First we’ve got new functionality in the Google Maps Data API.  First off you can now perform geospatial and attribution queries on data stored on Google’s MyMap.  Now of course this isn’t paleo-type spatial queries, just simple stuff that solve 80% of all queries you’d need to complete.  Simple web apps need not fancy complicated APIs and clearly Google is the master of this.  So upload your data into Google’s My Maps and then query it to display on a Google Maps application.  Simple and sweet.

Second is an update to the Google Fusion Tables API.  As the GeoChalkboard blog rightly points out:

Now, obviously Google Docs has been around awhile so uploading your spreadsheet data to this type of application is nothing new, but the compelling thing about Fusion Tables is its integration with the Google Maps API and Google Visualization API.  Visualizations are also real time as Fusion Tables automatically updates data as it is updated or corrected.  With the Fusion Tables API you can also update or query the database programmatically.  Data can also be imported from various data sources including text files and relational database management systems.

The pieces are really coming together here.  Not only can you load and work with data, but you can freely visualize it.  And not only do it freely, but do it freely in a scalable environment.  Let that all sink in for a moment.  Google is enabling tools that we pay big money for with APIs that are so simple anyone can use them.  Check and mate for some geospatial companies I think.  Database + Visualization = GIS eh?

Too much information running through my brain…

ArcGIS (Desktop, Engine, Server) 9.3.1 Service Pack 1
ArcSDE 9.3.1 Service Pack 1
ArcIMS 9.3.1 Service Pack 1
ArcGIS Image Server 9.3.1 Service Pack 1

UPDATE: Yikes, I left off ArcGIS Military Analyst 9.3.1 Service Pack 1

You can learn more on the “Issues addressed with Service Pack 1” page. I can’t think of any other way to celebrate than dear old Rocky Top…

ArcGIS, you’ll always be home to me…

As the name implies, 360° view provides fantastic panoramic views (360° horizontally and 160° vertically) of any given image within the 360 View coverage area (initially 30 cities and 15 suburbs across the United States with more to come). We have studied our industry, gleaning tidbits here and there, and polled our customer base in creating a simple, easy-to-use interface that fits seamlessly into the MapQuest mapping experience you have come to know and understand. Best of all, MapQuest 360 View “just works” without requiring any 3rd party player downloads.

Take that Bing Maps and your 3rd party player download.  MapQuest works without any Silverlight player to get in your way… except of course it uses a 3rd party player called Flash.  I suppose this plays into Adobe’s assertion that their 3rd party player download is included by default in many browsers by default.  Still it looks good and appears to have been taken sometime last year (the light rail line isn’t running yet in Phoenix and most stations haven’t been built yet.

A view of University of Phoenix Stadium where you'll be seeing the true national championship; TCU vs BSU.

Now before you start going off an claiming this doesn’t matter, remember the real traffic numbers for the four main mapping sites:

Yep, Bing and Yahoo don’t add up to MapQuest’s reach.  I think it is critical to get this functionality into their API before more companies abandon it for Google While traffic numbers trend down over the last 6 months, I’m not sure it is losing to Bing or Yahoo.

Carry on MapQuest!

Kansas, a band so great a state was named after them.

OpenScales, which has a LGPL license will allow those who want to build “rich” (rich is the keyword for any Flash or Silverlight app, if it ain’t rich, it ain’t a plugin) web mapping applications without need to license proprietary development frameworks.  You can see from the demos that this ends up being very similar to other Flex based APIs.

On top of that, it supports WMS/WFS, OpenStreetMap, IGN, KML and direct image reading.  You can also deploy on mobile using ActionScript 3 (Palm Pre support), web using wlex or on the desktop using Adobe Air.

OpenScales 1.1 was just released last week so the community seems strong and working toward increasing its functionality quickly.  If you are working on Adobe web technology and want an open source mapping framework, you might want to check out OpenScales.

Anyway I was sent this link to a company called Clover Point which is doing some really impressive stuff with 3D gaming engines and enterprise management with their Asset Tracking Anywhere.  Yea I know what you are thinking, how could I possibly get excited about something as boring as enterprise management?  Well in my pervious life (before da cloud) I was heavily involved with asset management and CAFM.  Now if you’ve ever been involved with this, you know how ugly the tools and how non-technical people have a great difficulty visualizing the data presented to them.

ESRI users take note:

Asset Tracking Anywhere also utilizes ESRI’s ArcGIS Server. This suite of products offers advantages over standard map engines in the ease of data layering, data creation, data visualization, data capture, raster-to-vector translation and the manipulation of projection and coordinate systems.

Detailed 3D models and immersive views are a great way to showcase your resources to managers and help them visualize their assets around the world.  Tabular reporting just doesn’t help people understand the impacts of planning and future changes to their business like a great 3D model.  Of course 3D modeling in GIS has been very basic, so I’m happy to see companies pushing the envelope on this.

Check out some of Clover Point’s work in these YouTube videos.  As I said, very impressive stuff. What I see here is BIM and GIS coming together to help people make informed decisions.

With lots of changes over time to online GIS and geographic information and the technologies used to serve them, the Geography Network has been replaced by better alternatives to publish and find data (like ArcGIS Online). Much of the same exact content, and much more content that has been updated, can now be found and used in easier and better ways. So ESRI is planning to retire the Geography Network in late December 2009.

Can you believe it has been almost 10 years? Let’s have Steely Dan play it out…

Hard Rock Hotel - San Diego, CA

Now of course how could one really get that excited about Google adding oblique imagery.  Well unlike Pictometry, you can zoom out much further on the data so you can see how one might get from the Hard Rock Hotel to the San Diego Convention Center (Bing Maps is of course out of date).

Gain better perspective on where things are

Isn’t that so much more valuable than the top down version?  I just can’t see how any current Bird’s Eye View user can continue to use Bing Maps over this (Shall we count the days until Zillow changes?).  What I’m interested in seeing which company can build out their “new service” first.  Google with their oblique aerial view, or Microsoft with their street level view.  I think we all know who will be throwing more resources at getting this done, don’t we?

The one weird part is this appears to be in the v2 API only. I suppose this is because launch customers Orbitz, Redfin and Trulia are all using that version of the API on their websites. v3 can’t be far along.

Dave Brubeck Quartet flying over Google’s Oblique Aerial Imagery

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 the purpose of a commercial request to be asked.

Non-commercial

You mentioned that your request is for a presentation to a Tempe elementary school, which sounds non-commercial. Please contact Wendy Springborn in our Engineering Division (480-350-8250) in order to discuss exactly what you’d like to request. The city does not charge for non-commercial requests, except for the production of CDs to deliver the records. Some records might be deliverable via an emailed PDF, but that depends on whether the requester wants to be able to manipulate the record. If they do, that cannot be delivered via PDF because of the limitations of that format. Wendy is ready to assist with your request if you’ll let her know what you need.

Commercial

Tempe bases its commercial rates in part on a fair approximation of market value. As described in the state law above, municipalities and other entities are able to ask the purpose of commercial requests and to deny improper requests upon the approval of the governor. The statute also establishes the ability to seek damages if records obtained for a non-commercial purpose are then used for a commercial purpose. You noted a few cities’ elected representatives have chosen to make all of this information searchable online; that would be a policy decision rather than staff action. It seems that some of your concerns with the city’s GIS records policy are grounded in the state law requirements rather than independent city policies.

Tempe places a high priority on transparency and customer service. We make every effort to fulfill records requests of all types across the many city functions and departments. Please let me know if I can assist in answering any other questions.

Regards,

Nikki Ripley
City of Tempe
Communication and Media Relations Director

So there you go, at least they are going to let you have it for personal use.  Good, at a minimum that is good news.  I’ll be making my request ASAP.  The part that causes me to pause is this, “Tempe bases its commercial rates in part on a fair approximation of market value”.  I couldn’t disagree more with this statement and it is nuts that they think that this data is worth $100,000.  Nothing in the state law says Tempe should charge $100,000 for their data.  Fair market value for public data shouldn’t be 6 figures.   This is why people don’t go to the source to get data but third party providers who don’t have the accuracy of Tempe’s data.  I’m disappointed in this response so it shows how much more work we have with local governments.

Update:  I submitted a public records request, so we’ll see how this goes.

Here at geo-tee.com we strive to serve up the funny. We dive deep to dig up the humor buried in the world of GIS. We supply apparel for the seasoned old-school GIS’r that was doing GIS with punch cards, to the newbie who just figured out the difference between a datum and a projection. We have a wide range of threads that will be sure to not disappoint. So whether you have been in the game for a while, or just now getting your map on, we have got the goods for you. Enjoy!

So if you’ve been looking for some geo-shirts and stickers you’ve got another resource.

What I find interesting is that United Maps is rendering vectors directly on the iPhone. I’ve always though rasterizing vectors causes you to lose the power of vector datasets. All I can say is those lucky Euros are going to be having fun with this app. I really need to get my rear over there soon.

City of Tempe – Sale of Engineering & GIS Records

Take a look, “$568.70 for each quarter section or 1/4 mile area”. For your own information, Tempe is 40 sq miles in size so do the math. Simply nuts! Plus take a look at their “conditions”:

Conditions and Restrictions
a. All commercial orders and digital data orders will be required to document purpose of use.
b. Plotting orders in excess of $25.00 and all digital data orders will require full pre- payment before order is processed.
c. Digital data will be provided on city-issued media only.
d. All orders and payments must be done in-person only.

I mean really, not only do they “share” it in Microstation, but you have to document the purpose of public data, you have to get the data on “city-issued” media and orders must be made in person.  My jaw is still on the floor a week after I looked that this.  Time for a little geo-revolution in Arizona.  Don’t you think?  Prepare to get very tired of my “struggle” against the City of Tempe for their data.

Time to call in the troops, free public data!

Update: Andrew Turner provides a great link to put this in perspective as well as the issues with data licenses on local geodata.

Update 12/01/2009: I just received this from the city:

Hello Mr. Fee,

Thank you for bringing your concerns to the city’s attention. We will review this practice/policy with the City Attorney’s Office and I will get back to you with more information as soon as possible.

Regards,
Nikki

Nikki Ripley
City of Tempe
Communication and Media Relations Director

At least it is a response.  Maybe other organizations who have more power in this valley might be able to get some results. I’m still hopeful though…

Since the release of ArcGIS Online three years ago, the 2D services have used the WGS 1984 geographic coordinate system and a 512 x 512 pixel tile size. Google and Bing, in contrast, use a modified Mercator projection and a 256 x 256 tile size. The scale sets used by both tiling schemes are similar, but not equivalent.

Make sure you read the whole ArcGIS Server blog post to understand what you have to do and when.  From the ArcGIS Online blog:

The existing services in the ArcGIS Online tiling scheme will remain available for at least six months and, depending on demand, may remain available longer. Although the services will remain available, the content in these services will no longer be updated.

So you’ve been sitting back, watching all this great new Web 2.0 stuff and this is what you bring to the table?  I know, lets see how much junk we can throw into a JavaScript API.  The whiteboard on this one must have been intense…  Just take every idea that someone comes up with and toss it into a ribbon interface.  Sweet!  But this isn’t a complex, specialized, niche application we are talking about.  This is our (well if you like me are a tax paying citizen) national map.  Yes the American Map!  It should be something we are proud of, something we would run of a flag pole and salute!

They do expose some other ways to access the data, but don’t be fooled by the names.  The Google Maps, Bing Maps and the rest are all just links to the ArcGIS REST API.  That is how The National Map should be exposed.  ”Here are the services, use them and create your own maps”.  Might be a better way to handle it because the future looks bloated.

Of course we can’t completely blame the USGS for this, ESRI’s JavaScript and Flex API sample viewers have a similar abomination.  Clearly GIS Analysts shouldn’t be designing user interfaces.  Are we really going to use this thing for every web map API?

I mean we all love to throw complex concepts under a widget icon of a box with gears on it.  Me?  I can never remember if I’m supposed to use the compass or the globe to zoom in or out.

The one saving grace is that one day Google will just enable all this in their web map viewer making everything else irrelevant.

Is anyone going to host a Bing Maps Party?

Now this could be a limitation of the current beta and not actually any retreat by ESRI on being able to run two versions of ArcGIS on the same machine.  Either way it make it really hard to beta test the 9.4 release as you can’t compare it to older versions.

Your Mamma Don’t Dance and your ArcGIS won’t install…

Note: If you post any specific 9.4 Beta information (such as quoting forums posts on the Beta forums), expect ESRI to personally contact you. They appear to be monitoring this blog post. You’ve been warned.

Its Alright?

If you are lucky enough to live in a “hip city” (or at least one that Zillow thinks is interesting), you can use their Trick-or-Treat Housing Index to find the best places to beg to sweets.