Thursday, September 4. 2008

Will CNN Need to Beef Up their Maps?

So far the results of our poll on Map Hawk as to what's next for CNN on using their "wall telestrator" is that they will have to beef up their maps to go at least to the zip code level. There is only one day left to vote in the poll. Go to the Map Hawk Blog to vote.

Off Topic: 9 Days from Auditions to Performance

Many readers know I have a Masters in Geography from Penn State. Only a few know that as part of that degree I explored the geographic problem of the Penn State Blue Band, the well regarded marching band famous for among other things writing PSU and LIONS across the field at Beaver Stadium.

I was in the band, as rookie and I must say, an alternate, back in 1987-88. So, as classes gear up across K-12, college and grad programs for fall I was delighted to read about how it all works. How the band goes from "nothing" to a "show" in 9 days. It involves band camp, weeding out those who don't make it, then lots of practice. And, yes, there is a quite a lot of geographical learning, too!

This article and the photos will bring back memories for band folks, band parents, and band fans from schools everywhere.

Journey: Virtual World Built on Real World

TechCrunch describes it this way: "Journeys, a mashup that hopes to appeal to these users by leveraging Flickr and Yahoo Maps APIs to create what it calls a “virtual world based on real Earth”." The problem is there seems to be no point to it, though to be fair it is labeled "alpha." Your avatar can travel and see the world (with limited info about some points of interest), but the commenters found it dull and computer intensive.

OSGEO: New York May Need A Kick

New York now has the New York City Open Source Solutions Lab. It's goal is "to show how open-source software can help local and state government agencies in New York state cope with tightening budgets and a difficult economic outlook."

It's a collaborative project of Linux vendor Red Hat Inc., the City University of New York and Intel Corp. Government IT staff can come and test apps and code at the facility in Manhattan at CUNY's Institute for Software Design and Development

Listed apps/tasks to be explored include: "Red Hat Linux, JBoss SOA applications and clustering, global file systems and virtualization systems." How about some GIS to with that?

- Computerworld

What to call apps with maps?

IT Business Canada profiles four mashups that it calls "Business Intelligence 2.0." It's another step in the "what do we call things with maps" question. In this case two of the mashups are geospatial: one is SpatialKey's implementation for Ogden Utah's police force. It's a dashboard, which makes me think BI, but really, it's what we used to call GIS. The second geo example cites the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency. This mashup integrates MapInfo software and Cognos BI. The big deal: "Before, only 12 superusers had access to geographical tools. Now, all 300 of the agency's workers can access and manipulate BI data in geographical form, says Carl Richardson, BI project manager." That's what we used to call enterprise GIS, no?

While some want hard and fast definitions for our industry (geoweb anyone? what about Web GIS?), the trend is not going their way. Instead, outsiders, like analysts, journalists and marketers are trying to own terms. To complicate matters, the different players are not using the same terms. While this article calls Spatial Key BI, when I spoke with the SpatialKey folks (the company is called Universal Mind) the term Business Intelligence didn't come up. It didn't come up in discussions with the Ogden Police Chief either. The app is on the cover of Computerworld; it's a good thing someone blogged that as I can't recall the last time I saw the cover of a tech publication! The cover article (the same one noted here) is titled: Can Web 2.0 Save BI?

Oh, and a new term I learned about in the article: a bashup is a BI mashup.

Free vs. Fee Software Seminars

Storm72 on Twitter notes that ESRI is offering free ArcGIS 9.3 seminars but ArcGIS Server Seminars require a fee. The suggestion is that this is not a great way to promote use of Server. He's referring to the free seminars where you:

- See what the latest version of ArcGIS offers you
- Learn tips for being more productive with ArcGIS
- Get your questions answered by ESRI technical staff

and the fee ones that include two half day sessions for $165 (or a half day for $95) that cover:

ArcGIS Server 9.3: Tips & Tricks
ArcGIS Server 9.3: Creating Mashups Using the ArcGIS API for JavaScript

First off ESRI is a sponsor of Directions Media publications including our podcasts. Also I used to work there.

I'll just note that to me these are very different. The first is marketing focused: The goal is to get folks onto 9.3 (since everyone gets it via maintenance...). Autodesk and other companies offer these freebies all the time. I'm going to What's New in MapInfo 9.5 next week, which falls into the same category. You can, and are encouraged, to bring your whole crew from newbies to pros.

The ArcGIS Server Seminar to me sounds like training. It's NOT aimed at selling you Server, but on specific technical skills. That's training - and it's not for everyone. In fact, it sounds not that helpful to folks who have not already committed to Server. Perhaps terming it "Seminar" is causing confusion? Maybe it should be offered as "training?"

Perhaps someone from ESRI can provide their thoughts on the matter?