Category: Thoughts

I just noticed the ArcGIS Explorer Software Developer Kit on the ESRI ArcGIS 9.2 beta download site along with ArcGIS Explorer Beta 2.

Installing right now… 🙂

Stefan finds that Google cleaned up the Google Earth “Free” EULA. You can’t even use it at work for personal reasons. Yikes!

1. USE OF SOFTWARE The Software is made available to you for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may not use the Software or the geographical information made available for display using the Software, or any prints or screen outputs generated with the Software in any commercial or business environment or for any commercial or business purposes for yourself or any third parties.

So that leaves NASA World Wind and ESRI ArcGIS Explorer to fight over the “free” business market. I think we’ll be seeing a public beta of AGX really soon so this could be great news for ESRI. I’d better get uninstalling GE 4.0 beta from my laptop right away.

We’ve been working with ArcGIS (3D Analyst and ArcScene) and Google SketchUp to see how we can improve our 3D scenes. I’m impressed with how quickly we were able to model buildings and integrate them into ArcGIS using SketchUp. We took Penn State University and modeled a couple buildings on Pollock Road in the University Park campus core. We need to work a little on Old Main (no flames from PSU alumni on that, the clock tower is hard to model), but I think it adds quite a bit of value over the generic block buildings. I uploaded two examples below:

ESRI ArcScene with Google SketchUp Example 1

ESRI ArcScene with Google Sketchup Example 2

We definitely are going to explore this much further and see about working with ArcGlobe and Google Earth.

Looks like Google started up their operations down the street in Tempe, AZ today. They are on the opposite side of Arizona State University from our office, and in not as a nice location. I’m sure that will all change once they get their permanent digs. 🙂

Guess I can assume Google will keep the aerial imagery of Tempe pretty much up to date. They do have some work to do though as the image up right now is about 2 years old.

I like the changes to the GUI with the new Google Earth 4.0 beta, plus all the new changes to KML. I sure wish I wasn’t traveling this week (stuck in the high desert of California on a “high speed Internet” connection that the hotel swears is DSL but I’m not buying it) and had some time to check more out. There are many new subtle features that will require more review, I just don’t know where to begin!

Google just keeps pushing that benchmark further and further.

I’m unsubscribing. I’ve enjoyed Robert’s blog ever since I discovered it while researching Tablet PCs years ago. I’m not sure what PodTech is, but it sounds like podcasts and I don’t bother listening to them anymore. I’ve discovered that I’d much rather listen to music while traveling than someone talking (if I do need someone’s voice, I’ll find the local NPR). Anyway best of luck Robert, but PodTech (I haven’t even bothered to visit PodTech’s website) is irrelevant to me.

I keep going back and forth on whether or not Wiki’s are worth the effort. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft’s MSDN Wiki becomes successful or not.

Those not on the ESRI ArcGIS Beta program can finally see a public blog this morning. It isn’t too technical, but at least it is a start. Bookmark http://blogs.esri.com/ and hopefully there will be some more really soon. I’m not sure how this is related to David Maguire’s blog, but I guess in time we’ll see who this “geographymatters” person is.

I’ve been pretty hard on ESRI about commercial scripts being in the ArcScripts section of the support site. Well Brian Goldin told me to take a look today and it looks like most of the commercial software I knew was gone. I believe Brian said ESRI has gotten over 800 alerts sent in by ArcScripts users seeing commercial software. It looks like the top 10 downloads only includes Avenue scripts as most of the top downloaded scripts were commercial for ArcGIS.

I can’t remember the last time ArcScripts looked this clean. 🙂

I had caught Howard Butler’s post on his take about OGC and GeoRSS and now I see Chris Tweedie and Allan Doyle responded. One comment by Allan that caught my eye:

“But when it comes down to which organization I support directly by my efforts, it matters a lot. Right now, the first compellingly neutral organization that jumps to mind is the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. I wonder if the time is right to have the Open Source Geospatial Foundation become the sponsor/host/supporter of GeoRSS?”

I’ll save my rant about OGC for another day (I’m in too good of a mood right now to get worked up over that), but it is interesting to see how quickly an open standard can become closed right before your eyes if people aren’t vigilant.

Also it is important to remember that much discussion goes on via email lists in the geospatial community. Subscribing to these lists is an great way to keep up on news that takes days or weeks to get out onto the blogs.