Author: James

I’ll be honest, I really haven’t been following this at all. I actually got contacted by a couple of reporters for the “inside take” and I had to do a quick Google News search to see what the heck they were talking about. Growing up in Orange Country California, I only knew Redlands as gas stations and truck stops (last place to get cheap gas before getting to Big Bear). It is best to try and protect space while they still have it, no matter who lives next to it.

Looks like Richie has been hard at work on the next release of GeoChat. You might remember it from about 6 months ago. I’ll give it a shot this week but until then these are some of the new features:

What’s new with GeoChat 2 for users?

1. New user interface (see screenshots),
2. Office-style alerts when new geochat messages arrive,
3. Support for adding/removing/grouping jabber users,

What’s new in GeoChat 2 for developers?

1. Full source code is included,
2. Object model diagram provided for core chat assembly (ESRI.ArcGIS.Chat.dll)
3. Migrated to .NET 2.0,
4. Includes sample executable called “ChatSample”,
5. Added new message type called “CustomMessage”. This allows developer to send any .NET serializable object.

It looks like people are able to do wonderful things with the Flickr API and a four color United States map.

Click over to the blog post link above for a better view of this map

I’d love to see this mashed up with the “Earth at Night” image and see what happens.

Yep those who are part of the ArcGIS 9.2 beta received their latest DVDs last week (or this week). The Release Candidate includes everything except ArcIMS and ArcGIS Server for Java (I’m sure there are more parts missing, but none that I noted). We must be very close as “ArcGIS 9.2 products not shown in this list will ship as part of the final release”. So this is it. ArcIMS 9.2 will have to wait for the final release which can’t be very far away.

ArcGIS Explorer isn’t part of this release candidate as far as I can tell, but it seems to be on a different schedule anyway.

_Update – _Looks like UPS brought the ArcGIS Server/ArcIMS for Java 9.2 Beta 2. Yep, the Java folks are so far behind. Hope it doesn’t hold up the 9.2 release.

I’m off for a nice 4 day weekend over the Labor Day holiday weekend. Have a great holiday everyone and I’ll be back on Tuesday.

Yep you read that right. The latest Arc2Earth version has a new toolbar called Map Tile Layer which allows you to download into ArcMap Microsoft Virtual Earth, Yahoo Maps and Ask Map tiles. So you can now choose Aerial/Hybrid/Streets for each of these services (NASA World Wind and Terraserver will be added at a later date). I’ve been testing it over the past couple days I’m I’m impressed. You can even cache the tiles locally and use them when you are “off the grid”. I’m looking forward for Google support so when I export my KMLs I can make sure they line up with the Google aerials in Google Earth. I’ve posted some screen shots of the ESRI campus in Redlands below from inside ArcMap.

Microsoft Virtual Earth Streets layer

Microsoft Virtual Earth Aerial layer

Microsoft Virtual Earth Hybrid layer

Steve noticed a post by Asa Dotzler about Paul Ramsey assertion that open source GIS is about developers, not users.

You may have failed (or decided not to even try) to build a product for users and to attract users to that product, but that hardly qualifies you to hand down edicts about what open source is or isn’t about.

Read the whole post here.

Paul responds:

It is just straightforward observation that if you aren’t adding code, documentation, bug reports, or user support to a project, if you are just downloading and using the software, you are not adding any value to the project.

Actually, very true. See Gary Sherman’s post on diminished expectations. Just downloading uDig or QGIS and complaining that it isn’t ArcGIS helps no one. Open source GIS needs users to be involved by providing feedback to help grow the software. That said, you don’t have to do anything if you don’t wish, but complaining about the software without helping the developers doesn’t help anyone.

Talk about everyone stepping up!

At 6:49 pm the $1600 ransom was met! The Maps have been liberated! All 56,000 of them are squeezing their way through my slow broadband connection right now to the safety and comfort of the Internet Archive. Thanks to the amazing and generous people at the Internet Archive, they will soon be available for download for free forever!

I’m happy to see that Jared was able to get enough people to pay the ransom. Now the community has a great resource for DRGs, free of any political or capitalistic shackles.

via Jo Walsh at Mapping Hacks

One of the things that has pissed me off over the years is how one has to pay for what should be free data. Those wonderful DRGs. Sure some states have wonderful GIS portals where they give this stuff away. But most don’t or make it very difficult to download. Plus people run off to these resellers like GISDataDepot and give money for free data. Well hopefully no more. Jared Benedict, the force behind the Libre Map Project flipped out and bought the whole DRG catalog from a reseller. Now he’s holding it RANSOM until the community pays up to set that data free. I just ponied up some cash to help and anyone who has ever used a DRG in the life should do too. Think of the children learning about GIS only to find that they can’t get free data that their parents and grandparents paid for with their tax dollars (feel free to hum “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”). Heck even if you want to buy DRGs in the mean time, he’s selling them on DVDs for much cheaper than any reseller out there. Great work Jared!

Maybe an important GIS software company, like Manifold, which is making billions off of GIS might be willing to give a couple dollars also.