James Fee GIS Blog

Got some good news via email tonight: Hey there! A Q&A site proposal which you are following, Geographic Information Systems, is now moving into the commitment phase. If you plan to participate in this site, please indicate your support by committing: Commit to Geographic Information Systems A good Q&A site needs critical mass to get [...]

That is the only conclusion I can come to out of this wacky ruling.  A huge warning to everyone, if you put your data in Oracle Spatial, you may never get it back out because it ceases to be data and turns into software.  There is only one song that comes to mind here: On [...]

Update Monday Jan 18th: Another update in an attempt to keep the links valid. Update Friday Jan 15th: The team has gone back and updated some of the mapping links so check them out at the bottom of this post.  Dead links have been removed and new ones added.  Keep in mind much of this is fluid [...]

I’m sure many of you have been following #geodesign on Twitter, but I thought I’d add some of my deeper thoughts.  First off, yes everyone in attendance realizes that we’ve all been doing this since the beginning of time.  GeoDesign wasn’t invented by anyone in particular, that was clear to everyone. So I guess the next question what [...]

Autodesk has been heavily investing in their 3D technology which includes bringing on 3D game developers to help with visualization. I can just imagine their pitch, “Do you want to make millions programming games or change the world with 3D Studio Max?”. Anyway I was sent this link to a company called Clover Point which [...]

I got a response back from the City of Tempe. Hello Mr. Fee,   Here’s some information that I hope assists with your specific request and also clarifies the city’s policy and state law with regard to production of this information. Tempe’s policy is guided by state law (available at this link) which allows for [...]

So every couple weeks, we get the neo is moving on up post.  My good friend Peter Batty wrote one titled, “How “neogeography” is rapidly moving into the “GIS” space“. At several conferences I have attended recently – Where 2.0, WhereCamp and State of the Map (SOTM) – I have been struck by the amount [...]

I just finished reading a new book by Gretchen Peterson called GIS Cartography: A Guide to Effective Map Design and I really enjoyed it.  Gretchen wrote this book independent of any GIS tools so that you can apply it anywhere, from ESRI and Autodesk to PowerPoint and Web Mapping.  So much of computer books include [...]

I was out last week in New Orleans and of course had no time to block so I’m going to try and catch up this week.   Alexander Karnstedt shares his thoughts on Dave Bouwman’s presentation at the Texas GIS Forum. “I strongly agree with Dave Bouwman’s assumption that this is the result of a long lasting [...]

For everyone  who keeps telling me that this “geospatial space” is boring these days, you have obviously not been paying attention.  Loads of great stuff has been been posted: Thanks to everyone who sent this link in (Bill, Dan, John, Barry, Alan, APB).  ESRI has compiled essays from their publications into a GIS Best Practices [...]

CityGML has officially become an OGC Standard.  This is great news for those of us who are tying to work with and exchange 3D models of buildings and cities.  I’m still a CityGML newbie, but the more I look at the standard and learn about it, the more I’m excited about what we’ll be able [...]

Adena blogged about a county mapping site from Morris County, New Jersey (OK, I’ll admit right now I was born in Morristown, NJ; the county seat of Morris County).  I had not seen the website before, but this comment from Adena got me curious: It’s a quite complex app, the kind I’ve not seen implemented [...]

Tim Sinnott’s video of the Radiohead LIDAR was interesting to me for two reasons.  First off it was nice to see LIDAR being used in what I suppose is mainstream media and the second is the thought that Thom Yorke would stand there and let a laser hit their face for what must  have been [...]

I really do enjoy books that ESRI publishes (if only they were cheaper) and I’ve noticed two books coming up that really interest me. The first, “Building a GIS” by Dave Peters looks to be a big help with implementing GIS at organizations. In fact ESRI is pushing it as a “companion” to Roger Tomlinson’s [...]

sigh I can’t figure out what I’m more disappointed in, surveyors thinking they should be doing work GIS professionals should be doing or a magazine previewing articles to government agencies for them to censor them. Inconceivable! Update: It appears that the author withdrew the article, not the publisher. The idea that a state board would [...]

I am excited to read on Jo Cook’s blog that version 1.2 of Portable GIS has been released. The concept of being able to either try out or even use software without having to install it, is how we’ll get GIS applications in the hands of everyone. Plus who doesn’t want to carry GIS on [...]

I was talking about web cartography with a client today and he was saying how he can tell any map made with GIS in a couple seconds. While he did admit that he has been fooled quite a bit, he was still disappointed that there really hasn’t been mainstream improvements to quality of maps. I [...]

My hat is off to everyone who had to work within the BIM (Building Information Modeling) space on a daily basis. Talk about using tools that aren’t refined enough (and this is coming from someone who has worked with GIS applications for 15+ years). It was painful hearing about how many hoops folks have to [...]

A thread has developed on the OSGeo email list (out of an “open source career” post in fact) asking how one can perform the same tasks using open source software as they do with ESRI. Paul Ramsey as usual writes a spot on response to the question: My general synopsis: for server-side, for scriptability, for [...]

Honestly I would just like them to make up their minds. MapInfo has a huge meaning to most of us in the professional GIS world even if we don’t currently or ever used the software, but you can bet my 98 year old Grandmother knows Pitney Bowes. Hey, don’t take chances, take Pitney Bowes.