Friday, July 31. 2009

Programmable Web Asks: Will ESRI's Free API Draw in GeoWebbers?

The site, which covers programing and APIs for the Web, got wind of ESRI's recent press release noting that even those without ArcGIS Server can now use the APIs for free. Adam DuVander suggests that now ESRI has removed the biggest criticism about about its Web offerings and asks if that means programmers will flock to ESRI's solution. He notes: "It’s not as clear for those not already an ESRI shop what it provides over Google, Yahoo or any other mapping provider."

I think that misses the point. ESRI didn't make the API available to pull in those who are using or considering using these other APIs. (If it did, it would have addressed the differences between its offering and those from Google et al.) It changed the terms to better serve its existing users, many many of whom are non-profits (and governments of various sizes) who will be unlikely to ever hold an ArcGIS Server license.

- Programmable Web

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in ESRI at 06:38 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0) |

Wednesday, July 29. 2009

Update: Wind Atlas of Spain - Which Open Source Platform?

Those who know more than I have commented and confirm:
(1) It's an ESRI Web ADF implementation and (2) there was a mis-translation in the article.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in ESRI, Open Source at 15:25 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0) |

Monday, July 27. 2009

GCN Tackles FusionX/Fusion Core Solution

FusionX was announced at the last November (press release), and renamed and relaunched at the ESRI User Conference (press release) as Fusion Core Solution, but neither ESRI nor Microsoft seemed to do much outreach on the offering, aimed at Fusion Centers. GCN has a write-up with this interesting quote suggesting why it came to be:

“We tried a year and a half ago to integrate ArcGIS with Microsoft SharePoint but failed,” Brian Egnitz, GIS program manager for the Massachusetts State Police, which hosts Massachusetts' Commonwealth Fusion Center.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in ESRI, Microsoft, ESRI UC 09 at 07:30 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Computerworld Talks to Dangermond on ESRI's 40th Anniversary

The short interview yields a few interesting tidbits:

"I don't think it was inevitable that geographic information systems would have come into being in the way they have [without ESRI]"
- Interesting conjecture; we'll never know!

"Sears invested $4 million to build a system, and they saved $43 million a year as a result of automating their trucks for delivery."
- That implementation seems to be the one ESRI continues to hold up as an example. One reason no other names/number may pop up? Other users may not have given permission to share such information.

"In the early years, GIS was largely a proprietary technology. It invented its own standards for doing things. GIS has moved from that position to using IT standards and standards-based technology."
- Is that unique to GIS or is that true of other disciplines?

- Computerworld

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in ESRI at 06:48 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |

Tuesday, July 21. 2009

Podcast: First Half of 2009: State of the Industry

We are halfway through 2009. Directions Media editors have been to about a dozen user and specialty conferences in the U.S. and around the world, including ESRI's huge event last week. What themes are emerging? What can we tease out about the future? Our editors try to make sense of five key themes they've identified.


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Missed any podcasts? Want to subscribe via iTunes, Yahoo, etc? Here's the index.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Open Source, PBBI [MapInfo], Autodesk, Standards, GIS Jobs, Directions on the News Podcast, Geospatial Business, ESRI UC 09 at 01:00 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Monday, July 20. 2009

Top Tweets from Friday #ESRIUC

Some of the more interesting tweets from Friday at ESRI UC:

UC is over. Recovering from exhaustion. Now the real work begins....but where to start?
@geoparadigm

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in ESRI UC 09 at 06:32 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |