Google Earth in My Car? Ha!
Google has said at CES that they plan to work with at least one car maker to try and work Google Earth as an in-car navigation system. Frank over at Google Earth has pretty much said all the reasons why it won’t be happening soon if at all. While I’m sure they could figure out a way to navigate easily with a touch screen rather than a mouse, but that isn’t the biggest problem as I see it. Anyone who has a car with a navigation system knows that the maps they generate are very simple and this is by design. Trying to view a map while traveling 60 MPH is hard enough without having satellite images in the background. These maps are designed to be viewed with a quick glance and I just don’t see how that would be possible with satellite imagery. Of course Google Earth could serve up Google Maps (though they would have to be simplified for ease of use in a car), but then why bother with Google Earth?
What I expect to happen with the future of Navigation is for companies such as XM Radio and Sirius to offer Navigation as part of their service. My wife’s Acura already has both XM Radio and Navigation, so why not combine them? Stream the maps down via their satellites. XM already has begun to roll out such a product (though it isn’t a stand alone product, yet) and since both Sirius and XM have contracts with car manufacturers already, they have a leg up on any companies such as Google, Yahoo and Micosoft who would like to break into that market.
The future of in-car navigation is in XM’s and Sirius’s hands so if GYM want to be part of it, they need to either partner up, or get out the checkbook and buy either one of them.
@Nian
I don’t think it’s a viable proposition to try to re-build the ADF in it entirety. The ESRI world has not been very collaborative in the past (as you mention everyone built their own connectors - there was no community effort to create ONE connector). Unfortunately, I don’t see that changing much. That said, I think that there are plenty of open source packages out there which may be great starting points for some applications - OpenLayers if a great starting point.
Here’s an idea I have for an initial project:
Build a .NET HTTPHandler which could read the contents of an ArcGIS Server MapCache, and serve it to OpenLayers.
It’s simple, small, and very useful. This would allow sites to create a cache, then push it to a web server, and use OpenLayers for the front end. Once this is in place, we can then work on building tools which would work in OpenLayers, and make calls back to REST or SOAP services which could wrap calls back into ArcGIS Server - for such things as Identify, Buffer, etc etc.
I’ve wanted to do this myself, but have not had any time whatsoever to dedicate to it yet. If you’re interested, and know others who are interested, we can use ArcDeveloper.net to formulate plans and get a project off the ground.
I’ve already got a SourceForge project (https://sourceforge.net/projects/arcdeveloper)
that we could use. We really just need to get a group of people who want to get something working and out there. You (or anyone else interested) can contact me via my blog if you are interested - use the link on my name…
Dave
I distinctly remember the EDN folks saying that ArcView w/ three extensions (Spatial, 3D, Network) would be part of the EDN subscription. What happened?
I got this error message
“Error in script ArcVieweraseFeatures.
Error in executing: cmd.exe /C C:\PROGRA~1\ArcGIS\ARCTOO~1\Scripts\ARCVIE~1.PY “Basins_Group\HWC” “Basins_Group\Cowpen_Subbasins” “C:\Documents and Settings\nketprakong\My Documents\— Cow Pen Slough\— Data\Shapefiles\Cuts.mdb” “hwc”
Failed to execute (ArcVieweraseFeatures_4).”
Has anyone had this happen to them before? If so how do I work around it?
I forgot to mention that I am using Arc 9.2
great software. Looks so realistic
I can’t figure out why my computer starts to overheat everytime I’m using VE 3D… Oh wait, my task manager says its using 300mb of RAM to run…
[...] 10. The big picture of ArcGIS Server Here I try and convince the world that with ESRI supporting OGC and other “open standards” that existing ESRI users can now push out their web services to a whole new clientèle. Not sure how many people actually agreed with me on that one. [...]
it’s pretty late in the week of the 18th and not even an update on issues to be addressed.
http://support.esri.com/index.cfm?fa=knowledgebase.whitePapers.viewPaper&PID=43&MetaID=1213
With all this buzz circling open source gis and the ADF licensing craziness. I think the time is right, for a new open source GIS framework to be created.
I might be crazy but what if the open source GIS community created an open source version of the WebADF that ran using the Mono Framework(http://www.mono-project.com). Replicate all the properties, functions and objects of the WebADF. But make it so that it runs against open source server software like MapServer and MapGuide. Than you could use the code you wrote for IMS and ArcGIS Server against MapServer and MapGuide and not have to change anything. This would make switching gis server software very easy.
I wonder what type of legal ramifications you would face from ESRI. I mean the only thing your copying is the interface of the framework not the code behind it.
What does everyone else think about this?
Due to the latest “improvements” ArcGIS 9.2 can’t read CAD files that ArcGIS 9.1 could. I did not install ArcView 3.x when I migrated to a new PC, but I am having second thoughts…
Just like Christmas, a lot of the joy of love is found in the giving.