Look, spatial has never been special. Realizing that will actually make you a better person in the new world economy. Look around you, people are using location without the need of Solaris, ArcInfo and a neck beard. Don’t be niche, think bigger.
Spatial is bigger than ever, yet laymen don’t fall of the edge of the earth.
Bill Dollins caught something we changed when we released our new UI.
I like this method of saying you have plenty of data. I see the @WeoGeo toolbar getting this soon… twitter.com/billdollins/st…
— Bill Dollins (@billdollins) March 14, 2012
When you’ve got thousands and thousands of datasets, does it really matter that you know there are possibly millions of choices? Take Google for example:
90 million records? What’s the point of showing a user that many results? The reality of the situation is that you want to get your result in the first two pages of any result. Anything more and a user gives up. So yea, we’ve got lots of data in WeoGeo, but I sure as heck don’t want you to scroll through every single one looking for your data. That’s why we give you a map to refine your search.
Over the weekend Esri pushed out an update to the File Geodatabase API. Esri’s “new” (new in the sense that Esri merged their blogs into one) blog has the details:
The updated File Geodatabase API version 1.2 is HERE!
There is now support for Intel-based Mac!
The minimum supported OS is Snow Leopard 10.6.
The supported compiler is gcc 4.2.1.
So this means that Esri’s File Geodatabase API works on the 3 largest computer platforms used by GIS people. Remember you can use Esri’s File Geodatabase API in tools such as Safe FME or GDAL/OGR.
Convert File Geodatabases like a champion!
One nice thing about having such a stable and robust infrastructure is that you can start focusing on the little things that make using WeoGeo just so wonderful.
Google Maps is starting to see some high-profile defections. The first was Foursquare, which revealed last week it was dropping Google Maps from its Web-based offering. This week, Foursquare was joined by Apple, which has abandoned Google Maps in iPhoto for iOS (specifically the new Journals and slideshow features).
Why are high-profile companies defecting from Google Maps?
Everyone is leaving Google Maps!
Geoff did a pretty good job lining out why people are choosing to leave Google Maps. I talked a bit about it a couple weeks ago as well. Geoff says the price of Google was the key reason why companies picked Google. I’d like to disagree with him there. Free is nice, but there are other services out there that are free and have been free. I think companies use Google Maps because the API is great, the speed of the service is very fast and people expect to see Google tiles on your website or app. In fact I’m reading a bit of blowback on Apple for even thinking of replacing Google’s tiles because people are comfortable with them.
So really it comes down to this myth that Google Maps is the standard and if you don’t use Google, you run the risk of people complaining. I’m just not sure that is the case though. As I said earlier, companies picked Google over Bing and other because the API was so easy to implement. While many can create their own tile sets, they don’t want to bother maintaining them. How to you handle updates to the map and tweaks to the symbology while you are trying to actually maintain your existing business? You don’t, that’s why you outsource it to Google.
Most of the web smells like Google doesn’t it?
Cloudmade was a bit early on the trend starting to appear. Companies creating APIs around OpenStreetMap data and giving users the ability to easily change between mapping APIs. When Google was basically free, nobody was interested in changing their code to point to a new mapping API. But now, even though Google Maps is still dirt cheap, the “pain” of moving from Google to another service isn’t an issue. These new APIs are just as easy to use as Google and give the users of them more freedom to customize the maps the way they want. So now we are seeing some companies (high profile ones, though as competitors to Google they may have business reasons to leave) migrating.
So back to the Google Maps as a standard. I wouldn’t consider Google Maps a standard any more than I’d consider Internet Explorer a browser standard. People and companies choose both for various business reasons. And they switch between them at will because it is easy to do so. It is only a matter of time before we see some company eventually move back to Google for some business reason. This shouldn’t be surprising, there is not much difficulty changing web mapping APIs anymore.
What we are seeing is people looking at web mapping again and taking an interest in how it looks, what its capabilities are and how it runs on mobile devices. That’s a huge win for all of us as competition is only going to drive Google Maps, Bing Maps, OpenStreetMap, MapBox and even Esri to give developers a better choice to integrate with their applications.
My friends, we are now in the golden age of web mapping. Enjoy it!
A couple weeks ago I was working with Dan Dye on a project using GDAL. Dan wondered why I wasn’t working with virtual formats rather than at the time GeoTIFF. With Dan’s prodding, I quickly got up to speed on using VRT and fell in love.
If VRT with GDAL/OGR is news to you, head on over to Paolo Corti’s blog and read up on the power of GDAL virtual formats.
Freaking Sweet!
While I was focused on Apple using TIGER in Phoenix, others noticed that Apple was using OpenStreetMap data. But as Martin Daly points out, where is the attribution?
So, if Apple are using OSM data without attribution, are we supposed to hate them now? @edparsons will be pleased to be the old evil
— Martin Daly (@mpdaly) March 8, 2012
OpenStreetMap needs attribution if used. I looked yesterday to see if there was any credit to the map and didn’t find anything. Nobody has added the Apple maps to the “Lacking Attribution” page on the OSM wiki yet.
So what will happen? If this was Esri or some other large company “stealing” data, the OSM community might be up in arms over the lack of credit. But since it is Apple, will they let it slide?
Is it inconceivable that Apple might not attribute?
UPDATE 1: Alistair Aitchison dives much deeper into the issue. He has a great observation though:
It seems that whoever rendered these tiles lacks any real understanding of how OSM data is structured.
That is clear, this is a hack job at using OSM and TIGER.
UPDATE 2: OSM Foundation welcomes Apple in a blog post. The whole thing is very passive aggressive. Guys, if you feel Apple is doing you wrong, just say so. It isn’t like they are going to donate new iPads to every Foundation member.
Taking a deeper look at Apple’s map tiles reveals much about their source. Here in Tempe, large sections of freeways built in the late 90s are missing.
Take a look at Loop 101 which has been around for over a decade. On Apple’s new maps it is missing:
Clearly Google has the road:
I’m guessing that Apple used older free map data in many places, this might be something like TIGER 1990 I suppose. It isn’t just this freeway, most of the Phoenix area is missing large sections of development. For showing the location of photos these map errors aren’t an issue at all, but if we are ever going to navigate, Apple has a ton of work cut out for them.
I’ve you’d like to browse the Apple Map tiles yourself, give this website a try:
http://www.refnum.com/tmp/apple.html
and here’s an even better resource. Compare OSM and Apple at the same time!
http://ivan.sanchezortega.es/leaflet-apple.html
In looking at the data closer, at least here in the Phoenix area, I’m sure this is TIGER data. Compare the Apple tiles with OSM.
Open Street Map Data
Apple Map Data
So you may have heard, Apple released something today. Well in addition to hardware, Apple released iPhoto for iOS. Looking around at it you can see Apple has included maps. But whose maps are they? Take a look…
The new map tiles from Apple. This is the deepest zoom.
Eastern seaboard of the USA in the new Apple map style
I’ve looked around the app and I don’t see any credits page where Apple lets us know where the maps came from. As with everything, I’m sure we’ll learn the details soon.
Looks like Apple has a nice tile API:
@mpanzarino This is where the connections are going to: gsp2.apple.com/tile?api=1&sty…twitpic.com/8tb9cb
— Holger Eilhard (@holgr) March 7, 2012
It appears that Esri has released ArcGIS 10.0 Service Pack 4 today.
I looked at the issues fixed list and didn’t see anything that was critical. I do feel for the guys that ran into this problem.
NIM033250 - The GPS Toolbar does not recognize over 9 COM ports.
The Esri delivery guy is busy today getting SP4 out.
Yesterday I noticed that there were new blog posts in my Esri feeds from groups that I hadn’t subscribed to before.
What happened to @Esri blogs?They are littering my RSS feeds all of a sudden.
— James Fee (@cageyjames) March 7, 2012
What happened was that Esri combined all their “ArcGIS for” blogs into one massive “ArcGIS Blog”.
For the past few years the various ArcGIS product development teams have hosted a few dozen separate blogs covering the width of the ArcGIS system. Now we have pulled those together into a single ArcGIS Blog so that you can more easily browse, subscribe to, learn from, and stay up-to-speed on the latest information from all our engineers and developers. In addition, the single blog reflects ArcGIS as a system and allows us to better tell big picture implementation stories that we couldn’t in the fragmented system.
So now you’ll have to unsubscribe from your existing Esri feeds as many of them will stop working or give you topics you didn’t mean to subscribe to and do this:
While redirects are in place, we suggest that you update your feeds at your earliest convenience. This will eliminate the duplication of posts that you may be seeing in your RSS Readers if you subscribed to more than one of the team blogs. You can subscribe to the entire blog feed (http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/feed/) or you can subscribe only to those categories or tags that are of interest to you, http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/category/arcgis-online/feed/ or http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/tag/flex/feed/ for example.
I haven’t decided what to do with Esri and Planet Geospatial yet. I may just wait and see how verbose the ArcGIS Blog is before adding it back into Planet Geospatial.
Enjoy a little MapCafe with your Esri Blog Feeds
I’ve not had time (nor the will) to install the Windows 8 Consumer Preview yet, but those who have say the metro style works very well. Since the public at large finally has access to the Metro UI, it makes sense for Microsoft to release an SDK for Bing Maps.
Licensing has been changed to take advantage of Windows 8 Preview:
Along with the new controls, today we’re also announcing a new licensing model for the pre-release versions of Windows 8, providing you much more flexibility in developing and testing your Metro style apps on the Consumer Preview. The new Terms of Use for Pre-Release Windows 8 Metro style apps allows free and unlimited use of Bing Maps controls and APIs within your Metro style apps for the duration of the Windows 8 pre-release period. Additionally, you are encouraged to submit your apps to the Windows Store for others to use during the preview.
That should make developing much easier so you can jump right in. I suspect Esri will jump in on this Metro stuff quickly as well.
Now I’m not Nokia user, in fact I think I’m pretty sure I’ve never owned a Nokia phone. But since Nokia owns Navteq, I pay attention to them. When I saw this announcement on Nokia’s website about Ovi Share being discontinued, I figured I’d look closer. Since I don’t user Ovi Share, the graphic that Nokia had on their blog post caught my eye.
It appears Ovi Share uses Google Maps to display the picture locations. How crazy is that? Nokia doesn’t use Ovi Maps/Nokia Maps on their own products. Of course maybe it is because their users prefer Google.
I’m guessing with the Microsoft Phone integration, Nokia is going to leverage Microsoft’s tools (and probably Bing Maps) to share your “experiences” with others. Can we add Nokia to yet another company leaving Google Maps?
A couple years ago I remember people thinking (including me) that Google Earth might be that visualization tool that changes how people look at the physical environment. Google Earth does a great job with the effects of humans on the environment, but it just has never been extended to look at anything that can’t be draped over the surface of the Earth.
Microsoft came out with a project called WorldWide Telescope a couple years back and if you are like me, you remember looking at it saying that its really cool, but then forgot it existed. Well it looks like not only is WorldWide Telescope still around, but it is being used by the scientific community to help better understand the physical environment around us.
Layerscape is a new tool out of the Microsoft Research team that tries to address the needs of researchers looking at the how the earth works.
Based on the popular WorldWide Telescope, also developed by Microsoft Research, Layerscape is a cloud-based instrument that enables earth scientists to analyze and visualize massive amounts of data. With Layerscape, scientists can create three-dimensional virtual tours of the Earth; explore new ways of looking at Earth and oceanic data; and build predictive models in areas such as climate change, health epidemics, and oceanic shifts.
The blog post goes into great detail about why Layerscape is needed and how specifically Lee Allison is leveraging these new tools to help Arizona manage their underground resources better. It leverages the visualization datasets of Bing maps, uses Microsoft Excel add-in for analysis and an online community to share your work.
You probably are familiar with the earthquake jokes where those of us in Arizona will have beach front property in a couple years, but Allison shows that Arizona, like most of the USA, is an active fault area.
Clearly this shows how WorldWide Telescope can be extended to help researchers visualize data quickly and easily and share it with the world. I really need to pay more attention to the Microsoft Research team.
HT: Ryan Taylor
The Big Map Blog points out that the Rozel Point SW DRG has few features showing on it. In fact it’s stuck in the middle of the Great Salt Lake.
I’m sure there are tons of crazy TOPO QUADs out there but this one might take the prize. If you zoom into that dataset above on WeoGeo Market, you can see it’s just stuck in the middle of the lake.
The Big Map Blog has the QUAD as a JPG, but you can also download it on WeoGeo in whatever raster format works best for you including TIFF, ECW and ENVI.
HT: /r/gis/