Geospatial Technology, Web Mapping and Spatial Services
August 15, 2011 Leave a Comment
I’m the first to admit I’m not a huge Flex supporter, but maybe this is interesting to all those who tell me Flex is where the magic is happening.
WebMapSolutions.com seems to be working with ArcGIS Flex 2.4 and Flex Builder 4.5 and ported them to AIR for mobile devices. For those organizations who are locked into Flex, this might be a simple solution to get their apps on mobile devices.
February 18, 2011 6 Comments
So yea, Friday should be a good day to prepare yourself for the weekend. To help ensure that I’ve got a couple interesting links to share.
Enjoy your Friday and weekend folks!
July 27, 2009 4 Comments
Well lucky you, you can still watch it here.
GEOMONKEY LOVEZ TEH GEOSPATIAL PDF
July 20, 2009 3 Comments
An interesting Webinar takes place this Wednesday at 10am PDT. The AdobeUsers.com GeospatialPDF Webinar covers:
- How GIS professionals can create full-featured map layouts with attributes, labels and layers in ESRI’s ArcMap and use TerraGo Publisher to export them to a geo-registered, portable PDF
- How to use PDF maps in the field, including querying the spatial data (e.g., find coordinates of a location or accurately measure distance, perimeter and area) and creating spatially intelligent markup using the tools in Acrobat 9
- How GIS staff in the office can roll field markups within a PDF map back into the enterprise quickly and efficiently
It sounds like a good overview of using PDF to share spatial data and maps. Definitely worth the time.
Even Ben Franklin was interested in getting the message out to the old world about geospatial PDFs.
June 18, 2009 6 Comments
As you can imagine, Adobe John Dowdell responded to the HTML 5 “flash killer” talk in a way only Adobe could.
It’s hard for Adobe to have an official opinion on whatever this consortium of minority browser vendors chooses to do… seeing what the final agreement turns out to be, and how it is eventually manifested in the world, both are prerequisites for practical tool-making.
I suppose when Microsoft becomes the minority browser to WebKit/Firefox then things might change? Guess we’ll see next year when it happens. So if my previous post didn’t excite you, maybe John’s will.
Adobe says, "Hey if you like HTML 5, take a look at Flash"
June 16, 2009 31 Comments
A great article has appeared about how HTML 5 really should finally kill off the proprietary Flash and Silverlight browser add-ons.
HTML 5, a groundbreaking upgrade to the prominent Web presentation specification, could become a game-changer in Web application development, one that might even make obsolete such plug-in-based rich Internet application (RIA) technologies as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and Sun JavaFX
All this focus on Flex/Flash and Silverlight is really beside the point in my opinion. Sure maybe today, we have to rely on these proprietary browser plugins to deliver content to users, but the real innovative developers and companies are going to standard on HTML 5 and in turn revolutionize how users interact with data. We all want faster web applications and the only way to deliver this is to use HTML 5. Of course some companies can’t get their act together to support it (I’m looking at you Microsoft), but given how positive people have been toward the Google Chrome browser and how it works with their web applications, I think we are really very close to a revolution here. The question we need to ask ourselves is to you want to be in the front, or the rear of change?
MechaHTML5 pushes proprietary browser add-ons to the side.
HT: DF
July 8, 2008 7 Comments
Because of a NDA of some sort, the Acrobat 9 support was never in the 9.3 beta program and even missed the 9.3 release. But never fear, you can download the patch to enable Acrobat 9 support:
Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader version 9 support a new version of PDF that allows for encoding of map coordinate system and georeference information inside the PDF file. This patch enables ArcGIS Desktop, Engine, and Server applications to export georeferenced PDF files.
There also appears to be some sort of agreement where Adobe will support GeoPDF in their Arcobat releases. My head hurts a little after reading those press releases (note to everyone, stop using the word “consume”). Hopefully TerraGo will use their blog to actually tell us in English what this agreement means.
June 20, 2008 62 Comments
Ever since the news that Adobe Acrobat 9 would support “mapping”, I’ve been getting emails from people asking what this does to GeoPDF. I’m sure the GeoPDF team has been fielding the same questions and has blogged about what they think are the important points of GeoPDF.
GeoPDF is a geospatial extension to the Adobe PDF file format, from TerraGo Technologies. It is used to present GIS and mapping data in a standard Adobe Systems PDF. This extension adds a coordinate transformation matrix and other metadata to allow transformation of PDF coordinates to a projected Cartesian coordinate system. GeoPDFs often include other advanced PDF features such as layers and object data which can add significant GIS functionality to the file, particularly when used with the TerraGo Technologies plugin to Adobe Reader.
Unfortunately, that description doesn’t do enough to convince me that GeoPDF is a viable format moving forward. I’ve barely run into GeoPDF over the years so believe me when I say I’m a GeoPDF novice and I could be missing the boat here. I’m sure there are very good reasons to use GeoPDF and I know some people who seem to believe in the format. GeoPDF of course requires an extra step to create and take advantage of the format, thus TerraGo really needs do a better job of getting out “the why” to use GeoPDF.
Otherwise it will just become a niche format.
Update: Commentator Kevin has some points as to why GeoPDF is powerful.
June 2, 2008 2 Comments
I guess the “big” news today was the Acrobat 9 “maps” feature. All Points Blog and Fantom Planet both cover the news in their own unique style. Since ArcGIS 9.3 will support the new PDF maps (with a patch of course) I suspect that this will be very popular, at least in our circles. Just last week I was watching someone take a ruler and put it up to their computer screen to measure distance. Hopefully with Acrobat 9 we won’t have to see this anymore. The bonus part of Adobe putting this in is that the free Adobe Reader supports the mapping features and will hopefully mean that it will be adopted quicker than GeoPDF has.
Now I wonder if this goes with the rumor that I’ve heard that ArcGIS Desktop will support reading of PDF files in the near future.
Also, as many of you know my first day at RSP Architects was today. The best way to get a hold of me via email moving forward will be at this email address.
james.fee@rsparch.com
Lastly, I’m going to be going to the GeoWeb 2008 Conference in July and be on a Spark Panel Session moderated by Geoff Zeiss called “National Critical Infrastructure Data Models: Implications for Local Government and Utilities”. Now if that title doesn’t get you excited, I’m not sure you are alive. Seriously though, I’m looking forward to GeoWeb 2008 as the CAD-BIM papers are right up my alley these days.
We’ll be running up to Vancouver for GeoWeb 2008 this summer.
