Thursday, June 28. 2007

New at Directions Magazine

Posted today at Directions Magazine:

- ESRI's ArcGIS 9.3 - Overview of Enhancements
- The Evolution of Geocoding: Moving Away from Conflation Confliction to Best Match
- Brainstorming in Conceptualizations of Telecommunication Infrastructure in GIS: An Attempt to Integrate ISP and OSP through a Common Geometry Type
- Securing GIS Program Budget

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Thursday, June 21. 2007

New at Directions Magazine

Posted today at Directions Magazine:

- A Governor and a Geologist Meet an Environmentalist and a Hospital Administrator - Result: Executive Champions
- From a New Language to a Common Approach - Dangermond's Message for ESRI UC 2007
- Satellite Images Bridge Understanding Gap between Climate Change and Individuals
- Interview: Multimap's Sean Phelan on the Company's Latest API Release
- Women in GIS: Claudine Bianchi, Vice President of Marketing, MetaCarta

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Wednesday, June 20. 2007

Podcast of ESRI Plenary Intro Available

I saw this podcast noted in a comment on James Fee's Blog. It's the part where Jack Dangermond acknowledges attendees, asks them to introduce themselves then shows off user maps and the wide range of uses of ESRI software. Unfortunately, you can't view the maps while he discusses them. That'd be a great addition for next year's podcast!

Flying under the Radar - Intermap - But not for long

If you have not taken a look at Intermap (traded on the Toronto exchange as IMP.TO) lately you wouldn't be alone. The company has be flying stealthily into the world of web map portals, vehicle navigation, and the PND market. Look for them to make more noise in the enterprise GIS market very soon.

We first caught up with Intermap CEO, Brian Bullock in January to discuss the company's NEXTMap product and the announcement about how they have been capturing highly accurate 3D geometry for road networks for the automotive and insurance industries. If you did not get a chance to hear that interview, Bullock gave a very intriguing picture of his vision for why you need such accuracy, even for a consumer marketplace. In brief, the data is being incorporated into both automated suspension systems and in-vehicle nav devices to help cars in predicting changes in slope and elevation. The result: cars can improve gas mileage and help drivers literally stay "ahead of the curve."

Now comes word today that Intermap is working with Microsoft to enhance the Virtual Earth product for Great Britain using this highly accuract 3D data. Intermap's 3D data is being used by MSFT as the foundation for placement of imagery within VE.

Hottest Tech Toy at ESRI UC

By far, the hottest "tech toy" demonstrated at the ESRI UC was the Adapx digital pen or Penx. The pen can be used to mark-up a paper map with "redline" annotation, but the unique function is to be able to dock the pen in a USB port and have your mark-up appear on the same map that had been previously digitized. The paper is "watermarked" so that it knows the extents of the map prior to drawing on it. The user "strikes-through" an icon on the legend and then draws the feature manually on the paper map. Docking the pen transfers the information to a digital map. The demo was shown during the opening plenary and the Adapx booth has been inundated. Rather than try to explain further, click on the photo at right and watch the demo.

Tuesday, June 19. 2007

Podcast: Dangermond Challenges Users to Adopt a New Geographic Approach

This week Adena Schutzberg and Joe Francica, who's on site in San Diego for the 2007 ESRI User Conference, discuss some of the themes from the opening plenary held Monday morning including "the geographic approach," a focus on modeling and planning, and updates to ArcGIS 9.3. Also: the innovation that got the crowd really going - and it's not ESRI technology!

The podcast is 10 minutes long (3.5 Mb) and was recorded on June 18, 2007.

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