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 (wait… release for a website? Come on now, there is no such thing as a version number in the cloud guys).
- 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 (I see a business model coming together)
- 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?