Just noticed that there is now a new option at Google Maps. In addition to “Map” and “Satellite” there is a new “Hybrid” version which I think works pretty well. You get road names, streets and landmarks right over the top of the satellite image. I didn’t spend too much time looking at how well the roads line up with the satellite images, but they look pretty good from what I saw.
I love the java applet that Gjermund Weisz is using on his blog about Sportsim. I’ve been thinking about taking part in the Arizona Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon and if I do it, I’m going to use Sportsim.
Run For Central Park, July 23rd 2005
Brian Flood just announced that he’ll be presenting at the .NET Developer SIG meeting at the ESRI User Conference next week. He plans to demo ArcGIS Server InProcess Redirect and using background threads in ArcMap. Now I’m going to have to get there early and get a good seat to view the screen.
Update – Art Haddad has added a post (dead link) detailing more about the .NET Sig Meeting
Link – Image Server
On Monday during the Plenary we will introduce a new type of Image Server. It takes a different approach to serving up large (TB) quantities of Images. The data is held in the raw file format (no need to pre-process, or load into a DBMS). The Server builds an index so that the files can be treated as a continuous image map. Services can be authored to process the images on the fly as they are served up to desktop or web clients.
My first reaction is cool, but I don’t see how this would replace me loading rasters into my ArcSDE as I do now. I’m guessing it costs less than ArcSDE and a DBMS, but how much less?
Damn, I guess I’ll just have to wait until Monday.
[update] OK, I’ve thought about this a little bit. How are they doing this without a DBMS? I’m guessing they are reading in the cell information from the rasters and then storing it somewhere (xml?). I guess Image Server processes the requests from clients, but how does Image Server know what to return?
I’m guessing this is an outgrowth of abandoning the Personal Geodatabase MDB format as we all have learned it pretty much doesn’t work as well as shapefiles (let alone Coverages, GRIDs and Tins). I’m actually excited about a new data format, but I’d like to know more about how we’ll be able to “interchange” the datasets. I assume it will be back to the venerable e00? 😉
Link – Transpac 2005 Tracks via Google Maps Mania
The Transpac race from Long Beach to Honolulu is run every two years, alternating with the Pacific Cup. 2005’s race, the 43rd, got started on July 11th. Position reports from each boat are collected by radio at 9am PDT, are posted on the web by about 1:30pm PDT, and show up here some time after that.
How cool would it be if someone took this data and created a ArcWeb Services application that had even more data in it such as weather? Heck ESRI should just do it as an example and post the code. A very nice mashup indeed.
It is a shame that the inaugural ArcWeb User Group Meeting is being held the same time as the blogger meet-up. Well I could go to the first 30 minutes and then run over to Dick’s Last Resort.
It is pretty hard these days not to have a MrSID image behind your vector data. Almost every project I am involved with has a satellite or aerial image behind it. These MrSID images are great because they compress huge raster datasets down to a fraction of their size, but in doing that they cause problems. ArcMap does a great job with MrSID (much better than the old ArcView 3.x ever did) that you almost never notice the difference while panning and zooming, but when you hit that print button the problems begin. The plot file size of these images just balloons to the point of our plotter (HP800ps) just choking on the files. The same plot file using a TIFF is much more manageable. The other big issue with them is you can’t load MrSID into ArcSDE. Well you can, but they don’t work as well as if you had an uncompressed format.
I think the best solution is if you order imagery, always request the “raw” TIFF images as well as MrSID. Down the road you’ll be glad you did.
I’m lucky enough to have either lived in Southern California or Arizona over the past 30 years so I’ve always had a quick trip to the ESRI User Conference. For me the biggest question usually is do I leave Sunday or Monday morning. Some bloggers are already heading out (here, here and here). Ed, as you land at Sky Harbor, look down at Sun Devil Stadium and I’ll wave back up at ya!
See you all at the blogger meet up.
Geographic Exploration – The New Fad?
David Maguire has written another blog post and he gives us his thoughts on Google Earth, MSN, Yahoo! and others who have entered the GIS arena. Personally I’m glad to see he gets why the others have been successful (ease of use, global data, branding) and he lets us know what concerns he has for the future of these system. I tend to agree with him that once you get past the hype, these are very basic programs or APIs, but we need to keep in mind that most of these are either beta or version 1.0 of their releases. ESRI needs to move the bar forward so that there is a gap between the hype and their products. Sounds like David or Jack will make an announcement at ESRI about their plans. Hopefully the ArcWeb Services team will be on stage at that point or even a new product.
Good to see a strategic blog post by David. Do you disagree with him? Just blog about it because I’m sure he’d love to see feedback from the users.