Symbology. It’s pretty important to cartography, and in these days of competing geographic information systems, viewers, and digital mapping data it is even more so.
My question now is, how will AX [my new pet name for ArcGIS Explorer] handle symbology?
Will it be the same ol’ ESRI-like output, or, will AX automatically “smooth” vectors and use an appealing symbol sheet for the “general population?”
… Here you go. (Image courtesy of ESRI)
As a geographer tethered to a desk these days it’s hard to get out and see the world. Fortunately, there are bloggers in other countries who write a pretty good description of what is going on where they are. Personal insight to the daily grind in another country is good stuff.
So, today’s featured blog is from Adam & Val, Peace Corps volunteers in Mauritania. In their recent post they tell it how it is during Ramadan in an Islamic country. Again, good stuff.
James and Ed are wondering where the data for ArcExplorer 9.2 will come from.
Answer: The public offerings from ArcWeb Services.
Although, ESRI is trying to figure out how to make moolah off of it. And ads don’t work for ESRI either.
I thought of this the night I saw AE: I would suggest open the API, which someone noted they might do. Then ESRI and commercial partners could liscense/sell custom-built tools for AE 9.2. Either a company buys the services of an ESRI person to build them an AE tool, or the singular geo-programmer writes one. Brian?
Just imagine a MetaCarta plug-in with a digital Chinese phonebook and NavTeq data from AWS for AE.
You’ll finally know where all of those chins are in 3-D!
When I praised Smogtown, this is what I was talking about.
ArcExplorer 9.2.
We all saw something at the UC planary, but that’s not what I saw. And probably not what users saw in Warsaw.
Ha ha.
Anyway, this is my original note to James:
Anyway, I saw a working pre-alpha version of AE 9.2. I guess it’s not what was demo’d at the UC Planary. This thing is pretty slick. The epitomy of ‘GIS Lite’. One question popped up when I heard that it has to take the 2D data and throw it into a ‘globe cache’ for it to get its 3D on. Otherwise, it rocks. Comes standard with an IP locator like VE, telephone location lookup, some kind of search, bookmarking, OGC compliant web service, AWS, IMS, GeoDB’s.
It takes it all in.
I asked about KML/KMZ. They didn’t know what the propriatary issues are, but ArcGIS Server can serve KML now. I wouldn’t think that it would be an issue with AE.
I did point out to the developers there the notion of hashing out GeoRSS readability
too. So, the boys ‘n’ girls in Smogtown are doing some good.
Of course, it won’t be out until “1st Qtr CY06.” Almost one full year after GE’s release. Which makes me wonder about the “Google folks” and eveyone who has lined up for Arc2Earth tools and enterprise implementations.
Woo-hoo-hoo!
Smogtown, you rock! Now, talk to the GeoRSS guys. That’s an order.
And that’s all I’m leagally allowed to say.
Yawn.
Oh, hello. Sorry about that. I just spent a day working on developing/reviewing some standards for GIS data…
…zzzzzz…
Actually, developing standards are hard work. Almost like trying to predict the future with the Way-Back Machine and an angry anti-social Keebler Elf with a drinking problem.
…zzzzz…
…Wake me when I’m done.
“Sweet nectar of life!”
From the folks at VerySpatial:
After all of my complaining someone finally has put together GeoRSS.
I finished reading Why Geography Matters earlier this week and Harm seemed to comment on irredentism quite often. Especially in this trying time religious and nationalist extremisim around the world. So, I thought I would do a quick Google search on the word.
So far, I have found the Wikipedia entry the most interesting. They actually list current situations of irredentism, which is pretty cool. (For a geographer.)
This blogging stuff is starting to wear on me. I’m not diggin’ up the goods to get the readership that I want. Therefore, I’m thinking about a career change.
In my pursuit of looking for really cool geography jobs I came across this.
I hear they’re hiring.
Of course, since I’m not producing here, why should they hire me?
I can’t spell and certainly can’t roll a map right.
