Category: Thoughts

A post on the Zillow Blog got me thinking about how people could use Google Earth and SketchUp to better market and sell their real estate. Could a better detailed SketchUp model of your house make is sell better in the future than a standard web based aerial photo? Interesting thought, virtual walk through are already done with QTVR (or similar products) so why not just take the next leap? Wonder if Google has plans for something like this or will services like Zillow take the lead? Heck someone might be able to make money creating these models for people to put up on craigslist where I’m sure it would get great play.

If there was a way to integrate Bird’s Eye View with the SketchUp I’m sure we’d all be blow away (at least where Bird’s Eye View is available, ie not in Phoenix).

I had gotten an email from IDELIX and promptly ignored it as their idea sounds like a hassle given the simplicity and ease of use Google Maps and Virtual Earth offer us. Well after a weekend of seeing everyone post about it I thought I’d give it another look. Well I think I was correct in ignoring it, the more middle men you put between me and the data, the less interested I am in it. The technology looks impressive, but to me it almost seems like a technology looking for a purpose rather than filling a need. Plus it turns the speedy Google Maps and Virtual Earth into a slow “Java-like” web application, rather than the lightweight AJAX solution that they are. I’m sure that there is an application for this technology out there, but the demo doesn’t show it.

Steve Lombardi, the Virtual Earth Program Manager took some time to respond to my post on the quality of imagery in Phoenix, AZ.

The things our users have been asking for include maps and geocoding Internationally (number 1 by a landslide. See Daanish’s comment above as an example of typical feedback), trip planning, ability to correct bad geocodes, ability to add their own content to maps and printing improvements. Not surprisingly, in this release we added features like Real Time Traffic Overlays, the ability to move algorithmically geocoded pushpins, and Collections which allows someone to build their own layer of points to share with others. Our new Print menu isn’t gonna get us a lot of coverage in hardcore GIS blogs, but its features like that that users need to complete the tasks they actually want to do at WLL.

Tim Beermann posted in my comments that:

Shape2Earth can now be downloaded and tested at http://interactiveearth.blogspot.com/.

I have not had much time to implement a lot of the features I would like .. but those will come with time.

For those who have not been following Shape2Earth Beta 2 news, you can get up to speed on the enhancements over on Tim’s blog. Good news as GIS professionals are really starting to take a liking to Google Earth and making it part of their workflows.

Ah, but Google Earth’s pesky EULA gets in the way.

The other theme was so hacked up it was driving me nuts. This one supports the latest features of WordPress 2.0 so it should be easier to handle. Plus I wanted something a little wider than the 768px width of the old theme.

Oh and yes that old blog header was from ArcGIS Explorer so if you remember what it looked like you can see San Francisco. 😉 I got rid of it because I wanted something more simple and nothing is more simple than text on a background color.

_**Update – **Thanks to Daanish for posting a Yahoo! News story updating us on the status of the products. It looks like at least for now both are safe, but you have to wonder for how long. So for now, no worries. 🙂 _

My first computer based cartography work was done on Freehand so this kinda makes me sad even though I don’t use Freehand anymore (our company uses Illustrator). Actually the last version of Freehand I used was version 5.5 on Macintosh so that pretty much dates me and is probably why Adobe is dropping Freehand. Also I’m sure many Dreamweaver users will be happy to hear that GoLive is going away also. I used to have GoLive Cyberstudio before Adobe bought the product and renamed it, but about the time that happened Visual Interdev came out so I just ended up using that instead.

courtesy GUIdebook

I hadn’t tried AGX in a couple weeks (been really busy) but I loaded the latest build on my computer this weekend. It is still closed beta so I can’t go into details but I’m very impressed with the progress over the last month. One of the new features really makes me wonder why Google hasn’t thought of something similar with Google Earth. As a ESRI developer I really can’t wait to see what I can do with it as it should help integrate AGX into our client workflows. I guess we should be seeing a public beta later next month but I’m beginning to think about how we can start using the ArcGIS Server 9.2 with AGX. Of course ArcGIS Server is in closed beta so we probably won’t be showing anything in that for quite some time.

A MapObjects 2.4 update arrived today (smelling of clove cigarettes, not sure if that happened at ESRI or in route). I don’t see anything that screams out in the “What’s New in MapObjects 2.4”, but I’m glad that they are still supporting it.

Apparently Arizona State University has a new online campus map in beta that was designed by Google. It is unsure if ASU paid Google to create this map or if it was part of a partnership with Google considering that Google is moving onto the ASU campus. It is a pretty slick Google Maps mashup that ties into their existing campus tour as well as the ASU campus locations; Tempe Main Campus, ASU West, Polytechnic campus, Downtown Phoenix campus, ASU Research Park and Skysong (where I think Google might locate permanently).

Microsoft has really started pushing out these community sites (Channel9, On10, Port25, GotDotNet) and now they have one for IIS. Since I’d wager most of the implementations of ESRI’s server products are done with IIS, this might be a good site to bookmark/subscribe via RSS.

IIS.net

Heck I see you can even give I IS 7 a tryout even if you don’t have a MSDN Subscription.