Amazing what you find in the Google Cafe.. These guys are pretty cool.

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

• Souvenir - take it home and show your friends
  
• Marketing Tool - now your friends want to go
  
• Traffic Control - make the mediocre attractions look more appealing
• Ride checklist - for the person who insists on doing everything
• Full immersion - a land of its own must have its own map

Just a quick note asking you to VOTE for the solutions you think are best in the current GeoWorld Geospatial Leadership Awards.

Some interesting entries have been nominated. In particular, FDO and Fusion (both open source applications) are competing alongside other prominent applications in the Innovator Award category.

Full disclosure: My work on earth.nanaimo.ca (built with MapGuide Open Source technology) is nominated for the Public Enterprise category. Please only vote for it if you think it’s the most deserving solution in this category.

-J

If you want to see what was presented at the NASA World Wind Java SDK 3D Earth in your Applications and Web Pages session, you can now view the power point file and see what was covered  The power point also has several diagrams that explain some of the core features about WWJava.

Still trying to get the other presentation (and I guess there were no video feeds this year).

Dave Bouwman has some thoughts on using PostgreSQL as a RDBMS for ArcSDE (or ArcGIS Server Enterprise as we should be calling it).

Thus far I’ve simply come to realize that I have a lot to learn. I need to grok a lot more about Postgresql and PostGIS to start, and then add ArcSDE into the mix.

While everyone is really excited about PostgreSQL support at 9.3, remember it won’t be as easy to administer as SQL Server is (at least to those who already use SQL Server). Just keep that in mind before abandoning SQL Server outright for PostgreSQL.

I found this out while going through the JavaOne WWJava power point presentation.  LandPrint.com is an interesting commercial enterprise, they are creating 3D models of the earth and make use of WWJava as the way the user selects what they want to have created.

Now you can create custom 3D models of your favorite places. Through the magic of 3D printing, personalized replicas of vacation spots, journeys and natural wonders.  LandPrints are three-dimensional models of the Earth's surface. They're 4-6 inches wide and made of a porcelain-like material.

The prices for a model range from $24 to $50, depending on the size (4", 5" or 6" square) plus shipping.

For me, the more interesting part is the tools they use to create the models, would love to have a 3D printer and the modeling software.

Default view after the application has loaded.  You can select the imagery on the left, Landsat, Topo (US) and high res of California.

In this view I used the Topo imagery and zoomed down to the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon.  The red box shows the selection that will be used for the 3D model.  you can also change the exaggeration of the 3D view with the slider.  You can also add GPS tracks and have them included on the 3D model.

This is the preview window of what your model will look like.

There’s been a bit of coverage about Google’s new addition to maps.google.com, with VentureBeat probably adding the most opinion about it. Google’s video has it pretty much covered …

… Ok, so just a touch deeper at what I think is going on here.

Google snapped up the rather wonderful Panoramio a while back, a photo site built on the raison d’atra of location. And not knowing the full details I believe that Google/Panarmio have a cycle of someone or something, or a combination of both of those, looking at all the new photos (since the last cycle), and deciding which ones will make it into the next Photo layer on Google Earth. Or rather I suspect they decide which ones won’t, but the principle is the same.

The new crop of photos, and removal of old ones that have either gone from the site, or someone has asked to be removed, are then converted and stored in a Layer for Google Earth. So when a version of Google Earth is released, it comes with the latest “Data Pack” of Panoramio photos. There’s no actual ‘live’ searching of the Panoramio site that I’m aware of.

Now, at the same time as making the layer, Google can also prepare the data for Google Maps, let’s take a quick peek at San Francisco …

… here’s a similar view from SuperGeotagged (using flickr photos, more on that later. I also think they could slightly smaller images at this zoom level) …

This is done by loading in an additional set of transparent tiles over the top of the map, this is tangently covered in my previous blog post Paul Smith’s thoughts about maps, it’s worth scrolling down to read his comment at the bottom.

Here’s an example of a transparent tile from both sites …

… Google’s tiles are served from their own servers, and SuperGeotagged supply their own slightly less ridged looking tiles.

SuperGeotagged: You can read more about the SuperGeotagged over here: SuperGeotagged - Every Geotagged Photo. Which as it happens isn’t every geotagged photo, just everyone with the “geotagged” tag, around 1.5 million of them. I have no idea how long it took Sean to render the tiles, but he needed to grab the thumbnail for each photo, so I suspect a long time.

Google on the other hand could possible render the tiles on the fly, if you compare the two images below, the first from Google and the second from SuperGeotagged, it looks like Googles coverage is quite sparse, which is isn’t. Actually they seem to have just deciding to render only a certain number (sorted somehow) of photos at a time, for if they are using the same photos in maps.google.com as they are in Google Earth, they should have over 3x as many photos represented here than you see on the SuperGeotagged map.

The difference you see below is fairly dramatic …

… so either Googles tiles are being rendered on the fly (and cached) and only the ‘top’ 200 or so photos are being used to keep thing quick. Or they are all pre-baked, in which case I don’t understand why they don’t go for a more even distribution at the global level. There’s seems to be no reason for google to render the tiles on the fly as no dynamic search is actually being done.

Which brings us to actually how useful is it to display as many photos as possible on a map?

Well with pre-baked tiles, it’s not actually possible to perform searches for images and view them in this style. I can’t just say to either Google or SuperGeotagged, show me photos tagged ‘beach’. SuperGeotagged would have to ask flickr for the photos via API searches and then render the tiles. Google have it slightly easier in that they can have the data on hand, so throwing enough machines at it makes it possible, maybe, sorta.

Each of these sites could pick a theme if they wanted too, “Windmills around the world” and then Google could show them on Global Windmill Day, or something, but then that’s editorial controls, which for the record is just fine with me.

So what are we left with? Well the photos are good for showing us the distribution of where people take photographs (generally where people sell cameras as it turns out), and I believe SuperGeotagged does a better and more artistic job of this. It’s really showing you, “yeah, there’s piles of photos here”.

Google on the other hand, leaves me slightly cold. When you first “Explore the area”, you basically get 8 photos and 2 videos placed live onto the map (the same way that Panoramio do -video), which is great, but at the same time I can’t actually search for stuff, like “coffee”. Or rather as soon as I do, I lose the photos. It being Google, I feel that I aught to be able to search for photos (and the resulting photos to be from the internet as a whole, not just Panoramio, but that’s a whole different kettle of fish).

Then when I click to view “More photos” I get thrown into pre-baked tiles mode, which is great for getting a feel for a place (which you can do with straight image search), which looks like it’s trying to be useful (in a way that SuperGeotagged doesn’t pretend to be), but isn’t so much. I can’t actually click on all those photos of the Golden Gate Bridge because they are all on-top of each other.

Anyway, this is starting to sound like a rant, so I’ll end with this.

I know the people at Google are smart, so I expect something a little smarter. Just because you can throw thousands of photos on a map, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, no matter how pretty it looks. Unless you’re offering it up as a pretty-thing (like SuperGeotagged), not a search-thing (like what Google is known for).

(and I’m not saying this because SuperGeotagged are using Flickr Photos, in theory with Panoramio’s API they could use ‘Googles’ images, and I’d still prefer the way SuperGeotagged have done it than Google, because of how it’s presented).

Oh and yes I know, its easy to lay out criticism like this, we (flickr) are far from perfect ourselves, with our own collection of problems, but I’m actually in a position to do something about these here. With Google I can just poke, prod and nag, they can always poke, prod and nag back at me next week at Where 2.0 :)

Prof. Arno Scharl of the MODUL University Vienna has send me an interesting Information about a project called Knowledge Planet. Unfortunately I had only litte time to look at this project, but it deals with with Ontologies and Knowledge Bases. Ontologies and Knowlegde Bases are populare buzzwords many people in the GI industy uses for neary everything, but in my opinion less people understand how this could applied properly to build up applications. I think this is one of the few implementations dealing with ontologies.

Excerpt of the mail:

At this year’s JavaOne conference in San Francisco, NASA developers showed that virtual globes are not only suited to explore geographic maps, but can also serve as rendering engines for other types of imagery.

The first public Knowledge Planet prototype, a java applet developed by a European team of researchers is now available (www.ecoresearch.net/climate). It visualizes large document collections using a landscape metaphor and was demonstrated by Tom Gaskins who leads the NASA World Wind engineering team at the JavaOne conference.

The peaks of the virtual landscape indicate abundant coverage on a particular topic, whereas valleys and oceans represent sparsely populated parts of the information space. The applet draws upon the extensive news archive of the Media Watch on Climate Change, which provides a continuously updated account of media coverage on climate change and related issues.

Further information about the Knowledge Planet, a screenshot and the underlying research project as well as the official press releases can be found at www.modul.ac.at/nmt/javaone .

On this way I want to thank Mr. Scharl for this information, and I’d like to share following links:
Media Watch — www.ecoresearch.net/climate
Knowledge Planet — www.ecoresearch.net/climate/knowledge-planet
Press Material — www.modul.ac.at/nmt/javaone

Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.

Want to see all the uses of WWJava that people are trying out?  Then you want to check out the NASA WorldWind Java Demo Page that lists Web Start examples and standalone applications.

There are your standard demo's there.. but there are some really nice demonstrations that that can really up the "Wow!" factor.  Something you just can't get with an embedded Google Map (Sorry Google lovers).  I'll just link to a couple of my favorites.. you can check the page for all the currently listed items.

Cascade Volcanoes Tour Applet
This page shows a WorldWind applet controlled from HTML hyperlinks in the page body text.

Air Search And Rescue
This application helps search and rescue planners determine the best places to search after a plane goes missing.

Using last known positions from ground radar and other sources, planners are able to reconstruct an aircraft path and study it's position relative to the ground from any view point including that of the pilote.

JSatTrack
JSatTrack is a Satellite tracking program written in Java. It allows you to predict the position of any satellite in real time or in the past or future. It uses advanced SGP4/SDP4 algorithms developed by NASA/NORAD to propagate the satellite orbits.

blueMarine
BlueMarine is an open source application for the digital photo workflow. It uses WorldWind to display the positions of georeferenced images over a 3D map.

Flat World Earthquakes
This example shows the latest earthquakes over a flat world projection. It allows you to see the whole globe at once while retaining the capability to zoom onto the surface and still experience 3D terrain.

The recent Myanmar disaster proves that visualizing data has found a new important place in mapping capabilities, links to data and pictures from Frank at Google Earth blog.

All Points Blog points to CNN as an example of why static data just doesn’t cut it, especially when it comes to demographic information and election coverage.

Sue at Very Spatial shows us IBM’s latest project called Many Eyes. Many Eyes is a set of visualization tools and web services that allow users to create and share visualization projects, with the goal of creating a collaborative social networking space for exploring and analyzing visualizations.

James notes that users love to play with maps of their data, and just find it easier to visualize maps than charts.

The GIS data interchange file is discussed by James Fee at Spatially Adjusted, and he asks users how people share data.

Patrick Murris just let me know of another goody that has come out recently. The University of Muenster Institute for Geoinformatics has now used WWJava for a multi-touch wall project. This video shows WWJava on a 7.9 x 6.2 foot Multi-Touch.

During last weeks, a lot of fresh bits have been contributed to the PostGIS provider for FDO Open Source. The great part of this work was committed by Bruno Scott and his colleagues. Bruno has recently joined the FDO development team. I’d like to express my deep gratitude to Bruno for his fantastic help in improving the PostGIS provider. The provider has got better shape and stability.

Recently, I’ve failed my duties in the provider development, so motivated by the load of Bruno’s work I found some gaps in time to submit a few fixes too :-)

(more…)

E-Councilor template—A Windows Live Agent that allows messenger communication with a virtual government worker to ask questions.

Web TV template— Allows government and citizen video hosting in Web 2.0 style.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 templates— A set of 40 templates to customize scenarios that address site and system administration needs.

Local government communications template— Sample portal with intranet and extranet templates.

Role-based My Site template— Designed for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and the My Site functionality.

Agenda Management template— Allows organizations to streamline processes.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM templates for municipal governments— Vertical templates, including reference data models, predefined work flows and role-based user experiences.

So my company is sending me out to Where 2.0 - I've never been and expect it will be quite different from many of the other GIS conferences I've been to - more MacBooks and soul patches I'm guessing.

I'm particularly excited about the pre-conference workshops, as it will be a chance to get the low down on some technologies I have not worked with in the past.  I'm hitting the Geo-ify your Web Site session in the morning (Mapstraction) and the The Open Geo-Stack: OpenLayers, GeoServer, PostGIS session in the afternoon.

In prep for the workshops I thought I'd get PostGIS (with ArcSDE 9.3 beta) installed on my notebook - ideally I'd like to roll into the session with a little background so I can ask relevant questions!

Installing Postgresql + PostGIS + ArcSDE 9.3 (beta)

Overall, not exactly the smoothest installation I've ever done. No step was particularly difficult, there were just points where I had to do some head scratching, Googling and then "just do it". I have to give ESRI credit as the ArcSDE installer was smooth as silk, and they included Postgresql 8.2 on their media. However, having not used PostGIS before, exactly how this fits into the mix was a little unclear. I will say that if you have used ArcSDE in the past, and just want to get rolling without paying for a database - the install is really pretty easy.

As noted, I installed PostgreSql 8.2 directly from the 9.3 beta media - this is super simple. I then downloaded the PostGIS Installer for PostgreSql 8.2. Again this was pretty easy, after you locate and download it. As per the ArcSDE instructions, I then ran the ESRI post installer, authorized ArcSDE and all looked good.

I could immediately connect to the sde database as the sde user, and used ArcCatalog to load a shapefile into PostGIS. Smooth.

But how do I know that this is actually using "PostGIS"? Would this data be accessible to non-ESRI clients?

Enter uDig. This was a quick and painless install, and uDig was installed.

When I browsed to my local PostGIS server, things were not looking good.

Where was my data? Clearly something is not lining up here. When I tried to connect to ArcSDE via uDig (after I located the jar files) it could not connect. Not sure if this is related to using the beta 9.3 jar files, or something else.

Anyhow, I decided I should try loading the same data via the command line post gis tools. Here I ran into a bit of a wall. The documentation for the PostGIS tools is not bad, but certainly aimed at the unix sys admin type of person. The basic process is to convert your shapefile into a Sql file, and then run that in Postgresql. Seems simple. A quick little batch file ought to work this right out. The sql file was created just fine, but it failed to load.

Sorting this out really meant it was time to do a little learning about Postgresql. After sorting out schemas, and learning that the most likely encoding of my shapefile was "LATIN1" I was able to load my data and "see" it in uDig.

Actual loading the layer into uDig never completed. The application just sort of hung stating that the "Project command" was executing. This was just a map of all the counties in the US, so not sure what the issue was, but I'm pretty sure it was my fault.

I then tried to connect via ArcCatalog to see if I could "see" this layer... and not too surprisingly I could not.

Summary

Thus far I've simply come to realize that I have a lot to learn. I need to grok a lot more about Postgresql and PostGIS to start, and then add ArcSDE into the mix. I'm sure that if I read more of the ESRI documentation I'll find some answers, but at this point it's unclear to me if they will be supporting direct access to PostGIS data, or if they will be supporting the PostGIS spatial format for data stored in traditional ArcSDE schemas (i.e. with all the GDB_ and SDE_ tables). I also learned that I've been sheltered from the reality of "data" for many years!

I'll continue this series as I make progress getting things sorted out.

With a bunch of work from Tim, and a little bit of serverside admin cleanup on my part, I’m proud to announce that as of today, the OpenLayers Examples are a lot nicer.

Improvements include:

• Shiny UI for browsing the examples, including keyword search
• Improved consistency of display of examples
• Changing the examples on the live server to depend on a singlefile build — no longer need to wait multiple minutes just to see a single example.

I’d like to thank the original doc team workers from the FOSS4G sprint team led by Josh Livni to get the titles/descriptions for most of these in place, Tim for his work on creating the nicer UI and getting me to update the server to point to it by default, and all OpenLayers contributors for making the number of features we have so easy to demonstrate!

Well, instead of me getting information out of JavaOne.. someon