial applications focus needs to be put on what the end users are going to be doing with the application.

So back to that old MapObjects application, it did a really good job of doing what it was supposed to do.  Display information in a context that the users were comfortable working (the interface was familiar to them) with and meet their requirements (which were obviously well developed), fit within their websites, scaled well (even Visual Basic does that apparently) and wasn’t an obstacle to their workflows.  With MOIMS depreciated and the need to connect to more modern ESRI servers and Oracle databases the application needs to be updated, but not because it restricts their business practices and workflows.

Foisting this application on users of a bus system was poorly thought out, but the Google Transit version released a few weeks ago hits the target users right on.  The heavy GIS website might meet needs of users in the organizations internally, but externally it really highlights missed opportunities and wasted resources.  I’m personally really excited to see if we can replicate the success of the earlier MOIMS application with JavaScript APIs, KML downloads and other new technology and still keep is simple.  The key is listen to what the client really wants and be agile enough to deliver simple, focused, and fast products.

I’ve been quiet this week because I’ve been at the fiscal year end management meetings.   The RSP Minneapolis office is located in the old Grain Belt Brewhouse which is just incredible office space.

View Larger Map

The weather has been just so hit and miss. Flying in on Tuesday, we almost had to divert to Omaha, NE and the rain once we did get on the ground made it almost impossible to drive. But since then the weather has been very enjoyable (I suppose some might say warm, but being from Arizona I have a different definition).

Oracle and Amazon today announced that Oracle would be offering some of their products inside Amazon’s EC2 cloud.

The Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Fusion Middleware, and Oracle Enterprise Manager can now be licensed to run in the cloud on Amazon EC2. Customers can even use their existing software licenses with no additional license fees. 

While I see nothing specifically about Oracle Spatial, I assume is can be licensed as well on the cloud.  The benefit to everyone is outside of licensing costs, the ability to launch the Oracle AMIs on EC2 and be up and running in no time.  That plus the scaleability of EC2 (and thus Oracle) means that you don’t have to worry about hardware limitations with your applications.  RSP Architects uses SQL Server as our database of choice, and while I would have been able to run Oracle in a virtual server, I no longer have to worry about hardware constraints to our development.  Just license (which of course I realize is a problem for some people) and start loading the database.  I’m anxious to see how ArcGIS connects to Oracle Spatial on EC2 and what kind of performance I can expect.

Cloudzilla could be unbeatable with Oracle in his hands

Now for those who want to avoid Oracle, MySQL Enterprise as well in the Amazon Cloud.

So Google has finally gotten around to making sure both the Google Maps API and the Google Local Search API are using the same underlying data.

Google Maps has now switched their map data provision completely over to TeleAtlas from Navteq. Now the google Maps, the Google API and the Google Maps for Mobile all use the same underlying data. This switch was only a matter of time given Nokia aquisition of Navteq

I’m curious to see if the change will affect any mapping applications out there that were using the Navteq data given that TeleAtlas and Nokia Navteq are probably different.  Time for Peter Batty to revisit his Google Maps vs Google Local Search blog posts.

Avast, me hearties!

‘Tis that time once again, International Talk Like A Pirate Day Tide be here. Ye better learn t’ talk like a seafarin’ hearty today or else ye`ll look like a fool. Raise yer grog mugs an’ celebrate. If Captain Jack Sparrow can take th’ time t’ get involved wi’ his local GIS Tide presentations, ye can talk like a seafarin’ hearty.

Captain Jack is teaching is crew about GIS today.

So you can’t have Silverlight, Java or Flash to develop interactive mapping on the iPhone and have to “resort” to using JavaScript. Well maybe not, could SVG be the way forward to creating mapping websites on the iPhone?  My 2G iPhone seems to support SVG fairly well, but many SVG sites aren’t optimized for the iPhone.  Take ESRI’s abandoned (?) SVG Viewer:

ESRI's ArcWeb SVG Viewer

It loads and you can turn on and off the “widgets” with ease.  But navigating it was impossible.  I know zero about developing with SVG so I suppose someone else will have to comment on if it is possible to create iPhone compatible navigation for SVG apps.  Heck if ESRI were to make a ArcGIS Server SVG API compatible for the iPhone, every ArcGIS Server implementation would be viewable on the iPhone.

For everyone  who keeps telling me that this “geospatial space” is boring these days, you have obviously not been paying attention.  Loads of great stuff has been been posted:

• Thanks to everyone who sent this link in (Bill, Dan, John, Barry, Alan, APB).  ESRI has compiled essays from their publications into a GIS Best Practices whitepaper.  Good for all those who like to pile your ArcNews in the corner of your office to show how important you are.
• Dave Peter’s great whitepaper on System Design Strategies has been updated and on its 25th edition.  Many were relieved to hear that he is going to continue updating the paper even after his new book (which I have an plan to start reading next week while traveling).
• Peter Batty continues to write about Netezza’s new spatial product.  He blogged about why this performance is important and where it is going to be used.  Of course I doubt I’ll be seeing it replace our SQL Server 2008 anytime soon but this could be the direction we are all moving toward.  He also posted a video interview with Rich Zimmerman who was the lead developer on Netezza’s spatial extension.  Well worth watching if you want to hear how someone could take PostgreSQL and turn it into a monster.
• Jithen blogged about updating the ArcGIS 9.3 SP1 announcement and how many more bugs they’ve fixed.  It really is amazing how their new crash reporting tools allows them to find and fix bugs faster than before.  I suspect we’ll see later service packs much smaller than they were at 9.2 given that they are able to trap the errors much easier.  I’m still on 9.2 (this will be resolved very soon) so I have to watch the fun from afar.
• Sean Gorman, bless his heart, has followed up his GeoWeb blog ranking list post.  I think Technorati isn’t work the time it takes me to type it, but the idea that he wants to develop a blog list is interesting to me and if he/we can come up with a good ranking scheme, it could be very useful to seeing changes with blogs over time.
• Lastly, Microsoft is going to have a couple webcasts about Virtual Earth.  Mark Brown posted information about a Virtual Earth 6.2 Technical Webcast October 3rd at 10am PDT and Chris Pendleton has one called Momentum Webcast: See More and Do More with Microsoft Virtual Earth October 2 at 9AM PDT.

Even Mark Twain is interested in reading Dave Peters new book

GIS Analysts are usually in the back room performing support rolls with most law enforcement operations, but recently a GIS Analyst was part of a marijuana eradication raid in California.

A GIS specialist went in with the raid teams for the first time in NPS history to perform an immediate on the ground evaluation of the impacts to the natural resource during the raid.

Just think how much better some law enforcement situations might have gone if GIS had been part of the raid.

GIS on the front lines of law enforcement

[Read more →]

And I, for one, welcome our new geospatial overlords

I didn’t bother to blog about the Google and GeoEye announcement (Google launches satellite?  Are you kidding me Information Week?) from a couple weeks ago (or was it a couple days ago?) because I really didn’t see what was so newsworthy about it.  It isn’t like this is the first announcement we’ve seen from Google and a satellite company.  Plus Microsoft even went out and bought Vexcel (hmm didn’t blog about that acquisition either).

I just don’t care too much about these deals as they don’t affect me in any way.  I still aquire my imagery the way I did before and I still use the free services the way I did before.  The only thing this confirms to me is that you can’t make money from selling sattelite imagery on an open market, you need a sugar daddy to pay the bills.  I guess that is what is the most telling thing out of this announcement, GeoEye’s and Digital Globe’s business models are broken.

Vish wonders aloud if we are close to using online tools to replace ESRI’s venerable Model Builder.

Why can't you get RESTful with ESRI's Web Services?

All Points Blog has the news that Netezza is set to release a “spatial extension” to their Data Warehouse Appliance.  You may  not think you know much about Netezza, but know that their success keeps Larry Ellison up at night.  There was some discussion on this blog about super fast geospatial analysis and what the target would be.  I think basically Netezza is trying to solve problems that we currently can’t do with existing spatial databases in both scale and speed.  I wouldn’t suspect seeing their product replacing Oracle Spatial or SQL Server, but for those who have the money to pay for the product this could help them answer questions they cannot do right now.  For most of us, just sit back and marvel at what you could do if money was no option and know that in a year or two, much of this technology will be in your hands.  Peter Batty says he’ll be blogging more about what exactly this means in the next week.  Can’t wait to read it.

This is Star Trek quality spatial data analysis folks

Photo by paper or plastic?

You might remember The United Countries of Baseball Map from last year.

The original map - click for larger view

Any time you attempt to make a map such as this, you know people are going to find faults with it.  Well Drew Silva took comments people made about the map on sites such as Deadspin and revised some of the boundaries of the map.  I think the refinement really tightens up one of my favorite maps that I’ve ever seen.  Check out the result below and compare with the CommonCensus Sports Map of MLB Team Fan Areas.

The revised map - click for larger view

Thanks to Dan for pointing this out to me.  He also offered up the Major League Baseball blackout map. Also, no need to bring up the collapse of the Diamondbacks. I’m a fair-weather fan of them so it doesn’t really hurt me too much, especially since my team is surging in the standings (but unfortunately has nothing to play for).

Brian Timoney has updated his Gulf Coast Energy Impact website with Hurricane Ike information.  It also looks like Brian has gotten a sponsor for his work, IHS (who many might better know as the publisher of this).

Ike's impacts on Gulf Coast energy

ISC keeps pushing the .NET web mapping front and has released MapDotNET UX Beta. MapDotNet UX Server has WCF-based web services and a WPF map and tile renderer. MapDotNet UX Studio includes advanced map design (XAML editing), support for shapefiles, SQL Server 2008 as well as ArcSDE ArcGIS Server and PostGIS and tile cache management.

ISC has some demos available to show the new MapDotNet UX in action. The beta is closed at this time, but interested developers who want to showcase WPF and Silverlight mapping are encouraged to apply.  Another item to note is that the MapDotNet UX Studio will be free.  ISC describes UX Studio this way:

It (MapDotNet UX Studio) was built with the WPF map control and allows developers/cartographers to develop their map configuration file (the .mapx), create/manage tile caches, perform data import/export to all of the support data types (SQL 08, SDE, PostGIS and Shapefile) and create starter Silverlight & WPF apps.

Of course their web services will still be licensed as normal.  Some screenshots of UX Studio are below and I have to say they remind me of another product. 

Click to view large image of MapDotNet UX Studio

Click to view large image of MapDotNet UX Studio

So deCarta has a new product called deCarta Mobile. Everyone has their own mobile development platform, so why not offer your own? I’m sure they have some developers lined up to showcase their Java LBS platform so there will probably be some interesting apps coming forward. I can understand that deCarta brings much expertise to the LBS arena, but I’m just not sure that will matter much given the huge developer bases for Android and the iPhone (I await Glenn’s comment below about Nokia mattering).

In the end I suspect this is a niche platform for users who need a very specific application and not meant for consumer applications (not saying that it isn’t possible, just there are other SDKs that developers might choose before this one). deCarta did a good job of explaining why they think they are important in the hosted service world in the comments of this post on the Virtual Earth /Live Maps Blog.  Ignore all the porn links and go to the last comment (note to Microsoft, Live Spaces is a horrible blogging platform and using it just proves to everyone what a poorly thought out concept “Live” is).

The deCarta model might be just what some companies are looking for (being able to pick and chose providers or hosting your own data) and I suppose we’ll see how if deCarta Mobile takes off. For me Java is irrelevant on the mobile platform (iPhone) and on my desktop (I think only my Oracle management tools are Java) so I’m definitely not its market.

Jerry loves GeoJSON

Yahoo! announced some updates to GeoPlanet including GeoJSON support.  Yahoo! seems much more quiet than most companies about their endeavors (Fire Eagle, GeoPlanet, Pipes) and I’m glad to see them improving given the pressures they are under these days.  I really like how GeoPlanet is organized and I hope it (and Fire Eagle and Pipes) continues to be improved and enhanced.  Plus not having to deal with XML is a huge bonus.  Now if ESRI can support GeoJSON with their RESTful API we’ll all be very happy.

Brian Timoney put it perfectly,  ”agile mapping” is where we need to be.  His expertise in the energy sector, plus the ability to mix in some PostGIS and he can deploy a map quickly and effectively.

Hurricane Gustav Energy Impact

Everybody has been using Google Chrome for screen shots, so why not me?

We were talking shop the other day and a couple of us lamented the need to have an ArcGIS Server license to use ESRI’s map cache generator.  While I have no problem using Arc2Earth to generate tiles I can integrate into Google Maps or Virtual Earth, it seems like such a no brainer to give ArcGIS Desktop users (heck even just ArcInfo users) the ability to use ESRI’s map tile generator.  ArcGIS Server has its place, but when wanting to put up timely maps such as Brian’s Energy Impact site, you need the ability to go from ArcMap to Google Maps with one click.

It amazes me that GIS Professionals are more comfortable rolling out an old ArcIMS site than they are working with Google Maps or Virtual Earth (even within the ArcGIS Server Javascript API).  You don’t have to spend a ton of money or effort to get your message across and noticed.