iExtMap for iOS

August 19, 2010 5 Comments

I reviewed ArcGIS for iOS a couple weeks back and liked what I saw.  One of my biggest disappointments was the lack of OGC support.  ESRI says it is coming, but in the meantime I took it upon myself to try out other iOS mapping clients.  One that has caught my eye is iExtMap.  You may recall Alper Dincer from the 2009 ESRI Dev Summit Challenge where his ExtMap took first place.  While not built upon ExtMap, Alper has released iExtMap for iOS.

So what does iExtMap bring to the table?

  • Google Maps Base Maps
  • Blank Base Map for your own base map
  • Displaying ArcGIS Server Dynamic and Tiled Services
  • Displaying WMS as Tiles
  • Displaying KML/GeoRSS files
  • Displaying static tiles (for Arc2Earth users)
  • Bookmarking
  • Geolocation
  • Identify (in next release)
  • Query (in next release)
  • Measurement (in next release)
  • Open Street Maps (in next release)
  • WMS improments (in next release)

So let us look at iExtMap in detail.

The iExtMap Splash Screen

The first screen you see when you start up iExtMap is the Maps window.  From here you can navigate whatever maps you have added to iExtMap.  Google is the default background map and in the Base Maps screen you can see how you can choose which “base map” you wish to have in your background.


The Map Tab on iExtMap

Choose your Base Map

After choosing your background base map, you go to the Layers tab to add layers.  The first thing I tried to add was a KML out of WeoGeo Market.  This was easy to add and actually looked pretty good on the iExtMap screen on my iPhone.  Just grab the URL to the KML and like that it is added.  Adding ArcGIS Server services and WMS is also as easy as copying a URL and pasting.  The only issue I ran into was that WMS needs to be in EPSG:900913 making your choice of WMS smaller than it should be.  This is a know issue and an update is planned in the future to address it.

Adding a KML to iExtMap is very simple.

After adding the layer, put a check next to each one you want to view on your iExtMap Map.

And here is that KML - viewed on the iExtMap Map.

The bookmarks are very strait-forward.  You either bookmark a view on the Map or manually input the coordinates.

Manually creating a bookmark in iExtMap

The Bookmarks tab in iExtMap

One actually fatal issue of iExtMap is that you can get caught in an info box and have no way to break back out.  Make sure when you are on the Map tab, not to click on the links at the bottom of the view (I’m assuming these are the credit links).  If you do you get stuck on the “about Google Maps” page with no way to get back to the map unless you exit the app.  Hopefully this flaw will be fixed very quickly.

DO NOT CLICK!

Don't get me wrong, the about page is very nice. You are just stuck on it if you get here - yikes!

Overall though, I think there is a ton to like about iExtMap.  Out of the box you have OGC support (KML and WMS) which I really think is critically important.  Support for ArcGIS.com (ArcGIS Online) layers is there as well so you have an iOS app that can work across OGC and proprietary services.  Alper should be commended on his efforts and I can see myself using this quite a bit to work with OGC services.

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ArcGIS Explorer Online Beta is Released

May 26, 2010 15 Comments

So hopefully not lost in the ArcGIS.com release is ESRI’s latest GIS tool, ArcGIS Explorer.  The one sentence explanation from ESRI about what it is:

ArcGIS Explorer Online is similar in appearance to the desktop version of ArcGIS Explorer, and has some of the same capabilities, but it’s a lighter weight version that works in a browser, and is built using Microsoft Silverlight.

ArcGIS Explorer Online is a Silverlight based browser application

So what we have here is a cross platform GIS analysis platform.  I’ve liked what I’ve seen from ArcGIS Explorer Online and I think it is a solid start to platform agnostic client applications.  It requires Silverlight to run, but I’m able to use it flawlessly on my MacBook Pro laptop.  It mimics the Microsoft UI standards with the ribbon, but I’ll be frank that I’m beginning to like the ribbon interface.  Of course if you hate it, you’ll probably hate the app.

Presentations are important to ESRI and ArcGIS Explorer Online

When you start working with the app, the first thing that will catch your eye is what ESRI has stuck in the upper left of the toolbar.  If I had never seen ArcGIS Explorer Online before, I’d assume that ESRI would have put “Add Data” or “Search” or even “Basemap” in that prime spot.  But as you can see to the left, Presentation gets the first place everyone looks.  I’m not sure if this is by design but ESRI thinks we’ll be making lots of presentations with ArcGIS Online.  I had see Bernie Szukalski use the presentation mode with great success at the ESRI Developer and Business Partner conferences so I get the power.  I’d just assume presentations would be a ribbon on its own and not on the primary one.

The basemap button doesn’t disappoint.  If there is one thing ESRI has gotten right over the years, it is the freely available basemaps they’ve offered up through ArcGIS Online ArcGIS.com.  These are all available here including the Bing layers, ESRI’s Imagery and Streets, the wonderful ESRI Topographic map and of course now the OpenStreetMap layer.

There are tons of basemaps available including OpenStreetMap

Adding content is where I think ArcGIS Explorer Online will eventually shine, but for right now it is limited to only web services that are available on ArcGIS.com or ArcGIS Server services.  I’ve been told OGC support will be coming soon, but as of today you can only add ESRI web services or consume services from ArcGIS.com.

As you’d expect, you can save your maps to ArcGIS.com and choose to save them privately, share with a group or share with the world.  There is no ability to share a permalink as you might with Google Maps, but saving to ArcGIS.com and then sharing that URL is probably the method for now.  ESRI also has provided some “Featured Maps” (I’m assuming this comes from featured maps on ArcGIS.com) that you can get started with.

You can grab existing "Featured Maps" that ESRI provides to get started.

I like the start of ArcGIS Explorer Online.  Building it on Silverlight seems like a smart move as it runs flawlessly on any computer I used.  The biggest limitation I see right now is the lack of OGC support (WMS, WFS, CSW and of course KML) but ESRI has told me that is coming down the road.  I also would have liked to see a permalink feature to share quickly with friends maps I create, but I’m guessing ArcGIS.com is the driving force here so I might as well get used to sharing ArcGIS.com links.  I’m not sure how I could share my ArcGIS Server services with ArcGIS Explorer Online (embed or link that I can put in a blog post), but hopefully that part of the story will be set by the ESRI UC.

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Sharing Cartography

April 21, 2009 62 Comments

There are tons of ways to store spatial data, but sharing cartography is much harder. ESRI seems to be using their new Layer Package “format” to keep the ESRI layer file with the datasets. Outside of that I don’t really see much in the way for cartography support with data layers (other than the odd ESRI LYR file offered up on FTP sites). In a way, there is much to like about ESRI’s decision to use essentially a sidecar file for storing symbology and maybe there is a more open method of sharing this information.

Most of the time when you download data, you just get the raw file format (usually shapefiles). You then drag your new downloaded dataset to your viewer (possibly ArcView, maybe uDig) and then you proceed to try and figure out how to color the map up (of course there is no metadata so you can’t figure out what field you should symbolize on) in an attempt to match that PDF of a scanned map that someone gave you.  Wouldn’t it be better if there was included symbology that allowed you to view that data layer the way the author intended?

Well as I said, ESRI’s Layer Package format does this.  The Layer file is of course a problem because you need ArcObjects to read it.  But in an ESRI world, that isn’t too much of a problem.  Outside of an ESRI world, maybe the MapServer Mapfile might be the best way to get symbology information in (heck you can write out a Mapfile from ESRI, let alone all those open source clients).  Some have said KML is that format.  I disagree because it doesn’t lend itself to storing attribute information (maybe there are ways, but I still question if KML should be used this way).  At least KML does store simple symbology with the dataset.

Ron Lake offers up SLD/SE as an option, but acknowleges that it really has no traction.  I really haven’t seen SLD used much beyond some GeoServer documentation and I’ve not seen anyone try and use SLD for storing cartography in desktop clients (NOTE: According to comments uDig does support SLD, but not be default which is a good starting point).  Sean Gillies thinks CSS is the best option but again we run into the issues of desktop clients not supporting it and probably won’t (though Sean gets GeoMonkey cred for continuing to use the term “GeoWeb” every chance he gets).

What about Mapnik?  It does a superb job at rendering great maps and Andrew Turner says there is a project that can convert CSS into Mapnik.  Now that might be a workflow.  CSS is very easy to edit and and work with and  Mapnik is great at rendering cartography (and could easily be supported by desktop clients).  CSS gets stored as a sidecar file to the dataset and the rich cartography can be read with Mapnik to render the maps as the author wishes the maps to look.  Maybe Sean is on to something after all…

If we are going to go out on the GeoWeb wall of death, well need a sidecar.

If we are going to go out on the GeoWeb wall of death, we'll need a sidecar.

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Arc2Earth 2.1 Update

January 9, 2009 4 Comments

Brian Flood comes up from the basement to give a glimpse of what has been happening in Arc2Earth land.  Arc2Earth Cloud Services is looking really amazing and it is clear Brian has put much effort into it.

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EarthBrowser 3.0 is out

April 30, 2008 6 Comments

Congratulations to Matt Giger for pushing out EarthBrowser 3.0. I have been following Matt’s triumphs and struggles on his blog as he’s worked at getting the latest EarthBrowser release out on his blog. I was more than happy to purchase a license and I encourage everyone else to do the same as well. I am very interested to see how folks use the Adobe Air based digital globe moving forward.


Click for larger view

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Google, you have to be kidding. Right?

April 14, 2008 45 Comments

KML, the HTML of geographic content

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Using OGR to Visualize Data

December 28, 2007 10 Comments

The biggest excuse I hear time and time again for not using open source geospatial tools is that they are too confusing to use. Take GDAL/OGR for example, the webpage probably scares off most users because of the lack of examples of how to use both toolsets. But the tools themselves are so easy to use this shouldn’t scare anyone off. In fact, if you’ve used ArcInfo to convert a coverage to a shapefile in your past, you have all the skills needed to use both GDAL and OGR.

That said Tom Kralidis has a great example of using OGR to convert a Microsoft Excel file to KML. GDAL/OGR is integral to so many GIS applications (even ESRI uses it) that any GIS professional should have at least a basic understanding to how it works. Look at Tom’s example, download FWTools and get cracking on using GDAL/OGR.


Fans of the Waffle House wait for open source geospatial tool users to create GeoRSS feed of store locations

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ArcGIS Explorer Build 440 Released

December 19, 2007 26 Comments

The ArcGIS Explorer Blog just announced that AGX build 440 is available:

The ArcGIS Explorer Team is pleased to announce that today, at approximately 1:58 p.m. PST, the newest version of ArcGIS Explorer – Explorer 440 – was released.

If the ESRI servers are your home servers, you’ll be notified that there is a new version available the next time you start the application. Just follow the instructions to download and install this new release.

The “What’s New in ArcGIS Explorer 440” page has a list of all the enhancements (I think many will appreciate the ArcIMS improvements since that is the biggest complain I always hear).

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