Document Density Mapping with MetaCarta

One of the new features MetaCarta is offering is a document density map. When MetaCarta’s Geographic Text Search (GTS) has finished compiling the results of a location-based search, it will offer the user a map of where it found the highest number of documents for a given location which is slightly different than what it had offered previously. The map is a coarse rendering of shaded pixels depicting "hot spots" of ever-increasingly higher concentrations of "hits" from the search. It looks like a coarse surface map. The user can then zoom in on the area and click on the map to retrieve the list of documents found in the search. So, MetaCarta gave GTS a slight tweaking to make its visualization of its search results just a little bit better.

Freezing the Market with ArcGIS Explorer

ArcGIS Explorer (AGE) has the potential to freeze the market for Google Earth (GE) among ESRI users who like what they see as a visualization platform but who want more than just access to the satellite data or 3D perspective views. Because of the additional functionality that AGE offers in terms of running Model Builder directly from the user interface, for expample, as well as accessing a WMS data source or other web service, GE looks limited by comparison. In addition, the ability to source other globes, like the Rumsey collection or political boundaries, on which to place thematic results is quite unique.

Podcast: The State of Digital Street Mapping

Joe Francica spoke with representatives of Tele Atlas and NAVTEQ at the ESRI User Conference. In this podcast, we consider the state of the market and what the future may hold. This ten minute podcast was recorded on August 9.

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The State of Digital Street Mapping

ArcGIS Server - Not Just Another J2EE Platform for NetWeaver

I sat in on an ESRI/SAP User Group meeting (ESUG) to better understand the level of intergration between SAP’s NetWeaver platform and ArcGIS. ArcGIS 9.1 is certified on SAP. ESRI support for SAP Netweaver for ArcIMS and ArcGIS Server is coming in 2007. ESRI would hope that SAP users will consider ArcGIS as just another J2EE platform that will easily integrate with other J2EE compliant applications for finanicial data administration or asset management, for example. ESRI is closely supporting SAP in a project called SAGRES to identify user workflows and building a working prototype to demonstrate a high level of intergration to spatially-enable SAP applications.

New Documentation Supplements ArcGIS 9.2

One of the unique items mentioned at the opening plenary session at the ESRI UC this year was better software documentation for users. Now, this may not sound very unique but ESRI intends to deliver not just a User Manual with the software but documentation about "why" you would want to use a particular function. What ESRI is trying to do is anticipate the challenges a user faces when learning a new piece of software. It’s one thing to learn a new function; it’s quite another to understand why you would use it in the first place.