I’ll be heading up to Berkeley this week to take part in GIS 2009 – Discovering the World Through GIS. I’m keynoting the event and I’m looking forward to seeing all the great presentations and meeting some folks I’ve not had an opportunity to yet. If you are in the Bay Area Wednesday night (November 18th), be sure to drop by.
Why oh why are we seeing this Map/Menu bar on all these new “Web 2.0” mapping applications? Take this beta example from the USGS National Map Viewer:
So you’ve been sitting back, watching all this great new Web 2.0 stuff and this is what you bring to the table? I know, lets see how much junk we can throw into a JavaScript API. The whiteboard on this one must have been intense… Just take every idea that someone comes up with and toss it into a ribbon interface. Sweet! But this isn’t a complex, specialized, niche application we are talking about. This is our (well if you like me are a tax paying citizen) national map. Yes the American Map! It should be something we are proud of, something we would run of a flag pole and salute!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDA9NbPAK8o&w=560&h=315]
They do expose some other ways to access the data, but don’t be fooled by the names. The Google Maps, Bing Maps and the rest are all just links to the ArcGIS REST API. That is how The National Map should be exposed. “Here are the services, use them and create your own maps”. Might be a better way to handle it because the future looks bloated.
Of course we can’t completely blame the USGS for this, ESRI’s JavaScript and Flex API sample viewers have a similar abomination. Clearly GIS Analysts shouldn’t be designing user interfaces. Are we really going to use this thing for every web map API?
I mean we all love to throw complex concepts under a widget icon of a box with gears on it. Me? I can never remember if I’m supposed to use the compass or the globe to zoom in or out.
The one saving grace is that one day Google will just enable all this in their web map viewer making everything else irrelevant.
So the news at the DevSummit was that you could install both ArcGIS 9.4 alongside ArcGIS 9.3.1. I’m not part of the beta for 9.4, but reports are that ESRI has not enabled this yet for the latest 9.4 beta release. If you want to install 9.4 on a computer running ArcGIS 9.3.1, you are being prompted to uninstall 9.3.1 before continuing. Has anyone yet been able to run 9.4 and 9.3.1 at the same time?
Now this could be a limitation of the current beta and not actually any retreat by ESRI on being able to run two versions of ArcGIS on the same machine. Either way it make it really hard to beta test the 9.4 release as you can’t compare it to older versions.
Note: If you post any specific 9.4 Beta information (such as quoting forums posts on the Beta forums), expect ESRI to personally contact you. They appear to be monitoring this blog post. You’ve been warned.
Microsoft finally has added draggable routes to their Bing Maps service. ‘Bout time guys since Google has had it for over 2 years. That said I’ve been using Bing Maps more lately because I don’t trust the Google Maps layers (great API, horrible data).
Is anyone going to host a Bing Maps Party?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cX4t5-YpHQ&w=560&h=315]
Phillip Holmstrand continues to improve his batchgeocoding.com website. He’s added bulk reverse geocoding using Google’s geocoder. Google’s advantage over Yahoo is it also includes an “accuracy” field so you can get feedback on your geocodes. Plus Google has rooftop geocoding in many cities making it much more accurate than Yahoo or TIGER/Line based geocoders.
Its Alright?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJiYZ6QIAtY&w=560&h=315]
I’ll be doing the same thing tonight as most of you. Using my iPhone while my son goes trick-or-treating.
If you are lucky enough to live in a “hip city” (or at least one that Zillow thinks is interesting), you can use their Trick-or-Treat Housing Index to find the best places to beg to sweets.
Programmable web has a timely post on what MapQuest has been doing.
MapQuest continues to add services to its developer network. Have they caught up with the geo-tools available from Google and Yahoo?
Most recently the mapping pioneer released a geocoding web service and static maps. In fact, many recent posts on its developer blog have included multiple announcements, testament to how much the company has been releasing.
Some cool new stuff for sure. My only issue is that I can’t find Legend City using its geocoder.
No Legend City in these parts….
I guess I’m spatially aware so I never bother with navigation, but given how many TomTom devices I see on dashboards these days others are. Well Google has a little announcement this morning which is?not a huge surprise.
Today we’re excited to announce the next step for Google Maps for mobile:?Google Maps Navigation (Beta) for Android 2.0 devices.
This new feature comes with everything you’d expect to find in a GPS navigation system, like 3D views, turn-by-turn voice guidance and automatic rerouting. But unlike most navigation systems, Google Maps Navigation was built from the ground up to take advantage of your phone’s Internet connection.
And those words that every other company fears…
Like other Google Maps features, Navigation is free.
The Walmartization of technology continues. Why pay for anything if Google will eventually give it away free? Heck why invest any time working on anything since Google will just kill it later anyway. Verizon, welcome to the Google ecosystem. Don’t bother porting Verizon Navigator over to Android (though you probably already did and are wishing you didn’t about now)
Now there are two great limitations on this product. First it is only on Android which like the Microsoft Zune is irrelevant. Second it is only available in the USA which means that my friends around the world won’t be able to navigate to amusement parks that closed 25 years ago in their neighborhood.
So here comes Google ready to obliterate everything in its wake…
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo48YpNOesQ&w=560&h=315]
I’m giving a talk later today at the Salt River Project on the future of geospatial technology and though why not show what Google has been up to with their mapping product. So I did what anyone would do, zoom into Google Maps and see how it looks. When I did so I saw something that made me do a double take:
As you can see, there is a lake with roads across the top. I know that there isn’t a lake there, but a parking lot and a building. Of course the Google Maps aerial confirms this.
So what the heck happened? How could Google put a lake in the middle of a desert? Enter Legend City. Before my time in AZ, there was a small amusement park in Tempe. It of course failed and SRP bought the land and put one of their buildings on it. The park closed in 1983 and I’m sure the lake dried up or was drained in weeks.
Map of Legend City – See the lake on the left side of the map?
So I know you are thinking the same thing I was. Let us take a look at the USGS Quad map for the area.
So there it is, Google Maps are no worse than 30 year old USGS Quad maps. What makes it even more fun is you can search Google for Legend City and get everything but a phone number.
Google best clean this stuff up. I’ve gone ahead and “reported” the problem so hopefully it will be removed here soon, but how can one build routing and other online apps on an API that has data which is so inconsistent? I guess it is up to the community to fix Google’s maps for them.
From the Microsoft Labs…
So this looks interesting (the video dates from July so I’m wondering how I missed this before), but the practicality of it seems far-fetched. I guess I could look at them on my laptop/iPhone before driving the route, but looking down at a video while I’m driving seems dangerous. Plus how often would they update these? Would they have nighttime versions to help navigate when the sun is down (to me a city I’m not familiar with looks totally different at night)?
Oh and is this a preview of Microsoft’s Street View?