Author: James

As some have already posted, I was invited to the Western United States Manifold Users Conference, January 18th and 19th down the road in Mesa, AZ. Looking at the presentation abstracts, I should be able to get a real education as to how people are using Manifold in their geospatial projects. Seeing how real folks use the software is always one of the best parts of the ESRI UC. Getting beyond the marketing hype and in the trenches is where the fun it.

I’ve been getting a demonstration ready to go for a client using MapDotNet Server (MDNS) and figured it was a great time to update to the latest version. Version 6.5 was released December 17, 2007 and is a huge update. Improvements include:

• Now uses Microsoft’s Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
• Support for the November CTP of SQL Server 2008
• Support for Oracle 10g and 11g
• MapServer 5.0 support for AGG rendering
• Improved VE Template II

There is a lot more than that and you can read the whole release notes here.

I hope everyone is having a happy New Year’s day. I have only one prediction for the new year and it is that we’ll have our minds blown away be all the new technology heading down the pike. Should be a blast.

I love using Virtual Earth because the imagery is so great compared to Google’s (at least in the areas I’m interested in). The reason why is the UltraCamX imagery that Microsoft uses. LiveSide.net has a small window into the UltraCam and how impressive its results are.

Santa didn’t bring James an UltraCamX this Christmas.

Gizmodo and Engadget both have articles on this LCD touch screen and both show a picture of Google Earth being demonstrated.

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52-inch Multi-touch Screen – World’s Largest Multi-touch Display
LG.Philips LCD’s 52-inch multi-touch panel for public and interactive displays is not only the world’s largest, it is also one of the most responsive, able to recognize input from either a touch of a finger or more precise writing instruments. It uses an infrared image sensor that gives it the ability to recognize two separate touch points as well as gestures. It boasts some of the industry’s highest specifications, with a 90 Hz touch response time, 1920 x 1080 Full HD resolution and a light transmission rate of 95 to 100 percent.

What caught my eye was how thin this unit is and there is no hacking here to get a touch table. We could be seeing this technology explode here in a few months.

Sure you can use the Xbox360 controller, or the 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator to navigate the 3D Virtual Earth globe, but anyone can do that. The real fun is using your Wii Remote to control the 3D Globe.

http://images.video.msn.com/flash/soapbox1_1.swf
Video: Wiimote Interface for Virtual Earth

Thanks to Paul Ramsey, Bill Dollins, Morten Nielsen and others, Microsoft has said that they plan to implement longitude-latitude ordering in WKB and WKT for both the geography and geometry types. Bill put it best IMO as to why this change needed to happen with SQL Server 2008.

For me, the issue is consistency. Regardless of the mindsets of professionals vs. non-professionals or the imprecision of the OGC spec, the bottom line is that the same call behaves differently for two related data types.

Now sure it would have been possible to work around this, but it makes no sense for Microsoft to do things different from everyone else. Now I still see Microsoft using the GML example of axis order to justify their choice, but given that the standard is long/lat I can’t understand why they’d want to be different.

Now you know why folks such as Howard Butler were “unhappy” that Google named their blog Google LatLong rather than the more correct Google LongLat.

Man, this place looks expensive. I feel like I’m wasting a fortune just standing here.

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

Its been a cold and blistery day here in Tempe, Arizona (well by Tempe standards at least) so I’m ready to get the fire burning and the Kahlua hot chocolate flowing. My son Connor has been bouncing off the walls full of Christmas candy and cookies and the anticipation that Santa is on his way. I’ve had Google Earth running all day and I’ve caught him watching multiple times. About 4 more hours and he will be in bed and dreaming of Santa.

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday!

I’ll be busy with my new Nintendo Wii today (and probably the rest of the week). I’m already getting beaten at EA Playground and Donkey Kong Blast, but holding my own at MLB Power Pros and Carnival Games. It wasn’t all Wii though for me. The wife did get me something I had been really wanting.

Hope everyone else had a great Christmas morning as well!