After spending $1 billion on Instagram last year to keep pace with the mobile photo explosion, Facebook is now reportedly ready to spend a similar amount on popular social driving app Waze.

Waze is considered the second most popular navigation map in the USA so it’s not too much of a surprise. I do find it interesting though that Facebook would spend this money on the data. They don’t need the users, that’s for sure and they can buy engineers to solve the problem. I can only think it is better to own Waze than use OpenStreetMap data that you have to share. Are we seeing problems with the license? I hope this is a huge discussion at OSM PLUS next month.

UPDATE - Marc Prioleau has some great insight on his blog. His kicker at the end?

Why OSM isn’t a better option is another whole discussion. I suspect it revolves around ownership and data rights.

• OGC exists to help software vendors, open source projects, contractors market to the federal government. There is no altruistic goal other than to make money.

• OGC standards are standard only in the world of contracts. Just because Esri gets their REST API “blessed” doesn’t make it worth using any more than it was before.

• Esri submitted their REST API to OGC so they could use it in federal contracts instead of existing OGC standards which nobody uses.

• Esri REST API won’t be used outside of Esri software so it really doesn’t matter.

• Esri’s consulting arm is competing with all of us. Beware as they’ll squeeze you out the minute they can.

• OGC standards suck so that’s why people are always proposing new ones. By next year there will be another “standard” coming up that will replace Esri’s.

• The simple fact that there is a proposal for ”OGCJSON” should tell you all you need to know about these standards.

• Esri exists to make money, that’s OK as I work for the same reasons. Just don’t wrap their business model up with saving the world.

• KML is the only OGC Standard people actually use. The rest are check boxes on a form.

Don’t get emotional about OGC standards. That’s what they want, people to actually start caring.

As always, we go live at 11am PDT and the video will stream live here on this blog.

It’s like nothing you’ve seen before. This is the tool that OSM needs to finish the map as Steve Coast said on my Hangout last week. All this is because of the Knight Foundation grant to MapBox which finally gives users tools they need to edit the map. As I said back then:

I’ve always felt OSM was held back by it’s editing tools. They are designed by nerds for geeks.

Well no longer, the editor is live and it’s gorgeous! Check out how you add a road:

Or add a park:

That’s not some crazy Potlach (now I did love that tool but it isn’t mainstream) method that only OSM users know. These are simple methods that everyone will understand. I do hope that it will also improve OSM’s biggest weakness, addressing. But in the meantime we should see lots of people start improving the map all around the world.

I have to be honest, when I first heard MapBox got a grant to improve OSM editing I thought it was a waste of time. There were already tools available, why not spend that money on something worthwhile. Well seeing iD in action, I feel like I need to take that all back. I no longer have to install Flash to edit OSM, that’s worth it’s weight in gold. I can imagine how this might look if another company did it, probably build in Silverlight with some crazy proprietary APIs. We should all be thankful MapBox took this on.

Update The OSM Blog has much more.

Adobe is pointing all of its energy towards Creative Cloud, eliminating the familiar retail box in the process. Like last year, the company is releasing an updated suite of applications this June, newly branded as “CC” apps. This includes: Photoshop CC, InDesign CC, Illustrator CC, Dreamweaver CC and Premiere Pro CC.

The key here is per user, per month. No more stupid buying a new copy of Photoshop every year and complaining about how there is no new value. Now you get the new version no matter what new features are added. Microsoft is trying to do with with Office 365 but most of us realize it is just a awful implementation of SharePoint. That said they realize that people just don’t upgrade anymore and in fact I’d wager they’d rather not anyway.

So Esri has lived on maintenance agreements and the wacky ELA agreements for revenue so they are practically halfway there anyway. I think the ELA tries to capture “per user/per month” but it’s not a 1 to 1 relationship. Adobe is showing the way and I think we GIS folks need to expect that Esri will transition everyone to such a model (at least those not on ELA) in a couple years. Autodesk is probably much closer to this reality so keep an eye on your AutoCAD users down the hall and see how their do when their 100% on Autodesk 360.

Now in the rush to get on the cloud, be careful slipping on those stairs in your Salvatore Ferragamo shoes.

UPDATE

WTS means “Web Tile Service”. It’s not WMTS but something they just made up. There is some sort of 900913 awesome in that. I’m just a bit afraid to ask the XYZ order…

So after some back and forth the meat of the argument is do we want to be known as GIS “people”? Is there some negative connotation to GIS that causes us to fear it appearing on our business cards? I look at mine right now and it says “Founder”. Now that should be the death sentence to getting any work. I mean what does a “Founder” do other than talk about being a “Founder”?

My recommendation was just stick to being a GIS Manager, no one really cares and if they do, they probably aren’t a client anyway. Job titles are funny in that we all pretend to not care, but once you see it on your business card, you become self conscious. Does changing GIS into “Geo” or “Spatial” improve your outlook or attractiveness? The real focus on improving your marketability is to make sure your CV/GitHub/Website/Blog is filled with the things that you care about in your career. Maybe it’s Python, JavaScript, .NET, Silverlight (snicker), C++, ObjectiveC, Java, PostGIS, etc. These are all things that will matter to your peers and your clients more than if your title is VP of Awesome or Chief Python scrubber.

Even the Esri Salesman seems to realize his title doesn’t matter. “How many ArcGIS Servers can I put you down for?”

First off, this book is for ArcGIS 10.1 so you can take advantage of the latest Esri ArcGIS Desktop features with Python. It’s nice in that it builds you up to authoring scripts rather than just give you code to copy and paste. I think this is something that will give you long-term sustainability in your python programming rather than just a mashup mentality that won’t help you improve your productivity. The examples in the book are really well written and easily understandable compared with the Esri documentation. Here are a couple areas that caught my eye.

• Create custom Geoprocessing tools with Python: These are simply ArcPy methods to help you get a grasp of how to create the scripts and how to run them. This is bread and butter ArcPy so a good foundation is key. The example though are really basic so you’ll quickly head to Esri’s documentation to learn more. I wish there was more depth here but at least you’ll learn how to create them and in turn go out on your own to make the scripts you need yourself.

• Automated map production: I’ve made no secret of my love of AML and ArcPlot (well I hate ArcPlot but I love scripting maps). With Python you can now automate your maps quickly and easily compared to the DS Mapbook hacks that people used to use. The book goes into how to create and export PDFs of your maps when you need to create a map set. I swear this is a skill ever Esri Desktop user needs to master.

• Queries and Database Management: Goes into how to use ArcPy and python to create proper database syntax and how to select features using Python/ArcPy. Plus you get a basic intro into using Python with databases (filters, updates, delete). The section like others is clearly just and introduction so you’ll quickly look for more examples on Esri’s site.

There is a chapter on fixing broken data links in MXDs using Python, creating Add-Ins for ArcGIS Desktop and error handling. Good basic introduction and hopefully things that will cause you to look into the Esri documentation deeper.

So the bottom line here is this is a great introduction to ArcPy with ArcGIS 10.1. But if you’ve already started using either Python or ArcPy, you’d be best to use your time/money elsewhere. The style of the scripts seems to mimic the Esri style so I’m guessing the author is very familiar with ArcPy. I don’t write my scripts this way but at least it should help you move from the book to Esri documentation quickly. For those who just want to get started though, this should be a great way to move forward. Programming ArcGIS 10.1 with Python Cookbook is $15 on Amazon as a Kindle Book or available on the Packt Publishing website as an ePub book for $24. Both very reasonable. Reviews seem to be mixed from what I’ve read. Either people seem to embrace the simplicity of the book or are turned off by the beginner focus. I feel that if you need the help, this book will get you there.

Anyway, we go live an hour earlier than normal (10am PDT) but do you really want to wait all that time to hear Dave talk about his love of Canadian baseball?

Oh, crap. GeoJSON is unsuitable for geospatial applications after all. Sorry, everyone. lists.geojson.org/pipermail/geoj…

— Sean Gillies (@sgillies) April 12, 2013

Make sure you click on that link to read something quite interesting. Howard Butler’s response is well thought out that I’ll just let him frame the situation. I my self am curious if there is really any need to fork GeoJSON into “OGCJSON” to solve something I’m not sure really is any issue. As others have said on Twitter, GML was designed to handle just these issues. I don’t want to get down the rabbit hole of being critical of OGC, but what’s the point of creating these standards (KML, GML, etc) and then not use them?

Why does this come to mind every time I heard the OGC thinking about creating a new “standard”?