Back from WhereCamp5280
I had a very enjoyable time at WhereCamp5280. A huge thanks should go to Eric Wolf, Peter Batty, and Ben Tuttle. I think one of the best parts of the WhereCamp was the practicality of what was presented. So much we get fluff at Where 2.0 or other “bleading edge” conferences of projects and companies that aren’t really trying to solve problems. All I saw last weekend was person after person talk about what they were doing with their workflows with some great technology and the end result was an improvement in their services.
That isn’t to say that there wasn’t cutting edge stuff there, Chris Helm showing CouchDB and IMBY, DRCOG, their data portal and using OSM, Ben Tuttle using IDL and Ruby at NOAA and Tom Churchill showing how Denver PD uses augmented reality mapping to help them catch criminals. It isn’t just that rolling MapReduce is “fun”, but it needs to be practical and that is what I think the Denver geospatial community is great at doing.
What also could be happening is that we are crossing over from thinking about using these technologies and are actually using them in our everyday workflows. I’m not sure WhereCamp5280 could have been any more successful than it was and I’m looking forward to the next WhereCamp (WhereCampPDX?).
Tom Churchill demonstrates augmented reality application from the Denver PD helicopter.
Tom Churchill demonstrates augmented reality application from the Denver PD helicopter.
WhereCamp5280 Presentation
Here is my slide deck from my plenary talk at WhereCamp5280. You can follow along as you watch the video of my talk on GeoGeek TV.
WhereCamp5280 Presentation
Here is my slide deck from my plenary talk at WhereCamp5280. You can follow along as you watch the video of my talk on GeoGeek TV.
ArcGIS Explorer 900 released
It looks like ESRI is releasing ArcGIS Explorer 900, just in time for WhereCamp5280. Some new features include:
- New UI (the Office ribbon)
- New basemap galley for easy access to different base maps
- 2D/3D <- What I think really sets AGX apart from other globes. It is a 2D world out there!
- Better KML support and support for layer packages (becomes a viewer for proprietary ESRI data0
- New presentation mode (if you saw Bern demo this at the UC, you know how valuable that will be)
- Bing Maps free to ArcGIS Desktop users (if you have ArcGIS Desktop license with Bing, you can use that on AGX)
- Localization
- Projections! Who says you have to work in mercator
- .NET SDK
AGX has come a very long way so if you haven’t tried it in a while you’ll want to give it another shot. One thing I did note, it doesn’t run on Windows 7 very well. Might be me, but I’ll see Bern tomorrow and ask him about it (though I can guess his answer, “We’ll support it when Windows 7 ships”)
ArcGIS Explorer 900 released
It looks like ESRI is releasing ArcGIS Explorer 900, just in time for WhereCamp5280. Some new features include:
- New UI (the Office ribbon)
- New basemap galley for easy access to different base maps
- 2D/3D <- What I think really sets AGX apart from other globes. It is a 2D world out there!
- Better KML support and support for layer packages (becomes a viewer for proprietary ESRI data0
- New presentation mode (if you saw Bern demo this at the UC, you know how valuable that will be)
- Bing Maps free to ArcGIS Desktop users (if you have ArcGIS Desktop license with Bing, you can use that on AGX)
- Localization
- Projections! Who says you have to work in mercator
- .NET SDK
AGX has come a very long way so if you haven’t tried it in a while you’ll want to give it another shot. One thing I did note, it doesn’t run on Windows 7 very well. Might be me, but I’ll see Bern tomorrow and ask him about it (though I can guess his answer, “We’ll support it when Windows 7 ships”)
Mercator Projection Hating Continues
Jeff Thurston asks a simple question:
Why take perfectly projected GIS data and stick it into Bing Maps or Google Maps? Isn’t it time that the 49th parallel was not a straight line?
I hate to break it to Jeff but 90% of the world has no idea that Bing or Google maps have a projection. People expect their web maps to look a certain way (you know where Greenland is bigger than Brazil) and because of that we’ll continue “sticking” our data in Bing or Google Maps. Anyway when projections matter, use something other than Mercator. I talked a little bit about my problems trying to work with the poles before here and here.
Much like the flat earth society, these Mercator haters want to make lives harder for average users to navigate maps. If projecting your data to Mercator is causing it to be incorrect, then you are obviously doing it wrong.
The GeoMonkey has always enjoyed the Mercator projection because he doesn’t like going to the poles
The GeoMonkey has always enjoyed the Mercator projection because he doesnt like going to the poles