James Fee GIS Blog

I’ve got family in Charleston, SC so I figured I’d fire up the ESRI Hurricane Disaster Viewer and see what is going on. I’m shocked (well I guess I kinda expected this) that ESRI hasn’t updated this viewer with the new ArcWeb 2006 stuff. It is still stuck behind that retro HTML viewer. [...]

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Yep you read that right. The latest Arc2Earth version has a new toolbar called Map Tile Layer which allows you to download into ArcMap Microsoft Virtual Earth, Yahoo Maps and Ask Map tiles. So you can now choose Aerial/Hybrid/Streets for each of these services (NASA World Wind and Terraserver will be added at [...]

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Talk about everyone stepping up!
At 6:49 pm the $1600 ransom was met! The Maps have been liberated! All 56,000 of them are squeezing their way through my slow broadband connection right now to the safety and comfort of the Internet Archive. Thanks to the amazing and generous people at the Internet Archive, they will soon [...]

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Steve noticed a post by Asa Dotzler about Paul Ramsey assertion that open source GIS is about developers, not users.
You may have failed (or decided not to even try) to build a product for users and to attract users to that product, but that hardly qualifies you to hand down edicts about what open source [...]

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via Jo Walsh at Mapping Hacks
One of the things that has pissed me off over the years is how one has to pay for what should be free data. Those wonderful DRGs. Sure some states have wonderful GIS portals where they give this stuff away. But most don’t or make it very [...]

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Given that I’ve let everyone let off a little steam in my comments in regards to Manifold vs Open Source vs ArcGIS, what can we glean from what transpired?
Plain and simple, all software sucks (and I say this as a software developer). On top of that, life is too short to get worked up [...]

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What the hell, lets continue posting about Manifold. I know both the NASA World Wind team and others have been wondering how they heck Manifold can be allowed to use the Google when they aren’t. Well that has changed (via Bull’s rambles):
Just prior to the release of 7x, Google lawyers contacted manifold.net to [...]

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OK, well I have heard of it. Still I’ve never run across it in my professional experience. Guess that makes me less than serious about GIS. *shrug*
Actually I have one more confession to make. I’ve never used it or installed it in my life.

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Steve Citron-Pousty wonders if there are too many barriers to using open source GIS for the average user, especially those already knee deep in the ESRI suite. Steve’s got some good points that I’ve heard from some of our clients when we’ve proposed open source solutions (well some, I’ve gotten a couple hooked on [...]

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Zooomr has a nice geotagging feature, but Flickr alas doesn’t (at least an official one, yet). But that hasn’t stopped people from geotagging their Flickr photos. On the heals of his Localize Bookmark for Flickr, Aemkei has released loc.alize.us using the Google Map and Flickr APIs. If you use his Localize Bookmark [...]

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Both Adena and Jason hit the big points about this bundle release, but I thought I’d chime in. From the press release:
“Incorporating Google Earth Pro into our Autodesk Government Geospatial Solution creates a complete workflow for government agencies,” said Dave Rhodes, vice president of Autodesk Government. “The powerful combination enables professional GIS staff to [...]

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We had a little rain last night so I figured I’d spend my morning looking for ways to bring Doppler radar imagery into ArcMap. There are of course a ton of ways (and at 9.2 you’ll have even more), but one simple ArcScript caught my eye. NOAA/NWS WEATHER FOR ArcGIS 9.X gives ArcMap [...]

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Chad Zimmerman has posted some wonderful screenshots of NASA World Wind 1.4. Go over to Chad’s blog and take a look.

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The Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator is not a bad idea for those who want to talk like they understand Web 2.0. I’m glad to see that the words “consume” and “rich client” are not on the generator. Guys at ESRI can still use them with impunity!

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I just noticed that ESRI now has a REST API Lab over at the ArcWeb Services webpage. New features include turning vector layers on and off and the ability to request raster tile maps. Most people are probably better suited to use the ArcWeb Explorer JavaScript API over this, but those who want to [...]

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I guess I freaked out a couple ArcIMS folks with some of my posts this week. Don’t worry, ArcIMS is not going anywhere and will still be an integral part of the ESRI Server product family. 9.2 could be the last big release for ArcIMS, but I don’t think that is a bad [...]

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OK so how does all this now ESRI server stuff fit into the big picture? Well lets take Declan Butler’s wonderful avian flu outbreak informationn map. Declan used ArcGIS to create his map and then Arc2Earth to export that map to KML. This works great when for Declan because he’s just using [...]

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I’ve gotten this question from a couple of people (mostly probably because they want to see me say Google Earth Killer).
Lets get this out there right now. ArcGIS Explorer (AGX) isn’t ESRI’s answer to Google Earth. The reasons for AGX are tied very closely with ArcGIS Server (AGS). AGS needed a client [...]

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On Jack’s Presentation:
Jack Dangermond as usual did a great job. He actually admitted that ESRI makes mistakes and apologized for them. He really got into ArcGIS Server which seems to be the big push this year as well as some of the new cartographic tools in ArcGIS Desktop. ArcGIS Explorer got some [...]

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I’m sitting at the airport right now (the security checking wasn’t bad at all) waiting for my plane back to Phoenix. I had a great time hanging out with everyone and seeing people I hadn’t seen in quite some time. Back to work on Friday and then the weekend is here.

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