Link – ArcNews
A perfect example to why quarterly publications aren’t valuable anymore is the latest ArcNews. The ESRI rss feed sums it up perfectly, “User Conference highlights and Image Server news among the top stories“. Both topics are important, but quite dated. If ArcNews was more relevant to current news the top stories should be ArcWeb 2006 and the ArcGIS Visual Studio .NET Integration Framework. ArcWeb is in the issue, but the announcement that Public ArcWeb services are available, YIKES! Oh well, maybe by March we’ll get some ESRI Katrina stories.
I would think this publication would be of more value if it was dropped as a print ‘newspaper” and became a online magazine updated as ESRI product news happens.
[tags]esri, arcnews[/tags]
10 Comments
Hello Again James,
Slightly off the GIS Topic, I am quite impressed with your weblog. I’m very interested in ‘creating’ my own weblog on a totally different subject topic (Sustainable Living). I’ve visited the ‘Wordpress’ web site, but just wanted your opinion on setting up a weblog (I’d be considered a Newby at this). Is this something a novice could do?
If this type of question is not something you’d not like to reply to, please let me know and I will keep all my future comments within the realm of GIS.
Thanks,
John Addison
The value of print is not in its timeliness. Not that I’m a reader of Arc-anything-news, but in general, newsletters like this get kept in places where people are likely to be a ready audience. Waiting areas, tradeshow floors, your supervisor’s desk, the NGO chief’s briefcase. It’s hard for us techies to remember that there are a whole lot of people who read hard-copy stuff.
John – you might want to take a look at http://www.worldchanging.com/ for an interesting “Green” blog-like site. As far as getting started, there are places where you don’t need any experience, like http://www.blogger.com
I agree with Allan, Blogger is a pretty good place to start as it is really easy to use. Many also use MSN Spaces which is also easy to use.
Allan, as I was writing this I was thinking about the “GIO” having a copy by his leather desk, but the lead time on this publication just kills it. Of course very few have an article on the front by Jack Dangermond, so I guess that counts for something. Maybe I should take some of the extra copies of ArcNews over the the dentist office for them to read up on ESRI news.
James:
Your point is very well taken. The photo, however, does not illustrate your point, but a quite different one. Namely, the fallacy of voting exit polls. In fact, the print media in this case was very quick (too quick, as a matter of fact) to bring the news to its readers. –Atanas
Yea I did tack the photo on at the end and I did think about its relevance. I’m using it to show how print media can be outdated. A stretch maybe, but it is one of my favorite photos of all time.
Hey James…
How do you explain this? Hmm?
http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/003028.php
Those Internet users are sharp – they are doing it both!
Oh I don’t doubt that we read print. My point was any publication that has a lead story of the 2005 UC or a product announced at the conference in November is for all practical purposes irrelevant and we haven’t even seen the Katriana stories yet (though I do notice that the latest ArcUser does have them).
There is room from print media and I prefer to read The Economist, Sports Illustrated and my local newspaper over their online versions, but each of them is published more than once a quarter.
As a person whose work has been featured in ArcNews and in the Atmospheric newsletter, I have to say its nice to see information disseminated that does not require page charges and goes to a wider audience. However, it is not always timely.