National Geographic Games
I suppose it makes sense. Print media is dead everyone says. How do you stay relevant if your primary product is a print magazine with pictures (that probably costs a ton to produce)?
I can’t wait until ArcMap X comes out on Wii.
Pulling off a wicked intersection on Wii ArcGIS.
Pulling off a wicked intersection on Wii ArcGIS.
Getting into the Geography Awareness Week Spirit
Back when ESRI had just released PC ARC/INFO (for the cutting edge DOS) and way before Google was a research project, the United States Congress passed a joint resolution signed by Ronald Reagan proclaiming that Geography Awareness Week would be held in November.
The Great Communicator signs Geography Awareness Week into law
The Great Communicator signs Geography Awareness Week into law
Remember, it isn’t about the Google or ESRI (I suppose GIS Day is for them). It is about the Geography!
Getting into the Geography Awareness Week Spirit
Back when ESRI had just released PC ARC/INFO (for the cutting edge DOS) and way before Google was a research project, the United States Congress passed a joint resolution signed by Ronald Reagan proclaiming that Geography Awareness Week would be held in November.
The Great Communicator signs Geography Awareness Week into law
The Great Communicator signs Geography Awareness Week into law
Remember, it isn’t about the Google or ESRI (I suppose GIS Day is for them). It is about the Geography!
Where is Metered Pricing for Internal Mapping Applications?
So I’ve got a (theoretical) simple internal website for a client that basically puts pushpins for their locations on a map. Since this is on their intranet we’ll have to pay approximately $10,000 to Google or Microsoft to license their products internally. This small company doesn’t have the kind of money (especially in this economy) to put down on such an application. Essentially spending $5-$10K before any coding has taken place is not going to get anywhere and the project is dropped.
Why is it that both Google and Microsoft are stuck in archaic licensing agreements? The logical way to price these services is a metered service. Much like Amazon AWS works, you’ll pay for what you use (with per-session costs decreasing as usage goes up). It would be monitored so I could see what kind of traffic I’m generating with the service and I could be billed monthly via credit card. We’ve been using Amazon S3 and EC2 with great results and it is very easy to justify the low initial costs and still be able to scale to larger applications if warranted.
How do you get Scrooge McDuck to part with money to pay API licensing costs to Google or Microsoft?
The other problem is that if I’ve got to spend that kind of money, I’m going to be developing larger internal applications than I would externally. You can’t do a simple internal mashup if you have to pay large enterprise licensing costs. I was told by one potential client who wanted a Virtual Earth application that ‘For that price we might as well buy another ArcGIS Server license’. For someone to say that it is cheaper to roll out ArcGIS Server for a simple mashup really puts it all into perspective and if you are going to develop with ArcGIS Server, you’ll probably have a larger application than a ‘simple’ Virtual Earth map.
So I’m pleading with Microsoft and Google to revisit their map API licensing and move toward more of an Amazon AWS type service that will help get their mapping tools into more places than today. Everyone wants a Google or Microsoft map on their intranet website, but the current licensing is killing projects before they can start.
The GeoMonkey is a huge supporter of Amazon Web Services
Where is Metered Pricing for Internal Mapping Applications?
So I’ve got a (theoretical) simple internal website for a client that basically puts pushpins for their locations on a map. Since this is on their intranet we’ll have to pay approximately $10,000 to Google or Microsoft to license their products internally. This small company doesn’t have the kind of money (especially in this economy) to put down on such an application. Essentially spending $5-$10K before any coding has taken place is not going to get anywhere and the project is dropped.
Why is it that both Google and Microsoft are stuck in archaic licensing agreements? The logical way to price these services is a metered service. Much like Amazon AWS works, you’ll pay for what you use (with per-session costs decreasing as usage goes up). It would be monitored so I could see what kind of traffic I’m generating with the service and I could be billed monthly via credit card. We’ve been using Amazon S3 and EC2 with great results and it is very easy to justify the low initial costs and still be able to scale to larger applications if warranted.
How do you get Scrooge McDuck to part with money to pay API licensing costs to Google or Microsoft?
The other problem is that if I’ve got to spend that kind of money, I’m going to be developing larger internal applications than I would externally. You can’t do a simple internal mashup if you have to pay large enterprise licensing costs. I was told by one potential client who wanted a Virtual Earth application that ‘For that price we might as well buy another ArcGIS Server license’. For someone to say that it is cheaper to roll out ArcGIS Server for a simple mashup really puts it all into perspective and if you are going to develop with ArcGIS Server, you’ll probably have a larger application than a ‘simple’ Virtual Earth map.
So I’m pleading with Microsoft and Google to revisit their map API licensing and move toward more of an Amazon AWS type service that will help get their mapping tools into more places than today. Everyone wants a Google or Microsoft map on their intranet website, but the current licensing is killing projects before they can start.
The GeoMonkey is a huge supporter of Amazon Web Services
Flickr Mapping
Homer tries to make sense of mapping
Homer tries to make sense of mapping
Dan Catt at geobloggers blogged over a week ago about Flickr about how they were using WOE ID to generate polygons of places that people have tagged in Flickr. A couple people have emailed me on how worthless this exercise is and how arbitrary it is. The Flickr Developer Blog goes into some more detail about the how and why Flickr is doing this and I think that should give everyone who doesn’t understand why this is important some better context. Personally I find it extremely interesting to see how people understand what place they are taking a photo at. A lot of this can all be tied back into Neogeography and what makes an expert. I’d wager people are more careful to geotag their photos in areas they are familiar with and less so when they are traveling. I don’t have enough photos tagged in Flickr, but I’d love to see maps from some larger Flickr users to see how they geotag the world.
What Flickr has is a way to visualize how people are geotagging their photos and they appear to be learning about to improve the process. I think this is a great application of technology to help better understand how humans perceive** **location.