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!

So, I went back. Back to the Kool-Aid stand that is the ESRI DevSummit. I got smarter, I got excited, I got even more hooked on the Kool-Aid.

First I’d like to note that I’m a geographer, not really a programmer, but… I learned a lot at the DevSummit and I got a lot of crazy ideas for my post-Redlands life. I did realize that to understand the mechanism that is ESRI GIS you can be a dope like me, but to develop the mechanism it’s hard work. I guess any development is really. Putting up with the client/user’s griping and complaining, their clueless ideas and so on. I commend a lot of developers for putting up with that crap, and most other geographers should too.

So, yes, my first DevSummit opened up a new world to me. One that f’in nuts! Still, I like building things, designing things, seeing the happy smiles of users. So, I think I’ll not only keep up with the tech and the processes that are new in buttonology, but also keep up with the tech that makes working with GIS “so fun.”

Bottom line: ArcGIS Server 9.3… F’in rocks. It’s off the hook, fool.

Side notes:

1) Jeremey B. said he should have made a “HTTP Goodness” t-shirt. I mentioned they would probably sell like hot cakes at the UC or next year’s DevSummit. I also recommended that he make “GET” and “POST” shirts too.

2) I spent the afternoon in the Microsoft Lounge charging my laptop, doing some homework, and found myself consulting with Ed Katibah and a Redlands alumn from back East. I tell you, that Ed sure is awesome. Always fun to chat with, always a ball of energy. Though I felt kind of bad about holding him up from his FAQ work that he did for the Microsoft SIG. I told him though that he’s lucky he hasn’t suffered from “Adult Onset Internet ADD” like I have. That’s what GIS and blogging will do to you.

3) The Flex API for AGS was “demonstrated today. Slick, slick, slick. In the three weeks that they’ve worked on it, it has some great visualization capabilities in the browser. The interesting thing is that you can not only build web RIAs but you can also export your work to Adobe Air for a light weight desktop app. Licensing? No clue. It’s built to mimic the AGS 9.3 JavaScript API, so any changes to either one, the other should be updated as well. So, a pretty nice presentation layer for the Flex/Flash folks. BTW: The Flex API isn’t in beta yet. Notice I said they worked on it for three weeks? So, Flex and AWX devs/designers will have to wait.

4) Congrats to Dave Bouwman. He won second place in the Code Challenge. Just think if he would have reminded us to vote for him?

I just got home from Palm Springs. No. I live in Redlands these days and I wasn’t kicked out. I was low on Kool-Aid.

I was at the ESRI DevSummit and Business Partners Conference, mostly hanging with Bill Dobbins and James Fee, and made it to the geoblogger meetup. It was a good time and there were some great people there—with James being the exception. Other than your typical blogger-types, Don Cooke from TeleAtlas made a visit, as did Scott Morehouse and a number of the ArcGIS Server Team members. As one could expect, we ended up talking mostly about the Server and the REST and JavaScript APIs.

James gave me crap for being remotely interested in the Flex API. He said something about ColdFusion being dead, VGI is a scam, and that Wikipedia is broken too. It was just James being, well, James.

What may have been the best story of the night though, is the story Don Cooke told James, Bill, Ed Katibah, and myself. I’m not sure if I should print it, but it has to do with the title of this blog post and an event at the first UC. James says he won’t look at the person who I’ve quoted in the same light again. Somehow, I think I could see that person being in that situation and having a little fun.

Still, the best part of the story was when the valet got the driver’s golf clubs out of the trunk.

The National Center for Geographic Information & Analysis at UC Santa Barbara is partnering with Los Alamos National Labs and the Vespucci Institute to hold a two-day workshop in December to address research initiatives about “Volunteered Geographic Information.”  Dr. Michael Goodchild is leading the workshop to discuss with a number of others interested in VGI.

I guess it was a matter of time before there was academic research into this area and a meeting other than Where 2.0 to show off the goods.  I guess GIS or geographic information as a media is pretty important to study. Especially when it comes to the have’s and have not’s in this world when it comes to access to tell stories about themselves. I wish I could go to watch, this would be a pretty good meeting to be at to see what comes from all of this.

One of the requirements for graduating from the MSGIS program at the University of Redlands is to participate in at least four workshops. We just received word that David Maguire is going to provide a workshop on return on investment (ROI) methodology.  From a professional perspective, this is an awesome opportunity to learn from Dr. Maguire and ROI methods from a GIS perspective. Of course, you’re probably wondering if it will be ESRI-centric. It was developed for ESRI, but I hope that it can be applied to organizations using any GIS technologies and processes.  That way no matter where we go after Redlands (or anywhere else), we can apply the methodology to our future endeavors.

The ROI Methodology workshop has a website at http://gis.esri.com/roi.

Quickly going through the BBC Headline feed this morning I came across the report that BBC plans to buy Lonely Planet. Sure, it’s not as exciting as the Nokia purchase of Navteq, but it’s something along those lines. . . Right?