ESRI’s Pre-UC Q&A Highlights

Each year, before the User Conference ESRI prepares a long detailed document answering questions it’s created along with those from users. When I worked at ESRI this was what I read on the 5 hour flight from Boston to California. It helped me get ready to answer all those questions I’d hear in the week ahead. Now that I attend ESRI as a member of the media, I use it to help me figure out what questions I will ask during the week. I also read it to tease out tidbits that might be of special interest to readers of this blog.

So, on the list of interesting tidbits! My comments are in [brackets].

ROI:

“ArcLogistics continues to provide some of the most compelling ROI and cost savings stories of any of ESRI’s technologies.” [That’s been a long running story at ESRI. I wonder if ROI for routing is just simpler to measure than “better decision making”?]

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Update: New Online Maps

The Seattle crime map (#3 below) had to be taken off line when it nearly crashed city servers:

[The map] had to be shut down after it almost crashed the City’s main site.

SPD says Seattle.gov usually gets 300,000 hits in a day. The interactive crime tool launched on Monday raised that to 3-million.

- The Examiner

—- original post 6/29/10—-

KPLU, the public radio station notes the new Puget Soundkeeper Alliance maps of the region. They cover

- Habitats
- Human Impact
- Water Quality
- Wetlands
- Shellfish Harvesting

The five different maps, all built on VERTICES Mappler app, itself built on Google Maps, basically break down what would be a very long list of GIS layers in four maps with fewer layers. That’s a great start to limit complexity. What I suppose is the “old non-Google maps site” is still online. But, back to the new one… I find some challenges:

- best viewed with IE (some definite issues on Safari)
- Contact button on map does not put full e-mail address into an e-mail program
- Help notes the document is only for members (of what I’m not sure)
- this note in the help is curious: “We reserve the right to edit or delete any information added by the public to the Gulf Coast Oil Spill mapsite.”

- KPLU

There’s a new version of of the W.M. Keck Earth Sciences and Mining Research Center, “The Nevada Geospatial Data Gateway,” a digital map data depository for Nevada. The map created at University of Nevada, Reno was unveiled to to the Nevada State Mapping Advisory Committee at the 20th Annual NGIS Conference in Las Vegas at the annual June meeting. The site

combines ArcGIS Server and Google maps, providing visitors with an intuitive way to access the data. Best of all, it is fast, returning results typically five to six times faster than comparable searches performed on http://www.data.gov.
“Essentially, the new site will allow a visitor to click on a location using Google maps and pull up all the data we have for that area,” Newell said. “It simplifies the process of discovering and using the information. It’s groundbreaking work that needs to be done, which no one else is doing.”

- UNR News

Seattle now has an online crime map built on Bing Maps (as is the city’s My Neighborhood Map public access map). The Seattle PI states: (1) the map is updated each Monday (2) users are asked provide an e-mail address to gain access, and (3) visitors must agree to terms and conditions to use the map. None of those seem to be the current situation based on a visit the app. The app states:

The mapped icons are based on police reports taken by officers when responding to incidents around the city. The time for an incident to show on the map is 12 hours after the report has been processed. However, the time for a report related to the event to be made available online can take 2-3 business days.

- Seattle PI

Quote of the Week

“...some counties bust a much higher proportion of their residents than others.”
“Some counties have small populations, so it doesn’t take many arrests to influence their crime rate.”

- Text accompany a choropleth map of per capita arrests for marijuana charges by county in California in the Merced Sun Star

Update: MapQuest Updates its Look, Tools and Logo

Another read on the update/rebranding - it’s another step toward selling MapQuest. Among the evidence from Business Insider:

- AOL has already shopped MapQuest to Microsoft
- almost NO AOL branding on the website

- Business Insider

—- original post 6/29/10——

It’s a few days before a big US holiday, Independence Day. I got a call this week from my best friend noting she’d gotten lost “again” using Google Maps, though I warned her back in October to check any Google directions as its mapbase was not the one it used to be. So, perhaps this is a good time for MapQuest to relaunch.

The announcement tag: “Site to be More Engaging, Intuitive and Faster.” The bullets:

—One-box search for finding directions, maps and businesses;

—Enhanced My Maps with a simplified login process using existing services (AOL, OpenID, Yahoo, Google, Facebook and Twitter);

—The ability to easily save and customize information, including My Maps trip itineraries, and share it with friends via social networks, including: Facebook and Twitter;

—Ways to plan and personalize travel with notes, anecdotes, landmarks and short cuts; and

—Integration of Patch’s directory information into MapQuest’s search results (e.g. restaurants, stores, government offices, local services, parks and schools).

Patch? That’s the hyperlocal news network AOL acquired in spring 2009. I noted last fall it was moved off of MapQuest’s mapping platform to an OSM-based one. So, it’s interesting that it’s now feeding MapQuest.

There a smattering of mobile versions, which will inherit the update.

The MapQuest.com experience will continue to be replicated on mobile devices via the company’s various mobile products including MapQuest 4 Mobile, MapQuest Navigator and MapQuest Mobile Web. MapQuest also recently announced the availability of basic voice guidance on MapQuest 4 Mobile for iPhone, a key differentiator from many other free navigation apps.

The new version is being rolled out slowly on the Web and will appear to only some users right away. They can opt to see the new version via a link on the homepage or go to the new version directly. Or there’s a video. (I have no idea why the video is not embeddable!) There’s quite a bit of talk in the PR and video about the new logo and its interpretation. I guess MapQuest “star” magnet on the fridge is now a collector’s item!

On first look the interface is cleaner and the app has more of the until-now-missing tools many of us already use in Google Maps and Bing Maps including “My Maps,” a tool to build your own custom maps. While the update is a step forward, it really just sets MapQuest closer to the leading players. But since MapQuest is still the #2 mapping site in the U.S. (comScore May 2010), but change was and is unlikely anytime soon.

- press release