GIS Playground Join Me On The Geo Jungle Gym

Is there a need for a GIS group in Boston

So I really want to go to a wherecamp, but I am thinking first... is there GIS community in Boston.

Let me know if you are into GIS and in Boston by posting a comment to this post. If I get enough responce I would be happy to start organizing some local GIS groups stuff... let me know. And please pass this on to your GIS friends in Boston.

After gonig to refresh boston I think there should be group that talks about GIS and spatial data issues.

What I learned from #wherecamp

I didn't go to WhereCamp5280, but I got to watch it on ustream. It's close enough right. (thanks to Dave Bouman)

I watched a couple of sesions, but the one that really stands out for me is the one with James Fee sharing a google map hack for searching for Rest services.

ok... open google map and search for this: "boston mapserver"

It suddenly find map servers that serve out rest... it's amazing. Now search "washington dc mapserver" and you can find tree planting. Or search "crime mapserver".

Now, think about this for a little bit. Should we be able to find crime data? Do all these mapservers mean to be open?

This sparks a great debate in my office about how one share information and why? It's great to have open standards for sharing geo-data, but I wonder, as many others do, does eeryone get that a mapserver by default can be set up to push out everything... and that can be a very dangerous thing.

What do you think?

The neck bones connected to the IName

With the help of a developer friend in my office I was able to work my way through the ESRI resource page and pieced together enough code to reach my first programming goal:

Public Sub RemoveSpatialIndex()
Dim pGxApp As IGxApplication
Set pGxApp = Application
Dim pGxObject As IGxObject
Set pGxObject = pGxApp.SelectedObject
Dim pName As IName
Set pName = pGxObject.InternalObjectName

If TypeOf pName Is IDatasetName Then
Dim pDatasetName As IDatasetName
Set pDatasetName = pName

If pDatasetName.Category = "File Geodatabase Feature Class" Then
MsgBox pDatasetName.Category & vbNewLine & pGxObject.FullName
RunRemoveSIGeoProcess pGxObject.FullName
Else
MsgBox "Selected Item is not a File Geodatabase Feature Class"
End If

End If
End Sub

Public Sub RunRemoveSIGeoProcess(InputString As String)
'//Init the groprocessor
Dim GP As IGeoProcessor
Set GP = New GeoProcessor

Dim parameters As IVariantArray
Set parameters = New VarArray
parameters.Add (InputString)

'Execute the removespatialindex tool
GP.Execute "removespatialindex", parameters, Nothing
End Sub

Ok... it's really rough... but now I have something to say about this whole resource website thing...

1. Why are all the searches opening a seperate window?
2. Why isn't their a way to re-open the TOC from the pages that search  brings up?

So the good news is that the informatino and diagrams are out there, but the bad news is that it's a little crazy trying to find what you need. It's like ESRI wants you to take a class on how to navigate their website.

Something simple

I am probably like many GIS Analysts out there and would love some simple changes to be made to the ArcMap / ArcCatalog interface. I spend a lot of time editing, organizing, and desgining data. I run into shortfalls a lot.

So I want to start programming some simple buttons that will allow me to work faster by making a button without having to click into many different windows and sus around.

So my first case study is going to be.... Spatial Indexes. Why Spatial index? Because all the spatial index tools are trapped in the properties window and force me to open many windows before I can delete or recalc them. BTW if you have a spatial index and put in a feature that exceeds it, you will get an error. (reminds me of the original bounding issues with the original geo-databases).

OK... so this is what I want to do, but how do I get started. Well... I started poking around the support/resource website and found a page that had some code that allowed access to a selected layer in arcatalog and returns information about the name of the layer here.

Now that I have this code, I need to do some searching to find out how to get the full path/dataset and featureclass name to allow me to locate the file I want to work on.

I hope that I can figure this out in the next week and move onto running a geo-proccessing function to remove the spatial Index.

One more little rant

While this may be getting tedious, sadly this is the stuff that motivates me to come over here and blog.

An open letter to ESRI:

Dear ESRI,

My name is Guido. I am a GIS analyst and a consumer of your web content. I was pleased to see that you have embraced the ideas of both rss feeds and podcasts. I like to use these for keeping up with the wide array of stuff that happens with your company and GIS at large.

But I am having some serious problems with the way you chose to implement these technologies. These feeds can prove to be a good way to build a conversation and to inform your clients what you are up to. But you really aren't providing either of these things based on what I am seeing.

First, the podcasts. While it's nice to have a place where you can tell your listeners what you are up to, would it be too much trouble to have a place where your listeners can add there own comments? Even if you don't have comments, how about some show notes where I can find links to things you guys were talking about in the podcats or even a transcript (you guys are big enough to afford that right?) Both show notes and transcripts also make it possible to Google these podcasts making them more assessable to all of the audience who would be interested in the topics you talk about. Finally, just because you put out a podcast doesn't mean you should only link to your mp3, try creating a show notes page which has  the mp3 enclosed and then my feed reader, itunes, and web browsers can get there.

Secondly, your news feed. Today I read this from your feed

The March regional issues of the Wealth Management Business Magazines from France Publications reveal the 25 Wealthiest ZIP Codes in the state of California, New Jersey, and Virginia in an easy-to-read graphic format. ZIP Codes ranked by ESRI’s wealth...

The March regional issues of the Wealth Management Business Magazines from France Publications reveal the 25 Wealthiest ZIP Codes in the state of California, New Jersey, and Virginia in an easy-to-read graphic format. ZIP Codes ranked by ESRI’s wealth indicators such as income, home value, net worth, and Community Tapestry prove there is more to wealth than just your paycheck.

And I though to myself, cool I would like to know more, so I tried to click on the link to the original page. This brought me back to a page about feeds fro your site and had no more contextual information or links to the article you describe. And that is what set me off into writing this letter.

Is it too much to ask for a link to the original story or a link to the original feed? arghh...

These issue worry me. I hear that you guys are going to be working on resource centers and are really trying to get WEB 2.0 stuff down. But these simple feeds show a real lack of understanding on how and why feeds work in a WEB 2.0 world.

I hope that you are trying to fix these issues. I have met many web 2.0 and podcast consultants with which whom i can connect you with if you would like.

Please let me know if I can be of any help,

Guido

p.s. if you happen to come across this site and this letter I know it's low on content at the moment, I really am trying to get back to that, but content is not something I am getting paid for at the moment so this pet project needs to wait until I have a little more time to blossom.

G-I-YES Please

I will put up a show this weekend... that's that.

Someone in my office sent me a link to this movie and I have not stopped laughing, an hour later. This is the funniest GIS movie I have seen yet !