New Biking Directions Legend

April 21, 2011

More about Google Earth Builder

We mentioned Google’s new “Google Earth Builder” in our wrap-up post yesterday, but decided that it deserved a bit more attention.

In a nutshell, Google Earth Builder is a new way for companies to share their vast repositories of geo data. Rather than needing to configure servers and support a local infrastructure, they can simply upload their data to Google Earth Builder and share it that way. It uses a sharing model quite similar to Google Docs (private, individual access, or public), and the data streams extremely quickly.

The implications of this could be huge. Not only will it be a great solution for large corporations and government entities, but provides a way for any company to generate data for a specific client (such as custom 3D buildings) without necessarily having to post them for the world to see.

An interesting point that Google made is that this data will be easily accessible to anyone (with permission) from their desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet, etc. That makes sense, but currently the tablet and smartphone clients for Google Earth likely can’t handle this kind of data. Either their comments have been misinterpreted by everyone (including cnet and others), or we’re hopefully looking at some nice updates to their mobile products in the coming months.

They keys that Google seems to be pushing with this is that it’s easy and fast. Both of this seemed clearly evident in the live demo that they provided on stage yesterday. You can watch that video demonstration below:

There were a few fun facts in that video: There have been more than 700 million downloads of Google Earth and that people use Maps and Earth for more than one million hours every day. Wow!

The fact that Google Earth Builder isn’t due out for a few months (some sites say July, Google says Q3), means that it will only be getting faster and smoother. This could be a brilliant tool to help large entities deal with their vast amounts of data, and we’ll find out once it launches later this year.

If you are at the conference please fell welcome to drop in and say hi. We hope to see you there.

Bernie Szukalski of ERSI posted this post on the ArcGIS Online Blog:

Recently we’ve received some questions about custom basemaps, using a unique basemap of your own instead of one of the Esri options found in the basemap gallery. In this post we’ll review how to use your own basemap and a few options.

Using any map service as a basemap

One of the easiest ways to have a custom basemap is to use an existing map service that’s been shared on ArcGIS Online. Any map service will work, but exactly how you do this depends on whether you’re using the ArcGIS.com map viewer or Explorer Online. We’ll start with the ArcGIS.com map viewer.

Open the ArcGIS.com map viewer with the default basemap, and search for the layer you want to use as your custom basemap. In these examples, we’ll use the Commonwealth of Kentucky map.

Click Add, then Search for Layers, and enter the search keyword(s):

Once you locate the service you want to use as your basemap, instead of clicking Add click the item name and choose Use as Basemap:

Here’s our map, now using the Commonwealth of Kentucky map service as our basemap. You can share it, embed it, use it applications, etc., just like any other map.

Using ArcGIS Explorer Online you can do the same, but the procedure is a bit different. Start Explorer Online, then click New Map, then choose Advanced:

If you’ve already added a map service item you want to use, click My Services to find it. Otherwise use Search to find the one you want to use, then click its thumbnail to highlight it:

Then click Create

And you’ve opened a new map with your custom basemap choice:

Adding your basemap directly from the service

You can add a map service directly from the service endpoint as published in your ArcGIS Services Directory. Just go to the services directory and copy the service URL:

Using the ArcGIS.com map viewer choose Add, then Add Layer from Web. Then paste the URL and check the box for Add As Basemap:

Note that you can also add OGC (WMS) services as basemaps in the same way.

Using Explorer Online start the application then choose New Map, then Advanced as we described earlier. Then choose Service URL and paste the URL into the input box. You can also click Test to make sure your chosen basemap works properly before you click Create Map to open it.

Adjusting your basemap

The ArcGIS.com map viewer enables you to adjust the transparency of any basemap, so you can “dial it down” to eliminate competition with your other operational layers if desired. Place your mouse over the basemap name to reveal the arrow, then click the arrow and choose Transparency:

While Explorer Online does not support adjusting basemap transparency, you can adjust the transparency using the map viewer, then save and open your map in Explorer Online.

For more information see Adding data layers to web maps or Create a new map.

Mapmatters.org is a service that catalogs and tests WMS feeds.

Mapmatters has cataloged more than 1000 WMS services.  Through text or geographical extent searches users can find layers of interest.  Each layer can be previewed on a map or with pre-compiled thumbnails.

In addition to the catalogue mapmatters  also assesses performance and reliability of  WMS services.  For many layers information is available, for instance, how long it takes to download maps from the service and how many times a request failed.

Mapmatters is both a tool for the end-user to find a WMS service that fits the needs of a specific application with respect to the thematic contents and the required technical quality and a tool that tracks how well the service performs and to quickly be notified in case of failure.

Mapmatters is currently in a beta stage and will be extended continously.  Mapmatters.org is a project by GeOps

VerticalGeo’s Spatial Web Developer employment description is located on the GIS Jobs Clearinghouse at:

http://www.gjc.org/gjc-cgi/showjob.pl?id=1323920292

Seamless Topographic USGS maps

A few months ago we showed you Matt Fox’s excellent topographic maps of New Zealand, which were quite impressive. Over the years he’s had many requests to create similar maps with seamless USGS topographic data, and now he’s starting to roll them out on his site.

As you can see from the image above, the maps are remarkably sharp. The are distributed through a rather unique system; rather than just downloading a KMZ file, you download an installation program that adds the maps to your PC as Super Overlays. To try it for yourself, Matt is offering a free download of the San Francisco area, available here.

For comparison, you can check out our “best topo map interface” post from 2006 (a free service of USGS topo maps for the US). While they were impressive five years ago, the new maps are significantly higher quality.

For more, be sure to visit Google Earth Library and read Matt’s full blog entry.

Looks like a very interesting addition to the Google Earth Library, and one that will be very useful going forward.

I was contacted by a reader and asked to clarify my comments.  I will attempt to do that:

I am a retired Air Force C-130 Navigator and after I retired I founded VerticalGeo, a Service-Disabled, Veteran-Owned Small Business providing GIS consulting services to the US Air Force.  We do quite a bit of consulting within Air Mobility Command’s GeoBase program.  We are used to working with some of the great enterprise mapping tools the GeoBase Program uses, but our company is too small (and we keep busy because our profit margin is low) to purchase tools such as ArcGIS Server for use in our own mapping projects.

I worked for ESRI for a year and have been a huge advocate for their software, but it is just too expensive for small companies like VerticalGeo to purchase much of their software, particularly the data sharing tier tools.  VerticalGeo has purchased ArcGIS Desktop software and we do a pretty good job of data authoring.  With the introduction of ArcGIS Online ESRI has delivered a free online Data Presentation tool that smaller companies like VerticalGeo can use to present their work without having to invest in the entire Arc Line of products.  But, ArcGIS Online is limited in what you can do with it and how much data you can display.  ESRI still doesn’t have an enterprise system that can be used to author, distribute, and present data that is affordable for companies like ours to own.  I am inspired that it looks like ArcGIS 10.1 will be offered as a SAAS product, because that makes the solution easier for companies like VerticalGeo to use on demand, but the cost is still too expensive.

We have recently been dabbling into the Open Source Geo Stack (http://opengeo.org/technology/) of software tools and it looks promising, but I believe for the most part Open Source GIS is a little bit light on the G (Geographic tools) and heavy into the IS (Information Systems).  You have to be more of an IT professional than a Geographer to use most of the tools offered through Open Source vendors.

What I would like to see happen is for the GIS community to come together and build our own Open Source Geo Stack that is simple to install and use (light on the IS) and provides ESRI-like analysis and authoring tools (heavy on the G).  Everyone likes to use Google Earth because it is a simple tool that works great and provides unparalleled visualization.  It just isn’t a data authoring tool.  I would like to create a suite of geo tools that is simple to use, powerful, covers data authoring, distribution, and presentation tiers, and can be used by map makers and analysts alike.