County GIS Mapping Websites
Adena blogged about a county mapping site from Morris County, New Jersey (OK, I’ll admit right now I was born in Morristown, NJ; the county seat of Morris County). I had not seen the website before, but this comment from Adena got me curious:
It’s a quite complex app, the kind I’ve not seen implemented in Flash. It must be pretty slick; it was named site of the day by Adobe earlier this year. Do be warned: you may need to read the help to use the site!
Go to the website yourself and take a look. I don’t want to take away anything from the people who implemented it because it is very impressive, but is this the kind of GIS web map site that should be the public face of a county?? My current county has a horrible MapGuide mapping site (you know the classic ActiveX plugin MapGuide thing?) that is difficult for even me to use. Most county websites (no matter if they use ESRI, Autodesk, open source, other1) are very difficult to use, take forever to load, run very slow, require plugins, require reading a manual and frustrate the heck out of me.
Shouldn’t a country web mapping site be simple and easy to use? I would assume the average user of a county website doesn’t have an engineering degree so why not aim these sites at the user level? And we need to be held acountable for accepting them (I’ve been using the Maricopa mapping site for as long as I can remember and I’m pretty sure I’ve never complained to the county, just on this blog). So right now I’m going to contact my county and let them know their website isn’t useful and you should do the same.
Won’t someone please think of the GeoMonkey?
Wont someone please think of the GeoMonkey?
- Manifold ↩︎
Open Source DoD, ESRI on Google, Fire Eagle flies
I watched the BarCamp.mil from afar and from what I’ve heard it sounded like it was a great event. Andrew Turner says that open source got quite a bit of play.
In the open-source world, a government supported promotion of its use would have dramatic effects. Looking at the current state of commercial company support for projects such as Apache, Linux, Gnome, OSGeo and more demonstrate that there is clear benefit to be gained. If the government then pushes open-source there would a huge upsurge in the support of projects and communities.
I don’t think there has to be 100% open source, but utilitzing it where it makes sense benefits the taxpayer.
ESRI today was the guest blogger on the Google Geo Developers blog. Sterling did a pretty good job of outlining the ArcGIS JavaScript Extension for Google Maps and how it can be utilized. I’m still waiting for my 9.3 to show up (long story) to actually start implementing ArcGIS Server 9.3 so I have to live through these posts for now.
Yahoo!’s Fire Eagle has left beta and is available to everyone. I don’t think there has been a killer app yet built using Fire Eagle, but the service has the potential to link LBS applications together. I think Yahoo! some really good spatial services (can’t forget about GeoPlanet) and I’d love to see them become more serious about them than their past would reflect.
Open Source DoD, ESRI on Google, Fire Eagle flies
I watched the BarCamp.mil from afar and from what I’ve heard it sounded like it was a great event. Andrew Turner says that open source got quite a bit of play.
In the open-source world, a government supported promotion of its use would have dramatic effects. Looking at the current state of commercial company support for projects such as Apache, Linux, Gnome, OSGeo and more demonstrate that there is clear benefit to be gained. If the government then pushes open-source there would a huge upsurge in the support of projects and communities.
I don’t think there has to be 100% open source, but utilitzing it where it makes sense benefits the taxpayer.
ESRI today was the guest blogger on the Google Geo Developers blog. Sterling did a pretty good job of outlining the ArcGIS JavaScript Extension for Google Maps and how it can be utilized. I’m still waiting for my 9.3 to show up (long story) to actually start implementing ArcGIS Server 9.3 so I have to live through these posts for now.
Yahoo!’s Fire Eagle has left beta and is available to everyone. I don’t think there has been a killer app yet built using Fire Eagle, but the service has the potential to link LBS applications together. I think Yahoo! some really good spatial services (can’t forget about GeoPlanet) and I’d love to see them become more serious about them than their past would reflect.
You have to like Google’s commitment…
Reminds me of the old USPS motto, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat fire nor gloom of night stays these couriers Googlers from their appointed rounds”.
Update (2008-08-21): It looks like Google has just pulled down the Street View images of the fire.
You have to like Google’s commitment…
Reminds me of the old USPS motto, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat fire nor gloom of night stays these couriers Googlers from their appointed rounds”.
Update (2008-08-21): It looks like Google has just pulled down the Street View images of the fire.
GeoServer gets a new UI
I’ve always thought of GeoServer as a great way to get introduced to open source web mapping servers because its Admin page was much easer to use than MapServer. It looks like at 2.0, the Admin page will get even better as the GeoServer team announced that the new UI is in the 2.0 alpha release. I can’t wait to see how this develops until the “final” 2.0 release.