Category: Thoughts

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.

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

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.

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.

In the mashup ecosystem, let’s get one thing straight. The data owner is ultimately in control, because a mashup developer is reliant on data owners to keep the supply of data flowing.

Sure the presentation is important, but if you rely on data sources you don’t have control over you run the risk of losing out. Better to get permission from your sources before you are blocked from getting the data. One should never base your business model on free data unless you have secured access to it.

I think his post might have gotten lost in the noise on Planet Geospatial as no one has commented on it, but Brian Goldin posted about the Developer Summit keynote yesterday (I get a free pass for not posting about it because I was sick as a dog). Being able to hear Scott Morehouse speak will be a treat as well as hearing Microsoft’s Eddie Amos (not to mention even IBM). Brian says there are upwards of 600 attendees registered so its going to be much larger than I thought it would be. It will be good to meet everyone who’s emailed me that they are going and we are going to have a blast. Heck if you were planning to visit for the Business Partner conference, why not come early and join the party?

Yea, its a blank page. I’m not sure what the problem is because I don’t have access to SSH into my account at work. I’ll try and fix some things via FTP, but I’m flying blind until I can get into my server account.

Sorry.

**Update – **It seems to be back up. I just cleared the cache and that seems to have fixed it (I hope).

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.

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.