FANTOM PLANET

See, the quake was the website update for Adobe Acrobat 9 Extended!

…A friend once told me, “PDF is where data goes to die.” If that holds true, then geoPDF is where maps go to die…

Word on the street is that ArcGIS 9.3 will natively export to this new Acrobat format. Schweet.

The other neat thing that I’d like to point out is the Flash embed capability for Acrobat. Could the ArcGIS Server 9.3 Flex API be embedded in the PDF for dynamic mapping?

Just forget about workflow for a moment. Is it possible?

Ok, now think of the workflow. Could it have the potential to be another SharePoint-like pain in the butt?

Adobe = Upgrade (with the potential to Fail!)
ESRI = Upgrade!
TerraGo = Fail!

James recently posted something that got me thinking:  “Hmm? ArcReader? Who uses it?”

I sure as heck don’t.  My company doesn’t. I’m interested how it really gets used by a large or small organization.

It’s not like ArcReader hasn’t been around for, oh say, about six years now.  So, why didn’t it catch on like Google Earth has to view geographic data?  I mean, no one’s clammoring to share .pmf’s, right?

So, what gives? And why is ESRI continuing down this path?  Wouldn’t it be easier for ESRI to give into Adobe  and TerraGo to just publish GeoPDF’s from ArcMap?   Intergraph and Bentley do this now with their platforms. (That wasn’t a paid advertisement.)

Of course, I highly recommend that providing web services is much better than becoming a file distributor.