I had lunch this afternoon (Sushi) with Brian Goldin and Steve Citron-Pousty. Took us a while to find a place that didn’t have a 30 minute wait, but eventually we did. I let both of them know how much I appreciated them blogging about ESRI and how hopefully more ESRI employees will take it up. I’m looking forward to the blogger meet up on Wednesday night and meeting more of ESRI’s bloggers as well as other GIS bloggers. Make sure you guys show up as we are all anxious to meet everyone face to face.
Author: James
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New ArcIMS Design Tools
The new ArcIMS designer tool looks great. The older Java tools have never really been updated in years. The new Designer is based on COM (I assume?) .NET and creates some really slick maps. It blows the Google Maps AJAX client out of the water and you can even use Visual Studio.net to create these maps. ArcIMS 9.2 is going to be a huge release and you won’t recognize the look of the maps created using it at all. I can’t wait to get into the ArcIMS API and see what new interfaces we can create.
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New Usability in ArcGIS 9.2
Some great new usability features of 9.2.
- Add native Microsoft Excel spreadsheets as a table in the TOC. (w00t)
- New measure tool calculates length and area
- Calculate Acres directly from the table view, no longer do you have to add vba code to do this
- Sort the fields in the query dialog. I’ve never figured out the logic of the sorting of these fields, now I choose how they should be displayed.
- Limit zoom to extent to a data view.
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On MSN Instant Messenger at the Plenary Session
I’m on MSN Instant Messenger so if you want to say hi, just add “cageyjames@hotmail.com” to your contact list.
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Heading Out
I’m heading out to San Diego early tomorrow morning. I’m driving this year rather than flying, mostly because I’ve done so much of it over the past year and I’m just tired of the hassle. Anyway, I plan to head out by way of Interstate 8 from the Phoenix area and I’d like to leave early enough that I don’t run into any monsoon storms. That way I’ll get into San Diego early enough to pick up my badge and swag. See you guys there, and if anyone wants to get a hold of me, just send email to james.fee at google.com as I’ll be checking it often.
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MSN Virtual Earth Revisited
Remember my post this morning when I said I liked the look of MSN Virtual Earth? Well I still do but unlike Google Maps it isn’t as easy to use. The more you try other solutions, the more respect one has for how well Google Maps works. Simplicity is key here and MSN Virtual Earth just can’t hold a candle to Google Maps. Four quick thoughts on MSN Virtual Earth before I head down to the beach…
- Didn’t anyone at Microsoft get the memo that the Earth is round? Why can’t I pan from Alaska to Russia?
- The Microsoft Terraserver images are nice, but how about adding some for other countries. I don’t mind B&W images as long as the are crisp, but the lack of coverage outside the USA is really bad.
- How about adding the word BETA somewhere on MSN Virtual Earth? Lets not get carried away here.
- Why do they have two separate search fields? Can’t they just use one and figure out a way to parse out what I want? They just take up too much room on the toolbar for not much added value.
It is a nice first start and some of the features won’t be available until Monday at the official launch. I just don’t see anything here to make me stop using Google Maps as my primary online mapping tool.
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MSN Virtual Earth
Link – http://virtualearth.msn.com/
Just a quick note before I head out this morning for San Diego. MSN Virtual Earth is up and running. Looks like they are using the Terraserver images in the background and some more up to date aerials in the urban areas. That works much nicer than those low-res satellite images that Google has and you can zoom in much closer than Google Maps can. The transparency on the toolbar and search is nice as you can see the data layers underneath. I’m quite impressed with it and I think it looks much better than Google Maps to the eye. I might change my mind after using it, but I’ll try it more tonight.
Robert Scoble says that there will be an announcement Monday morning while we are listening to Jack Dangermond. Guess we’ll have to take advantage of the wireless network to find out what they say about MSN Virtual Earth.
[Update] – Check out this comparison between Google Maps and MSN Virtual Earth.
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Past ESRI User Conference Beer Pints
I was looking at my old mouse pad on my desk and was thinking of what ESRI UC logo items I have around the house. I found 6 beer pints (I have 4 more at work) and thought I’d take a picture of them. Time to buy one more this year…
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Zoom “rubber band” for Google Maps API
Link – Implementing a selection box for Google Maps – via PubSub
An enterprising Google Map “hacker” has created some code that will allow you to zoom in via drawing a window on the screen. To zoom into an area, click the ‘z’ button and move your mouse to select an area, then release ‘z’. It works pretty well and I suspect we’ll see many Google Maps “mashups” to use this. The Google Maps API continues to impress me on how easy people are able to take advantage of it.
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Google Maps Goes Hybrid
Just noticed that there is now a new option at Google Maps. In addition to “Map” and “Satellite” there is a new “Hybrid” version which I think works pretty well. You get road names, streets and landmarks right over the top of the satellite image. I didn’t spend too much time looking at how well the roads line up with the satellite images, but they look pretty good from what I saw.
