Yea it is about time us Phoenix Metro folk get off our butts and start up an open geo group. We’ve got our first meetup this Wednesday in downtown Phoenix at the Turf Accountant Pub at 7:00 PM. I’ll be there and so will many of the GeoNinjas in the Valley of the Sun. It’s just off the Metro Light Rail so it will be easy to get to for all.
Find out more at phxgeo.org and on the event page.
Alper Dincer is one busy guy. Seems like just a couple weeks ago he release iExtMap for iOS. Well if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know I’m always complaining about apps and app stores holding back real mobile development. I mean shouldn’t it be simple to just have one web app that covers iOS, Android and Blackberry? Ah, but no. It just isn’t that easy, until now…
Alper though has a new framework that looks very promising. Says Alper:
Writing a multi-platform viewer is also quite hard due to different code bases on different platforms. Mobile Web is developing very fast due to usage of WebKit on different platforms. Today; iOS, Android, WebOS, Bada, BlackBerry, Symbian and other platforms are using WebKit implementations on their browsers and this lead to a dream of web developer : One browser to rule them all?
Anyway, I have the idea to write a mobile version of ExtMap, but there is a need for a motivation to start the project. The motivation was Sencha Touch Developer Contest and Sencha Touch Framework and I started working ExtMap Touch on Sencha Touch Framework and Google Maps JavaScript API v3.
Yahtzee! I’ve been playing with the demo this morning at the GITA Oil and Gas conference (where WeoGeo is exhibiting) and I love what I see. I can’t wait to get back home and start playing around with this thing. Check out the live demo and the ExtMap project home for more information.
A great intro to web mapping!
I was thinking just the other day when someone asked, why were there not updated Google Maps API books out there. People like to read books, right? I mean, reading API pages is boring even for devs. I saw a review a couple of weeks ago of Adam Duvander’s book, Map Scripting 101, and jumped at the chance to read it.
Funny thing though when I first started reading it. I was totally turned off by the use of the open-source Mapstraction library. But what do you know… I’m a total convert now for beginners looking to get started in web mapping. I was thinking, it would be so better to teach people one API (probably the Google one) and then leave it at that. I mean who really uses Bing or Yahoo! anymore. Well after reading the book, I think for most “ordinary” people, focusing on the Mapstraction library is the way to go. Being able to code one JavaScript app for your web mapping applications simplifies the whole process (no matter how you wish to use it). If you need advanced features, you’ll probably want to code directly with each particular API, but I’d wager most people reading a book titled “Map Scripting 101” what the quickest method to getting a good-looking map.
Anyway, enough about Mapstraction and on to Adam’s book. Adam starts off with some simple maps built on a couple of APIs, but quickly gets into how you can use Mapstraction to simplify it. Once he gets beyond the intro to creating maps with these APIs, he gets into some samples that should get the attention of those who this book was written for. He hits on some classic mapping examples such as weather and earthquakes but then gets into some Twitter and music event stuff that was a refreshing change from typical web mapping books. And you better believe there was a coffee shop example that used some cool geocoding and routing stuff.
Adam also got into some of the formats that are important to web mappers; GeoRSS, GeoJSON, KML, and even threw in a MySQL example. Word of caution though, you’ll want to have some MySQL background before trying as there wasn’t much background there (and probably rightly so). The Map Scripting website has all the examples ready to go if you want to be a copy and paste coder.
The one thing about the whole book though is that it is clear that Adam is a great writer who is excited about technology and it shows. The book is very accessible for beginners and even intermediates who might want to get more familiar with Mapscraction. Adam should be very proud of his book as I think he’s done a superb job on it. I hope he’ll continue writing technology books because his style is needed in a normally very drab and boring space. I’d wager most readers of this blog will gain a ton of benefit from reading this book if they want to learn more and apply some of the fun things you can do with web mapping.
This web mapping is the craziest party that could ever be…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKaQzQAlNn4
I’m sure all Esri EDN users are running in to the same problems I am with the product, licensing. At WeoGeo, I’m testing our new toolbar on many platforms and OS versions so that we know it works with ArcGIS 10. The problem is that the ArcView license included in EDN only allows you to install ArcView twice. Every time I need to switch from one VM to the other, I’ve got to go through this crazy unregister/register process just to use ArcMap. And you’d better believe I’m headed to a point where I won’t be able to install ArcView anymore because I’ve hit the install ceiling (which I’ve heard is at 999 installs).
So don’t assume that an EDN is licensed per developer because it sure isn’t. Makes you question the value of the product where licensing keeps kicking you in the shins. I have no will to fire up ArcGIS 10 anymore because of the Esri licensing mess. This wasn’t a problem at 9 and I can only assume licensing was tightened at 10 so we’d all pay up. But EDN is supposed to be licensed for developers, not production and you’d think Esri would encourage me to make sure my toolbar runs on 32/64 bit XP/Vista/7. Time to cue the Price is Right losing horn…
Remember that World Streets Map Service from Esri? Of course, you don’t. You’ve been using the Google or Bing maps as your backgrounds or the beautiful Esri Topographical map. Parcels in World Streets is nice I guess, but until it is in the Topographical map service, I just can’t see using it.
You have to be in awe about the pressure companies such as Esri, Google and Microsoft can put on these “premium”, “authoritative” data sources (like First American) to release their product like this. Parcels are a big deal to many folks, but the percentage that actually care about the parcel database vs the pretty picture outlines is small. Now everyone who just wants to see Parcels on their map can do for free (well free in the sense that Esri and Google’s licensing allows it).
Why anyone would pay for parcel data anymore is beyond me.
Nothing is final, but it looks like Netezza could be part of the IBM empire:
International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) agreed to acquire data specialist Netezza Corp. (NZ) in a deal valued at $1.7 billion, as Big Blue expands its analytics business.
….
Netezza provides technology that allows companies and government agencies to quickly analyze huge amounts of data-something IBM says will give it an advantage in its analytics business.
Netezza offers “a much simpler way to get started on analytics and data warehousing than anyone else in the industry,” said Arvind Krishna, IBM general manager for information management. He told Dow Jones Newswires Netezza’s system can be operated by one person instead of “an army of people” and that it provides increased performance at a lower cost.
Of course, Netezza does spatial as well so it will be interesting to see what happens in this space with the IBM R&D behind it.
The big news tonight though is Hawaii Five-0 is back!
ArcGIS Server – now with Legends
No GIS Professional can make a map without a legend. Probably because we create such complex maps, they can’t stand on their own. Anyway ESRI added some new features that should help us GIS Professional enter the world of Web 2.0. Key new features as I see it are:
The whole list of new and changed is available here. One day I hope to see Dojo dropped, but that’s just me.
They roll this out…
This afternoon, I sat through the Collaboration Panel discussion. The panel was made of of a few people representing state, regional and local governments and well as utilities and academia. Almost uniformly, there was a fear (yes, I mean fear) of crowdsourcing that was best summed up by the following statement:
Crowdsourcing presents a vulnerability to us.
Fear of accurate maps? I wish I was there to see who could have this backward stance, but it doesn’t really matter. The tide is against them and in time they will be washed away. If there wasn’t a better reason to have SOTM 2011 in Denver, I can’t think of anything else. These folks need help and if the Front Range is the great hope for the USA, we are screwed.
Can’t find my way home because the map isn’t crowdsourced!
So we’ve got yet another blog touting the future of the SpatiaLite format as being the next Shapefile. Now, don’t you dare look over at that search feature on the right side of my blog and type in SpatiaLite because you’ll probably see the same thing (though honestly, I can’t recall if I was of sound mind when writing it)? The simple fact is SpatiaLite is a favorite format for those of us with nothing better to do than tell the rest of the world what they should be looking at.
Ah! But like most things, just because a bunch of bloggers thinks it is a good idea doesn’t mean it will actually matter. In this case, SpatiaLite is dying a slow death because no one is actually implementing it. Now yes OGR, FDO, and other libraries support it, but you don’t see that making its way into mainline software (QGIS aside, but even its support is poor) and in turn, you rarely see it in the real world. Offhand I can only think of the “beta” format that GeoCommons has on their service (and they’ve had beta attached to it for almost a year).
Now yes, I think we all need a better format than the venerable shapefile (and it’s three amigos) which as a transmission format fails miserably. But there doesn’t seem to be any indication that this is a problem people actually want to be solved. I’ve seen much more effort put into KML, GeoJSON, and LAS by the community than SpatiaLite or even SQLite. This isn’t because the SpatiaLite project hasn’t given tools to us to implement, it has been the community could care less about it. SHP works for them and there isn’t any reason to change.
So what is going to change things? Well, it will be web services, not GIS formats that matter for users moving forward. So I say let’s stop focusing on SpatiaLite as a consumer format and actually work harder at making better web services for these users (like stop it already with the WxS please). SpatiaLite still has its place in the world, but does anyone really want to bother downloading GIS files anymore? Of course not…
Shapefile can’t #FAIL!
Oh and the FGDB API – just assume it is dead as well. ESRI can’t get it out the door and in reality, no one gives a hoot other than federal agencies that have to provide open data, but are locked into the ESRI stack.
So a week doesn’t go by where I don’t see some news about Ovi Maps.
The new, improved Ovi Maps will offer, live?traffic?flow information, a new drive assist mode, public transportation maps, a redesigned places page, and social check-ins. The public?transportation?maps will be available via a map layer for over 80 cities around the world and check-ins will allow you to broadcast your location via SMS or to your social network of choice.
OK, so does anyone actually use Ovi Maps on purpose? I mean MapQuest learned how to fit in with the new world order, but Nokia seems to still think we are all ready to jump on their platform. Part of why Where 2.0 doesn’t interest me anymore is they keep getting up there pushing this platform like it is viable or something. But hey I doesn’t matter right? Name one product of value that ever launched at Where 2.0? [editor’s note: I must remind Mr. Fee that his passion launched at Where 2.0]
I wonder where Ovi Maps is? At least Nokia is consuming their own dogfood.