ESRI is boasting about a very cool webmapping application in use in Minneapolis. It helps commuters determine the best route to take to avoid problems and congestion that has resulted from the I-35 W bridge collapse over the Mississippi River. The city posts dynamic data immediately on the website so users are searching real-time information to help plan their route. From ESRI, Using the ArcWeb Services Flex API, an ESRI software architect quickly put together a two-tiered Web application that consists of a public-facing Web page and an administrative Web page. According to eSRI, Within three days of the disaster, the city had a complete two-tier application designed and deployed to help keep the city functioning! The app is simple to use.. simply click on a start and end point and wait for the resulting route to be generated… navigation instructions can then be printed. See
http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/traffic/routeplannerintro.asp
Archives for October 2, 2007
Capital Regional District (CRD) Natural Areas Atlas powered by Geocortex scores award
Congrats to the Victoria CRD and to the crew at Latitude Geographics as the Capital Regional District (CRD) was presented with an Award of Excellence at ESRI Canada’s Regional User Conference in Victoria today. The CRD provides GIS data and services to the public via a popular application called the CRD Natural Areas Atlas (www.naturalareasatlas.ca) I went and checked out the web application and its pretty darned awesome! Powered by Geocortex, the web service provides users with 2005 color ortho imagery (and some black and white images too) along with loads of natural resource data for the area including transportation layers, soils, vegetation and more. Users can measure, mark up (redline, draw lines, polygons etc…) print, save etc.. using the application. Given the lack of freely available data up north this simple to use web service is a very nice treat and the UI is totally cool too! With much fragmentation in government in Victoria (there’s more than a dozen local governments) and then the CRD which is a non-elected level of government, you can imagine how tough the budget constraints are for the CRD so its quite cool to see such an innovative GIS application come out of there.
The GISP and the press release??
More imagery (60 cm) available in latest Google Earth update
2) You can now explore the ruins of this ancient Mayan city, first discovered in 1934.
3) This small Peruvian village attracts many tourists each year for the Incan ruins atop nearby hills.
4) This city claims to be the southernmost city in the world, with approximately 64,000 residents.
5) Home of the Russian Pacific Fleet, this city is also Russia’s largest Pacific coast harbor
Via http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2007/09/where-in-world-is.html
GeoCommons gets a data update and some developer tools to share
More on Nokia Navteq deal – Analyzing the Impact of Nokia’s Acquisition on mobile 2.0
Strategies for Portable Navigation Device Makers
Impact on Internet Players
How Nokia-NAVTEQ Could Impact ‘ Mobile 2.0’
Nokia’s Opportunity Beyond Navigation
More on Nokia Navteq deal – Analyzing the Impact of Nokia’s Acquisition on mobile 2.0
Strategies for Portable Navigation Device Makers
Impact on Internet Players
How Nokia-NAVTEQ Could Impact ‘ Mobile 2.0’
Nokia’s Opportunity Beyond Navigation
the Friendly Autodesk webcast reminder
Scrapblog – the multi-media scrapbook
Leave for a day and Nokia shells out 8+ billion for Navteq
oh man, I go away for one day and look what happens… the Rockies finish up an amazing regular season with a crazy win (luckily the game was still on while driving back from the airport!) and then yesterday I’m sitting in on a meeting with some Forum Nokia execs and they ask me if I heard that Nokia bought Navteq… I almost dropped! I heard the big news while getting the low-down on what Nokia will be doing with Flash and more specifically Flash Lite now at release 3. Nokia is committed to cranking out new devices that will support Flash 3 and something new to me, Adobe’s CS3 product lineup offers developers are very impressive application development environment that enables creation, testing and deploying applications to mobile devices that support Flash. This really is quite huge, particularly when you now toss in the fact that Nokia owns Navteq and all their assets… wow. Can you imagine the applications that will be developed to run in the Nokia Maps ecosystem. I’m guessing that as Nokia Maps migrates to the OVI space (Nokia is moving their games and maps platforms to what is known as OVI) and the 3+ million members of Forum Nokia ( the world’s largest mobile developer community) start thinking more about compelling mapping-based applications, we’ll be seeing some pretty amazing stuff! This is just the tip of the iceberg and getting pretty exciting although I guess I’m not totally surprised at what’s gone down. A tip.. want an audience for your mobile apps, demos, trial ware and even docs? Check out MOSH mosh.nokia.com! FYI, Navteq has some 3000 employees around the Globe. Some reports seem to think that this deal may have been a bit too sweet ($78 US per share) although Navteq shares have soared recently due to speculation that Garmin may have been chasing them – of note, Nokia’ shares dipped slightly once the acquisition (Nokia’s largest ever) was reported. Some food for thought… Forum Nokia developers (the World’s largest developer community at 3million strong,, now has access to Navteq data to use in their apps… hmmmm.