Open Thread
Its been a very quite week here and I think I’ve finally recovered from moving into my new house. All the boxes are put away and I’ve actually got a working internet connection in the house. I had been using the City of Tempe Wi-Fi, but its been brutally slow while inside my house (probably due to the “block construction”). Anyway time for an open thread….
I see that the new Google LatLong blog doesn’t have a link to Planet Geospatial in their “What we are reading” section. Ed Parsons calls those the most “dynamic blogs on the internet” but the aggregation of the best geospatial blogs isn’t worthy?
Oh I’m sure they read it. I’ve talked to folks at Microsoft and they live by it. Plus they really read James’ blog. I can’t say if Google reads this blog and if they do they probably don’t like what James has to say about their product. That is probably why PlanetGS is not in their list.
I know for a fact that Google doesn’t like James. I’ve had some on the Google Earth Enterprise team say so to me at a conference. The feel his viewpoint is “jaded”.
Honestly I think they don’t like that he isn’t drinking the Google Kool-aid like most bloggers.
I guess that means James’ career is screwed. Google will own all and if they want him to live in a gutter, he will be in 10 years.
Its better to have your pride and say what you want, that prostitute yourself to Google and be laughed at.
I’ve heard the same thing from Google, that they have a very low opinion of James and his blog. I think they take what he says WAY TOO PERSONALLY.
Is it me or is Google Earth 100x faster than ArcGIS Explorer? Anyone else having performance issues? ESRI’s imagery loads extremely slow and so does their vector data (i.e., their “transportation layer”). I realize ArcGIS Explorer is not GE and vice-versa, but the performance degradation is steering me far away for ArcGIS Explorer and thinking about converting to data to KML for other corporate employees to use.
Wonder what they think of me then… no link to my blog… yet I have had Google contact me about the Mogadishu KML I created =D
On another unrelated note.. you can try the WWJava F-16 simulator now: http://www.simulation.com/products/glstudio/content/JDJ/index.html
LOL, Google link to James’ blog. I’d sooner seen pigs fly than that happen.
Google is God and if they say PlanetGS or James is irrelevant, then it is so.
@Bsock
Yes if you can use Google Earth (check the EULA to make sure), it is the better play. AGX is probably better suited for running geoprocessing.
@Everyone else
Does everything have to be a conspiracy?
It’s rare that any of ESRI’s apps display anything faster than their counterparts tbfh.
@James:
How many times have you had interaction with the Google Maps or Google Earth team in the past year?
How about Microsoft, ESRI, Yahoo?
Lefty, I can’t recall ever having interaction with anyone at Google over anything. With the others, pretty much all the time.
What does that have to do with anything?
Do you think it is odd that they avoid you?
I’ve never tried to contact them so it could be they see no reason to contact me. shrug Why is that important?
The EULA?
Actually now that you mention it, Ed Parsons has emailed me about the EULA so I guess you could say they’ve talked to me.
I have to ask, why does this bother you?
Google only cares about Google. Thus they won’t be linking to a blog that doesn’t discuss Google.
@Anon:
Um James talks about Google more than anything in this blog other than ESRI. According to his category list:
ESRI – 596 posts
Google – 141 posts
Open Source – 94 posts
Microsoft – 69 posts
Yahoo – 18 posts
Manifold – 14 posts
Autodesk – 9 posts
I’d say he talks about Google more than most blogs out there, wouldn’t you?
ahhh poor ole google can’t stand critical comments. I”m going to shed a tear.
Again it reinforces my view google is ran by a bunch of leftists.
I can’t wait for the day google goes “plop”.
KoS
Yea Open Source
Just noticed, we can edit our posts……thanks James for the improvement.
KoS
@KoS
Yea, at least for 5 minutes. That way can fix your spelling mistakes (or take back something you said)
You should be honored that Google hates you. Wear it like a badge.
But.. I seem to be missing a post 0.O
As someone who “sells” geospatial visualization, here are the facts on the ground as I see them
–Google Earth is hands-down the best user experience out there and KML hits the sweet spot between functionality and ease-of-use.
–While everyone I talk to acknowledges the “cool” factor of GE, businesses have no natural point of reference in determining the value of integrating it into their current IT stack–and they’re damn well reluctant to pay $400/seat up front to figure it out themselves. Say what you will, but ESRI and Microsoft have a sales force you can call up and they’ll come over and tell you how everything fits together (never mind if it is or isn’t the most efficient way to accomplish your original end goal) and how much it will cost to make it happen. Given the impressive track record of expensive white elephant tech failures in the workplace, businesses want living, breathing people they can hold responsible, not simply cool technology cooked up in “the Valley.” Apparently Google is making steps in this direction, and I’ll be very interested in what they have to say during the Denver stop of the “Google@Work” roadshow.
–If I were a betting man, I’d say that in 3 years the majority of geospatial content consumed in the workplace will be based on Microsoft technology. SQL Server 2008 supporting geometry natively, Silverlight, and the steady improvements in Virtual Earth indicate to me that they’ll be able to leverage their existing advantages from Office and the .NET developer community in ways their competitors will find hard to match.
–MapGuide Open Source is the Swiss Army knife of web mapping: a week of prototyping and we’re doing slippy tile maps, direct KML streaming, WMS publishing, reading SDE datastores directly via FDO, etc. Very sweet.
BT
GE is a consumer product. James approaches it from the corporate (WTF EULA) angle. Google isn’t that interested in hearing about the EULA because they need to recoup bandwidth and development costs (developers in San Fran aren’t cheap).
I’m still waiting to see how Google is going to make money off of GE by integrating GE into what makes Google rich- paid advertising. Of course they would have to do something in GE that they can’t do in Google maps to justify why people would fire up GE to do some searches.
As cool as GE is (and it is cool), does anyone here think that it is a black sheep in their company and that its revenue generating ability is extremely limited, if not downright impossible due to the “200 million” bandwith sucking people who use GE to look at beaches?
Meh, its a marketing blog. James shouldn’t put it in PlanetGS (and I guess that is why it still isn’t there as of this morning). Marketing blogs suck and should be ignored (which makes me wonder why the Google Earth Blog is still in PlanetGS).
The blog title is incorrect. It should read lat/long, not LatLong.
No wonder these folks don’t get it.
James……me??? Take back something I said!! Never
KoS
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