Category: Thoughts

I’m sure many of you have been following #geodesign on Twitter, but I thought I’d add some of my deeper thoughts. First off, yes everyone in attendance realizes that we’ve all been doing this since the beginning of time. GeoDesign wasn’t invented by anyone in particular, that was clear to everyone.

So I guess the next question what is GeoDesign and why do we need to even define it, especially if we’ve been doing this for years anyway Since we’ve all be already been doing this for years shouldn’t this be easy to define since we already have an understanding of it A Wikipedia entry has been started and I’d encourage everyone to take a look at it and refine it based upon your experiences.

I think a couple things helped bring so many people together from so many different disciplines. With Architects, Planners, Engineers, Technologists, Researchers, Professors, Graduate Students and “other”; there was academia, government and private industry. The one person in our industry that has the pull to get this done is of course Jack Dangermond. He was also gracious enough to allow the organizers to use the new ESRI Q Building which was perfectly set up for a conference of this size.

Adena Schutzberg and Matt Ball both did a great job diving deep into the conference and it would be a good idea to read up on what was discussed and what needs to be done to move forward. What I’m going to talk about is what I think came out of the Summit and what should be the next steps.

First off, there was a little push-back that was acknowledged at the Summit which seemed to revolve around the fact that some small group of people seemed to think they could take ownership of something everyone has been doing for years, GeoDesign. I was also a little on edge about what might have come out from this Summit, but in the end it was unfounded. The group of folks from Michael Goodchild to Carl Steinitz all where very pragmatic about GeoDesign, how we involve more in the process of design (how crowdsourcing can be involved), to even deeper issues such as how we must fundamentally change how we as humans impact our environment.

Many showed examples of GeoDesign projects that they are currently work on to ones that were completed decades ago. Also despite the Summit occurring on ESRI’s campus, there were many examples showed that included non-ESRI technology such as GRASS, Google Earth and SketchUp. Jack also stood up on stage and hoped next year the organizers could include other software platforms and technologies that weren’t on stage this year.

So this brings up what to do next. Where do we go from here. Jack asked everyone in attendance if they thought we should move forward with the GeoDesign concept and everyone agreed we should. The details on how were to do so was what we discussed Friday morning. There will be a GeoDesign Summit next year. Tom Fisher the Dean for the College of Design at University of Minnesota offered to host it there. Given the warm weather though many though Redlands would be a great location to hold it again (Mid 70s in January is hard to beat). Jack said that if the committee wanted to hold it at ESRI again he would offer up the facilities again. Jack also said he wanted to unbrand the summit from ESRI and have it stand alone. To do this the Summit will be moving off of the ESRI servers on to its own and engage other potential stakeholders.

Since there was so much content created and organized there was a discussion on how to best disseminate the data out to everyone. This was probably the most contensious discussion. On one had you have those who wanted to write books (grey hairs) and on the other there were those who wanted to set up a wiki and get more community involvement. In the end it appears we will have both, a GeoDesign book you can get signed by your favorite GeoDesigner and a wiki the community can showcase their ideas and collaborate.

One problem is how to get this information out to the community at large. Organizations such as the APA have the tools in place (and not ESRI branded) to facilitate getting the word out to their members. Since there were many researchers present, there was also questions about how we can get funding in place from NSF or possibly even the World Bank since better planning and design is critical to helping reverse the destruction of the planet.

So bottom line I admit I’m not one with too much patience for “University think” and there was plenty at the first GeoDesign Summit. But at the same time there was so much practicality shown that it isn’t hard to want to get Design and GIS more interconnected. One group that I think was underrepresented at the Summit was Technologists (I can’t say Architects or Designers because in this crowd that means something else). The gap between “GeoDesigners” and the public needs to be bridged with our work and our expertise. Making sure that this is represented in this GeoDesign initiative is important and we are those who need to make sure this is grounded in reality and not locked up in University research.

So lets see what happens. Will there be continued push back to “GeoDesign” from the geospatial community or will people want to be involved on the ground floor defining and encouraging GeoDesign I think we all realize powerful things happen when there is a marriage of design and GIS.

Here are 5 predictions for Twenty Ten.

1. The shapefile dies: SpatiaLite + ESRI’s File Geodatabase API finally put a dagger in the shapefile.
2. GIS on iPhone/iSlate (Apple Tablet) and Android/Chrome OS: With Apple and Google owning the mobile space, we’ll see more proprietary and open source projects being ported to these platforms. Microsoft Tablet PCs and Windows Mobile/CE begin to die off.
3. 64-bit: There will be some holdouts (cough ESRI), but most of us will be running native 64-bit code on our desktops and servers. Now to just get more RAM in this laptop.
4. Mobile: If you aren’t running on the iPhone/Android/Blackberry you aren’t relevant. Web mapping apps become mobile browser aware. Those that aren’t were probably irrelevant anyway.
5. Google: Google’s APIs continue to push the envelope and they continue to be the standard for everyone mapping on the interweb. Google is able to throw so much money and manpower at “problems” and their solutions are coming faster than anyone else can match.

Here are 5 things that won’t happen:

1. Augmented Reality: Much like the Nintendo Virtual Boy, it sounds great until you try and use it.
2. OpenStreetMap Dominates: Between Google’s quick improving of their database and continued licensing issues OSM plateaus. Companies will continue to try and figure out how to monetize OSM, but fail.
3. ESRI + Microsoft: This was on the top 10 lists for many people in 2009, but I don’t think we’ll be seeing deeper integration. ESRI will continue to support multiple platforms (Google, OSM, Microsoft, “other”) and not become a Microsoft shop. As Google continues to erode away at SharePoint and Bing Maps, ESRI will make sure that they don’t get caught in Microsoft’s blind spot.
4. Geolocation other than Twitter, Apple and Google (TAG): Foursquare, Brightkite, and others will fade as TAG rolls out new APIs and ensure their mobile devices are tagging everything you do.
5. MySQL falls apart: Despite the dire predictions of Oracle or Monty destroying the project, too many people have too much invested in the project to let it fail. MySQL will be fine and LAMP will continue to power Badgers.

Hey, don’t worry… It’s gonna be a bright, sun-shiny day!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkwJ-g0iJ6w&w=560&h=315]

So we are sitting around watching Santa work his way toward Tempe, AZ and it is time to send the boy to bed. I hope everyone who has read my blog this year has a very Merry Christmas.

Given what we’ve witnessed since October, 2009 is sure going out with a bang. Google dumps Tele Atlas for their own mapping dataset and then gives away navigation, Microsoft adds street level imagery, Google adds oblique imagery and then gives away a spatial query server and Mapquest adds street level imagery as well. But today Twitter did something that just seems to fit perfectly with just about any mobile application. They went ahead and picked up GeoAPI.

Twitter clearly sees location as important as anything they do (I guess microblogging is something they do as well). Tagging tweets with location is something fairly new to the Twitter API, but with smartphones probably being the primary method of tweeting, location becomes natural with tweeting. We’ve been speculating that we could analyze tweets during “events” and see locations of tweets with information about what is being observed (flooding/fire/babes). Having a richer geo-api will only facilitate this further and could be the real killer crowdsourcing app.

The only pushback I’ve seen on twitter is the location API can be very accurate. I’d love to see them enable something like Fire Eagle where you can have it return a city level geocode rather than a hyperaccurate one. I mean I’m glad everyone knows how often I visit the Apple store, but I’d like @pbissett to wonder just a little.

So I’m sitting here just fantasizing what can be done with the data provided by Twitter and GeoAPI.

So who says GIS or ESRI can’t be part of a meme?

Adolph Hitler Furious at Esri Software

Update: Looks like the creator of the video has posted it on their website.

You might recall the issue where I wanted some GIS data from the City of Tempe Well they finally told me to make a public information request and they’d evaluate my request. Well I got back a response this week:

Dear Mr. Fee:

I have reviewed your public records request for the “complete city of Tempe landbase and utilities in digital DGN format,” and discussed it with our City Attorney, Andrew Ching. He has advised me that, under the state public records law and cases construing the law, cities are permitted to weigh the competing interests of the public’s right to receive records versus the countervailing concerns of privacy, confidentiality, and the best interests of the city. Under federal law, city utilities such as water and sewer lines are considered critical infrastructure, which means that cities may restrict access to such data for homeland security reasons. As such, we generally limit access to utility mapping except for very limited parcels or sections, and not for the entire city. Therefore, your request is denied in part; we will release the complete landbase, but not the utilities.

As an alternative, we would be willing to discuss with you further your proposed educational use of the information. It is my understanding you intend to use this for a class presentation to school children on the power of GIS. If that is still the case, we would be willing to discuss options for how you can present to the class while at the same time we can ensure that sensitive data is not disseminated. Please let me know if you would like to meet and discuss these options.

Wendy Springborn, MBA Engineering Services Administrator City of Tempe

So as you can imagine I took them up on their offer of the Landbase data and I now have the city landbase in Microstation DGN v7. I’d of course love to have unrestricted use of this data, but at this moment I’m in the process of preparing it to be loaded into PostGIS via FME 2010 so that I can start using it. There was no metadata with the CD they gave me, but it was easy enough to figure out the layering system. The quicker I get it unlocked from DGN and into open PostGIS, the easier it will be to work with. Now I just have to make sure I remembered to get my wife a Christmas present.

It seems everyone I know is either heading out for the holiday week or getting ready to welcome people into their house. Me? I’ll be here all week blogging, but if you’ll be off the grid I’d like to make sure you have a wonderful holiday and see you in the new year. And those back east I hope shoveling that snow keeps the pounds off. Take it away Lyndsay…

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nLiQBV6A7c&w=560&h=315]

It seems like not a week goes by (heck sometimes an hour) without Google just dropping a bombshell. Well this time it is a combination of things.

First we’ve got new functionality in the Google Maps Data API. First off you can now perform geospatial and attribution queries on data stored on Google’s MyMap. Now of course this isn’t paleo-type spatial queries, just simple stuff that solve 80% of all queries you’d need to complete. Simple web apps need not fancy complicated APIs and clearly Google is the master of this. So upload your data into Google’s My Maps and then query it to display on a Google Maps application. Simple and sweet.

Second is an update to the Google Fusion Tables API. As the GeoChalkboard blog rightly points out:

Now, obviously Google Docs has been around awhile so uploading your spreadsheet data to this type of application is nothing new, but the compelling thing about Fusion Tables is its integration with the Google Maps API and Google Visualization API. Visualizations are also real time as Fusion Tables automatically updates data as it is updated or corrected. With the Fusion Tables API you can also update or query the database programmatically. Data can also be imported from various data sources including text files and relational database management systems.

The pieces are really coming together here. Not only can you load and work with data, but you can freely visualize it. And not only do it freely, but do it freely in a scalable environment. Let that all sink in for a moment. Google is enabling tools that we pay big money for with APIs that are so simple anyone can use them. Check and mate for some geospatial companies I think. Database + Visualization = GIS eh?

Information running through my brain…

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUwd737mioM&w=560&h=315]

I’m sure everyone reading this blog knows my opinions about Flash and Silverlight. I’m of the mindset that I’d prefer HTML Javascript over either, but clearly like my opinion that 3D Globes would too hard for “ordinary people” to use; I’m in the minority. Given the huge adoption for both for mapping, an open source?mapping framework usingActionScript 3 and Flex has appeared.

OpenScales, which has a LGPL license will allow those who want to build “rich” (rich is the keyword for any Flash or Silverlight app, if it ain’t rich, it ain’t a plugin) web mapping applications without need to license proprietary development frameworks. You can see from the demos that this ends up being very similar to other Flex based APIs.

On top of that, it supports WMS/WFS, OpenStreetMap, IGN, KML and direct image reading. You can also deploy on mobile using ActionScript 3 (Palm Pre support), web using wlex or on the desktop using Adobe Air.

OpenScales 1.1 was just released last week so the community seems strong and working toward increasing its functionality quickly. If you are working on Adobe web technology and want an open source mapping framework, you might want to check out OpenScales.

So yea, not a surprise.

As the name implies, 360 view provides fantastic panoramic views (360 horizontally and 160 vertically) of any given image within the 360 View coverage area (initially 30 cities and 15 suburbs across the United States with more to come). We have studied our industry, gleaning tidbits here and there, and polled our customer base in creating a simple, easy-to-use interface that fits seamlessly into the MapQuest mapping experience you have come to know and understand. Best of all, MapQuest 360 View “just works” without requiring any 3rd party player downloads.

Take that Bing Maps and your 3rd party player download. MapQuest works without any Silverlight player to get in your way… except of course it uses a 3rd party player called Flash. I suppose this plays into Adobe’s assertion that their 3rd party player download is included by default in many browsers by default. Still it looks good and appears to have been taken sometime last year (the light rail line isn’t running yet in Phoenix and most stations haven’t been built yet.

A view of University of Phoenix Stadium where you’ll be seeing the true national championship; TCU vs BSU.

Now before you start going off an claiming this doesn’t matter, remember the real traffic numbers for the four main mapping sites:

Yep, Bing and Yahoo don’t add up to MapQuest’s reach. I think it is critical to get this functionality into their API before more companies abandon it for Google While traffic numbers trend down over the last 6 months, I’m not sure it is losing to Bing or Yahoo.