Geospatial Technology, Web Mapping and Spatial Services
November 10, 2009 15 Comments
Microsoft finally has added draggable routes to their Bing Maps service. ‘Bout time guys since Google has had it for over 2 years. That said I’ve been using Bing Maps more lately because I don’t trust the Google Maps layers (great API, horrible data).
Is anyone going to host a Bing Maps Party?
May 28, 2009 38 Comments
No way, no how will I ever refer to Virtual Earth as Bing Maps for Enterprise. I’m putting my foot down on this.
I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough water! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
March 31, 2009 17 Comments
ArcGIS Code Challenge Winners Announced
Looks like Alper Dincer and Matthew Petre are the big winners. The mobile code challenge results are posted as well. I suppose they announce this after the DevSummit so the winners don’t have to buy everyone beer.
VBA and VB6 with ArcGIS: What’s the Story?
First off I bet you didn’t even know there was an ArcObjects blog. Second, please move off of VBA or VB6. Last year I said the writing was on the wall, this year the wall is falling down upon you. Python, Java or .NET; take your pick and enjoy. There is nothing you can’t do with those choices and in fact gives you much more freedom.
Silverlight API
Vish is taking it for a spin and he’s reporting back on its use. Bookmark or subscribe to Vish.
Virtual Earth and ESRI ArcGIS
This seems to be getting a ton of play. One thing to remember folks, yes VE is free with ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Explorer 900, but you need a valid license. If you download AGX 900 and don’t have a valid ArcGIS Desktop license, you won’t be seeing VE imagery. Yea that sucks for the world, but every ESRI user should buy Jack a drink at the UC in San Diego for paying for this.
March 18, 2009 16 Comments
So Microsoft has released a Silverlight map control to developers:
Now, because we’re using Silverlight, .NET developers (all 6 million + of you) can leverage your skill set to build rich, killer apps that make your data bling and highlight media in a geo-contextual way as has never been seen before. VESL leverages all of the drawing tools that come with Silverlight, so for Silverlight developers you’re not relearning how to take your computer art and force it onto a map. Instead, you’re starting with a map-based canvas instead of a blank one.
Looks simple enough to leverage and I’m guessing since Microsoft developers are in love with Silverlight, it won’t be long before the JSAPI is pushed aside. It looks like people will start having to pick a side, Flash or Silverlight.
Silverlight is bling
March 2, 2009 4 Comments
Sure this was news last week, but it can’t hurt to revisit it. ESRI has released an update to their JavaScript API and Google Extender to version 1.3. Check those links to see what has been updated and make sure you update your pages to take advantage of the update:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://serverapi.arcgisonline.com/jsapi/arcgis/1.3/js/dojo/dijit/themes/tundra/tundra.css"> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://serverapi.arcgisonline.com/jsapi/arcgis/?v=1.3"></script>
or
<script src="http://serverapi.arcgisonline.com/jsapi/gmaps/?v=1.3" type="text/javascript" ></script>
I don’t see any update to the Virtual Earth Extender and the docs still seem to reference v1.2 (not that anyone really uses the VE Extender anyway).
Time to get out of your RESTful chair and update your JavaScript references
Update: Apparently the Virtual Earth extender was updated to 1.3. I suppose ESRI hasn’t updated their doc just yet.
Update 2: A couple people have asked, yes you can change the reference from 1.2 to 1.3 and publish. Aren’t JavaScript APIs much easier to use?
January 29, 2009 6 Comments
The word leaked out last week from the Developer Summit agenda and now ESRI has a webpage posted with the latest info on their latest API. Yep, Silverlight. The ArcGIS API for Microsoft Silverlight is probably compelling for some .NET developers and we’ve seen some interesting work from IDV Solutions. What is interesting is that it allows developers to leverage Microsoft Virtual Earth in addition to the ESRI ArcGIS Online data which is much more than the Flex API can do. The current information page from ESRI is very light on details (could ESRI have chosen a less compelling example screen shot?), but given some of the immersive user interfaces I’ve seen built with Silverlight, I can only expect we’ll get our socks knocked off at the Dev Summit. So in the course of about a year, we’ve got ESRI Server APIs for .NET, Java, JavaScript, Flex and now Silverlight. So what is left, Rails?
Are you sitting down? ESRI just announced they are going to release a Silverlight API.
January 23, 2009 5 Comments
Google has a new tool that helps developers learn and test code for Google’s JavaScript APIs (similar to Microsoft’s VE Interactive SDK). The interactive AJAX APIs Playgound has an easy interface that allows users to interact with Google’s JavaScript APIs (Visualization, Search, Language, Blogger, Libraries, Maps, Earth, Feeds, and Calendar). Google also open sourced the API playgound so maybe we’ll be seeing more of it with other APIs in the near future (*cough* ESRI JavaScript API *cough*).
December 1, 2008 2 Comments
Dave Bouwman has a great blog post on all the different choices available to ESRI centric developers for a web mapping front end. Not a bad primer for folks still trying to figure out all the new options we have available for visualization.
I'll take a side of RESTful with my mapping front end please.
November 24, 2008 5 Comments
Those who use the JavaScript extensions for Google Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth can now update their script tags that reference the API to 1.2. The ESRI ArcGIS Server Blog has all the details.
Virtual Earth example:
<script src="http://serverapi.arcgisonline.com/jsapi/ve/?v=1.2" type="text/javascript"></script>
Google Maps example:
<script src="http://serverapi.arcgisonline.com/jsapi/gmaps/?v=1.2" type="text/javascript" ></script>
November 13, 2008 39 Comments
Why is it that both Google and Microsoft are stuck in archaic licensing agreements? The logical way to price these services is a metered service. Much like Amazon AWS works, you’ll pay for what you use (with per-session costs decreasing as usage goes up). It would be monitored so I could see what kind of traffic I’m generating with the service and I could be billed monthly via credit card. We’ve been using Amazon S3 and EC2 with great results and it is very easy to justify the low initial costs and still be able to scale to larger applications if warranted.
How do you convince Scrooge McDuck to part with money to pay API licensing costs to Google or Microsoft?
The other problem is that if I’ve got to spend that kind of money, I’m going to be developing larger internal applications than I would externally. You can’t do a simple internal mashup if you have to pay large enterprise licensing costs. I was told by one potential client who wanted a Virtual Earth application that “For that price we might as well buy another ArcGIS Server licenseâ€. For someone to say that it is cheaper to roll out ArcGIS Server for a simple mashup really puts it all into perspective and if you are going to develop with ArcGIS Server, you’ll probably have a larger application than a “simple†Virtual Earth map.
So I’m pleading with Microsoft and Google to revisit their map API licensing and move toward more of an Amazon AWS type service that will help get their mapping tools into more places than today. Everyone wants a Google or Microsoft map on their intranet website, but the current licensing is killing projects before they can start.
The GeoMonkey is a huge supporter of Amazon Web Services
