Category: Thoughts

There will be an OpenStreetMap mapping party this weekend in Phoenix, AZ December 6th and 7th. Brandon Aguirre from Cloudmade will be here to coordinate things, and Gangplank will host it in Chandler, AZ.

If you haven’t been to a mapping party before you’ll want to come along and bring a friend. There is quite a bit of work that needs to be accomplished in Phoenix on OSM so there are tons for everyone to do.

The invite is below and don’t forget to RVSP:

Make Your Mark on the Free World Map!
Join me at Gangplank’s offices Saturday, December 6 and Sunday, December 7 from 11:00am-4:00pm for an OpenStreetMap Mapping Party where we’ll get more of the things you want added to the map of Phoenix! Since OpenStreetMap is both free and Free, you can do really cool things with the data. (check out www.opencyclemap.org and www.openrouteservice.org for examples). At the party we’ll loan you a GPS unit and show you how to use it so you can then go out and map a section of the city. At the end of the day we’ll show you how to get that data into OpenStreetMap so you can begin mapping your community’s bikeways, hiking trails, park paths and anything else you choose!

For more information check out the following:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org
http://www.openstreetmap.org

RSVP HERE! http://www.meetup.com/OpenStreetMap-Phoenix/
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1382243/

The latest Google Maps API TOS is available here. Google had just updated their TOS back in early November to clear up some questions around the use of API on free sites (this TOS only applies to the free API, not the Google Premier). The changes were welcomed by all, but one section appeared to some people to suggest that by using the API, you were giving Google a license to your data. Ed Parsons blogged about the situation?so you can follow more what the problems were there, but this latest update seems to remove that section (Ed has it on his blog) that people were worried about.

OK, now back to getting the house ready for the family invasion tomorrow.

The turkey in my fridge did not receive a pardon from the president.

Those who use the JavaScript extensions for Google Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth can now update their script tags that reference the API to 1.2. The ESRI ArcGIS Server Blog has all the details.

Virtual Earth example:

[http://serverapi.arcgisonline.com/jsapi/ve/?v=1.2](http://serverapi.arcgisonline.com/jsapi/ve/?v=1.2)

Google Maps example:

[http://serverapi.arcgisonline.com/jsapi/gmaps/?v=1.2](http://serverapi.arcgisonline.com/jsapi/gmaps/?v=1.2)

The ESRI ArcGIS JavaScript API has been updated to version 1.2. The ArcGIS Server Blog has the details. Remember to update your code with the new version:

<script src="http://serverapi.arcgisonline.com/jsapi/arcgis/?v=1.2" type="text/javascript">

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href=http://serverapi.arcgisonline.com/jsapi/ arcgis/1.2/js/dojo/dijit/themes/tundra/tundra.css>

A couple people have commented recently about this blog or via twitter about the possibility of ArcGIS and the Cloud. The current licensing of ArcGIS Server pretty much precludes the possibility of running it in the cloud so until ESRI changes the licensing or works with a company to provide ArcGIS Server in the cloud don’t get your hopes up.

I’m guessing it is virtually impossible for ESRI to license ArcGIS Server in the cloud as the product stands today.

Have a merry GIS Day!

I suppose it makes sense. Print media is dead everyone says. How do you stay relevant if your primary product is a print magazine with pictures (that probably costs a ton to produce)?

Launch a games division.

I can’t wait until ArcMap X comes out on Wii.

Pulling off a wicked intersection on Wii ArcGIS.

Back when ESRI had just released PC ARC/INFO (for the cutting edge DOS) and way before Google was a research project, the United States Congress passed a joint resolution signed by Ronald Reagan proclaiming that Geography Awareness Week would be held in November.

The Great Communicator signs Geography Awareness Week into law

Remember, it isn’t about the Google or ESRI (I suppose GIS Day is for them). It is about the Geography!

So I’ve got a (theoretical) simple internal website for a client that basically puts pushpins for their locations on a map. Since this is on their intranet we’ll have to pay approximately $10,000 to Google or Microsoft to license their products internally. This small company doesn’t have the kind of money (especially in this economy) to put down on such an application. Essentially spending $5-$10K before any coding has taken place is not going to get anywhere and the project is dropped.

Why is it that both Google and Microsoft are stuck in archaic licensing agreements? The logical way to price these services is a metered service. Much like Amazon AWS works, you’ll pay for what you use (with per-session costs decreasing as usage goes up). It would be monitored so I could see what kind of traffic I’m generating with the service and I could be billed monthly via credit card. We’ve been using Amazon S3 and EC2 with great results and it is very easy to justify the low initial costs and still be able to scale to larger applications if warranted.

The other problem is that if I’ve got to spend that kind of money, I’m going to be developing larger internal applications than I would externally. You can’t do a simple internal mashup if you have to pay large enterprise licensing costs. I was told by one potential client who wanted a Virtual Earth application that ‘For that price we might as well buy another ArcGIS Server license’. For someone to say that it is cheaper to roll out ArcGIS Server for a simple mashup really puts it all into perspective and if you are going to develop with ArcGIS Server, you’ll probably have a larger application than a ‘simple’ Virtual Earth map.

So I’m pleading with Microsoft and Google to revisit their map API licensing and move toward more of an Amazon AWS type service that will help get their mapping tools into more places than today. Everyone wants a Google or Microsoft map on their intranet website, but the current licensing is killing projects before they can start.

Homer tries to make sense of mapping

Dan Catt at geobloggers blogged over a week ago about Flickr about how they were using WOE ID to generate polygons of places that people have tagged in Flickr. A couple people have emailed me on how worthless this exercise is and how arbitrary it is. The Flickr Developer Blog goes into some more detail about the how and why Flickr is doing this and I think that should give everyone who doesn’t understand why this is important some better context. Personally I find it extremely interesting to see how people understand what place they are taking a photo at. A lot of this can all be tied back into Neogeography and what makes an expert. I’d wager people are more careful to geotag their photos in areas they are familiar with and less so when they are traveling. I don’t have enough photos tagged in Flickr, but I’d love to see maps from some larger Flickr users to see how they geotag the world.

What Flickr has is a way to visualize how people are geotagging their photos and they appear to be learning about to improve the process. I think this is a great application of technology to help better understand how humans perceive** **location.