Spatially Adjusted

Category: Thoughts

  • Off to the FME User Conference

    Well I’m off to Whistler, BC and the 2009 FME User Conference. It should be a blast and if you are going as well lets meet up for some drinks.

    They still play hockey up there don’t they?

  • From the Mailbag

    A reader wanted to know the following question, I figured rather than answer it myself, you guys could help a fellow out.

    “Please list all the pros and cons of ArcView 3.1”

    I’m sure whatever insight you could give the person asking the question would be greatly appreciated.

    Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

    Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

  • Amazon Hosting TIGER is nice, OpenStreetMap would be interesting

    I’m sure most of you have seen the news of Amazon hosting TIGER shapefiles in S3 and now in EBS. Sure I like TIGER being available for EC2 instances, but the real amazing stuff happens when you can work with OpenStreetMap XML data. That mounted up to either FME Server or some great open source tools running on EC2 really would whole open worlds up. TIGER is the low hanging fruit here, but OSM would be the icing. My mouth waters thinking about what people could do with EC2 instances chomping on OSM data. One could do the lifting yourself, but Amazon’s rates are lower than what it would cost to host it yourself and since you are already on AWS, the benefit would be huge.

    Update: A couple people have asked, yes you need to have an EC2 instance to leverage the EBS TIGER data.

  • A Quick Look at 2009 ESRI International User Conference Exhibitors

    While waiting for ArcGIS Server to cut my tile cache, I thought I’d look at who is exhibiting at the 2009 ESRI User Conference. A couple caught my eye.

    • BlackBerry – If only they were going to demo a real ESRI API on their phone.
    • DeLorme – I’m really interested in seeing their ArcGIS Online map service. Great worldwide cartography is worth paying for.
    • Microsoft – .NET 4.0, SQL Server 2008 Spatial and Visual Studio 2010 are much more interesting than Microsoft Maps for Enterprise. (side note for ESRI/Microsoft – Silverlight is dead to me until it can print)
    • Pictometry – I’m a sucker for those oblique views
    • Safe Software – FME is the key for really sharing ESRI data with the world
    • TouchTable – Every year I look and wish I could have one.

    Who is missing? Sun and I assume it is because they are now Oracle. I didn’t see Google either as well (nor SketchUp).

  • ESRI Releases JavaScript API v1.4

    Looks like ESRI got out JSAP v1.4 just before the weekend. Some items of note:

    Enhancements to the ESRI JavaScript API (this is inside the JSAPI, not the ESRI ArcGIS Server JavaScript API Bing Maps for Enterprise Extender) include a new BingTiledLayer and support for the Bing Maps for Enterprise Geocoder. Great news for those who have built their practice on Bing, but would rather use the ESRI JSAPI (because isn’t it better to admit you work with the ESRI JSAPI than the Bing Maps for Enterprise API?). It also includes support for the ArcGIS Server Network Extension for routing, some really neat graphic rendering and much more (including the bug in IE7). So if you’ve got nothing going on this weekend, check it out and get a jump on next week. (just change your code to reference 1.4).

    Me? I’m going to order myself up some nice Harry & David Bing Cherry Chocolate Cheesecake and celebrate!

  • OpenGeo releases OpenGeo Suite, puts price on Open Source GIS

    OpenGeo has released their OpenGeo Suite to the public. Most people already know about the part of OpenGeo Suite, so take a look at the Version Matrix with pricing and features and the big reason why you’d look at this suite.

  • Google I/O News

    I suppose there is some sort of Google event going on this week and what do you know, we’ve got some GoogleGeo news:

    Google Maps API v3 – The new Google Maps API v3 enables support on mobile browsers (such as Mobile Safari), dropping the need for keys (hurray!), now MVC-based architecture (about time), default UI automatically supported (so you never have to worry about updating the UI), cleaned up namespaces (everything is now google.maps.* rather than gmap). So what does this mean? Take a look at the old v2 example.

       
    
    <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
      
        <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
        Google Maps JavaScript API Example
        <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&v=2&key=abcdefg&sensor=true_or_false">http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&v=2&key=abcdefg&sensor=true_or_false
        
    
        function initialize() {
          if (GBrowserIsCompatible()) {
            var map = new GMap2(document.getElementById("map_canvas"));
            map.setCenter(new GLatLng(37.4419, -122.1419), 13);
            map.setUIToDefault();
          }
        }
    
        
      
      <body onload="initialize()" onunload="GUnload()">
        <div style="width:500px;height:300px;" id="map_canvas">

    And now v3.

        
    
    <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
    
        <meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" />
    <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps/api/js?sensor=false">http://maps.google.com/maps/api/js?sensor=false
    
    //
    
        
    
    <body onload="initialize()">
        <div style="width:100%;height:100%;" id="map_canvas">

    I like the new look and for me it is much more logical than before (plus mobile browser support FTW!). Check out the documentationand the reference. This coupled with the Google Maps Data API really pushes the Google Maps WAY in front of Microsoft and others.

    Become Google Certified? So they have this new Google “Qualified Developer” program now. Looks like you pick a Google API (the page listing them seems 404, but I’m sure maps is going to be one), take some test and then show references and community participation. Much like other developer programs, they’ll have a directory to find “qualified” developers and probably some logos to put on your blog/homepage. Something tells me there will be a ton of people rushing out to get this done. The Javascript API Study Guide (I suppose the Flash Study Guide is on its way) seems to be very strait forward and since it is free, probably worth doing.

  • Bing Maps for Enterprise?

    No way, no how will I ever refer to Virtual Earth as Bing Maps for Enterprise. I’m putting my foot down on this.

    I don’t want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough water! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!

    I dont want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough water! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!

  • Direct from Where 2.0 2009 – “Junk Mail” and the GeoWeb Shine Light on New Orleans Recovery

    The video from our Where 2.0 presentation is available. If you haven’t been following what the GNOCDC is doing down in New Orleans, this is a great introduction. You can download the presentation here.

  • GSS – Style your web maps with CSS client side

    As Steve pointed out, this is does deserve two exclamation points!!

    Just like CSS for styling web pages, GSS is a specification for designing maps. Adapted for dynamic data sources, GSS can define changing geographic elements, display multiple datasets, and even respond to contextual tags like “condition:poor”.

    Very tasty! Just look at this simple GSS and how you can render maps on the client.

    body: {
fillStyle: "#fff",
lineWidth: 0,
},

node: {
fillStyle: "#ddd",
strokeStyle: "#090",
lineWidth: 0,
radius: 1
},

way: {
strokeStyle: function() {
return "rgba(1,1,1,0.7)"
//return color_from_string(this.user)
},
strokeStyle: "#ccc",
lineWidth: 3
},

leisure: {
fillStyle: "#2a2",
lineWidth: 3,
strokeStyle: "#181"
}

    Previous conversation about styling GIS data.