Category: Thoughts

Yes, you read that correct. Even though there were sprinkles on my windshield yesterday, it still wasn’t enough to measure as rain and the Valley of the Sun continues to go without rain. I might have to take a “rain vacation” just to remember what it looks/feels like.

I’m sure everyone has seen the news about the new Streetlevel view in Virtual Earth (aka Live Local). Channel 9 has a great behind the scenes movie up so it you want to see how they did it, go ahead and view the move. I’m a much better drive in real life than I am on this Streetlevel prototype, that is for sure. Its eye candy, but it does show how it is possible to accomplish more than just top down views. I’m guessing we are only months away from video being used in these types of applications.

I’ve been subscribed to the ESRI e-mail discussion lists for more years than I can remember, but I honestly can’t remember the last time I posted to them (either a question or a response to one). I was looking at the latest email digest for both the ESRI-L and the ArcView-L and I started to think of how they could be improved. Most people these days seem to post their question to both lists, probably because they can’t tell the difference between them. According to the signup page the “ARCVIEW-L is a discussion list for all subjects concerning released versions of ArcView and related extensions” while the “ESRI-L is a discussion list for subjects on all other released ESRI software products”. I’m sure this dates back to the time when ArcView 3.x was pretty much a different beast compared to classic ArcInfo Workstation, but these days ArcView really isn’t a product at all so it seems confusing to have an e-mail list devoted to it. I think also the ESRI list is way too broad for as many products as ESRI has these days (From ArcWeb to ArcGIS Server) that probably could use their own email lists.

I’d probably kill both lists right now and replace them with a couple. First there seems to be a huge need for a ArcGIS Desktop list as most of the questions on both lists currently pertain to Desktop questions. I think there probably should be a Server Products discussion list as well as a Mobile and Web Services list. Maybe even an EDN list might be nice to help answer developers questions. Heck, maybe just one list for every group on the Sofware page of the ESRI Support site might be easy.

I’ve seen many people really drawn to open source GIS products because of their email lists and the response they get from their questions there. Just having a list doesn’t mean people will use it if they don’t think their questions are getting answered. Having more specific email lists means that maybe ESRI’s employees can get in and answer some of these questions because they only have to subscribe to the email list that they are experts on. This is all part of that community that needs to happen around ESRI software that has been missing for some years. Updating the e-mail lists is easy and probably should have happened with the release of ArcGIS 8.x.

I just got an email from Tom Savage and he says he was able to buy a copy of Arc2Earth. I just headed over there and he’s right, you can purchase right from the site, but no word from Brian Flood yet. I’m sure he’ll post about it soon.

Update – Brian’s posted about it and Stefan over at Ogle Earth has an interview with Brian.

Tim Beermann, a blogger working for CH2MHill at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs writes about how he’s using Google Earth to as a viewer during emergencies. He’s taken an existing application and enabled it to send information to Google Earth clients.

My first test on the system used CH2M HILL’s iCIT emergency management application. As iCIT managed the application, the GE extension would publish the data for viewing in a command center in GE. The KML files were securely sent to the GE client machine using a secure Instant Messenger type of technology. Once the files were update on the client machine, a web service was used to reload the altered file in Google Earth.

The results are impressive and I can imagine very useful to the Academy. It is so easy to visualize in tools like Google Earth and using ArcGIS on the backend just enables Google Earth to be so much more valuable.

Looks like ESRI is trying to get a handle on the ArcScripts disaster.

ArcScripts is intended for the free exchange of scripts and tools related to ESRI software products. Please alert the moderator if this script is a demo, trial-version, or an advertisement for a retail product.

Get cracking and remove all those commercial ArcScripts.

**Update – ** Brian Goldin has an insider’s update to the status of ArcScripts. I’m glad to hear about the plans for the future of ArcScripts. Many of us programmers have talked about somethink along the lines of GotDotNet or The Code Project (I prefer The Code Project), but you do worry about overkill for something like this.

Boy my son really got me sick today. I finally was able to crawl out of bed at 4pm. I’m not a trooper about being sick so I probably need to go out and buy some flowers for my wife.

Slowly but surely ArcWeb is beginning to filter out into the world. Check out this web developer for Crossroads Community Church plotting addresses on an ArcWeb map using the REST API.

It is good to see people starting to blog about using Public ArcWeb Services.

Shaan Hurley points to a new geospatial IT blog over at Autodesk. Between the Poles is written by Autodesk’s Geoff Zeiss.

Subscribed and added to Planet Geospatial.

I’ve been letting Planet Geospatial (PGS) sit for the past month just to see how its doing. There was an issue with some WordPress blogs not showing up, but that seems to have passed and everything is smooth. One issue I’ve started to notice is that there are way too many blogs in it. This is probably a good thing as it proves that the Geospatial blogging community has grown to the point that moderation is required.

I’ve been clearing out blogs that don’t post so all the ones in there right have have at least one post in the past month (or are important enough to be included for other reasons). There are 75 blogs in the aggregator right now and I’d like to cut that in half (I think too much noise hurts the value of PGS).

Without going into specifics, what blogs do you guys think should be included and which ones might be best left off? You don’t need to point to a specific blog that should or shouldn’t be included, but I’d like to know what makes PGS valuable to you.

Most of our work in my office is related to facility planning for the U.S. Navy. Years ago, one of the first things we’d try and get when we started a project was General Development Maps (GDM) for the installation which were usually in CAD and usually tiled. We’d usually have to develop GIS from this CAD and it was much work anyone who’s ever had to import hundreds of CAD layers into SDSFIE can attest to. As time has gone on, more of these installations have invested in their GIS and now have some great looking datasets for us to use with our projects.

What I have noticed lately is the quality of the mapping from our clients. These “basemaps” replace the old GDM maps that were used in the past (or NIMA) and they look very professional. What is even more amazing is that they are done without any of the old tricks we had to use in the past (export to Illustrator, etc). I also think we are at the cusp of a cartography revolution with the new cartographic features of ArcGIS Desktop 9.2 (I blogged about them back at the UC). I’m looking forward to see what maps are produced using the new powerful cartography tools.

While there is a great resource for Cartographers on the web, there isn’t much on the ESRI site. Maybe if the ArcScripts gets cleaned up and organized better, we’ll be able to find more nuggets on the site. What would be really good is if there could be the equivalent to EDN for cartographers on the ESRI site. I think the trend is to have more communities out there rather than one big support site. I mean wouldn’t it be cool to see a Geoprocessing community go up, rather than the static download page that is currently up?