Category: Thoughts

Link – Styling KML to GML

So I extended my begun KML to CSV XSL stylesheet to take over Google Earth KMLs in a more convenient way. With the help of this XSL stylesheet you can transform a KML to a GML file.

Christian is really working hard on finding ways to get KML into ArcGIS and he may have hit on the best way right now. Because KML and GML are both XML, “converting” from one to another is pretty strait forward. Christian also notes that once in GML, it is really easy to either use GML inside your GIS applications or with ArcGIS you’ll either need the Data Interoperability Extension or convert using GDAL. There has been a huge focus on getting ArcGIS maps into Google Earth, but I’m beginning to see the value of getting a KML file converted to shapefile or at least GML.

I’ll make my weekly plea for the Data Interoperability Extension (or at least a subset) to be included with ArcGIS 9.2 so every user from ArcView to ArcInfo can interact with GML.

Update – Matt Perry has posted a bash script to automate this process of KML into Shapefile.

Update 2 – URL updated

Looks like you can actually rotate the “Bird’s Eye View” in Live Local, but you don’t always have all the options. If we look at the ESRI campus example, you can see we only can rotate the view 180 degrees. If you want to look at a more popular landmark you can see how you may rotate the view 90 degrees. Of course as I’ve said before, I don’t have any Bird’s Eye Views in my neck of the woods so your mileage may vary and of course this doesn’t help with moving from one image to the next.

I took the day off to go Christmas shopping with the wife. I’m of the mindset to just buy everything online, but the wife loves to touch and feel everything. Toys”R”Us, Target, two malls, Costco and Ikea was way too much for me. The only reason my wife was tired was probably because of my bad attitude near the end.

I still have to buy a present for my parents, but you can be sure that will be done on-line. Of course now I’m singing “Frosty the Snowman” over and over again in my mind, so I’m sure to go crazy. Gotta find a cold beer, put my feet up and watch the Phoenix Suns/New York Knicks game tonight. 🙂

I’ve been playing around with the “Bird’s Eye View” in Live Local and all I can say is that it is very disappointing. If it was seamless, maybe I could get more into it, but the views are from all different angles and you have to manually switch back and forth between them all. I know people say it is good to help reference themselves when they get to an intersection or such, but personally I would have rather seen Microsoft put more money into better satellite imagery, than this 45 degree angle view as it has been implemented. Well if you’ve ever wanted to see what the ESRI campus looks like, click on the link here or the screen shot and view it larger.

Link – Export to KML 2.0

Export to KML is an extension developed for ArcGIS 9.x by the City of Portland, Bureau of Planning. The extension allows ArcGIS users to export GIS data in ‘keyhole markup language’ (KML) format for viewing in the free Google Earth data viewer. Any point, polyline, or polygon dataset, in any defined projection, can be exported. The dataset’s layer symbology (or a specified attribute) can be used to create categorical symbols in Google Earth. Features can be exported as either 2-dimensional features, or “extruded” upwards by an attribute (or, in the case of true 3D features, by z-value).

Great to see one of the better ArcGIS to KML extensions get an update. New in version 2.0 is the ability to incorporate ArcMap layer symbology into the output KML, ability to label line and polygon features and a new “description expression” option that lets you create complex KML descriptions for individual features, using feature attribute values, HTML tags, and hyperlinks.

Update – there was a small bug fix so if you already downloaded this, you might want to do so again.

Well we all know that ArcWeb 2006 really won’t be “out” until January, but they have been rolling out portions of the product slowly. REST documentation was noted by myself and Brian Flood as being pretty weak, but ESRI seems to be filling in the gaps nicely. Two new sections have appeared in the REST help, REST mapping projections and REST mapping sample requests. You can start playing with ArcWeb by signing up for a Public Services. When ArcWeb Explorer is released, we’ll start seeing some of the power behind ArcWeb 2006 including the seamless panning that has me so excited.

Live Local’s release makes me think of only one thing, this conversation between Homer, Bart and Lisa on The Simpsons

Homer: Kids… how would you… like to go to… Blocko Land!?

Lisa/Bart: Meh

Homer: But… the TV gave me the impression tha..

Bart: We said “meh”

Lisa: M-e-h. Meh.

Meh sums it up pretty well. Lets look at reality for a second. Most web mapping geeks pretty much ignore Mapquest these days, but it still commands over 70% of the marketplace. Nothing in Live Local is compelling enough to get anyone to bother changing their routine, not to mention changing URLs is a horrible way to get people to remember your service. From a developers standpoint, Yahoo! Maps has been the only service I’ve seen since Google Maps released their API to grab my attention. You do have to hand it to Microsoft’s technical evangelists for getting the buzz spun up.

M-e-h. Meh.

Link – ArcWeb Services 2006 in Pre-Release

As some of you have discovered ArcWeb Services 2006 has been out there for a couple of weeks now. It hasn’t been publicized or formally announced yet because it is still in pre-release. This means that the product is available for use but bugs are being fixed, docs finished, etc. The APIs are frozen and all functionality and data is available for use however. So give it a try. The bug fixing and docs are going very well and the release is imminent. One big focus of this release was really about the platform. A lot of work was done behind the scenes to make the whole platform more flexible, easier to manage, and perform better. A lot of this you won’t really notice but it’ll make future upgrades quicker and make release cycles shorter.

Andrea has quite the detailed post on some changes and new features to AWS 2006.

Maybe ESRI should have a ArcWeb 2006 contest that would run until the Developer Summit in March. Make it open to anyone who wants to create an application with AWS and first prize could be a copy of ArcView 9.1 and a bunch of ArcWeb credits. That would get people interested. 🙂

I’ve gotten a couple emails and comments from people who seem to be confused about two of ESRI’s mapping products. ArcWeb Explorer and Arc_GIS_ Explorer are two very different products. ArcGIS Explorer is a 2D/3D windows client, while ArcWeb Explorer is a Flash-based web client. Both are quite impressive though and both are due to be released in January 2006. I’ve always thought there are way too many products with the word “Arc” appended to the front of them, but we might be at the point where there are too many with the word “Explorer” in them too.

Link – Making Y! Maps with Flash (Series)

“So yahoo’s map api is available to help us make maps with flash. Strangely I see an awful lot of questions about the Flash-JS api. I don’t personally do a lot of flash javascript communication, so I’m not sure i really understand why there seems to be so much interest in this. Javascript is great, but if i’m using the flash plugin i feel like i might as well get my monies worth and do the work in Actionscript (saving JS for when flash just can/t handle something, or to communicate with things in strange ways that flash can’t).”

Most who have seen the Flash viewer for Yahoo! Maps are impressed (even I’m a convert now) so how easy is it to use the API? Well compared to Google’s API it seems that Yahoo!’s documentation is lacking. A good API documentation will do wonders for those wanting to get involved with Yahoo! maps and help with its adoption. As for Actionscript vs. JavaScript, I’ll just say I’ve been sticking with JavaScript on their API as I’m more comfortable with it. I guess Yahoo! should be commended for allowing both to be used with their flash maps.

ESRI should take this to heart and make sure their documentation is ready to go when ArcWeb Explorer is released.