Category: Thoughts

Since I don’t want to get kicked out of the beta program, this is the best I can do to satisfy everyone’s need to see latest AGX beta.

World Streets 3D Globe View of Hollywood and Vine

Jei is all over the AGX 9.2 rc1 being released. Those in the beta program can download the latest version from the beta site.

I visited this over a year ago and I still feel the same way. For someone to invest their time and effort using these online mapping APIs and not have access to the metadata really hurts. Take this example; in jest the Virtual Earth team posted on keeping an eye on their competitors such as Google and joked that “no one actually works at the Googleplex given the barren parking lots”. Of course we all know it must be a holiday/weekend when the picture was taken, but in reality, can we really be sure? For companies such as Zillow who use this “Bird’s Eye View”, one would think that they would want to know when the image was taken. Maybe they have this information, but end uses don’t. Copyrights don’t do us any good.

Time is such a big component of data and being blindfolded only limits the value of these APIs.

OK, so I whined and moaned about Arizona not have any good coverage in Virtual Earth (or any service for that matter). Well check this out!

Not only is there coverage, but it is quite recent. You can see the light rail construction at the base of “A Mountain” just north of our building. Must have been late spring/early summer. Better stop off a Costco and get those M&Ms for the Virtual Earth team. 😀

For those who want to see what the Tempe location of Google looks like, check this out. It might not be a Google Campus, but is is on the ASU Main Campus. See how easy life is when you have good data? I guess I can take the rest of the week off.

Honestly I’m like a kid in the candy store. Heck even Scottsdale was added so you can see other interesting things beyond the pool next to my work such as Taliesin West.

I can’t bring myself to say Live Local so I’m sticking with Virtual Earth. Anyway I was talking to Brian Flood today about using Arc2Earth to export KML and share those KMLs using Google Maps. My only disappointment was in Google Maps support of KML at this point (though I’m sure it will get there eventually). The problem for us using KML has been our clients not being able to install Google Earth because of the license issues. $400 a pop just won’t cut it. Anyway taking a look at the new Virtual Earth features such as the ability to draw polygons on maps and collaborate with other users via the web seems like a killer feature to me for those who want to share their GIS layers with others. Google Earth is a great tool, but ever computer has a web browser on it. Beyond exporting to PDF, that is the only sure way I can share mapping with clients and have them able to read the maps.

So this begs the question, when can I see Arc2VirtualEarth? There seems to be no import/export tool for these polygons, polylines and points but I can’t imagine that would be very hard to enable such a tool.

Also the Virtual Earth Interactive SDK has been updated with the new VE features.

Looks like it might get out this week, so patience.

The UC release is very nice, but if there is a show stopper, best get it right especially since this is the release candidate.

For those who keep bugging me about when it will show up, I know nothing. I heard it will be available as a download by the end of this week so maybe we’ll see it really soon. Beyond that I still don’t know when it will be available to the public. The last I heard was the general public would have to wait until ArcGIS 9.2 goes public. Until then you can read up on new changes.

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.

I know you’ve all really been waiting for this news, but IronPython has been officially released. Python is a beautiful programming language (Planet Geospatial runs on it) and I’m so happy that ArcGIS uses it for geoprocessing and now I can integrate Python right inside my existing .NET framework and interact with .NET objects.

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.