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Yes, you must be able to put your designs into Google Earth! So Autodesk now offers a technology preview to do that. I think its interesting that Bentely made a big deal of its offering and Autodesk is keeping this low key.
The download requires both Civil 3D 2007 and any version of Google Earth (Free, Plus, Pro) installed.
Apparently, there is an existing hidden command, EXPORTGOOGLEEARTH, which is no nearly as powerful as the new tool.
“I’ve watched our software grow for 35 years but this release [ArcGIS 9.2] is more technology than we’ve ever released in 35 years.”
- Jack Dangermond, Founder and President of ESRI, quoted in Forbes
I’m starting to see the subtle switch from hype about map mashups to hype about tools to allow us regular folks to make mashups and custom maps. MapCruncher, a tool to make the creation of Virtual Earth-based maps simpler, is a hot topic on blogs. Today I ran into PininthetheMap, (press release) a simple tool to populate a Google Map wtih points. You then send the URL of the pin to friends. (Here’s a sample in Google Maps and Google Earth.) The buzz on GeoRSS is adding to the fire. We are now in phase two of the new world of maps.
I saw this coming and its nice to hear it from the experts:
Strategy Analytics, cellular phone companies and traditional automotive system suppliers are now well-positioned to present a serious competitive response to the low-cost, well-branded navigation products from TomTom, Garmin, Magellan and others. Indeed, the firm predicted that cell phones will take a 30 percent slice of 88 million unit navigation market by 2010.
Perhaps more interesting is this comment from Joanne Blight, director of Strategy Analytics’s automotive practice.
The next challenge is to meet the needs of the much larger consumer segment who require route guidance on a far less regular basis. These consumers will require products that combine and integrate navigation with a range of other features, starting with road traffic information, but increasingly requiring entertainment and innovative location-based applications.
That’s quite correct; most of time, most of us travel in small known orbits. We’ll want other features while we travel therein, specifically traffic information.
read this expose on the new Autodesk CEO in the Marin Independant Journal. The article leads off with how Bass was once fired from Autodesk and just recently became CEO. I’ve seen that at other companies, too. I suspect if you are bold enough to get fired in the first place, you may indeed be bold enough to run the company.
Ask long timers at ESRI how many times they’ve been “fired”; it’s a badge of honor to tell the tale and how you were brought back basically immediately. (I was fired but once from ESRI.)
