Anything Geospatial

GIS, Maps, Geo and Location Technology by @gletham

Archives for April 1, 2010

Vote in the Google Model Your Town competition!

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Recall Google put the call out several months ago for community groups to model their communities in 3D – enter the Model your Town competition. Seems now there are 5 finalists and in American-Idol’ish fashion, the rest is up to you… so get out there and vote! Online voting is open from April 1 through May 1, 2010. Be sure to look at all the entries in detail on the competition website and then cast your vote for the one you deem to have created the best sense of place. Finalists are from the UK, Spain, Peru, Germany, and the USA.



From #Where20 – Spatial Analysis on the GeoWeb from ESRI- GIS in the sky

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Today at Where2.0 in San Jose, ESRI President, Jack Dangermond took to the stage (for a record 6th year in a row) to discuss among other things, ArcGIS.com and more specifically, how GIS is changing.  Some details from the presentation:

  • Jack enthusiastically described how services are built on tools like the cloud, uses cloud sourcing, open data, and user generated content.  Orgs are building on these tools and sharing RESTful services which are easily discoverable and come with easy to use UIs, have open APIs, and run on any browser (PC or mobile).
  • He described how a new kind of architecture is emerging… so far about 50,000 servers (commercial, academic, gov) and exposing their information via the web. A new infrastructure has emerged where apps can be built on top of that distributed environment… think Open Governement, crime mapping, GIS on the web.
  • Crowd-sourcing is becoming increasingly important and a major focus. The National Map and others are looking at UGD.
  • Jack and ArcGIS.com – sharing maps and apps (drag and drop) put them in the cloud for sharing and discovery). The central focus is the map – these maps have the data model behind them, users are sharing not just the map but the geographic knowledge… use my map with your data and your model or analysis.
  • Good maps require good base maps…
  • ArcGIS – think Open and community participation and collaboration using services in the cloud. Downloadable apps (free or paid for)Example, local information (like from San Fran) is pushed into map tiles for tremendous detail for the end user. For developers thge services are exposed via the web app, enabling further use and reuse. Search for data using ArcGIS.com or the openweb via Google services. Create your own mashups, save them.
  • Publishers… enable sharing of your data. Share with a group, tweet it, share with the world. Coming soon, even access these data in a mobile environment via iPhone…
  • Jack – “we have 300,000 user orgs with 10s of thousands of services… all open std based stuff there for you to use and mashup!” Think GIS in the Sky

GIS in the sky
GIS in the sky

ArcGIS on the iPhone

Keep an eye on ArcGIS.com

A few favorites from Where20

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No doubt many of you are either in attendance at Where2.0 (@where20) in San Jose, CA this week (along with Google CodeCamp) or, perhaps you’ve been enjoying the Twitter stream (#where20) or catching some of the sessions via live stream… FYI, you can watch live this morning starting at 9:30 (PDT) by registering here. Please note, O’reilly Media has been gracious enough to post video recordings of all the fabulous presentations on their Blip.TV Channel – see where.blip.tv – thanks O’reilly!

A few interesting tidbits I picked up on yesterday include the following: from Tim O’reilly re location tech “Not enough people are thinking big enough about where all this is going”. An interesting presentation regarding the City of San Fran. and their use of technology, the City’s leaders encourage their team to innovate and to not be afraid of failing… cities need to give their staff permission to fail and remember… Fail Forward!! From Tim O’reilly, government needs to start acting like a platform… (luv it!) Michael J0nes (Google) “maps aren’t just driving directions.. they are about our planet and educating people about our planet.”

The idea that location is becoming a platform is truly exciting or should be exciting to anyone playing in the location technology sandbox!

A number of interesting newsmakers have been busy this week and getting our attention; Coming out of San Jose yesterday, deCarta announces a partnership with SimpleGeo – deCarta mapping services will provide customers with easy access to SimpleGeo’s Data Layers; Skyhook Wireless Announces Local Faves for iPhone Developers – the new SDK brings location features to new categories of apps including music, video, reference, news, and more; SimpleGeo Launches as the Easiest Way to Add Location-Based Services to Any Application – More than 4,000 Partners Already Developing Location-Based Applications with SimpleGeo – watch these guys!!

Filed Under: gis

Forget OSM, how About ClosedStreetMap

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This breaking news today out of the Where2.0 event in San Jose as several leaders combine on an interesting mapping effort. From the “PR”…

After many months of negotiation the OpenStreetMap Foundation, Waze Inc. and Google Inc. have agreed a common licensing, technology and community platform for hosted crowd-sourced data. Agreeing not to split the community of potential mappers in three, this agreement sets the tone for the next decade in mapping

Google’s Map Specialist Ed Parsons said “Today the challenges of a building a global map go beyond Google’s focus on search. Combining efforts with Waze and OSM allows us to focus on a common enemy of TeleAtlas and NavTeq.”

Waze’s Di-ann Eisnor had this to say: “We realised fighting Google, OSM and TomTom is not a pragmatic solution to our geodata needs. Further, why try to own everything? There are only so many cherrys and cupcakes our users are willing to drive around to find.”

See more at http://www.closedstreetmap.org/ hmmmmmmm

Filed Under: gis Tagged With:

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