Directions Magazine - Top Stories
Directions Magazine - Press Releases
geoinformatics.com
GISCafe.com CorpNews
GISCafe.com Weekly Reviews
Geospatial Solutions
Mapping Hacks
International Journal of Health Geographics - Latest articles
Information Technology News at iCivilEngineer.com
ESRI News Feed
Geo: International UK News Articles
GIS Lounge - Geographic Information Systems
News
Geobranchen.de
CeGi GEOcatalog - News (deutsche Version)
Geobranchen.de EVENTS - RSS/RDF Feed
AECWEB.de-News
Geography 2.0: Virtual Globes
Ogle Earth
Geo Coding
GIS CAD Interoperability
GIS Matters
All Points Blog
AnyGeo - Anything Geospatial
Mapperz - The Mapping News Blog
Sebastian Pache | Blog for Spatial Technology
Directions Magazine GIS & Spatial Jobs Board
Geographic information systems jobs | SimplyHired
Gigajob: neue Stellenangebote: GIS
GeoJobs Network Jobs Feed
ICjobs.de Geoinformatik
Careerjet
Careerjet - keywords:GIS jobs in USA
Careerjet - keywords:GIS jobs in Europe
Related tags: in [+], News [+], Trends [+], Techniques [+], Issues [+], and [+], World [+], Learning [+], Jobs [+], Free [+], Data [+], als [+]
ESRI has released ArcGIS 9.2 SP6. All those who are unlucky enough to be working though the weekend can get ahead of the rest of us who will spend out Monday morning downloading and installing SP6 on our our workstations.
Me? I’ll be on the couch all weekend watching the British Open.
Some wear their ESRI T-Shirt while climbing mountains, I wear it while watching golf.
Paul Bissett has some great news on Safe Software entering a partnership with WeoGeo. This is great for users who have looked at the superb FME Server and wondered how the heck could they actually use it. WeoGeo gets that into the cloud using Amazon Web Services (AWS) and users benefit by being able to pay for what they use.
Details in the press release. Paul was hinting he had some news for GeoWeb and apparently he wasn’t kidding around. This could be a game changer for sure.
WeoGeo help FME Server into the cloud
 |
Mobilfunk - Business Analyst Applications GIS (m/w) (Geografisches... Von: 18.07.2008 08:54 · Anbieter: SD & T AG · Ort: Deutschland · Gigajob Nr. 13.172.071 Diese Stellenanzeige: ansehen · merken · weiterempfehlen |
Isaac Kunen blog’s about the first spatial whitepaper Microsoft has released.
Introduction to Spatial Coordinate Systems: Flat Maps for a Round Planet
Says Isaac: “This paper is a bit of an odd duck: it isn’t SQL Server, or even Microsoft specific in any way. It’s just a little introduction to the use of spatial data.” Yea so it isn’t exactly new material for spatial folks, but hey it might come in handy one day and it is very well written. Definitely worth bookmarking.
Microsoft is new to the spatial world, so maybe they didn't get everything right.
I was wondering just this week the purpose of ESRI’s EDN site now that they’ve got the Resource Centers online. The ArcObjects Development Blog has some of the thinking behind why EDN is just a placeholder now:
Feedback from the user community, as well as our own technology development goals indicate that developers need information about product installation, architecture, administration, and functional usage as much as any other user, and end-users more and more often are making use of information for product customization, components, scripting, programming, and other resources typically associated with application developers. As our technology continues to grow along with the maturity of information technology, the lines between “user” and “developer” continue to blur and overlap. It makes less and less sense to maintain two sites and have users decide which one to use.
I do like the Resource Centers very much, but the more I think about this move, the more it seems like the same old ESRI response; launch a website and then let it languish until it becomes useless. The support site is stuck in 1999, EDN seems like it was stuck in 2005 and now we’ve got the Resource Centers. I can only hope they don’t fall to the same fate as those before it.
ESRI, I'm just a caveman. I fell on some ice and later got thawed out by some of your scientists. Your world frightens and confuses me!
Jason Harris of ROK Technologies describes how easy it is to work with the new ESRI ArcGIS JavaScript API.
I thought it was time to put my money where my mouth has been these past couple of months. I have been yapping about how easy the new ArcGIS javascript api is to work with, so I thought I’d share a very simple example.
The ease and speed of developing with the JavaScript/REST API at 9.3 will probably pull many developers back into ESRI who have left over the WebADF. I predicted that we’d see many ArcIMS developers finally move off of working with those wacky AXL XML files and to a very RESTful process.
Even Indiana Gilles likes what ESRI has done
Speaking of AXL being a PITA, ESRI’s REST[ful] API uses JSON which in my humble opinion is enough reason to switch off of ArcIMS, I noticed today that Safe Software is now supporting GeoJSON 1.0 in FME. ESRI isn’t supporting GeoJSON with ArcGIS Server, but maybe they will in the future. JSON with ArcGIS Server REST[ful] API is a least a step in the right direction.
The Monsoon really came into Tempe yesterday afternoon and ended up flooding my backyard, the pool overflowed and all that was between the rushing water and my kitchen was me and a push broom (I was able to triumph over the water). I hope we’ll start drying out as the whole yard is a disaster and I’ve got no place to dump the water from the pool until it dries out a bit.
Well at least others have been more productive. Peter Batty has announced that whereyougonnabe.com has gone through an upgrade and now integrates with other social networking tools such as Dopplr and Twitter. He’s got some videos showing the new features of his social networking tool online on Vemeo. He is also presenting at GeoWeb next week on some of the issue his team has had to address on creating a spatial networking site.
Speaking of GeoWeb 2008, online registration closes today so don’t put it off anymore.
Jithen noticed that the ESRI Developer Network (EDN) has been updated to 9.3. That means that ESRI developers now that both the ESRI Resource Centers and the EDN site to help them develop on the ESRI platform.
Sean Gorman wrote up day one of the State of the Map conference.
Lastly, it appears that WeoGeo’s move to Portland, Oregon has been noticed by Oregon Business Magazine. If Paul Bissett can just shave his head bald, I’m sure he’ll get number one next year. Maybe we can do something about it at GeoWeb 2008?
For those who haven’t had a chance to register for GeoWeb 2008, the time to do so is right now. I’ll be there pretty much all week and on a Spark Panel Session titled “National Critical Infrastructure Data Models: Implications for Local Government and Utilities“. If that title doesn’t get your juices flowing, you can always plan to attend the workshops, paper presentations or the OSGeo British Columbia Chapter Meeting.
You can also check out some of last years speakers at GeoWeb 2007 on YouTube to see what you might be missing.
One of the more interesting features ESRI has rolled out lately is the ability to connect to geodatabases that aren’t the same release. Now ArcGIS 9.2 SP5 or SP6 clients can make connections to ArcSDE 9.3 geodatabases and for ArcGIS 9.3 clients can make direct connections to any ArcSDE 9.x geodatabase.
Direct connections to ArcSDE geodatabases
The ESRI Inside the Geodatabase blog has some links to web help and support information worth checking out.
ESRI clients can now consume multiple versions of the geodatabase
The ArcGIS Sever Development Blog says that the ArcGIS JavaScript API is now available to the public. As was mentioned before, it is freely available for anyone to use. You can of course also use the extenders for Virtual Earth and Google Maps if the ESRI JavasScript client isn’t what you are looking for.
The ESRI ArcGIS Server Resource Center has all the information about getting started with the API. You don’t need your own ArcGIS Server install to get started, you can just use ESRI’s sample servers.
Finally you can get RESTful with ArcGIS Server on your own
Last week I assumed one could access the new 9.3 resource centers, but it appeared that unless you were part of the 9.3 beta, you could not log in. Jason Stewart noted in the comments that you can now access them without your beta program login.
I’ve recieved an email saying that the great GeoCommons Finder! is now public beta. Many were very interested when it was announced so if you’ve been waiting for an invite to the private beta, you no longer have to wait. Sign up, check out the user manual, and give feedback.
I love Finder! and how it makes searching for data and learning more about the data easy. You got to check it out. This stuff is easy to use if you know nothing about GIS and it provides enough value to GIS professionals who want to get more data and have it documented for their use.
Brilliant!
Because of a NDA of some sort, the Acrobat 9 support was never in the 9.3 beta program and even missed the 9.3 release. But never fear, you can download the patch to enable Acrobat 9 support:
Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader version 9 support a new version of PDF that allows for encoding of map coordinate system and georeference information inside the PDF file. This patch enables ArcGIS Desktop, Engine, and Server applications to export georeferenced PDF files.
There also appears to be some sort of agreement where Adobe will support GeoPDF in their Arcobat releases. My head hurts a little after reading those press releases (note to everyone, stop using the word “consume”). Hopefully TerraGo will use their blog to actually tell us in English what this agreement means.
I really do enjoy books that ESRI publishes (if only they were cheaper) and I’ve noticed two books coming up that really interest me.
The first, “Building a GIS” by Dave Peters looks to be a big help with implementing GIS at organizations. In fact ESRI is pushing it as a “companion” to Roger Tomlinson’s Thinking About GIS, which is one of my favorite books (I even got a signed copy). The table of contents reveals how deeply it will visit many of the topics folks email me daily on such as ArcGIS architecture and security (feel free to continue emailing me though 
). I know many folks avoid these books because they have an obvious ESRI slant to them (given the publisher), but I find their approach valuable in any geospatial implementation.
The second book is one that I think I’m even more interested in reading, “The Business Benefits of GIS, An ROI Approach” by David Maguire, Victoria Kouyoumjian and Ross Smith. ESRI linked to an interview with David Maguire on the book and David hit a on something that I think is why this book will be very valuable. David rightly points out there are very few examples of “measurable” business benefits of GIS projects and no standardized way to estimate the ROI on using GIS. (read the interview for more insight). A good methodology to establish true value of a GIS will greatly improve its acceptance in both enterprise and smaller organizations. ESRI has even set up a website to support the book ( [gis.esri.com] ).
According to Barnes & Noble, the books won’t be shipping until late August, but maybe there will be something at the ESRI UC next month on them. Even at their cost (especially the second book), I think will be very valuable in my bookshelf.
Update: It looks like there will sessions for both books at the UC.
For those who haven’t received their 9.3 release and can’t sleep at night without knowing what the package looks like, Jithen has some pictures for you.
I’m wondering if the new packaging will be gentler on the DVDs as mine always got very scratched removing them from the cardboard packaging.
Those who aren’t jumping on the 9.3 upgrade bandwagon can grab the latest ArcGIS 9.2 SP6 release available later this month. I’m personally very happy to see continued improvements to 9.2 even though 9.3 is released. Many organizations don’t upgrade immediately and making sure 9.2 is still improved allows those who aren’t ready to make the jump work better. A welcome change from abandoning older releases (though I think in the past years ESRI has been more proactive about supporting versions longer).
It looks like ESRI finally put the 9.3 help publicly and you no longer need a password to access it (HT Jithen & Mapperz).
The ESRI Resource Center is available as well. Unlike the disorganized ArcGIS Support pages, these are focused on the ESRI product you are working with. I’m really happy to see these resource pages, but I’m curious where they fit within the whole ESRI Support and ESRI EDN sites. I suspect that I won’t be using EDN as much as I’ll be using these new resource pages. At any rate the look great and are easy to use; a welcome change from the Support and EDN pages.
UPDATE: It looks like the resource center is still blocked for those who were not in the beta. Someone at ESRI forgot to flip the switch…
There is also a “What’s New in ArcGIS 9.3″ Podcast. The direct link to the podcast is here. Why they make it so hard to get to these podcasts are beyond me. Shouldn’t they be available on the resource pages?
Lastly, while I’m getting ready to deploy ArcSDE ArcGIS Server Enterprise with SQL Server 2008, many are very interested in what PostgreSQL brings to the ArcGIS stable at 9.3. Bill Dollins has been working on a couple blog posts about Using ArcSDE 9.3 with PostgreSQL. Just seeing ArcMap push to PostgreSQL and then using uDIG to view the data is powerful. Says Bill:
…depending on how you implement it, ArcSDE for PostgreSQL can provide interoperability between ArcGIS and an open-source stack. uDig can be leveraged in a pinch to edit data loaded into ArcSDE using the PostGIS geometry type, allowing you to expand to meet demand.
I think many organizations will look long and hard at migrating their SQL Server or Oracle implementations to Postgres.
ESRI ArcGIS 9.3 with all that great Swedish quirkiness
(Photo by dmurray)
Real Ed Parsons tries to frame what Map Maker is. I’m still disappointed in what Map Maker is not, oh well at least they could have paid folks using Mechanical Turk for their time.
Sanchez pays big for map edits
I can’t figure out what I’m more disappointed in, surveyors thinking they should be doing work GIS professionals should be doing or a magazine previewing articles to government agencies for them to censor them.
Inconceivable!
Update: It appears that the author withdrew the article, not the publisher. The idea that a state board would even worry about such things shows that they obviously don’t have enough to do.
GISUser.com has a news release posted that probably was meant to go out tomorrow, but “today” ArcGIS 9.3 ships. (HT Bill Dollins)
So now go bug your local ESRI rep asking them when it will show up.
Caption not needed
The ArcGIS Explorer Blog announced that AGX 480 was released last night. I was wondering when build 480 was going to arrive given the May timeframe announced at the DevSummit. You’ll want to check out the “What’s New in ArcGIS Explorer 480” for all the improvements, but I’ll list some of the ones that I think are important:
How AGX handles point symbols is interesting and I’m anxious to give it a try. We’ve been working on a project in Google Earth for Trip Reduction but we might deploy it on AGX if build 480 is as good as it appears.
Microsoft is smartly asking governmental agencies to publish their satellite and aerial imagery though Virtual Earth.
GoVE supports the data sharing goals of many public sector organizations by providing a free publishing service. Through GoVE, your taxpayer-funded information will be provided on a free, open access web site that benefits taxpayers, government officials, your corporate tax base, state and local governments, etc.
I think the definition of “free, open access” is a little different than most of us would assume it to be. That said, I really don’t have any problem with cities pushing their data into Virtual Earth, Google Earth or any other commercial API.
If there is any problem with it though, it is in the restrictions the API puts on developers and how they can use the data. I would recommend that any government that wants to put their imagery up on the web and be available for everyone to use, take advantage of Google and Microsoft, but also use services such as OpenAerialMap which have licenses that everyone can use and probably more beneficial to the taxpayers as they aren’t paying Microsoft for access to their data. Letting Microsoft and Google have the imagery is nice, but letting the community freely use it as well is just as nice.
Less gatekeepers of aerial imagery is a good thing for the community
Update: Andres writes about Google’s new MapMaker and wonders the same thing about community getting to use such services freely. I mean what is the point about putting effort into these initiatives if you can’t get the data back out. There are organizations that I would freely donate my time to, but Microsoft and Google aren’t them. I’m starting to sound like SteveC…
Update 2: Umibot over at Off the Map (Urban Mapping’s Blog) hits on the point that many are making about the Google:
It isn’t that Google can do neighborhoods ‘better’ than UMI (or anybody else), it’s the idea that Google doesn’t need anybody else to do it for them. In fact, they don’t need to do it themselves–throw it over to a fanatical user base, and watch them diligently work away
At least they could do it though Amazon Mechanical Turk and reward users for taking the effort clean up Google’s maps. Given how much money the Google is making off of these services, at least they could toss everyone a bone or some Google Goo.
libLAS has moved forward and has been released as 1.0.0b1 in the hopes of attracting more testers. For those who haven’t been following, “libLAS is a BSD library for reading and writing ASPRS LAS version 1.0 and 1.1 data. LAS-formatted data is heavily used in LiDAR processing operations, and the LAS format is a sequential binary format used to store data from sensors and as intermediate processing storage by some applications.” If you deal with LiDAR on a regular basis, you might want to take a look at libLAS due to its integration with GDAL (see Hobu’s comment below). While I haven’t taken this release out for a spin yet (not dealing with LiDAR in the new job), I’m sure it goes without saying that it is a beta product so be prepared for “issues”. Yet if the goal is to get better LiDAR tools, a little pain now could result in good things for all.
In more OSGeo news, I saw that GeoNetwork graduated incubation last week. GeoNetwork has really flown under the radar and I’m pretty sure it will start to get more notice as time goes on and the need for geospatial/metadata catalogs increases.
Heck, why not one more OSGeo note? The great Frank Warmerdam posted that OSGeo4W is looking for testers and contributors. OSGeo4W can somewhat be thought of as superseding MS4W and FWTools, but it isn’t that simple. Basically it is an installer for OSGeo windows packages that allows users to easily install different OSGeo projects. Windows users wanting to get into the open source GIS world should sit up and take note.
Lastly I find it very interesting that ESRI is apparently looking for a SEO specialist (HT APB). I find that using the Google to search the ESRI forums, knowlege base articles and help is virtually impossible. I can only hope that they plan to get their support and help indexed by the world’s search engines. Of course we’ve been waiting for improved EDN search for years so I won’t be holding my breath.
Ever since the news that Adobe Acrobat 9 would support “mapping”, I’ve been getting emails from people asking what this does to GeoPDF. I’m sure the GeoPDF team has been fielding the same questions and has blogged about what they think are the important points of GeoPDF.
GeoPDF is a geospatial extension to the Adobe PDF file format, from TerraGo Technologies. It is used to present GIS and mapping data in a standard Adobe Systems PDF. This extension adds a coordinate transformation matrix and other metadata to allow transformation of PDF coordinates to a projected Cartesian coordinate system. GeoPDFs often include other advanced PDF features such as layers and object data which can add significant GIS functionality to the file, particularly when used with the TerraGo Technologies plugin to Adobe Reader.
Unfortunately, that description doesn’t do enough to convince me that GeoPDF is a viable format moving forward. I’ve barely run into GeoPDF over the years so believe me when I say I’m a GeoPDF novice and I could be missing the boat here. I’m sure there are very good reasons to use GeoPDF and I know some people who seem to believe in the format. GeoPDF of course requires an extra step to create and take advantage of the format, thus TerraGo really needs do a better job of getting out “the why” to use GeoPDF.
Otherwise it will just become a niche format.
Update: Commentator Kevin has some points as to why GeoPDF is powerful.
|
Unser Kunde, weltweit führend in der Energie- und Automatisierungstechnik,... Von: 11.07.2008 16:26 · Anbieter: brefisag · Ort: CH-8000 Zürich · Gigajob Nr. 13.139.706 Diese Stellenanzeige: ansehen · merken · weiterempfehlen |
The excellent ArcPad Team Blog has info on the new storage format for ArcPad 7.1.
Prior to ArcPad 7.1, shapefiles were ArcPad’s most common spatial file format for features. Shapefiles are great for many applications, but shapefiles lack the capabilities to support more sophisticated relational database requirments that exist in the ArcGIS Geodatabase. So ArcPad 7.1 introduced the AXF format, which we like to refer to as a “lightweight geodatabase”.
As a user of ArcPad at my old job, I really hated storing information in the shapefile format. Actually I hate shapefiles, period. Any format that requires you to maintain at least 3 separate files to ensure they work is a bad idea in my book. I liked that the ArcPad team build upon the Microsoft’s SQL Server Compact Edition platform.
Time to bury the shapefile format!
I am excited to read on Jo Cook’s blog that version 1.2 of Portable GIS has been released. The concept of being able to either try out or even use software without having to install it, is how we’ll get GIS applications in the hands of everyone. Plus who doesn’t want to carry GIS on your key chain? That isn’t geeky, it is being prepared!
Note: there have been some problems with the download server, but all seems well as of this moment.
Putting Open Source GIS software in your pocket
The Yahoo/Microsoft/Google quagmire hasn’t stopped Google from separating out their geospatial blog from their search blog. The Y! Geo blog has started up today and possibly points to Yahoo! pushing more of the geospatial technology out. In addition they’ve announced their Yahoo! Internet Location is now called Yahoo! GeoPlanet.
The Y! Geo blog seems to be written in marketing speak, but hopefully that will change as time goes on.
Jerry Yang is ecstatic at the idea of GeoYahoo!
OK, well the title might be sexier than the content, but I thought I’d finally get around to linking to Sean Gorman’s blog post about a conversation we had about the GeoWeb. I was just listening to his interview on the VerySpatial podcast and it really is amazing how far we’ve come in a year. To say I had little faith in these projects/companies (WeoGeo, FortiusOne, Pleiades, OpenStreetMap among others), is an understatement, but they are really proving that if you give people a platform to collaborate and share data, they’ll do really amazing things. I’m so excited to see where we end up in the next year. Good thing for the disclaimer at the bottom of my blog sidebar!
And the Autodesk reference? This afternoon Shaan Hurley from Autodesk stopped by the RSP Architects studio space in Tempe. Shaan and I have emailed each other for the past few years and it was great to finally meet him in person and show him around the studio space. It was a shame we weren’t able to spend more time, but since he makes it down to Arizona often, I’m sure I’ll be seeing him again really soon.
I was talking about web cartography with a client today and he was saying how he can tell any map made with GIS in a couple seconds. While he did admit that he has been fooled quite a bit, he was still disappointed that there really hasn’t been mainstream improvements to quality of maps. I think he’s a little blinded by the average ArcMap document produced as most of them look alike because many GIS professionals seem to just be happy with the default symbology (or just don’t know how to take advantage of Cartographic Representations). Now this is somewhat unfair to ESRI as most desktop GIS clients seem to fall into these faults.
OK, but why is this a problem? Tonight, while watching ASU fall apart against Fresno State in College Baseball, a couple of us came up with some ideas:
What do you think? We all see amazing cartography and some of it is very easy to produce. Why can’t we be blowing people’s minds anymore? There are tons of great books out there to help.
Just being better than a Disney map shouldn’t be enough
|
Tätigkeitsbeschreibung:
- Bestellabwicklung für Federspeicherantriebe,... Von: 05.06.2008 11:58 · Anbieter: k.A. · Ort: CH-5036 Oberentfelden · Gigajob Nr. 13.126.197 Diese Stellenanzeige: ansehen · merken · weiterempfehlen |
My hat is off to everyone who had to work within the BIM (Building Information Modeling) space on a daily basis. Talk about using tools that aren’t refined enough (and this is coming from someone who has worked with GIS applications for 15+ years). It was painful hearing about how many hoops folks have to jump through with BIM and how it affects their workflows (not in a good way).
It has been clear to me with all the emails I’ve received from folks wanting to know more about how I’m approaching BIM and GIS, that there is great interest in the subject. Just about everyone of my clients I’ve talked to about the move to the new company has mentioned BIM as something they want to or are being required to get involved with. I’ll make it my goal in the next year or so to keep everyone informed about how things are going and what I’ve learned about working with BIM and GIS.
I’ve just gotten Revit installed on my desktop and as soon as we can square the ArcGIS Desktop licenses we’ll start working on workflows and interoperability.
We don’t need gatekeepers between BIM and GIS
Read more of this story at Slashgeo.
|
Ihre Herausforderung:
- Weiterentwicklung von Geoinformationssoftware
-... Von: 08.07.2008 08:41 · Anbieter: BANDAO Unternehmensberatung · Ort: D-80333 München · Gigajob Nr. 13.124.077 Diese Stellenanzeige: ansehen · merken · weiterempfehlen |
