James Fee GIS Blog

Link – ArcWeb and PHP – Controlling visible layers Walt Eis has posted a simple method to control what layers display on your ArcWeb Public Services. Walt has really taken off on ArcWeb over the past few weeks, with many great examples on how to use PHP and ArcWeb together.

In case you don’t already subscribe to his RSS feed, Jeff Archer posted a small bio about himself and how he ended up as the Product Manager for ArcGIS Server. I’ve never met Jeff as unfortunately our workload hasn’t included much ArcGIS server beyond a few projects, but if you do use Server you should [...]

I’ve got family in the Austin area so I’m very happy to see that the hurricane will be well to the east of them, but it looks like Houston will be getting more than before. The ESRI Hurricane Disaster Viewer is a great tool to keep up to date on the path. The live web [...]

Link – Multi-Dimensional Imagery from NOAA Multi-Dimensional Imagery from polar orbiting and geostationary satellites at NOAA really gives you a sense of depth in these hurricanes. I wonder if this time next year if we’ll see 3D live models of hurricanes in Google Earth and ArcExplorer. Until then, bookmark this site for incredible pictures (high [...]

Link – Sportsim with Google Maps and Google Earth Add On The introduction of free mapping services from Google Inc. with Google Maps and Google Earth in the last months has revolutionized the way we view maps on the Internet. Sportsim has today released a new software version with these Google add-ons: * Create your [...]

I got a note from ESRI letting me know that they are helping local and federal government agencies prepare for Rita. It seems that everyone has learned much about what happened after the devastation of Katrina and I think everyone is being proactive with Rita. ESRI’s online information will be updated to ensure people know [...]

It is hard to keep track of all these hurricanes this year which is too bad for people who live in the Southeast United States. I went to the ESRI’s Hurricane Maps and Help, but Rita doesn’t seem to be on their radar yet. Lucky for us, ArcWeb Services has tons of weather services that [...]

Link – Earth Mapping Blog Rob Shanks, the President of GlobeXplorer has been blogging since July and for some reason I haven’t seen or heard about it. Probably not a bad read if you want to keep up on the satellite/aerial image industry as a whole. I’m subscribed.

I’ve been talking quite a bit over the past few weeks about why I think Google Earth will become the default GIS viewer in the next year, but I thought I’d also post about what might keep it from coming that viewer. Support for projections – Sure one can always change the projection of files, [...]

I’m home today and tomorrow taking “vacation”. I use the quotes because I’m getting new cabinets and counter-tops for our kitchen. Posting will probably be light until Wednesday.

Link – Been a while… Art’s been really busy and that can only mean good things for end users. He’s thrown up a big post about what he’s been up to, what we can look forward to at ArcGIS 9.2 and he’s even asked his team to start blogging more about ESRI, ArcGIS and AJAX/.NET. [...]

Link – Hurricane Katrina Disaster Viewer (like google maps) I guess it is good that people are beginning to notice ESRI and ArcWeb….

The Map Room posted about a great site this morning called Map Projection Pages. I spent much of my undergraduate work in Geography researching projections and I’ve always found them and their history very interesting. Ask any cartography and they’ll always be willing to argue which projection is the best. Anyway, Map Projection Pages is [...]

Link – An Interview with Tyler Mitchell Howard’s latest interview is with Tyler Mitchell who is the author of Web Mapping Illustrated and a contributor to many open source GIS projects.

National Geographic has been one of the most prolific ESRI users out there, but they have begun to utilize Google Earth. Now appearing in the Google Earth layers are Features Articles and & Photograph, Sights & Sounds, African Megaflyover and Live Wildcam. The Map Machine has been using ESRI server software for years, but could [...]

Michael Quetel was nice enough to email me a link to Flash Earth which uses flash to interface with Google Maps and Virtual Earth. I had seen this when it first came out but must have misplaced the link as I never mentioned it on this blog. What I like about it is how easy [...]

Link – MSN Virtual Earth SDK is live! After all that waiting I feel no urge to download.

ESRI – Just how important are they? I’m not sure I agree 100% with this statement, although I do see its point. ESRI has been hugely influential in defining what GIS is, and how it operates. However, I’d hate to see folks like Roger Tomlinson and his work on the CGIS forgotten or ignored. I’m [...]

Link – Export_to_KML_V10.zip Export to KML is an extension developed for ArcGIS 9.x by the City of Portland, Bureau of Planning. The extension allows ArcGIS users to export any dataset in “keyhole markup language” [KML] format for viewing in the free Google Earth data viewer. Any point, polyline, or polygon features, in any defined projection, [...]

I’ve been getting emails from people asking about ESRI and many of them think of ESRI as the Microsoft of the GIS world. Since people like analogies, try this one on for size: ESRI is the Microsoft, Apple, Google, Sun, Lotus, Borland, Adobe, Oracle, IBM, and WordPerfect of the GIS world. That is how you [...]