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OK, this isn’t the product that we saw at the User Conference, at least as far as I can tell (I left my laptop at work so I don’t have a copy of ArcGIS to test it on). Rather than being built on MSN Messenger, GeoChat supports Jabber allowing you to use any Jabber server you wish (specifically it uses XMPP protocol which Google Talk among others uses). Since I can’t test it, I’m limited to reading the user guide but it looks very impressive and well integrated into ArcMap. My company has many offices and few people so collaboration between GIS professionals is usually done with Acrobat. GeoChat would surely simplify our workflow so I’m really wanting to try it out (I’ll have to wait until Wednesday as our office is closed on Tuesday due to it being right across the street from the Fiesta Bowl).

First Python and now Jabber. Could ArcIMS 10 be built on Mapserver? 😉

They become a smock to paint in…

**Update – GeoChat has been released.
**
GeoChat is one of those programs that ESRI has talked about in the past, but then went silent about. The thought among most of us is ESRI abandoned it, but it appears it might be released really soon.

If you’ve missed ESRI’s announcement at the 2005 UC on GeoChat (or just have forgotten), you can check out Richie Carmichael’s blog entry for more information.

I was catching up on my RSS feeds and I caught a link to this book in my .NET Technorati page. The book seems to cover MapPoint 2004, MapPoint Web Service, MapPoint Location Server and MSN Virtual Earth (aka Live Local). I wish I saw this book before today as I’ve pretty much burned though all my money buying Christmas gifts (include the Acura TL I bought for my wife today), but I’m sure I must have a Barnes and Noble gift certificate somewhere in my desk. The examples are even in C# so what they heck, I’m going to buy it right now. 🙂

The GIS CAD Interoperability blog by Don Kuehne has part one in a series of articles on how to build geoprocessing tools. If you are an ArcGIS user (and I assume most of you are) you’ll want to learn how to build these tools as they can simplify your workflows and improve your productivity. Most old ArcInfo users had built these types of tools over and over again, but many of us seem to have abandoned this practice since 8.x was released.

Ah, the old days….

OK, it doesn’t exist yet, but I want it. For those who don’t know about Mapdex, it is a huge index of web mapping services you can search to find datasets from around the world. Part of ArcGIS Explorer includes is a section that allows you to program tasks. I’d love to be able to type in a search and allow Mapdex to find the layers and then have them appear in ArcGIS Explorer. Since ArcGIS Explorer supports so many file types it could become the way to find GIS web mapping services. In fact ESRI should contact Jeremy Bartley right away to make sure this task makes it into the default ArcGIS Explorer program.

I’m not sure what ESRI has planned for the beta release, but hopefully they’ll have good support for creating and sharing these tasks (its that community thing again I’m always talking about).

Boy was that exhausting?!?!?!

I’m sleeping well tonight. 🙂

I’m taking this week off to just enjoy the holiday with my family. I’ll be back on Monday so until then check out Planet Geospatial.

Good news for ArcIMS developers like us. ArcIMS 9.1 Service Pack 1 is out and we can finally upgrade both our ArcIMS and ArcSDE. Looks like some of the issues with the Metadata Server are fixed according to the “Issues Addressed” document. I saw the patch on the revised ESRI Support pages so it does look like the redesign does work well.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and enjoyed their holiday. We actually had to turn on our air conditioner today here in Arizona so we definitely were dreaming of a white Christmas. We are going to be heading out for the Insight Bowl to watch my alma mater Arizona State play Rutgers (I was unaware they stilled played football) in the rematch of the 1978 Garden State Bowl. On paper ASU should wipe the floor with them, but they are excited to be in a bowl game and ASU is disappointed to be playing in such a low bowl. Its happened again and again with ASU and I’m hoping it won’t happen again. I’ll do my best to make sure it doesn’t happend. :p

Yes compelling television.