Category: Thoughts

OK, I’m the first one to dance on ArcObjects grave (In fact I suspect I’ll take my anti-love of ArcObjects to my grave), but others seem to like it.

…This all comes from the following fact: being a complete ignorant about ArcObjects and the ArcGIS API, I have been able to create the corresponding SEXTANTE bindings from scratch in less time than I needed to create any other bindings before. That means less time than the gvSIG bindings (an application that I knew pretty well), and way less than the OpenJUMP or Geotools ones (both of them softwares that I had worked with before, at least once).

This is basically due to the clean, well designed and perfectly documented API of ArcGIS, which, along with the additional Eclipse plugins, makes it very easy to develop new plugins and extensions for the software.

Now, let me just tell you first off. Sextante coming to ArcGIS – awesome! But the real meat of the matter here is if there is a well documented API, developers just love it (No matter how crazy the ArcObjects API may be). That is the real lesson for any project, proprietary or open source. Documentation matters!

In API hell, as long as there is documentation we’ll all be fine!

Apple iOS – Now with Mapping Data

Look, I totally get it. The big shiny object in the sky is Apple. Anything they do is “interesting” (Disclaimer: I give every other paycheck to Steve Jobs for his new shiny objects). I saw this news this morning about TomTom being in Apple’s Legal Doc (The amount of GNP devoted to reading Apple’s tea leaves has to be bigger than most eastern european countries) and let out a big meh. Clearly as location becomes more integrated in smartphone workflows, companies will start adding additional data sources for their customers to use. Since Apple uses Google Maps as the default mapping app on the iOS, we probably won’t see any changes to that for quite some time (if ever). TomTom/TeleAtlas data is used by many companies for many things so the possibilities that Apple would use their data isn’t that far fetched (I’m actually surprised that it wasn’t in there before, it is hard not to use TomTom or NAVTEQ these days).

Adena did a great job highlighting the companies that are now (or have been) part of Apple’s legal description. Let’s see… We’ve got parcel data, we’ve got neighborhood data, we’ve got routing data and we’ve traffic data. If I didn’t know any better, I’d be guessing Apple is trying to build a smartphone (Side note, I’m very happy for Waze and Urban Mapping here. Great job guys!).

The OpenStreetMap whining is already started with folks wondering why Apple didn’t use their data. Clearly Apple is picking and choosing what they need here. Apple is one of those companies that uses whatever makes best sense for them and their uses. That is why they still use Google Maps, it really is still the best solution out there and they can afford to pay Google the licensing costs. I still believe, as many of you do, it is only a matter of time for Apple to roll their own mapping solution. This is a company that loves to control everything and to think they allow a competitor to have a mapping app on iOS by default has got to hurt them. Of course how many years did Apple include Internet Explorer as the default browser on Mac OS X before rolling Safari. Yea, only a matter of time.

Many don’t remember, but Mark Twain was a big user of iOS mapping applications and thus a user of mapping data.

I might have mentioned this a couple times on twitter yesterday, but I really like the new Esri Ocean Basemap. My only wish would be that it drops down one more zoom level. So close to being perfect. Here it is in all it’s glory…

View Map

So in my small brain, I see Esri Java Server solutions as the only way to effectively and economically deploy and scale ArcGIS for Server in any hosted environment (I refuse to use the “c” word that rhymes with loud). The idea that I’d scale any ArcGIS for Server on Windows in AWS is simply crazy talk. Because of this line of thinking, I’ve been watching for the “new” Esri Java Server products that hopefully are right around the corner. Well, Esri has posted a “Java State of the Union” for everyone to read:

Esri’s ArcGIS and Java strategy is pervasive, in and through all of the key computing environments that Java is found in, from Mobility to the desktop and to the Enterprise. This makes Esri’s GIS and Java a perfect match for any Java-based implementation that requires the delivery of geospatial or location services and capabilities.

So it looks like Esri is continuing to invest in ArcGIS for Server Java and hopefully we’ll see it available on platforms other than RHE and SUSE (cough Fedora cough). Java still feels like an afterthought for much of Esri’s push, but at least we’ve got a dedicated team trying to get Server where it belongs.

OK, everyone together…. “Java…… in the Server…… Make me happy……. Make me feel fine. Java….. Make me warm all over…”

Late yesterday morning I saw something on Facebook that caught my eye. Frank Warmerdam posted that he was moving to California and join Google (We learn this stuff on Facebook these days apparently). He later blogged about it and it’s now all over the internets.

Today I accepted a job with Google as a GIS Data Engineer. I will be based in Mountain View California at head office, and involved in various sorts of geodata processing though I don’t really know the details of my responsibilities yet.

Mr. Warmerdam Goes to Google

Frank says he was looking for a change (I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to in the past month that are saying the same thing, clearly our niche is stale) and the awesome of Google was too much for him to turn down. You really need to read Frank’s post. Google had no idea what they were interviewing even though they are a huge user of GDAL. It looks like eventually smart people at Google came forward to attest to Frank’s history and he was hired as a non-entry level tech. Here is one of our best and brightest and Google just looked at him as a number (Wake up call people!).

Google does make use of GDAL/OGR for some internal data processing and in products like Google Earth Professional. My original hope had been that my job would at least partly be in support of GDAL and possibly other open source technologies within Google. While things are still a bit vague that does not seem to be immediately the case though I’m optimistic such opportunities might arise in the future. But I think this usage does mean that work on GDAL is a reasonable thing to spend 20% time on.

I always assumed Esri would eventually hire Frank to work on their raster conversion stuff as they already pay him, but it appears that Frank is moving on to better things. Clearly he’s not giving up on GDAL/OGR, but his focus could be elsewhere. Say’s Frank:

Writing file translators for 20 years can in some ways become a rut!

Best of luck Frank, we all appreciate your hard work every time we open any geospatial application since your hard work is in the core of everything we do. And Google? They’ve got top men working on just about anything. Wow!

This showed up in my inbox this morning, enjoy!

So this awesome happened over the weekend:

We are pleased to announce the latest release in our 1.X series of releases. To download your copy, please visit the QGIS download page. This release is named after the town of Wroclaw in Poland. The Department of Climatology and Atmosphere Protection, University of Wroclaw kindly hosted our last developer meeting in November 2010.

The release has some great new symbology and data management improvements continuing the push of QGIS as a full fledged GIS client. I use QGIS much more than any GIS client these days (Most of that has to do with me being on Mac OS X but it is a reality.) and coupled with FME, there isn’t anything I can’t do.

Last week something very unsurprising happened:

As part of Yahoo!’s commitment to creating deeply personal digital experiences, we have been reprioritizing our current portfolio of mapping products to refocus on a great consumer Mapping and Local Search experience.

So there you go, finally Yahoo! Maps API is going away. Seems like just a couple years ago, Yahoo! was one the most prolific GeoAPI companies. Now they are telling you to go look at OviMaps which might be just as unused as Yahoo!’s own APIs.

Jerry Yang seems still excited about Yahoo!’s chances though.

Thanks for visiting Yahoo! Now go find your APIs somewhere else

Update:

Confirmation by the OGC on the status of the Esri REST API and the OGC process.

Now I’m sorry if I butchered that name, I don’t recall being briefed on what the API Is called these days. (Seems like REST API for ArcGIS Server would be right) It appears that over last weekend Esri announced that they were “giving” their REST API to OGC as a standard. Big news if you ask me given that the OGC has just never been able to get an OGC REST Standard adopted. Plus it might make more sense given that the Esri REST API is pretty damn awesome and you got to think that the OGC would rather have awesome over a committee standard that no one uses.

One curious outcome of this is that we could now have a JSON standard in OGC, in this case, Esri JSON. GeoJSON, despite the fact that almost everyone uses it, is a community standard (And there isn’t anything wrong with that), not an OGC one (like GeoRSS). If the OGC adopts the Esri JSON standard in the REST API, we could finally have a JSON standard for the INSPIRE project (Does anyone else use OGC on purpose, or is it only by law?) Brian Flood thinks it makes sense and I tend to agree with him.

https://twitter.com/bFlood/status/81375894324789248

Bill Dollins isn’t so sure

If this is all going to happen, we’ll see a couple of things come out of this. First, we’ll probably see Geoserver and Mapserver start supporting this standard (Though we’ve seen Esri’s REST API documented for months, no one that I know of has implemented it) which means that Esri Desktop users can add these servers without having to use WMS or WFS. It also may mean that clients such as QGIS, gvSIG, and OpenLayers will have native Esri REST API (And thus Esri ArcGIS for Server) reading.

If OGC was an open organization, we’d probably know more. Heck, something to talk about at the UC next month, right?

Wonder how Esri was able to do this?

So let me get this right out of the way. I for one welcome our new geospatial overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted GIS personality, I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground geoprocessing caves (see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs74VYDNDXE).

I had seen the announcement of Google Earth Builder (GEB) at Where 2.0 and like many of us, I laughed it off as a distraction. Well not anymore as I was lucky enough to take part in a Directions Magazine Webinar today that gave Google an opportunity to show off GEB and I’ve come away impressed. This is a company that has a vision about sharing and visualizing geospatial data and is developing tools to make publishing and visualizing it, much easier. Imagine a combination of Esri, Geocommons, SimpleGeo, Cloudmade, Microsoft and a little Amazon (It doesn’t do everything they do, but crosses all boundaries. Who else by Google could do that?) thrown in for good measure.

You can view the GEB webinar on Directions Magazine by registering. If you get a chance to see it you really should. Basically Google gives you the ability to upload shp, csv, kml, GeoTIFF, JP2 or MrSid with almost no limit in file size. Plus 3D models (COLLADA and probably SketchUp) are also supported. You manage it with a Voyager GIS/MapInfo Manager looking tool and then visualize it using Google’s map styling tools. On the fly rendering of vector data, your vector data (Freaky, right?). On top of it all they give you advanced analytic tools to see who is using your maps. Data sharing? As simple as the data sharing you’ve already seen with Google Docs. Plus tie in OAuth2 for granting access to resources. Bam!

Google is delivering access to this data via the web browser, Google Earth, Mobile (iOS and Android), the Google Maps and Earth APIs, OGC standards and as raw vector features. That means no matter where you are, the data will be available on your platform (Missed references to Microsoft Windows Phone, but that’s got to be around the corner, cough). GEB is built partially on Google Fusion Tables, so if you’ve already gotten familiar with that product, you should be able to get working with GEB. The limits of features goes up million fold vs Fusion Tables and you get that great rich cartography visualization tools I talked about above.

Pricing is still vague, but Google is looking at this as a Page Views vs Storage model. You get changed based on how many map views and disk space you are using, but they aren’t tied together. You could have 10TB of imagery on GEB but accessed by 2 people, or you could have one dinky little KML accessed by millions of users. The licensing scales either way.

The commercial version (I’m assuming this is a reference to the federal government already using it) is due out this fall. Google will have tools available for migrating ArcGIS Server for Server implementations which they didn’t get into details so we’ll have to hear about their plans for Esri users. Quite a bit they talked about migrating Esri products and data formats to GEB so it is clear who they are going after.

So as I’m sitting there, all I could think of was how many different ways WeoGeo can work with GEB. We’re looking forward to working with the GEB APIs for delivery of WeoGeo Market and Library data and hope to talk more about it over the summer. Very exciting times!

Larry Page is gunning for you. Look at those pecs!