Spatially Adjusted

Blog

  • Glenn Letham tries to stir the pot with FUD

    Link – Will Google Earth Replace the need for costly GIS software and license fees?

    This was a recent topic of discussion on the Google BBS… no doubt you’ve also been wondering… why invest deeply in a pricey IMS, GIS site license and support costs etc… “Lets take a look how much ArcGIS software we would need on one desktop to replicate the functionality of Google Earth. First you would need ArcView for $1,500, then add a license of 3D Analyst for $2,500. So now we are at $4,000 dollars just for software and don’t forget to add the yearly $1,300 dollar maintenance fee also. Now you need to pay for ArcWeb services so that you have data (which there aren’t even prices on website). Add in ArcIMS and ArcSDE servers and your talking the GNP of some third world countries.”

    First off Glenn, lets try and include links with your posts. For those who want to see the reference post in Glenn’s blog entry click here.

    I won’t spend too much time responding here to this charge that to get the functionality of Google Earth, you need to spend $4,000. One doesn’t buy a backhoe to dig a hole for a plant in your front yard, but this is what the writer above is proposing. The best response to people who post information like this above is, “To get the functionality of ArcView and 3D Analyst in Google Earth, you’d have to buy ArcView and 3D Analyst. Google Earth is nothing more than a 3D Map Viewer. ArcGIS is a professional GIS suite. Has Photoshop been hurt by Picasa since Google released the free version? Probably not any more than ESRI will be affected by Google Earth in its current state. ArcView is overkill for many, and Google Earth probably fits the bill for them, but to expect GE to replace the scientific quality analysis that ArcGIS provides is laughable considering how they can’t even get the alignment of their data correct. Maybe in the future Google Earth will add more data support, but the years of experience that ESRI has with spatial analysis will be hard to compete with. Many of us long time GIS professionals remember the press all said ArcView was dead the day that Microsoft released MapPoint. That didn’t happen and I just don’t see Google Earth making any dent into ESRI’s core business.

    Oh and the writer of that post above that Glenn linked to? He posted this in the same thread.

    As a side note ESRI is now saying that the free viewer ArcExplorer will include ArcScene, their 3D environment. Not sure if Google Earth had anything to do with it but competition is nice.

    Seems that even he realizes that ESRI is still a force to be reckoned with even if Glenn doesn’t.

  • Putting Shapefies into Virtual Earth

    Link – Virtual Earth Shapefile Viewer – via Virtual Earth Blog

    Interesting and it works pretty well. Upload any shapefile to the Internet and then just paste the URL into the form and submit. There isn’t any description yet on how this is done or what you need to do to your shapefiles to get them ready to inclusion into Virtual Earth, but it is impressive non the less. Hover over the centroid to get a pop-up id of each record. The GIS community has pretty much ignored Virtual Earth since day one, but maybe this is the start of something new.

    Ve shapefile

    Update – Brian Flood post the following in the comments.

    pretty slick. for the record:

    1. background transfer of XML encoded point,polyline,polygon shapefile data. I’m not sure if its GML or just some quick and dirty xml
    2. javascript (js) parses the xml and either uses a custom class MPolyline to create VML (IE only) for polylines/polygons. For points, it just uses the VE AddPin method. Translation between the XML coords to map coords is handled with VE GetX()/GetY() methods
    3. local javascript from the site adds prototype handlers to the main VE_MapControl that handle the VML placed on top of it
    4. Looks like some symbology is randomly generated.

    nice work, whoever they are 😉

  • ArcGIS Server Utility Classes GotDotNet Workspace Project

    Link – ArcGIS Server Utility Classes: Workspace Home

    One thing I’ve been meaning to do is set up a GotDotNet workspace for ArcGIS Server utility classes. The workspace is up, and I threw up a project containing SOC (Server Object Container) COM utility classes. This is not entirely generic, and it’s currently namespaced as “Sanborn.Utilities.ArcGIS.Server.SOC” (Any ideas on namespaces?? OpenESRI.Blah.Blah?) but it’s a start. It’s also VB.NET if that matters. Without further ado…

    Good for someone to step up and actually start up one of these development projects. We’ve been talking about it for months and Dave Bouwman has created one and populated it with some ArcGIS utility classes. I’ll be back in the office on Thursday so you can be sure that I’ll be taking a look at this. Our little shop has been more of an ArcIMS developer than ArcGIS Server, but we’ve been beginning to start programming with ArcGIS Server. As soon as we finish up this little Map Objects project, I really want to get into ArcGIS Server.

    ESRI really should be providing this service to us GIS programmers, but it sounds like Brian is on it so hopefully this ArcGIS Server effort can drive the move to a shared development environment to replace ArcScripts. The best way to move this forward is to participate and show ESRI how valuable this can be.

  • Running ArcReader on an average PC

    Ubikcan wonders why ArcReader requires such a powerfull PC to work. Simple, it is pretty much full blown ArcGIS minus all the features. I’d expect ArcExplorer to be much easier on the systems than ArcReader. Still, the point of a reader program is that you don’t need a full blown GIS system. If ArcExplorer supports PMF files, I’d say Reader is pretty much dead anyway.

  • Updated GIS blogroll again

    I’ve updated my blogroll again and I’m going to try using the Newsgator service again. The last time I did this it didn’t work, but it seems like all the kinks are out of the system. What is cool is that rather than me manually adding and deleting feeds, this will automatically be updated as my Newsgator Outlook and FeedDemon readers change. I’ve been testing it on the side and it seems to be fine. Let me know if anything seems out of wack. I’ll try and get the OPML files for the ESRI bloggers and the GIS bloggers as a download by the end of the week (also dynamic) so if you want to just import them you can.

  • Podcasts and Web 2.0

    I’m still not really sure what will become of Podcasts in the next year but I can tell you that they are much easier to listen to on an airplane than trying to fight with Newsgator and RSS feeds on my laptop. I ended up listening to the Very Spatial, NPR and Engadget podcasts. Not a bad use of my time as there aren’t any movies or even food served on most flights these days. Plus if I don’t get my laptop out I won’t be working in my Outlook either so that is an added bonus.

    Of course you can’t really listen to a Podcast these days without someone mentioning Web 2.0. I’ve been able to put a filter on my RSS feeds to automatically toss any feed post that has the words “Web 2.0” in the text to the trash (which ironically means this one wouldn’t show up). I’m so sick of this term and how people are using it. It is just a marketing term to describe the latest internet bubble and try and make as much money off of it before it all crashes again. I just miss those old Web 1.0 days where everyone put the letter “e” or “i” in front of their product. Oh well, better check back with the office and make sure they are completing all our Web 2.0 applications.

  • The ArcGlobe Text Toolbar — Label in ArcGlobe

    Link – Labeling in ArcGlobe: The ArcGlobe Text Toolbar

    Ever wanted to label a layer in ArcGlobe? The recently updated “ArcGlobe Text Toolbar” allows an ArcGlobe user to label any FeatureLayer with true 3D text. Labels are transparently persisted to an external GLM file (eg myGlobeDocument.glm). The toolbar also extends the ArcGlobe animation framework. Text can be animated over time and space. Other properties such as color and azimuth can also be animated.

    I think ArcGlobe has been ignored over the years for many reasons (some valid, others aren’t), but now with Google Earth taking off, many GIS professionals are taking a second look at ArcGlobe especially since ArcReader 9.2 9.1 will support Globe documents removing the requirement for ArcView or greater. I wish I had a better laptop than I did because I can’t really run ArcGlobe well with this really poor video card.

    Arcglobe label

  • Heading out for a couple days

    I’m heading out tonight to State College, PA to work on a project that combines a little GIS with loading docks (think Network Analyst). Anyway I’ll be posting pretty light over the next few days so make sure you check some other great blogs for GIS news. I’ve posted a list below of the ones that have been posting great stuff in the last couple weeks.

  • Site Statistics For September

    September Statistics

    • Total Pages: 150,957 (average 5,031)
    • Total Visits: 64,802 (average 2,160)

    Top 10 Search Strings

    1. earthgoogle
    2. spatially adjusted
    3. arc2earth
    4. tracking rita
    5. shapefile to kml
    6. geochat
    7. arcims
    8. arcpad 7
    9. esri
    10. arcexplorer 9.2

    Thanks for everyone who has stopped by, traffic has increased almost 5 times over August.

  • Arc2Earth Offers ArcToolbox Integration

    Link – Arc2Earth Update – ArcToolbox Integration

    One feature that I wanted to point out specifically is the integration of A2E into the ArcGIS Geoprocessing subsystem. Essentially, this will allow the A2E exporter to be called directly from scripts (Python, VBScript etc.), Models, the CommandLine or directly from ArcToolbox. My favorite right now is the Model integration, there is just a myriad of geospatial analysis that be accomplished. Likewise, the time savings from the automation can be pretty significant. So now the final step can be to create a KML or KMZ file for consumption of the results directly in GE.

    I love this. You can perform analysis on your datasets and then send to users who don’t have ArcGIS. Export to KML becomes as easy as exporting to a e00 (well actually easier). I’ve written so many AMLs in my life that I even today continue to use AML (and Python) for scripting many of my analysis tasks. Rather than adding the output to ArcMap and generating a PDF to show others the results, I can just send them the KML and let them view it in Google Earth. Sweet!

    KMLExporter GPModel