Microsoft TerraServer Is No More
So Microsoft TerraServer is finally dead. In its time, I used it to test WMS, but I’m not sure I ever really used it for anything else. Much like LandSat, I’ll shed no tears. It served its purpose and now it must die.
Lonely
It must have been pretty lonely around the TerraServer offices lately
Google Makes a Game of Maps
Yesterday Google released their game based on the Google Maps API and WebGL (Note to Safari users, you’ll have to enable WebGL through the Develop menu to get it to work).
GoogleMapsCube
Basically you use your mouse to tilt a 3D cube and have a ball travel down the transportation networks (road, trails, subways, etc). Since we in GIS all know about topology in these networks, the game isn’t as hard as you might expect. Still it’s a pretty amazing example of using HTML + WebGL for web mapping. Open or not, the Google Maps API clearly is well ahead of others. If you can stomach the licensing, you’ll continue to have access to tools that other mapping libraries can only dream of.
As I said back a couple months ago, this is very impressive. The fact this is running in at least 3 browsers (Chrome, Safari and Firefox) gives me hope that WebGL apps have a future. I had partly expected this to be Chrome only…
Google Makes a Game of Maps
Yesterday Google released their game based on the Google Maps API and WebGL (Note to Safari users, you’ll have to enable WebGL through the Develop menu to get it to work).
GoogleMapsCube
Basically you use your mouse to tilt a 3D cube and have a ball travel down the transportation networks (road, trails, subways, etc). Since we in GIS all know about topology in these networks, the game isn’t as hard as you might expect. Still it’s a pretty amazing example of using HTML + WebGL for web mapping. Open or not, the Google Maps API clearly is well ahead of others. If you can stomach the licensing, you’ll continue to have access to tools that other mapping libraries can only dream of.
As I said back a couple months ago, this is very impressive. The fact this is running in at least 3 browsers (Chrome, Safari and Firefox) gives me hope that WebGL apps have a future. I had partly expected this to be Chrome only…
Trimble Buys SketchUp or Google Dumps SketchUp
So take your pick, is this Trimble making a bold move or Google realizing SketchUp had no place in their portfolio. One more reason to think Google Earth is headed to the land of the walking dead.
This doesn’t change SketchUp’s awesomeness, but I’m wondering what the future holds. Trimble’s press release talks about an “enterprise solution”. The tea leaves say this means that SketchUp will transition away from free and the cheapskates need to pony up. Their FAQ says they’ll continue to support free customers, but I just can’t see that continuing like Google has been doing. A brave new world is upon us, one where Google doesn’t give everything away for free.
Smoking
Everyone is addicted, but now what? I have to pay my supplier?
Trimble Buys SketchUp or Google Dumps SketchUp
So take your pick, is this Trimble making a bold move or Google realizing SketchUp had no place in their portfolio. One more reason to think Google Earth is headed to the land of the walking dead.
This doesn’t change SketchUp’s awesomeness, but I’m wondering what the future holds. Trimble’s press release talks about an “enterprise solution”. The tea leaves say this means that SketchUp will transition away from free and the cheapskates need to pony up. Their FAQ says they’ll continue to support free customers, but I just can’t see that continuing like Google has been doing. A brave new world is upon us, one where Google doesn’t give everything away for free.
Smoking
Everyone is addicted, but now what? I have to pay my supplier?
My Personal GIS Stack
I get asked a ton about what sort of software do I choose to use in my daily workflows. I’m all over the place on stuff, but I figure I’d write it down and see what it looks like. This shouldn’t take long!
For my data storage needs I use WeoGeo Library as my content management system. I like how it keeps all my data organized and available no matter where I am in the world. I use WeoGeo Utility to keep that hosted library organized and to download data I need. Locally I use PostGIS to store and manage the data. I’ll occasionally use Microsoft SQL Server but PostGIS does all I need it to do and since I’m never on Windows anymore I really don’t feel like licensing a Windows instance to run a database.
Working with this data means I need a couple choices to get data in and out of PostGIS. I probably use FME Desktop most of the time because it can do just about everything, but I’ll also use GDAL/OGR because it runs on my MacBook Pro. I’m actually finding myself using GDAL/OGR more these days because I just can’t be bothered to start up a VM with Windows. Dan Dye has me using GDAL almost all the time now so it has become second nature to me. I don’t bother with MapServer or GeoServer because the thought of consuming data out of PostGIS as WxS seems very dirty. You can use either of them but count me out.
I haven’t mentioned Esri yet. I do use ArcGIS for Desktop but again, I’m just not interested in running GIS software in a VM anymore so it doesn’t get spun up much anymore. I do have an older Dell Desktop on my desk but even that seems like such a pain to get working that I just stick to software that runs on my Macintosh. I might checking out ArcGIS Online or whatever it is called these days when Esri gets some licensing costs out there but for now I’m sitting tight with my EDN licensing.
Airplane
Did I just say I don’t use ArcMap that much anymore?
Now on the desktop I’m rolling QGIS because I’m very familiar with it. I keep trying to get gvSIG into my workflow but it’s resemblance to ArcView 3.x keeps turning me off. That said, having two great Desktop GIS tools means that they are pushing each other to be better. I use Mapnik for my cartography engine with Quantumnik integration into QGIS. Mapnik just makes beautiful maps and I don’t feel like I can get that control anywhere else. I’m also playing around with TileMill but migrating my old Mapnik XML files to Carto has been more work than I hoped. I’ll get there though.
Wrong Week
I picked the wrong week to convert XML to CSS
I’ve also been using AutoCAD on my Mac since Autodesk came out with a native version again. Just goes to show, you can have a great native OS X version of CAD software. Shame Esri can’t do the same or I’d be running ArcGIS Desktop much more than I currently am.
Looking at my workflow, it looks like I don’t like or need a mapserver of any type. I’d rather just talk directly to PostGIS than put more middleware in my way. Tiling engines really have changed how I work. Top to bottom though, I rely on Python to script almost everything (from ArcGIS and FME to GDAL and QGIS). I’m not seeing much uptake in my workflow with File Geodatabases, but maybe when support for them becomes more widespread, we’ll see that happen. Shapefiles just seem to still be the standard and as much as I dislike them, it just won’t be changing soon.
I’m guessing most people have workflows like mine, looking for software that makes their life easier and the work more efficient.