ESRI ArcGIS Online: Enabling the sharing of GIS Data

ESRI ArcGIS Online: "ArcGIS Online Content Sharing" ESRI has made available the beta version of ArcGIS Online - a system for the sharing of GIS content. What makes it useful is the fact that the system will make available the data - royalty free to users of ESRI software. Virtual Earth has made available the specs to its tile server - which makes it possible for anybody who wants to share their data to host it on their own server. What differentiates this ESRI product is the fact that ESRI will host the data on their servers - which means that the barrier to sharing has been lowered. What remains to be seen is what the barrier to use will be like? Imagine what this does for local and state governments. They can provide access to valuable GIS info to their denizens at no cost to the tax-payer! What I would like to see with this service: 1. A better version of ArcGIS explorer to view this data. (Right now - ArcGIS explorer pales in comparison with Google Earth) 2. Make the data truly public. That is, open up the specs for the online service, so that I could write plugins for open source tools like WorldWind that could leverage this public data. And remove any usage restrictions on the softwares that can use this data. It is data that users wish to be available publicly... so why not?

EveryScape: 3D GIS Worlds

Here is another immersive 3D GIS world WEB2.0 provider - EveryScape. The technology is pretty impressive and it looks sort of like MS's PhotoSynth. The big difference is that this technology was enabled via Flash - so it doesnt take too much computing power. Now, we have to wait and see if they will be providing free tools and if the technology is easy enough for ordinary users to create and upload worlds - thereby creating content for the entire globe quicker. I am not sure if EveryScape is actually Mok3 - but I did see a reference to the two on a blog somewhere. (http://www.dfjne.com/portfolio/Mok3.htm). The video below shows some really cool technology. Mok3 allows one to also create 3D scenes from 2D scenes like paintings! Pretty cool though... Welcome to EveryScape!

This I believe... the developer edition : guiding principles for a software project

Patrick Cauldwell's Blog - This I believe... the developer edition: This blog has some points that can be seen as general purpose guidelines for any software project.

Dutch Umbrella : A Location Based Service

Dutch Umbrella From the company website "1. A system for the free public use of umbrellas comprised of pick-up and drop-off locations within a defined urban area. 2. A community supported effort to encourage citywide sharing, enabling the convenience of any-time umbrellas. " The company plans to have bins across a city from which people can pick-up and replace - for free - umbrellas to use around the city. The bins called RainDrops are sponsored typically by a local store, which hopes that the extra foot traffic to its location will be turned into some sales. (I am sure a lot of bins are sponsored out of the genorosity of the local people too). To me this is the ultimate opportunity in location based services. Imagine what you could do with a GPS and a cheap LCD screen mounted underneath the umberella. As a person who has picked up an umberella walks around, the GPS system could pick and display ads of local stores. Such a system would be wonderful in the heart of a city - where many stores are located and act as a magnet for tourists and the locals (the 16th street mall in Denver comes to mind). An even simpler solution could be that the umberellas have an embedded RFID chip. As the user passes close to sponsoring business, a special sign could light up in the store window..... the possibilities for such a service are ENDLESS. But what a neat idea...... Umberellas are for rainy days only..... one could do it with cycles (I would love to see that)..... or maybe Segways (wishful thinking).

Cool Client Stuff : How does the Windows Forms designer in Visual Studio load a Form?

Ever wondered "How does the Windows Forms designer in Visual Studio load a Form?".... here is a MS blog post about this (link)

WhoLockMe & Unlocker: Determine the app thats locking a file and unlock it!

Ever needed to delete a file and Windows reports that it cant because it is locked! Usually occurs to me when I need to clear out the %temp% folder.... and it bugs me to no end! I used to run the ProcExp.exe tool which would report which process had the file locked and I would then kill the process after which I could delete the file. No more long drawn steps - Unlocker comes to the rescue and its free. It even adds a context menu - USEFUL as hell! And you can use WhoLockMe now, to determine via a context menu - which app has your file locked! WhoLockMe Explorer Extension v1.04 beta (NT-Win2K-XP) download page UNLOCKER 1.8.5 BY CEDRICK 'NITCH' COLLOMB

Crash when using windows.external to call a C# class method

Recently I was using the WebBrowser control embedded into a Windows Form. I assigned the current form object to the webBrowser control using the property ObjectForScripting property. My hope was that I would be able to use the javaScript method windows.external.PublicMethodInMyClass to call methods in my form: essentially a callback from the webBrowser control. Remember you have to declare [ComVisible(true)] on your class for it to be available to be called via JS from HTML page and if you plan on assigning it to ObjectForScripting. Now for some reason I was having a crash everytime that windows.external was being accessed in my HTML code. After much debugging I found out that the problem was that I was declaring the ClassInterfaceType.None attribute on my class. ([ClassInterface(ClassInterfaceType.None)]) Once I removed that attribute - voila! everything started working correctly. Who knew!

Microsoft Surface

Earlier this year I had written about Jeff Han's Perceptive Pixel project. (http://therajahs.blogspot.com/2007/02/perceptive-pixel-future-for-gis.html) Perceptive pixel is a montior with which multiple users can interact just like Tom Cruise did in Minority Report. When I first saw the video, I was truly blown away at how close we were to this technology. (Perceptive pixel already has working models). Today I came across Microsoft's interactive monitor technology called "Surface". The reason that I think that this is way cooler is that MS has thought of how to bring this technology into every home. Where Perceptive Pixel made me think of how cool its use would be at work in areas such as GIS, Military intelligence, Surface makes me think of all those and more. I can see Surface being used in our conference rooms, during code reviews, showing our prototypes to stake holders..... but I can also see it as a coffee table in my house, a game console for multiplayer games, a way to show my pictures, the uses are endless. Check out all the videos at Microsoft Surface. The ideas that they have dreamt up are pretty cool. (The one I like the best is - splitting your tab at a restaurant! - its in the 3rd video) For more technical info check out this PopularMechanics video -> http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html

C# : Enum and overriding ToString on it

I know the answer (it's 42) : C# : Enum and overriding ToString on it Usefull methods for working with Enum types in C#

Mob Gaming

Mob Gaming: NewsBreaker, Like a Group Wii Experience - Gizmodo Check the video out - it looks like a lot of fun!