Spatially Adjusted

Tag: esri

  • Tracking Hurricane Wilma with ArcWeb

    I’ve been keeping an eye on Wilma using the ESRI hurricane tracker mostly because I have many friends in the Fort Myers, FL area. Anyway I just noticed something on the tracker that made me look twice.

    Arcweb alpha

    Say hello to Tropical Depression Alpha (hiding off there to the right of the image). So the counter has reset on the storm names. For those who haven’t heard:

    In the event that more than 21 named tropical cyclones occur in the Atlantic basin in a season, additional storms will take names from the Greek alphabet: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and so on.

    I wonder if this happens again next year if they will start naming the second batch of storm names. Amazing how quickly this has spun out of control. I’ll take the 120 degree days here in the summer over a hurricane, blizzard, earthquake, tsunami anytime. Hopefully when I wake up in the morning not too much damage will have been caused by Wilma. Good luck Florida.

  • ET GeoWizards LT Released

    Link – ET GeoWizards LT on ArcScripts

    ET GeoWizards LT is a set of data processing functions for ArcGIS presented in a user-friendly, wizard type interface.

    ET GeoWizards LT was created as a subset of the free functions of ET GeoWizards (available from http://www.ian-ko.com) and complies with the requirements for posting on ArcScripts:

    • It is 100% free.
    • It is not a sample or a demo. All 28 functions included are fully functional with no restrictions whatsoever.

    How about that!?! Talk about being responsive. Ianko went ahead and changed his extension to be completely free. Frankly I’m very impressed with his responsiveness and it shows how he listens to the GIS community as a whole. No other company has responded in my little blog other than him and it would have been so easy (I wouldn’t have blamed him) to say I’ll remove it when others do.

    So go download the updated extension and make sure you check out his website to see what the difference between this LT version and the full version is. Heck why not buy the software anyway and show him that you appreciate his work and his responsiveness.

    Etgeowizrdslt

  • Blog Support in the ESRI World

    Link – Peer Support by Blog

    Andrew Hallam posted to thank Jithen Singh for letting the world know about a technical paper on ArcGIS server. He also makes the great point of how blogs gave him information that he normally would not have gotten from ESRI because of their confusing support site. While it is true that they have a “Support Notifications” registration site that will send out emails for this kind of information, I’ve noticed that many new documents show up without being included in the weekly email. What needs to happen is RSS feeds for practically ever section of the support site. I should be able to subscribe to the ArcIMS RSS Feed and get all new documents as they appear, not wait until the get included in an email that my Outlook always seems to label as Junk Mail (no matter what I do with its settings). I’ve heard again and again from ESRI staff about how the support site is held together with duct tape, but something has to give and soon over more RSS feeds.

    Oh and would someone over at ESRI make Jei some sort of MVP? (or just send him some t shirt that said GIS Geek on it) He’s pretty much deserved some kind of recognition given all he’s done over on the other side of the world.

  • Tracking Hurricane Wilma

    Link – ESRI Hurricane Viewer

    A nice feature about ArcWeb is these services are ready to go. No need to mashup something for the next hurricane. Anyway, as with Katrina and Rita, you can use the ESRI Hurricane Tracker to check up on the progress of Wilma. Unfortunately it is looking like it will be hitting the US, but hopefully it won’t be as large as Katrina or Rita. As with before, select “Current Hurricanes” from the Map Type in the upper right and navigate to the area off the coast of Honduras..

    Esri wilma 1

    Also, don’t forget about the Geospatial One Stop Hurricane page where you can get all the latest data and information about the 2005 hurricane season.

  • Favorite Extensions and Scripts for ArcGIS

    I haven’t posted too much on Desktop GIS, but I was thinking today I’d look at what extensions and scripts I use every day that are not ESRI products. The biggest one lately has been the TerraServer Download for ArcGIS 9.0 which has been a big help to getting up to date imagery on sites around the country. We have quite a good collection of DOQQs over the past few years, but they aren’t as up to date as the TerraServer imagery is. The other utility for ArcGIS I’ve been using is the Geodatabase Diagrammer. If you have Microsoft Visio, there is no easier way to diagram the elements of a Geodatabase. Lastly I have been using the Batch Define Projection Python script practically every day. I wish one could just highlight all the layers in ArcCatalog and just right click and define the projection, but you can’t. This script is the next best thing.

  • More on Commercial Software in ESRI’s ArcScripts

    As with most blogging tools have spam catching built into them to stop comment spam and this one is no exception. I try and look though the “junk comments” every once and a while just to make sure that nothing got labeled as junk by mistake. Well last night I found one by Ianko who makes the very popular ET GeoWizards tools for ArcGIS. I’m not sure why his IP is labeled SPAM, but SpamLookup thinks it is. Anyway, here is his comment on my post Stop Putting Commercial Software in ESRI ArcScripts

    James,

    Since you mention ET GeoWizards I think that I have to post a comment on this.

    It is true that ET GeoWizards is a commercial product (I would rather qualify it as semi-commercial), but I think that it has got more free functionality than 50% of the rest of the submissions to ArcScripts that deal with data processing put together. You can check this here if you want: http://www.ian-ko.com/ET_GeoWizards/gw_NoRestrictions.htm

    Do you think that it will be better if the ArcGIS users do not know about those free functions that they need in their everyday work?

    What about questions on ESRI forums like: “How do I remove the excess vertices from my polylines” and answers like “Get an ArcEditor license and use Generalize!” when the users can just use the free function of ET GeoWizards and their ArcView license.

    What do you think the ArcGIS users will gain if ET GeoWizards is removed from the ArcScripts site?

    If you give me valid reasons, I’ll remove the ET GeoWizards entry from ArcScripts.

    Cheers

    Ianko

    I will agree that ET Geowizards is a great tool that helps users accomplish tasks that ArcView normally can’t do on its own, but as you say it is a commercial product. I guess one persons demo is another persons “semi-commercial”. I will give you that Ianko’s product isn’t as bad as most commercial scripts in ArcScripts, but the fact that there is registration required to get all the functionality of ET Geowizards shows me that is is a demo for their full product (without a timeout period) and as the upload screen for ArcScripts plainly says.

    I would say that if the ArcScripts version of ET Geowizards only had the free tools and had an “ad” only in the about screen, it would be fine for ArcScripts, but in its current form it is a demo and in turn using ESRI’s bandwidth to sell your product. Because you sell ET Geowizards, it shouldn’t be in ArcScripts.

    The big problem with these smaller GIS developer companies is that they have no easy way for their product to get noticed by the masses of GIS professionals. ESRI should create a section where these companies can upload their tools. There is a huge difference between XTools and XTools Pro. The spirit of ArcScripts has been violated by commercial software and many GIS pros have told me that they don’t upload their scripts and extensions to ArcScripts because it is such a mess with commercial software.

  • ESRI Podcasts

    Link – ESRI Podcasts

    I just got a note from an ESRI employee that there is now an ESRI Podcast page. They all appear to have come out of the 2005 User Conference and the 2005 Homeland Security GIS Summit. I’d like to see an RSS feed with enclosures to allow people to add this to their RSS readers, but it is a step in the right direction. Don’t forget to also check out the videos that the EDN team is starting to post as well.

  • Glenn Letham Restates His Opinions about Google vs. ESRI

    Link – More on Google vs ESRI Pricing

    FYI, for the record, I should have stated earlier (regarding my post about price comparison of ESRI vs Google Earth – see below) that I was simply relaying some material from the Keyhole BBS that was sent to me from a colleague.

    Glenn clarifies his position about Google vs ESRI. Glenn’s posting style lends itself to confusion in regards to what is his thoughts vs what he is “reporting”. I always put the link to a referenced article first in my posts and use > tags to make sure that what I’m quoting is separated from my own thoughts.

  • ESRI Posts Videos on EDN

    Link – EDN Videos

    Brian Goldin has posted to let us know that ESRI has posted some really interesting videos up on EDN. If you’ve ever seen a video on Microsoft’s Channel 9 you’ll have an idea about how Brian did these. I love them because they are raw, just ESRI employees talking about what they love. There are times that ESRI feels like such a closed environment, but with videos you get to see behind the scenes on the ESRI campus in Redlands. Don’t let the EDN site scare you because one of the new videos is with Corey Tucker who is lead product specialist for the geoprocessing analysis team so even GIS analysts will get value from these videos. If you are new to GIS and want to know more about what GIS analysts do, you should check out that video with Corey Tucker also as he gets into building models to perform analysis. On top of all this, Brian is soliciting feedback on his blog and he’s open suggestions for new videos.

    How about an ArcExplorer video?

  • Glenn Letham tries to stir the pot with FUD

    Link – Will Google Earth Replace the need for costly GIS software and license fees?

    This was a recent topic of discussion on the Google BBS… no doubt you’ve also been wondering… why invest deeply in a pricey IMS, GIS site license and support costs etc… “Lets take a look how much ArcGIS software we would need on one desktop to replicate the functionality of Google Earth. First you would need ArcView for $1,500, then add a license of 3D Analyst for $2,500. So now we are at $4,000 dollars just for software and don’t forget to add the yearly $1,300 dollar maintenance fee also. Now you need to pay for ArcWeb services so that you have data (which there aren’t even prices on website). Add in ArcIMS and ArcSDE servers and your talking the GNP of some third world countries.”

    First off Glenn, lets try and include links with your posts. For those who want to see the reference post in Glenn’s blog entry click here.

    I won’t spend too much time responding here to this charge that to get the functionality of Google Earth, you need to spend $4,000. One doesn’t buy a backhoe to dig a hole for a plant in your front yard, but this is what the writer above is proposing. The best response to people who post information like this above is, “To get the functionality of ArcView and 3D Analyst in Google Earth, you’d have to buy ArcView and 3D Analyst. Google Earth is nothing more than a 3D Map Viewer. ArcGIS is a professional GIS suite. Has Photoshop been hurt by Picasa since Google released the free version? Probably not any more than ESRI will be affected by Google Earth in its current state. ArcView is overkill for many, and Google Earth probably fits the bill for them, but to expect GE to replace the scientific quality analysis that ArcGIS provides is laughable considering how they can’t even get the alignment of their data correct. Maybe in the future Google Earth will add more data support, but the years of experience that ESRI has with spatial analysis will be hard to compete with. Many of us long time GIS professionals remember the press all said ArcView was dead the day that Microsoft released MapPoint. That didn’t happen and I just don’t see Google Earth making any dent into ESRI’s core business.

    Oh and the writer of that post above that Glenn linked to? He posted this in the same thread.

    As a side note ESRI is now saying that the free viewer ArcExplorer will include ArcScene, their 3D environment. Not sure if Google Earth had anything to do with it but competition is nice.

    Seems that even he realizes that ESRI is still a force to be reckoned with even if Glenn doesn’t.