By Andres | In How To

First, the good: I have released a new Feed Blend into the wild. The ESRI Spiced Feed Blend combines many of the ESRI blogs with one feed from Autodesk (Geoff Zeiss’ “Between the Poles” blog). You can get the RSS feed here, and the OPML file here. I hope to incorporate other GIS software ‘corporate’ blogs into the blend in the future.

I had originally blended a whole bunch of feeds, including content from MapInfo and Intergraph to make the feed blend really spicy. Unfortunately, trying to blend these feeds proved to be problematic, as SimplePie could not parse the feeds properly, leading to improperly sorted dates for this particular feed blend. The process of debugging the feed blend also led me to update some of the logic/output for the other feed blends as well.

The new feed blend is pretty cool, and it’s nice to have a consolidated feed/page that shows the various ESRI blog posts in chronological order. It seems that ESRI and Autodesk are the only two GIS software companies with corporate blogs that cover various types of subject matter that are updated consistently.

Now, for the not so good…

• Overall, the other major players in the GIS software industry don’t seem to have a very strong online presence via blogs.
  • Bentley has various blogs, but I only found one that has posts on MicroStation. It doesn’t seem that the blogs there are updated often (less than 5-10 total posts for each blog listed). I couldn’t access the blog or RSS feed for the MicroStation-themed blog.
  • GE Smallworld has no corporate blog. Nada.
  • Intergraph has one RSS feed for corporate news, but the RSS feed is not formatted properly (this is one of the feeds that SimplePie could not parse properly). For example, I don think that “December 10-14, 2007″ or “November/December 2007″ are valid dates for the pubDate element in RSS.
  • MapInfo has a corporate blog, but the last post is dated October 29th, 2007. The blog is no longer listed on the corporate web site. Did I write MapInfo, I meant Pitney-Bowes map…no wait, yes, I did mean MapInfo. Or did I?
  • Manifold has no corporate blog. Nada.
• ESRI’s blog listings are kind of hard to navigate through. There are kinds of different links/entry points to the blogs and corresponding feeds. There is also a lack of standardization to how the feeds are delivered. Some are delivered via FeedBurner, some are delivered via http://feeds.esri.com and some are delivered via http://rss.esri.com. A link to an OMPL file would have been greatly, greatly welcomed.
• Some of the corporate sites I visited offer RSS feeds for their forums, but these are very random and more like listserves.

I find it a bit disconcerting to see a lack of activity in the blogosphere by players other than ESRI and AutoDesk. Seems to me it’s time to get some RSS love going, in addition to press releases (dry) and community forums (noise).

What do you think? Should GIS software companies offer updates, how-to’s, and informal thoughts via blogs?

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By Andres | In How To

Just ran across a post on O’Reilly’s Inside RIA by Moxie Zhang entitled “Flex GeoWeb with Yahoo AS3 Services.” Moxie discusses using Flex, Yahoo! Maps ActionScript 3 and ESRI’s new Javascript API for ArcGIS 3 (beta) to develop a sample locator application with a standard buffer as well as a minimum drive polygon.

Pretty darn cool. Doh, I promised myself I wouldn’t use the the term “GeoWeb” on Fridays…doh!…there I did it again!

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By Andres | In How To

I had proactively stayed away from Twitter and held out on posting/following ‘tweets’ until now.  Though I don’t plan on posting what I am doing or where I am, I do see great potential for Twitter as a micro-platform for collaboration and information exchange (bursts?).

So…if you don’t already have an account, I dare you to get one…or go ahead and dismiss it, but at some point I guarantee you will have the lightbulb moment.  If you already have an account, please post where I can follow you on your blog (or email me).  I plan on using BlinkGeo on Twitter as a general ‘geo’ information exchange.  I’ll be adding myself as a follower to your feeds as I become aware of them.

My first post is already up: http://twitter.com/blinkgeo

Hope you will join and follow.

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By Andres | In How To

It seems that most GIS needs analyses touch on how a Coordinator/Manager can try to garner increased buy-in for GIS within an organization.  While I am not going to go into all of the recommendations made in these GIS analyses (and implementation plans), I would strongly recommend Made to Stick as a resource for GIS coordinators/managers in organizations that have ‘challenges’ with enterprise-wide buy-in for the organization’s GIS programs/projects.

Time to start thinking beyond the quarterly GIS newsletter or GIS day, and time to start a plan of action based on the principles of SUCCESs as described in Made to Stick.  If you’re serious about getting buy-in from the county commissioners all the way over to that network admin that is always putting the kaibosh on your data accessibility plans, then you need to make GIS as sticky as it can be.  Though my days as a GIS coordinator are long over, I sure do wish I had thought about stickiness during my attempts to garner increased support/visibility/enthusiasm for that ‘GSI thing’…I mean the little box in the corner we called the GIS…er, I mean our ‘enterprise’ GIS.

Get it at your local library (save some trees) or buy it on Amazon (only $16 bucks) if you plan on keeping it.

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By Andres | In How To

I think I remember doing ‘burpees’ when I was in high school, but I recently rediscovered this great calisthenic exercise a few months back.  I have incorporated it into my general routine at the gym and I have seen some improvement with my general fitness as a result.

One of the great things about the burpee, is that you can do it pretty much anywhere (I even did a few sets in an empty area at the IAH airport last week).  I will be looking to incorporate some other ‘old school’ calisthenic exercises in the coming months.

Try the burpees out when you get a chance.  Do at least two sets to feel just how intense they are!

More info at Wikipedia,  eHow, and YouTube.

Anyway, not a geo post, but figured I would pass on some good info…

Mahalo

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