LBS and Fusion Tables and Vector Tiling, Oh My!

March 4, 2011 15 Comments

Another week has passed and we are all still alive and kicking. Humanity never fails to surprise me. Anyway, Geo[ref]That is “Geo” with a big “G” vs “geo” with a little “g”.[/ref] continues to roll on and keep us excited.

  • Skyhook Wireless and Sony are hooking up to give the next generation PSP some location capabilities.  Good news for Skyhook, but aren’t devices like the PSP and Nintendo DS on their way out?  I guess we’ll see this summer when everyone is playing the latest EA games on their iOS devices.
  • Work with R?  Check out RStudio!  IDEs are usually hit and miss with me but this has enough awesome to warrant a download. (HT: PHXGeo)
  • Protected Maps in Google Fusion Tables?  Yes please!  2011 may be the year of Google Fusion Tables[ref]oh and the iPad 2, right?[/ref]
  • Google Maps labels look better, but why?  Justin again analyses how Google does this and compares it to Bing and Yahoo!.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you’ve got to be following Justin’s blog!
  • IBM puts out a weird blog series on the “The Case Against Google Maps in IBM Cognos Reports” (parts two and three).  To me I’m left wondering where the content is on that case to use Esri map services.  They sum it up this way, “In solid Boolean logic: NOT Cognos BI AND Google Maps.”  Say whaaat?
  • Lastly, Matt Kenny brings us the awesome that is TileStache.  Seriously now, why are we still using WxS and Esri ArcGIS Services?[ref]Sure, you can give me thousands of edge cases where such overhead is needed, but rarely does one need such things.  We need to break out of our bad practices and embrace the future.[/ref].  Read Matt’s blog and get cracking.  Bonus points for rolling TileMill and TileStache together!

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The Use of Game Engines in GIS

December 13, 2009 8 Comments

Autodesk has been heavily investing in their 3D technology which includes bringing on 3D game developers to help with visualization. I can just imagine their pitch, “Do you want to make millions programming games or change the world with 3D Studio Max?”.

Anyway I was sent this link to a company called Clover Point which is doing some really impressive stuff with 3D gaming engines and enterprise management with their Asset Tracking Anywhere.  Yea I know what you are thinking, how could I possibly get excited about something as boring as enterprise management?  Well in my pervious life (before da cloud) I was heavily involved with asset management and CAFM.  Now if you’ve ever been involved with this, you know how ugly the tools and how non-technical people have a great difficulty visualizing the data presented to them.

ESRI users take note:

Asset Tracking Anywhere also utilizes ESRI’s ArcGIS Server. This suite of products offers advantages over standard map engines in the ease of data layering, data creation, data visualization, data capture, raster-to-vector translation and the manipulation of projection and coordinate systems.

Detailed 3D models and immersive views are a great way to showcase your resources to managers and help them visualize their assets around the world.  Tabular reporting just doesn’t help people understand the impacts of planning and future changes to their business like a great 3D model.  Of course 3D modeling in GIS has been very basic, so I’m happy to see companies pushing the envelope on this.

 

Check out some of Clover Point’s work in these YouTube videos.  As I said, very impressive stuff. What I see here is BIM and GIS coming together to help people make informed decisions.


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