Tuesday, August 25. 2009

Microsoft's Popfly Shuts Down

Like much of the rest of the world I didn't realize the shutdown occurred yesterday. But I noticed today. I was reviewing next week's lesson for my students where I reference the customization power of both Yahoo Pipes and Microsoft's Popfly. That's where I found the notice that it was no longer available. A more complete explanation was made on July 16 on the Popfly blog.

Pipes and Popfly are visual development tools aimed, for the most part, at non-programmers.

I'm pleased Yahoo Pipes is still with us. But, the fact that Popfly never made it out of beta gives me pause. Why did Popfly not make it? More broadly, why are these very powerful visual modeling tools not more popular? I know that Safe's Workbench, the first one of these I ever saw, IS well used within its user base. (I even used it fairly effectively as a complete newbie at the FME User Conference.) I wonder about ESRI's ModelBuilder. I like to think it's used, but don't hear much about it or about people sharing models.

Are these types of metaphors just not that useful? Is there really no audience for programming between casual or heavy duty that would use such interfaces? Are they too complex to use?

Bing Maps via WMS

Jeff Harrison at The Carbon Project let me know about a new beta offering from On Terra Systems that makes Bing Maps data available via a WMS. You can join the beta and test it out for free.

Monday, August 24. 2009

Yelp Mobile: Bing Maps on Blackberry, GMaps on iPhone

TechCrunch notes the launch of the Yelp Blackberry app (Yelp is a restaurant review service) and the difference in map platform. So, why go Bing when Google was used for the previous app on the other platform?

Per the article: "Yelp says that Bing was used because the search engine provided map tile access, which was essential for movable maps on the app."

Tuesday, August 11. 2009

SQL Server 2008 R2 CTP - with more maps

There's a lot that's new and available to all tomorrow in a Community Tech Preview (CTP) but one aspect is a new release of Report Builder (3.0). It offers charts and gages and supports "geospatial visualization" which the blog posts explains means "maps." The actual release is expected in the first half of 2010.

- Data Platform Insider/SQL Server News Blog

Podcast: Cloud Computing in Geospatial

Cloud computing is on everyone's list of buzz words this summer. What does the phrase mean? And what does it mean in the geospatial arena? We offer some definitions and ways to think about the new computing platform and look at what's happening now and may be ahead for geospatial technology practitioners.

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

Monday, August 10. 2009

Quick: Move the Servers to Save on Taxes!

You can file this under "Geography Matters": cloud platform providers are getting savvy about chasing the best tax benefits. If they should end in one state, they can ship the servers to another with better incentives. To that end Microsoft is packing up the Windows Azure platform (Platform as a Service in cloud speak) and moving it out of Washington State since breaks on equipment are no longer available.

I guess Sun had it right when the started thinking about packaging computing power in shipping containers.

via Slashdot via reader Larry