Esri Adds Parcels to Their Little Used World Streets Map Service
Remember that World Streets Map Service from Esri? Of course, you don’t. You’ve been using the Google or Bing maps as your backgrounds or the beautiful Esri Topographical map. Parcels in World Streets is nice I guess, but until it is in the Topographical map service, I just can’t see using it.
You have to be in awe about the pressure companies such as Esri, Google and Microsoft can put on these “premium”, “authoritative” data sources (like First American) to release their product like this. Parcels are a big deal to many folks, but the percentage that actually care about the parcel database vs the pretty picture outlines is small. Now everyone who just wants to see Parcels on their map can do for free (well free in the sense that Esri and Google’s licensing allows it).
Why anyone would pay for parcel data anymore is beyond me.
IBM Makes Offer for Netezza
Nothing is final, but it looks like Netezza could be part of the IBM empire:
International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) agreed to acquire data specialist Netezza Corp. (NZ) in a deal valued at $1.7 billion, as Big Blue expands its analytics business.
….
Netezza provides technology that allows companies and government agencies to quickly analyze huge amounts of data-something IBM says will give it an advantage in its analytics business.
Netezza offers “a much simpler way to get started on analytics and data warehousing than anyone else in the industry,” said Arvind Krishna, IBM general manager for information management. He told Dow Jones Newswires Netezza’s system can be operated by one person instead of “an army of people” and that it provides increased performance at a lower cost.
Of course, Netezza does spatial as well so it will be interesting to see what happens in this space with the IBM R&D behind it.
The big news tonight though is Hawaii Five-0 is back!
ArcGIS API for JavaScript 2.1 — Now With Legends
ArcGIS Server - now with Legends
No GIS Professional can make a map without a legend. Probably because we create such complex maps, they can’t stand on their own. Anyway ESRI added some new features that should help us GIS Professional enter the world of Web 2.0. Key new features as I see it are:
- Legend
- Scale Bar (nothing like a scale bar to make your map ugly)
- Touch aware (support for iOS devices)
- WMS Support
The whole list of new and changed is available here. One day I hope to see Dojo dropped, but that’s just me.
ArcGIS API for JavaScript 2.1 — Now With Legends
ArcGIS Server - now with Legends
No GIS Professional can make a map without a legend. Probably because we create such complex maps, they can’t stand on their own. Anyway ESRI added some new features that should help us GIS Professional enter the world of Web 2.0. Key new features as I see it are:
- Legend
- Scale Bar (nothing like a scale bar to make your map ugly)
- Touch aware (support for iOS devices)
- WMS Support
The whole list of new and changed is available here. One day I hope to see Dojo dropped, but that’s just me.
Just When you Began to Think the Front Range was all That…
They roll this out…
This afternoon, I sat through the Collaboration Panel discussion. The panel was made of of a few people representing state, regional and local governments and well as utilities and academia. Almost uniformly, there was a fear (yes, I mean fear) of crowdsourcing that was best summed up by the following statement:
Crowdsourcing presents a vulnerability to us.
Fear of accurate maps? I wish I was there to see who could have this backward stance, but it doesn’t really matter. The tide is against them and in time they will be washed away. If there wasn’t a better reason to have SOTM 2011 in Denver, I can’t think of anything else. These folks need help and if the Front Range is the great hope for the USA, we are screwed.
Can’t find my way home because the map isn’t crowdsourced!
Just When you Began to Think the Front Range was all That…
They roll this out…
This afternoon, I sat through the Collaboration Panel discussion. The panel was made of of a few people representing state, regional and local governments and well as utilities and academia. Almost uniformly, there was a fear (yes, I mean fear) of crowdsourcing that was best summed up by the following statement:
Crowdsourcing presents a vulnerability to us.
Fear of accurate maps? I wish I was there to see who could have this backward stance, but it doesn’t really matter. The tide is against them and in time they will be washed away. If there wasn’t a better reason to have SOTM 2011 in Denver, I can’t think of anything else. These folks need help and if the Front Range is the great hope for the USA, we are screwed.
Can’t find my way home because the map isn’t crowdsourced!