According to the Google GeoDevelopers Blog, the Google Maps API now supports multiple languages (list here). There is no need for developers to do anything, Google will simply translate all map controls based on the location of the user (geo-ip location). Wonderful news for all of you travelers which will end up seeing the local language at your location rather than the language you speak. Google does offer a way to define a specific language, but is that enough?
As mentioned on the Google Geo Blog yesterday, as well as by James Fee in his blog, Google’s spatial offerings (Google Maps and soon Google Earth I assume) will include comprehensive parcel data that has been collected somehow from Google. While the Geo Blog entry is sparse, there is a mention of the “Report a Problem” link added to maps, allowing users to make suggestions (and perhaps corrections) to the data served by Google. What many people have noted is that the copyright notice in the United States has changed, and now the notice reports as a copyright holder Google.
Oct 022009
Many people out there insist that Google Maps and Google Earth is killing the GIS industry. I had a number of students circulate that idea with me, always wondering if there is still a future for GIS. In a short simple answer, Google Maps/Earth is not a GIS, and GIS will be around for the foreseeable future.
Aug 192009
The geoprocessor object has multiple List methods one can use to retrieve lists of items that it is aware of. Below are examples of the most commonly encountered ones: ListWorkspaces(), ListTables(), ListRasters(), ListFeatureClasses(), ListDatasets() and ListFields().
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Everyone that creates maps has to deal with color, some way or another. While there are many different ways of going about it (refer to any textbook on cartography), few online resources seem to be up to the tasks. Well I recently stumbled upon NASA’s Color Usage website. Apart from the excellent articles and resources provided (thank you NASA), they also include a Color Tool (Java Applet) that allows one to explore colors in a very beautiful way. I hope you find the information there as useful as I have.
Jul 162009
There are some fundamental differences between geoprocessing performed in ArcGIS version 9.2 and 9.3. While I will not cover them all in this post, I will attempt to show the most fundamental differences that people seem to encounter more often.
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I have talked about cartography and typefaces in a previous post, but never actually provided any examples of those typefaces. I believe this would be a nice time to do so now.
Jun 112009
There are multiple problems analysts face when they have to deal with processing multiple data files. There is the issue of identifying similarities and commonalities in files, and then of course how to automate the processing so they don’t have to run a program multiple times with the same parameters of separate files. In the world of ESRI’s GIS analysis, this can be performed quite easily with the help of Geoprocessing, either in Python or the Model Builder. Below is sample code that allows the iteration over a number of datasets. Continue reading »
Jun 042009
In the many methods present at the Python interface to ArcGIS (Python geoprocessing through the arcgisscripting module), one that is quite useful when processing individual elements on a feature class is called MakeFeaturelayer(). The behavior, while predictable with a small number of runs, can prove problematic when dealing with large datasets. Continue reading »
May 202009
As may be evident from my other posts in the past, I have a tendency to use Python to solve a lot of the problems I face every day doing research in Geography. In that context, analyzing the 2002 Input Output Model for Washington State, I decided that Graph Theory needs to come into play (Economic Geograhy seems to need more Python(s) around). Continue reading »
