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Blog: Chris Harlow on ITSearch The Harlow Report Archives
In June last year the Google Chrome team announced that they would be ending support for NPAPI based plugins by September 2014. NPAPI is an ageing technology used by, most notably, Java, Silverlight and the Google Earth plugin. It is being dropped largely because it is considered a potential security risk.
In September Google released a 64-bit version of Google Chrome that did not include support for the Google Earth plugin or other NPAPI based plugins. However, the 32-bit version still supported it and has continued to support it. Over time, however, Chrome has been making it increasingly difficult to run NPAPI plugins, requiring the user to explicitly allow a plugin to run before displaying it. continued…
first published week of: 04/20/2015
www.esri.com/software/cityengine
In this minor release, Esri presents some enhancements such as Reporting Dashboards, improved KML and WGS84 support, better RenderMan export, and many others.
With reporting in CityEngine, it is critical to see the necessary information about your scene in a concise manner for analysis and decision-making. With this release, we present Reporting Dashboards. With the new Dashboard window, you can quickly and easily understand key metrics of your project through compelling and dynamic visualization tools.
first published week of: 11/16/2015
Citymaps, a recent entrant to the mapping space, sees itself as employing two key strategies to disrupt the traditional way that mapping and geolocation APIs do business. And coming up on a year in operation, its approach is gaining traction with key new deals with large companies and new API features that focus on the social sharing of map data being released.
Citymaps' game plan to reimagine the business model for mapping products is twofold: to create a map interface that moves away from using pins to mark places of interest, and to create an API usage model where application developers are rewarded for using Citymaps data, rather than having to pay for the privilege.
Citymaps began as a mobile app focused on a visually stunning design approach to displaying maps. This included having a business’ preferred logo — whether that be a private enterprise or a cultural landmark — to indicate places of interest. Now it has a number of API products that enable other developers to use either the map design or the map design and the data layers being collected by Citymaps. SDKs for iOS and Android are also available. continued…
first published week of: 05/04/2015
The Civilian Topographic Map (CTM) is designed to allow you to easily create civilian style 25K topographic data and maps using Esri Production Mapping. The first release of CTM includes a geodatabase data model as well as sample configurations for editing, quality assurance, and cartography for creating 1:25000 scale civilian style topographic maps.
You can adopt the CTM data model holistically and implement all configuration rules rapidly, easily, and repeatedly or you can use these files as a sample to implement this type of configuration with a different data model. continued…
first published week of: 05/18/2015
Stitching together a live world map from many different satellite images lets algorithms keep an eye on the health of crops and problems like flooding.
It’s Earth as not even astronauts get to see it—completely without clouds.
Software developed by startup Descartes Labs stitches together daily satellite images into a live map of the planet’s surface and automatically edits out any cloud cover. That makes for a nicer view, and also helps algorithms that automatically track changes in land use or vegetation. The company says its software can make better forecasts of America’s corn crop than the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Descartes Labs was founded to commercialize image-recognition software developed for satellite and aerial imagery at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The software has been trained to identify features of Earth’s surface such as agriculture, water features, and types of forest by comparing annotated maps from sources like the U.S. Geological Survey with color, infrared, and ultraviolet satellite imagery.
Combining many satellite images makes it possible to watch changes in vegetation, crops, and land use over time, as seen here on the border between China and India. Algorithms can automatically track patterns, for example to predict the possible size of a harvest. continued…
first published week of: 12/14/2015
The Coalition of Geospatial Organizations (COGO) announces the release of its Report Card on the U.S. National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) that depicts the condition and performance of the nation’s geospatial “infrastructure” which includes surveyed, mapped and remotely-sensed information.
The report card was developed by an expert panel chaired by The Honorable James E. Geringer, former Governor of Wyoming, with Dr. David J. Cowen, John J. Moeller, Dr. John D. Bossler, Susan Carson Lambert, The Honorable Tom D. Rust, and The Honorable Robert T. Welch. COGO initiated this effort in 2009 by securing the commitment of the expert panel members who worked on a volunteer basis to produce this report.
As stated in the report’s foreword, COGO “recognizes the individual contributions of all Federal, state, regional, tribal, and local government agencies that have worked in concert with the private and academic sectors to develop the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) as it exists today. This work has spanned entire careers, and COGO applauds the sincerity of their efforts and the value of their contributions.”
ASPRS is a member organization of COGO, with an overall representation of approximately 170,000 individual geospatial practitioners. Together, the coalition is delivering this assessment to help Congress, the Administration, Federal agency executives, and others understand the importance of geospatial data to the nation, as well as shortcomings of the NSDI.
Michael Vanhook, COGO Chairman, stated “Federal agencies have worked for many years to improve their geospatial programs, but the COGO member organizations believe that the national data sets and delivery systems (the NSDI) generally need improvement. It is time for the Federal government to more effectively engage the entire stakeholder community to ensure that America has the highest quality geospatial infrastructure. Doing so will allow us to more efficiently and effectively deal with society’s needs, and to reduce duplication of effort.”
The Report Card on the U.S. National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) may be found here – www.cogo.pro/uploads/COGO-Report_Card_on_NSDI.pdf.
first published week of: 02/16/2015