NASA’s OnEarth Has Been Abandoned

November 3, 2011 1 Comment

Paul Ramsey noted this morning that OnEarth is no more.

This server no longer provides full WMS services for any of the datasets. Furthermore, the MODIS daily mosaics are no longer being updated. The tiled WMS access, described in the Tiled WMS and Google Earth KML support will stay operational. This includes access to the archived of MODIS daily mosaics, which were built from 2006 to the end of 2010

Interesting as this was a great resource that I’m not sure was freely available elsewhere.

It's the One Earth that I know...

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ArcGIS Online :: The “WMS Release”

July 7, 2011 Leave a Comment

For those who feared there was going to be no Esri news the week before the UC, this happened:

Time to refresh your browser! ArcGIS Online is frequently updated, and a new update has just been published. This is a significant release with many new features and capabilities.

OK, so what is new in this release[ref]wait… release for a website?  Come on now, there is no such thing as a version number in the cloud guys[/ref].

  • Drag and drop add of data.  Interesting, but drop of GPX but not KML?
  • WMS support — I can only guess this is to meet some government requirement.  I mean who really is asking for WMS support in ArcGIS Online?  ”I’d totally be all over ArcGIS Online if they just supported WMS!”  Yea not happening.
  • KML support via URLs.  See the problem here is you need to post the data somewhere to use it.  Of course maybe the hook is that you can store the KML on ArcGIS Online[ref]I see a business model coming together[/ref]
  • ArcGIS Explorer Online supports WMS.  Again, I see government contracts all over this one.
One thing that did really catch my eye was this:
Coming Soon to ArcGIS Online
ArcGIS Online Organizational Accounts
Organizational accounts and hosted mapping for organizations will soon be available through a fee-based subscription to ArcGIS Online. A subscription provides additional capabilities and tools to centrally manage individual user accounts within an organization, and to create and manage an organization’s hosted maps, and more.
Does that sound a bit like Google Earth Builder?  I suspect we’ll hear a ton of Esri’s response to Google (not directly because that isn’t Jack’s style) next week.  Could be interesting, that’s for sure.

Oh Captain, my Captain! Where is my WMS Service?

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WMS — Dead? No, But Does Anyone Really Want to Work With It?

February 23, 2011 6 Comments

Sophia Parafina threw this gem up over the weekend [ref]3 day weekend no less[/ref].

Don’t get me wrong, W*S style services will have a long tail, because we’ve spent a decade expounding it’s virtues to the Federal government. However, it’s time we recognize the WMS is OBE.

Go read the details.  Me?  I’m no fan of WMS by any means, but tile map server urls can be just as complicated and undocumented.  OGC WMS URLs?  A mess at any level, but documented.  Pick your poison, but at least tile map services can scale.

Either way conquering web mapping URLs can make you pass out.

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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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Is FTP access the best we can do?

March 10, 2009 13 Comments

I can almost predict that every conversation about data sharing will have one person stand up and declare, “Just give me FTP access and I’ll be fine”.  I used to think that way and while I probably still would like file based access to datasets, I just can’t see FTP being a viable data transfer method anymore.  Just it makes it easy to grab a data dump, but there isn’t anything that allows users to know if the data has been updated (other than I suppose checking the metadata).  So many times I see people using old data because they have no idea data has been updated.  Personally I don’t like the idea that I’m offering up spatial data web services for data I don’t control and most others should be worried as well.  Users want to grab data from the source, not some middle man who probably knows less about the data than the creator.

There has been a huge jump into SDI since the pork bandwagon started up in Washington and I’ll be honest…  I haven’t paid much attention.  One thing I am sure of is I don’t want to see something introduced that has two choices, WxS and FTP.  Data needs to be both discoverable and usable and I’m not sure WxS and FTP get us there.  WxS no matter what defenders might say is not discoverable and FTP is not secure and has no method of tracking changes.

AtomPub to me looks like the best method of publishing and sharing datasets.  There is a huge risk here of inventing something new when a superb solution already exists.  Workflows change quickly and WxS/FTP can’t adjust sprightly enough.  Read “How to GET a Cup of Coffee” and think about how easier this could all be.

Gatekeepers want to limit you to FTP/WxS so that you cant change the world...

Gatekeepers want to limit you to FTP/WxS so that you can't change the world.

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Open Source on the beach at Waikiki

October 1, 2007 25 Comments

I’m “stuck” in Waikiki this week at our Honolulu office helping them get back on track with their GIS after our GIS coordinator resigned to join her husband in the peace corps on Tonga. The new GIS person is really excited about GIS and that is always nice to be around. Sometimes even I need my GIS Kool-aid recharged.

Anyway I was hanging out at Duke’s Waikiki and randomly started talking to the group next to me at the bar. Turns out that they are all readers of my blog and have been migrating their GIS from an ESRI only shop to a combination ESRI/open source shop. It was interesting to hear how they were picking and choosing the best products from ESRI and open source to help them better get their work done. What was also interesting is that they didn’t decrease their maintenance costs, but reallocated. They’ve replaced most of their ArcView seats with QGIS, replaced all but one license of ArcSDE with PostGIS and in turn used those savings to buy more licenses of ArcInfo and extensions. They’ve been able to give their high end GIS analysts the tools they feel that they need to get their work done, but still increased their GIS production. Every person at their company has either an ArcInfo or QGIS license on their desk that they can connect to WMS services hosted by MapServer and PostGIS.

I wish I could have spent more time with them talking about this, but they were heading to China in the morning so they needed to get to bed. I liked how they were able to give better tools to everyone by prioritizing what they needed and picked the best tools for the job.

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