Thursday, October 29. 2009

Dangermond on Data Sharing at NASCIO

An article at CRN highlights what some industry leaders consider the most disruptive technologies today, during the National Association of State CIOs (NASCIO) conference in Austin, Texas. Among them: virtualization (if you don't know what that is, this is a good time to look it up!) and social networking. And, geodata and its use.

Jack Dangermond, president and CEO of ESRI, a Redlands, Calif.-based geographic information systems (GIS) developer, said the IT industry has only scratched the surface in leveraging GPS and imagery data.

"It's all about seeing the world as a map. It's so powerful from a visualization perspective, but also from an analytic perspective, with special relationships and how things are related. GIS is becoming embedded within the fabric of government. It's being used for planning, monitoring and communicating with citizens," he said.

"People say the sharing of government data on the Web is the next step for democracy, Web 2.0 for government," he added. "The concept of data sharing is not new. But all of these efforts haven't resulted in a platform to build applications in a consistent way. That's beginning to change. "

There are some key ideas hidden in there:

"data sharing is not new"

Indeed. ESRI and others have worked to offer the technology to make sharing easier (The Geography Network, ArcGIS Explorer, the new ArcGIS Online, GOS to name just a few ESRI efforts). The issue is not tech so much (though that is a factor) but people and policies. (NB Santa Clara County, California for one.)

"But all of these efforts haven't resulted in a platform to build applications in a consistent way."

Is our goal a platform to build apps in a consistent way? I feel sure OGC would say we should aim to build them in an interoperable way. I would argue the core technologies that make up the Web are the closest thing we have to a consistent way at this point.

"That's beginning to change."

I'm not sure to which point this statement is addressed, but there is no question that change is in the air. My sense is the biggest change is simply citizen expectation. Citizen's expect to be able to access geodata and ask and answer questions. Google and others have set that expectation very, very high. Its up to ESRI and other companies (Google, Microsoft and other included) that serve government to insure their expectations are met.

Wednesday, October 28. 2009

HuffPost on Bill Davenhall's TED MED Presentation

Alana B. Elias Kornfeld was at TED MED which started yesterday in San Diego. She gave ESRI's Health and Human Services Solutions Manager Bill Davenhall high praise for his presentation on the importance of geography in preventing, managing and understanding disease.

But the most compelling and immediately applicable information came from Bill Davenhall, .... Davenhall spoke about the missing piece to understanding personal health: the environment. He said the basic formula for good health is:
Genetics + lifestyle + environment = risks

Huffington Post

Monday, October 26. 2009

Lynchburg Web GIS with All the Bells and Whistles; Another Signal of Desktop GIS' Demise?

Lynchburg, VA just updated its online GIS website. Among the new additions: the ability to document your markups, save measured lines, jump to Google StreetView or Bing's Bird's Eye views, and tools to better see the relationship between records and parcels. (See What's New for details and screen shots.)

The app seems to be ADF-based ArcGIS Server apps and does not use Flex. WorldView Solutions did the consulting work.

The updates make sense when you learn that most common users of the site are "real estate agents, builders and others in development-related fields." One agent who uses the site daily is still finding new features.

Costs: $228,500 for the changeover from the old system, $50,000/year maintenance (the same as the previous system, interestingly).

The more apps like this I see, the more I wonder about how quickly desktop GIS use will drop inside local governments. Apps like this are as easily used inside as well as outside local government. The question is when, not if, most gov employees will move off the desktop. The related question, then, is how this new business model will change revenues for software developers.

- News and Advance

Bentley Positions PowerMap as Alternative to ESRI/ArcGIS

While doing some research on a previous post I did a Google search on "lynchburg va esri." One ad that popped up in the results:

Alternative to ESRI
Powerful Standalone Mapping With Bentley PowerMap
www.bentley.com/powermap

The link to the top text brought me here. While there's quite a bit of text about Bentley PowerMap's features and benefits, and the promise of a free trial, I didn't see anything about it being an alternative to ESRI.

Bentley is getting aggressive with its marketing of PowerMap and subtly positioning it as an alternative to ArcGIS. (Google that phrase and look at the sponsored links!)

Tuesday, October 20. 2009

Update: ESRI Invites You to "Make a Map"

Update: The site and app are now out of beta. Besides links to APIs, there's data for ArcGIS Explorer and a link to a forum.

- PR

Continue reading "Update: ESRI Invites You to "Make a Map""

Monday, October 19. 2009

Wacom Looking for ArcGIS Beta Testers

I saw the of the interface of the pen-based solution at the ESRI UC. (APB post) @wacomgeo is looking for testers.