Category: Thoughts

Another week has passed and we are all still alive and kicking. Humanity never fails to surprise me. Anyway, Geo (That is “Geo” with a big “G” vs “geo” with a little “g”) continues to roll on and keep us excited.

• Skyhook Wireless and Sony are hooking up to give the next generation PSP some location capabilities. Good news for Skyhook, but aren’t devices like the PSP and Nintendo DS on their way out? I guess we’ll see this summer when everyone is playing the latest EA games on their iOS devices.
• Work with R? Check out RStudio! IDEs are usually hit and miss with me but this has enough awesome to warrant a download. (HT: PHXGeo)
• Protected Maps in Google Fusion Tables? Yes please! 2011 may be the year of Google Fusion Tables (oh and the iPad 2, right?).
• Google Maps labels look better, but why? Justin again analyses how Google does this and compares it to Bing and Yahoo!. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you’ve got to be following Justin’s blog!
• IBM puts out a weird blog series on the “The Case Against Google Maps in IBM Cognos Reports” (parts two and three). To me I’m left wondering where the content is on that case to use Esri map services. They sum it up this way, “In solid Boolean logic: NOT Cognos BI AND Google Maps.” Say whaaat?
• Lastly, Matt Kenny brings us the awesome that is TileStache. Seriously now, why are we still using WxS and Esri ArcGIS Services? (Sure, you can give me thousands of edge cases where such overhead is needed, but rarely does one need such things. We need to break out of our bad practices and embrace the future). Read Matt’s blog and get cracking. Bonus points for rolling TileMill and TileStache together!

Just in time for the Esri Developer Summit, Esri has pushed out the ArcGIS API for JavaScript (Horrible name, but great API). Esri says it includes “many oft-requested features that will improve the usability of the Web apps you build”. If that doesn’t get you excited there is always the “What’s new in Version 2.2” in the docs with lots of samples.

On a related note, did anyone else notice that Flash Gordon (with help from Prince Vultan and the Hawkmen) attacked the War Rocket Ajax (Yes, Ajax. Weird huh?) in the movie Flash Gordon? Every time I hear someone talk about Flex/Flash I too want to scream, “repel all boarders”.

The speed at which technology flows these days still impresses me. It seems like just yesterday I was watching TV on a TV, reading books on paper and listening to music on something called a walkman. My son asked me what a modem was and how it worked with my iPhone. Clearly we are all in trouble.

• Brian Flood is correctly impressed with the World Resources Institute Reefs Map rendering 63,000 polygons with Google Fusion Tables faster than you can scream AXL.
  

  RT World Resources Institute maps coral reefs…Fusion Tables: http://bit.ly/gXX4Pu <- 63K features dynamically rendered. #wmsmightbedead

  – Brian Flood (@bFlood) February 23, 2011

• Take a look at the Atlas of New South Wales. I love how it is organized for actual people and not technologists. I suspect it will be used quite a bit by the good folks upside-down on the other side of the world. Take note, organize information by how people understand it to be, not by how you think it should be. I’m not as smart as I think I am and neither are you.
• The OpenLayers community has been sprinting in some neutral country in Europe. The main goal, only something where they get OpenLayers to support mobile devices better. Sounds like they have made some great progress.
• When you see an article with “Gov 2.0” in the title you can but not help but cringe. That said the awesome that is TileMill is only to apparent to everyone. CSS is the future, stop using SLD everyone.
• Speaking of freaking amazing, how about this? Noncontiguous cartograms in OpenLayers and Polymaps (just saying “noncontiguous cartograms” makes you sound smart). OpenLayers + Polymaps <small(oh and GeoJSON is in for the ride as well, what a great example all around) is a winning combination. God bless Ian Turton for pushing a SLD/GeoServer example (Come to think of it, maybe the fact you can do such a thing with SLD is more amazing) in the comments.
• Do you use ArcGIS Server with OpenLayers? Thank the Azavea guys for making that happen.
• Lastly, lets all start putting the fork in the IT department and just name them “the help desk”. Why we hold on to such nonsense is beyond me. We are all IT staff tonight! (Ich bin ein ITliner)

Have a great weekend folks, baseball is back in session!

Sophia Parafina threw this gem up over the weekend (3 day weekend no less).

Don’t get me wrong, W*S style services will have a long tail, because we’ve spent a decade expounding it’s virtues to the Federal government. However, it’s time we recognize the WMS is OBE.

Go read the details. Me? I’m no fan of WMS by any means, but tile map server URLs can be just as complicated and undocumented. OGC WMS URLs? A mess at any level, but documented. Pick your poison, but at least tile map services can scale.

Either way, conquering web mapping URLs can make you pass out.

So yea, Friday should be a good day to prepare yourself for the weekend. To help ensure that I’ve got a couple of interesting links to share.

• TileMill – If you haven’t heard about TileMill yet, clearly you aren’t on the Internet. One of the biggest issues with creating maps online is you usually either needed a bug bulky desktop application to style them, or you had to go all ninja in notepad. Either way, you end up hating yourself which is never good on a Friday. TileMill leverages Carto for styling which uses CSS (CSS for map creation has been a huge goal of mine for years). CSS to me is a natural way to style maps, unlike AXL, SLD, and MapFile. All this cartography greatness is rendered with the awesome Mapnik. Right now you need to stop how you are styling maps and move to TileMill, there is no other choice. Look at the awesome people are already creating.

• I’ve been called a Flex/Flash hater (Actually I’ve been called worse, but I can’t repeat it on the Internet), but clearly, Flex is here to stay for web mapping. We’ve seen some APIs from proprietary vendors, but if you want to roll in the open/free/beer crowd, you need to check out OpenScales. Matt Sheehan has a good overview for open source developers that want to use open source for a web mapping front end, but not OpenLayers.
• Lastly, geographika ponders if HTML5 will change how we map raster graphics. I embrace that new world and hope it gets here sooner than later.

Enjoy your Friday and weekend, folks!

Clearly when it comes to navigation, the Android platform is king. Me being an iOS Fan Boi, I roll with MapQuest as my navigation tool on the iPhone because it seems to do the best routing. The Google Map app seems to let me down again and again. Now MapQuest seems to have pegged its future on OSM and this new Android Navi app brings it front and center.

• OSM Maps: User-sourced maps that may provide unique local perspective and detail
• Bug Logging for OSM: Standing in front of a new building? Report it to the community and they’ll fill in the missing pieces
• International Maps: Take MapQuest abroad on business trips (or for you ex-pats) and experience maps improved by mapping enthusiasts (is that code for mapping wackos?)

As I don’t have a working Android phone anymore, I can’t test it out. What would be killer is that if the OSM maps could be cached so that you can navigate while traveling and not have to use expensive data roaming plans.

Well ask and you shall receive.

We’ve added a Linux version of the File GDB API.

It is available from the same download page as the windows version.

Now developers can develop file geodatabase code on a Linux machine.

Happy Feet!

Now I gotta get off my duff and do something with it. Good to see some Linux support here, feel like Esri is saying Use Me.

So things are moving quickly, well that is if you are on Windows. Those of us who are waiting for a Linux build (Fedora please) watch with anticipation.

Esri, do we need to haggle to get some Linux support?

The FOSS4G 2011 Local Organizing Committee has opened the call for presentations for the FOSS4G 2011 Conference on September 12-16, 2011. All you open-source geospatial users (which is pretty much everyone out there since almost every GIS program has some sort of OSGeo project in it) need to take note and submit your presentation before the April 15th deadline.

Gimme Some OSGeo Lovin’!

Don’t forget folks in the Valley of the Sun this week, there is an Esri Dev Meet Up you should be going to. I’ll be speaking there as well as some other great geospatial devs in the Phoenix area. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone there, so make sure you stop by. This will double as the monthly PHXGeo group meet-up as well so kill two birds with one stone and show up.

Who knows what fun we’ll have but I’m sure we’ll see gringos falling from the sky.