Author: James

Anyone check out MapQuest’s API? I’m not sure when it was “released”, but its new to me.

Probably big news since so many websites use MapQuest to show directions and office locations.

Eric Bader wrote a great honest post about ArcGIS Server 9.2. Anyone who has ever used AGS 9.1 knows that its hard to even get a “hello world” application up and running quickly. I remember when I first installed it I had that sinking feeling, “now what do I do?”. Eric says at 9.2:

The non-developer will immediately become highly productive, immediately after installing the ArcGIS Server.

And with a product that costs as much and requires the investment that AGS does, quick results are needed to show those who just laid out big bucks why AGS is so powerful. This is part of the story of why the 9.2 release is so important to developers.

Eric’s blog post is probably the best I’ve seen out of ESRI yet. It is honest, transparent and spells out why AGS 9.2 is a huge deal to developers. I’m looking forward to more from Eric on ArcGIS Server and I’m sure everyone else will too.

Looks like those who wanted to attend both SIG meetings (the Java or the .NET) you now can. I was just looking at the Dev Summit schedule and the Java SIG now appears as a Saturday event.

_**Java SIG

Saturday, March 18, 2006, 12:00 PM-12:45 PM

Smoketree C (Palm Springs Convention Center)**_

ESRI has quietly posted the new features in ArcGIS Desktop 9.2 on the ESRI website. Its been pretty quiet around here because of the closed 9.2 beta, but it seems ESRI is beginning to ramp up the PR machine. See the whole list on their webpage but a couple of the more interesting ones to me are below:

• Mouse wheel support
• Ability to rename folder connections and customize appearance of the tree in ArcCatalog
• Direct read of Microsoft Excel files
• Support for OGC GML Simple Features data
• New File Geodatabase for personal data collections with support for single-user editing without a DBMS
• The new cartographic tools
• Georeferencing toolbar that allows users to move, rotate, and scale CAD files using the mouse
• Maplex as optional extension for ArcGIS Server, ArcGIS Engine, and ArcIMS (ArcMap Server) for better labeling on web mapping or embedded applications
• Support for Google Earth KML and OGC GML 3.1.1 through the use of Safe Software’s FME 2006 engine

Don’t forget, today is the last day you can register for the Developer Summit online. You can still register at the door, but why wait. There are a ton of bloggers showing up (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here) so we’ll be getting together at some point (probably Thursday night). Don’t forget, Brian Goldin says he’s pinching anyone who doesn’t wear a green shirt on the 17th so if you want to avoid that nightmare, remember the shirt.

Robert Wood liked the sound of the idea of running GIS from a flash USB drive for those emergencies so he went out and tried to get the great FWTools running.

After playing around a bit with 1.0.0a7 (windows release)
I found I could get it to work by doing the following:

• Edit the setfw and openev batch files so that instead of a hard coded path, the home directory is set using %cd% to supply the current directory
• Copying the shortcuts into the fwtools directory and removing the absolute paths from them (the OpenEV icon gets lost, but that isn’t fatal).

I’ve tried it and its works fairly well. It looks like Robert’s gotten some responses on the FWTools mailing list so maybe we’ll see an updated version that takes advantage of the portability. Many developers have run with this idea of portability and given the larger USB 2.0 flash drives out there, why not? Maybe someone can set up a wiki somewhere to list the instructions for various open source programs to run on portable devices.

I can’t believe how quickly it has all happened. Happy 3rd Birthday big guy!

I posted a little about the new features (well actually “alluded” to them) in the 9.2 release since we can’t blog about it, but ESRI did write an article in the latest ArcNews about what is new and how it all works. If you want to see how 9.2 revolutionizes how we’ll create maps in 9.2, check it out. It even has tons of pictures to show you just how it works. The new features give GIS professionals so much more control over their maps. This is something anyone who creates maps in ArcMap will want to keep on top of or you’ll be left behind. The power to create maps and not lose accuracy is simply amazing. One thing to keep in mind, the article doesn’t mention it but at the 05 UC, ESRI did say you’ll need an ArcInfo license to create these cartographic features and at least an ArcEditor license to edit them you’ll need just a ArcEditor license to create these cartographic features. ArcView cannot work with these features but can open and render them so you won’t lose them if you have to print from ArcView.

I just felt like posting Bex. He’s so part of ESRI that I can’t believe he hadn’t been on my blog yet.

For all the talk about Google Maps being the new powerhouse behind the web mapping revolution, you can’t forget about the company that enables Google to do what they do. Ask.com’s mapping tool isn’t anything new, but it does have better imagery than Google has (at least in the areas I looked) thanks to the latest GlobeXplorer data. Ask.com, Zillow and Homepages all use GlobeXplorer’s product. Don’t forget who holds the cards in this game.