This morning I was minding my own business doing a Google Search, when the flashing red notifier for Google+ went went off and sucked me in for a couple minutes. In that brief amount of time, I started off a chain reaction…

I saw a post by Matt Manolides asking for recommendations of geo people to encircle. Well, I mused, this is inherently a social platform, so let’s see if we can exploit some of its intrinsic properties to… who am I kidding??? I just figured I’d see if people would add themselves to a list.

The reaction? More than I counted on! About twelve hours after posting, my initial message had been commented on by almost 60 people, received 12 +1′s, and been shared 28 times.

Whoops...

This is where my plan(?) kinda fell apart. Though the experiment was a partial success, it also annoyed some people considerably. Many of the good folks that have (had?) me in circles also have each other in circles. And every time one of them chose to “Share” my post, all of the people who had encircled them would see it again. And again.

So, in closing, I bring you back to the title of this post: I’m sorry! If I annoyed you with this experiment, please try to forgive me. I won’t do it again… at least not until Google comes up with an equivalent to Twitter’s native ReTweet that filters out multiple notifications. :)

-J

P.S. If you aren’t on Google+ and would like an invite, just drop me a line by way of my profile.

P.P.S. Darn, didn’t quite make it a year…

Being in a precipitous mood, I decided to plunge in and get my clichés wet. The first step was to attempt to use the new provider with Jackie Ng‘s FDO Toolbox, my go-to GUI tool for examining FDO data sets. I followed these steps:

1. Downloaded the 32 bit FDO 3.5 version of the new SpatiaLite provider from the SL-King website.
2. Copied all of the files into my C:\Program Files\FDO Toolbox\FDO directory.
3. Copied the contents of the providers_kingspatialite_entry.xml file into the providers.xml file before the closing FeatureProviderRegistry tag, modifying the FDO version string to 3.5.
4. Discovered that something had a dependency on the MS Visual C++ 7.1 runtime, so I found msvcr71.dll and msvcp71.dll on another PC and copied them into the same directory

With this in place, I was able to quickly connect to the SpatiaLite demo database:

And browse and visualize the data:

Confidence buoyed, I decided to take it a step further and attempt to connect to the same data in MapGuide. The initial steps were the same as for FDO Toolbox (adding the provider to the MapGuide FDO folder).

Once configured, I was able to quickly add a connection to the test database, but I had to manually hack in a coordinate system reference and map extents. This is due to an incompatibility between SpatiaLite and MapGuide’s coordinate system handling, and I’m hoping that the WKT projection support in the next version of SpatiaLite allows Haris to fix this.

With the data connection and its spatial context override in place, creating layer and map definitions was dead easy, and allowed me to quickly get to data visualization.

Next Up? Making the SpatiaLite FDO provider work with GeoREST. Out of time for tonight though…

UPDATE (2010-09-01): I was able to get the SpatiaLite provider working with the current preview version of GeoREST with very little difficulty, and the next official build of GeoREST will probably include this provider. If you’d like to play around with it earlier, you can download a totally unsupported package of GeoREST with Spatialite from my temp files area for a limited time only :)

-J

Notes:

1. FDO is a geospatial object/relational mapping framework, allowing consistent programmatic access to dozens of GIS data formats. It is used by MapGuide Open Source, FDO Toolbox, GeoREST, Autodesk’s geospatial products like Topobase, MapGuide Enterprise and AutoCAD Map 3D, and is also included in applications like Safe Software‘s FME and 1Spatial‘s MapRelate.

2. SpatiaLite takes SQLite‘s concept of database-in-a-file, and turns it into geodatabase-in-a-file, offering a full suite of geospatial query abilities in a lightweight extension to SQLite. FDO already has a robust SQLite provider that uses its own open geometry format, metadata, and spatial functions. In contrast, SL-King‘s new provider is intended for users who prefer to use the SpatiaLite geometry format, and takes advantage of SpatiaLite’s built-in GIS capabilities.

The Geographic Information Systems Area 51 proposal has entered the private beta period. Over the next week or so, folks who committed to the proposal have a chance to create the initial shape of how this site will work for our community. If you committed, don’t forget to go to http://gis.stackexchange.com/ to help out on this critical part of the process!

After this week, it will open to public beta, where a wider audience will be able to access it, and the community norms will be further refined.

While I was waiting for this proposal to reach the beta phase, I participated in the Pro Webmasters proposal, and it’s been a blast! I highly recommend that you have a look on the Area 51 staging website and see if there are other areas where you can lend a hand, or where you might need some intelligent collective answers.

As a reminder, all of the content on the Stack Exchange sites is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution / ShareAlike licence, so these are truly community resources we’re building.

-J

This session is open to all, so if you’re going to be at GeoWeb, or are in the area and want to hang out and eat pizza with some Cool GeoGeeks (oxymoron?) RSVP on the wiki!

We’re also looking for some presentation ideas; if you’ve got a burning desire, then please propose a topic on the wiki.

-J

Me

Ross

This past week was an interesting bit of synchronicity. First, Ross took advantage of a Costco sale on the Garmin Forerunner 405, a really interesting bit of sports gadgetry that gives you real time location and performance information including heart rate.

Garmin Forerunner 405

Second, Google released Google Earth 5.2 with considerable enhancements including elevation profiles and the inclusion of additional data (such as heart rate) in its GPS import function.

Google Earth 5.2

And third, this weekend Ross took part in the Kusam Klimb, a gnarly 23 km long trek over Mount H”Kusam near Sayward BC, featuring rugged conditions and a 1.5 km change in elevation. Make sure you check out this year’s conditions…

Kusam Klimb in Google Earth

After completing the event, Ross somehow managed to summon up the energy to post a link to his data upload on Facebook. I have to say, Garmin’s web-based visualizer is very nice! it combines a graph, a map, and gauges in a very clear and easy to use format.

Garmin Player

If you visit the activity page, you will notice that below the map you can export as TCX, GPX, and KML files. Garmin’s KML file is actually a very nice time-enabled presentation, but it doesn’t include the heart rate or speed data. For this, you need to download the GPX file. The easiest way to open it in Google Earth is to drag it into the globe window. This pops up a dialogue asking what features you want in the generated KML, and then creates a new file in your Temporary Places.

GPS Data Import

Now the fun begins. Of course, the obvious first step is to click on the Play button in the time menu to watch Ross run the trail…

GPX Animation

But that capability has been there for a while. What I find really interesting is the extra data that the GPX file brought along for the ride: heart rate, elevation, and speed. You can see the heart rate and speed (I think it may pull elevation from the terrain) by right-clicking anywhere on the track and choosing Show Elevation Profile. This gives you a cool interactive screen where you can display up to two variables, position your mouse anywhere along the graph, and see the information on the globe.

Ross on the Kusam Klimb

I have to admit that I have some reservations about this. The profile was very usable, but the design didn’t really fit with the rest of the Google Earth interface, and I would have liked to see all three data points (elevation, speed, and heart rate) at once. Fortunately, Google is well known for its incremental improvements, and I’m sure that it will get better over time.

Something else you can do with GPX data is create a Tour of your run and follow along with dizzying swoops and dips :) To do this, import the GPX as a linestring instead of a track, then expand the legend until you get to the Path and click on the “Play” button, and finally save the path tour.

Play the Path

Save as Tour

You may need to play around with the Tour Settings in the Google Earth options a bit to get the correct zoom and speed, but eventually you’ll end up with something like the link below. Download the file, expand it in the Google Earth menu, and double-click on the Tour for some dorm-room-Quake queasiness:

Run Ross Run!

Whew. Time for some hard-earned relaxation! ;)

-J

The last day for early bird registration for GeoWeb 2010 at reduced rates is June 20, so get cracking!

Snark: Perhaps the conference should have been entitled “The Importance of Metadata”? ;)

-J

With this understanding, I was excited to see that George Silva was involved in StackExchange’s incubator, and had put together a proposal for a StackOverflow for Geographic Information Systems.

GIS has long been more of a diaspora than an online community, with information stored across dozens of mailing lists, forums, blogs and other locations. Each open source project and proprietary application has its own set of resources, as do academic communities. Answers have been hard to find, and expert participation in these communities can quickly lead to burn-out. I believe that having a StackOverflow for GIS will help to solve these problems, and increase our individual efficiency working with GIS.

If you agree, please take the time to sign up for George’s proposal, and commit to being involved in StackOverflow for GIS!

-J

As a result of this great collaboration between city staff and residents, Nanaimo has gained an invaluable resource. Apart from the obvious benefit of showing downtown Nanaimo off to the world, this new level of completeness gives City staff an amazing resource to use for three-dimensional planning and analysis.

Have a look at this cool movie highlighting the community’s hard work:

If the stars align correctly, I will be speaking about this experience at GeoWeb 2010 later this summer. Hope to see you there!

-J

1. Theming, with ColorBrewer Suport

Being able to theme maps based on data distribution is a basic mapping function, and this release of Maestro delivers. Adding support for ColorBrewer means that you can be confident that your colour scheme is visually distinct and cartographically appropriate for the message that you are conveying. The Maestro UI automatically constrains the colour choices based on the underlying data categories:

2. Expression Editor

MapGuide and the underlying FDO data providers support a powerful expression language, and previously you were on your own to write valid expressions. Thanks to Jackie Ng, MapGuide Maestro was able to use the same expression editor that FDO Toolbox is using, giving expression-completion, valid value extraction, and more:

Check out Jackie’s posts on the FDO Expression Editor and the follow-up where he talks about the addition of value auto-completion.

3. Resource Validation

The Maestro resource validator walks from application to map to layers to data, warning if it detects any common errors such as broken references or potential performance issues like unmatched projections. This is an invaluable tool for troubleshooting problems in your maps:

4. Improved XML Editor

While Maestro’s GUI is great for most purposes, there are times when you need to access the full power of MapGuide XML configuration syntax, like when you’re editing complex XML-based stylization elements. Maestro makes it easy for you to edit any resource as XML simply by right-clicking on it and choosing “Edit as xml”. Maestro 2.0 comes with many improvements to the XML editor, including validation against the schema, cursor position (important when tracking down errors), and the ability to attach arbitrary files to the current resource, which is critical when making bitmap-based symbols:

5. Profiling

Profiling allows you to easily find the performance bottlenecks on a given map, or quickly determine whether changes to theming or other items are having an impact on performance:

6. Package Management

MapGuide packages are a zipped export of the DBXML repository including XML resources, associated binary files, and a manifest. Typically these are managed on the server, but Maestro allows you to create, edit, and load these files via the GUI. This can be really handy when you’re migrating changes between servers. One of my favourite tricks is to export both test and prod as packages, unzip them, and compare using Beyond Compare (not free, but worth every penny).

7. Custom Resource Templates

Any time you are creating a new data source, layer definition, map definition, etc, you are basically just creating a new XML document. If you find that you are always performing certain steps as part of creating these resources, you can create your own custom resource types with customized versions of these XML documents. For instance, I like to start layer creation using the version 1.3 of the LayerDefinition schema, with a default scale range of 1:1->1:500,000, and none of the feature types being displayed. All I had to do was create a new LayerDefinition with these settings, save it to the MapGuideMaestro\Templates directory with a name like “Nanaimo Layer.xml”, and it shows up when I want to create a new resource:

8. Duplicate Resource

This might not seem like a big deal, but when creating dozens of similar layers it can be a huge timesaver. Simply right-click on any resource and choose “Duplicate” and a copy of that resource is created and ready for you to customize:

9. Colour-Coded Resource Tree

When editing many resources at once, things can get a bit confusing. Crispin Hoult from 1Spatial contributed a feature that colour-codes currently open resources in green, and resources that have unsaved changes in pink. The currently active resource comes up in a darker shade. This feature makes it much easier to keep track of what’s going on in your work area, and is surprisingly useful:

10. General Usability

OK, maybe this doesn’t count as a feature, but a LOT of thought has been put into how various user interactions work, and countless small refinements have been made. A few examples:

• inserting a new layer into a map definition when you have a group selected inserts the layer into that group, and places the layer into the overall draw order right after the bottom-most layer in that group
• you can now right-click on any resource and copy its ID (like Library://Nanaimo/Data/MyFile.FeatureSource) to the clipboard, which can be incredibly useful when writing code to access resources
• you can multi-select many layers for insertion into a MapDefinition at once
• maestro keeps track of references when you rename or move resources, prompting you for whether you want dependent resources updated

All of the little enhancements in this release added together have saved me hours of work (I’ve been using the pre-release versions for a few months).

All-in-all this is a very impressive release, with countless new features and enhancements to existing functionality. Give it a spin, and I’m sure you’ll turn up your own favourites!

Thanks Kenneth, and great work.

-J

The first thing stuck in my head is the idea that Google is moving wholesale into the content business. They aren’t creating their own content, but they aggregate external content into a “walled garden” and encourage users to host content on Google properties, both actions ensuring that value remains solely exploitable by Google. For product and service folks this won’t matter much, but for people reliant on web content for their income the contraction of the web into mega-portals is definitely a business threat to be aware of. I personally worry that this business tactic may affect the vitality of the web in the long run. Case-in-point, with the recent launch of the real estate layer in Google Maps, realtors are incented to funnel their listings through Google Base rather than posting them openly on the web as GeoRSS or KML. This echoes the aggregation that is occurring in Google’s “Place Pages“, and is a worrisome trend.

The other thing stuck in my head is that stupid Sesame Street pinball counting song… actually I kinda dig it, which is probably why it’s staying stuck.

What I really want to do is to stop thinking about these things. I figured that maybe if I combine the two it will help me exorcise both demons, so:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 !!!!

-J