Blog

That fun time we all wait for with releases, the Esri Service Pack. ArcGIS 10 SP1 is out and available for those who want to be cutting edge. The long list of what is fixed is here (but we all know you aren’t reading that and you’ll install anyway). Plus how many ArcIMS service packs will you ever be able to download in the future?

Looking for something besides damnyouautocorrect.com for your Friday distraction? A couple of interesting GeoDesign links are below for distraction.

First up is a new e-book from Esri called, “Changing Geography by Design: Selected Readings in GeoDesign”. As expensive as that title is, it is available as a free PDF from ESRI. And don’t worry, Carl Steinitz’s work is way back in the Bibliography, so you can ignore his complicated University-think GeoDesign ideas (yea, works well at Harvard, but us mere mortals live in the real world).

The other is a video demonstrating some GeoDesign workflows to perform a suitability analysis. Cool stuff (though clearly an Esri exercise)…

Oh, and Go Giants!

Yea it is about time us Phoenix Metro folk get off our butts and start up an open geo group. We’ve got our first meetup this Wednesday in downtown Phoenix at the Turf Accountant Pub at 7:00 PM. I’ll be there and so will many of the GeoNinjas in the Valley of the Sun. It’s just off the Metro Light Rail so it will be easy to get to for all.

Find out more at phxgeo.org and on the event page.

Alper Dincer is one busy guy. Seems like just a couple weeks ago he release iExtMap for iOS. Well if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know I’m always complaining about apps and app stores holding back real mobile development. I mean shouldn’t it be simple to just have one web app that covers iOS, Android and Blackberry? Ah, but no. It just isn’t that easy, until now…

Alper though has a new framework that looks very promising. Says Alper:

Writing a multi-platform viewer is also quite hard due to different code bases on different platforms. Mobile Web is developing very fast due to usage of WebKit on different platforms. Today; iOS, Android, WebOS, Bada, BlackBerry, Symbian and other platforms are using WebKit implementations on their browsers and this lead to a dream of web developer : One browser to rule them all?

Anyway, I have the idea to write a mobile version of ExtMap, but there is a need for a motivation to start the project. The motivation was Sencha Touch Developer Contest and Sencha Touch Framework and I started working ExtMap Touch on Sencha Touch Framework and Google Maps JavaScript API v3.

Yahtzee! I’ve been playing with the demo this morning at the GITA Oil and Gas conference (where WeoGeo is exhibiting) and I love what I see. I can’t wait to get back home and start playing around with this thing. Check out the live demo and the ExtMap project home for more information.

A great intro to web mapping!

I was thinking just the other day when someone asked, why were there not updated Google Maps API books out there. People like to read books, right? I mean, reading API pages is boring even for devs. I saw a review a couple of weeks ago of Adam Duvander’s book, Map Scripting 101, and jumped at the chance to read it.

Funny thing though when I first started reading it. I was totally turned off by the use of the open-source Mapstraction library. But what do you know… I’m a total convert now for beginners looking to get started in web mapping. I was thinking, it would be so better to teach people one API (probably the Google one) and then leave it at that. I mean who really uses Bing or Yahoo! anymore. Well after reading the book, I think for most “ordinary” people, focusing on the Mapstraction library is the way to go. Being able to code one JavaScript app for your web mapping applications simplifies the whole process (no matter how you wish to use it). If you need advanced features, you’ll probably want to code directly with each particular API, but I’d wager most people reading a book titled “Map Scripting 101” what the quickest method to getting a good-looking map.

Anyway, enough about Mapstraction and on to Adam’s book. Adam starts off with some simple maps built on a couple of APIs, but quickly gets into how you can use Mapstraction to simplify it. Once he gets beyond the intro to creating maps with these APIs, he gets into some samples that should get the attention of those who this book was written for. He hits on some classic mapping examples such as weather and earthquakes but then gets into some Twitter and music event stuff that was a refreshing change from typical web mapping books. And you better believe there was a coffee shop example that used some cool geocoding and routing stuff.

Adam also got into some of the formats that are important to web mappers; GeoRSS, GeoJSON, KML, and even threw in a MySQL example. Word of caution though, you’ll want to have some MySQL background before trying as there wasn’t much background there (and probably rightly so). The Map Scripting website has all the examples ready to go if you want to be a copy and paste coder.

The one thing about the whole book though is that it is clear that Adam is a great writer who is excited about technology and it shows. The book is very accessible for beginners and even intermediates who might want to get more familiar with Mapscraction. Adam should be very proud of his book as I think he’s done a superb job on it. I hope he’ll continue writing technology books because his style is needed in a normally very drab and boring space. I’d wager most readers of this blog will gain a ton of benefit from reading this book if they want to learn more and apply some of the fun things you can do with web mapping.

This web mapping is the craziest party that could ever be…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKaQzQAlNn4

I’m sure all Esri EDN users are running in to the same problems I am with the product, licensing. At WeoGeo, I’m testing our new toolbar on many platforms and OS versions so that we know it works with ArcGIS 10. The problem is that the ArcView license included in EDN only allows you to install ArcView twice. Every time I need to switch from one VM to the other, I’ve got to go through this crazy unregister/register process just to use ArcMap. And you’d better believe I’m headed to a point where I won’t be able to install ArcView anymore because I’ve hit the install ceiling (which I’ve heard is at 999 installs).

So don’t assume that an EDN is licensed per developer because it sure isn’t. Makes you question the value of the product where licensing keeps kicking you in the shins. I have no will to fire up ArcGIS 10 anymore because of the Esri licensing mess. This wasn’t a problem at 9 and I can only assume licensing was tightened at 10 so we’d all pay up. But EDN is supposed to be licensed for developers, not production and you’d think Esri would encourage me to make sure my toolbar runs on 32/64 bit XP/Vista/7. Time to cue the Price is Right losing horn…

Remember that World Streets Map Service from Esri? Of course, you don’t. You’ve been using the Google or Bing maps as your backgrounds or the beautiful Esri Topographical map. Parcels in World Streets is nice I guess, but until it is in the Topographical map service, I just can’t see using it.

You have to be in awe about the pressure companies such as Esri, Google and Microsoft can put on these “premium”, “authoritative” data sources (like First American) to release their product like this. Parcels are a big deal to many folks, but the percentage that actually care about the parcel database vs the pretty picture outlines is small. Now everyone who just wants to see Parcels on their map can do for free (well free in the sense that Esri and Google’s licensing allows it).

Why anyone would pay for parcel data anymore is beyond me.

ArcGIS Server – now with Legends

No GIS Professional can make a map without a legend. Probably because we create such complex maps, they can’t stand on their own. Anyway ESRI added some new features that should help us GIS Professional enter the world of Web 2.0. Key new features as I see it are:

• Legend
• Scale Bar (nothing like a scale bar to make your map ugly)
• Touch aware (support for iOS devices)
• WMS Support

The whole list of new and changed is available here. One day I hope to see Dojo dropped, but that’s just me.

Nothing is final, but it looks like Netezza could be part of the IBM empire:

International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) agreed to acquire data specialist Netezza Corp. (NZ) in a deal valued at $1.7 billion, as Big Blue expands its analytics business.

….

Netezza provides technology that allows companies and government agencies to quickly analyze huge amounts of data-something IBM says will give it an advantage in its analytics business.

Netezza offers “a much simpler way to get started on analytics and data warehousing than anyone else in the industry,” said Arvind Krishna, IBM general manager for information management. He told Dow Jones Newswires Netezza’s system can be operated by one person instead of “an army of people” and that it provides increased performance at a lower cost.

Of course, Netezza does spatial as well so it will be interesting to see what happens in this space with the IBM R&D behind it.

The big news tonight though is Hawaii Five-0 is back!

They roll this out…

This afternoon, I sat through the Collaboration Panel discussion. The panel was made of of a few people representing state, regional and local governments and well as utilities and academia. Almost uniformly, there was a fear (yes, I mean fear) of crowdsourcing that was best summed up by the following statement:

Crowdsourcing presents a vulnerability to us.

Fear of accurate maps? I wish I was there to see who could have this backward stance, but it doesn’t really matter. The tide is against them and in time they will be washed away. If there wasn’t a better reason to have SOTM 2011 in Denver, I can’t think of anything else. These folks need help and if the Front Range is the great hope for the USA, we are screwed.

Can’t find my way home because the map isn’t crowdsourced!