WhereCamp5280 – The Take-Away

So yea, great time had by all.  As far as an unconference goes, it was a nice improvement over last year.  These things take time to get right and WhereCamp5280 is looking like its going to be a very successful gathering.  So what did I see that I think I need to pay attention to in the next year.

  1. Google Fusion Tables — Are you kidding me?  These stuff is “teh awesome”.  Fusion tables are going to be more “killer” than Google Maps was.  Yup, pay attention.
  2. Polymaps — I have no idea how I’m going to use this thing or even how the darn thing works (voodoo is the general assumpition), but damn it works and it kicks butt.  You can’t be serious if you want to actual serve up vectors via WFS.  Another game changer…
  3. Raphael — I was playing with this a couple months back and forgot about it.  Don’t get me wrong, Google Chart API is sweet, but Raphael is like chocolate syrup (with whipped cream and a cherry on top).  Hey look at that two SVG rendering projects in a row.
  4. SEO for Mapping — Brian Timoney talked about SEO and how data needs to be found better.  I can’t find a link to his topic anywhere, but just know what is good enough for John Elway should be good enough for the City GIS Department.  Seriously though, if you want your data found, you need to think about how Google crawls it.

There was a ton more discussed (see Andrei’s blog).  What caught me off guard was the general lack of interest in Microsoft technology.  In a huge shift from last year.  Silverlight, .NET, SQL Server and Windows were all lacking in representation.

As I said, great time was had and it was good to get me focused on where I want to go in the next year.

Microsoft SQL Server Denali Community Technology Preview 1 Spatial Whitepaper

The new spatial features in SQL Server Code-Named “Denali” CTP1 represent a significant milestone in the evolution of SQL Server spatial data support. New features include support for full globe spatial objects and circular arcs on the ellipsoid, industry firsts for relational database systems. The geography data type has achieved parity relative to the function and variety of methods that support the geometry data type. Overall performance, from spatial indexes to methods, has been significantly increased. These and other improvements to promise a significant step forward in spatial prowess of the next generation of SQL Server.

Please read the details on these new features here:

ArcGIS Desktop 10 UI Wackiness

So recently I’ve moved my work from the 9.3.x version of ArcGIS to 10. There are some really great things with 10 that make it much easier to use1, but there are some other things that I just have to scratch my head and wonder what they heck were they thinking.

Dissolve is Good Honest GIS Work

I had to create a vector output from a Esri Grid last week and I did the good old Desktop equivalent of GRIDPOLY and got my shapefile. But as you’d expect, there was millions of little polygons from the grid. I did what any sane geogeek would do, grabbed the dissolve tool. A couple clicks later I’m ready to hit the run button and watch ArcGIS struggle to dissolve such a large/complex dataset. But when I clicked the run button, away went the dialog and I assumed the process crashed. So bring of the dissolve again and try it all over again. Yup, away goes the dialog and I have no idea what is going on. I go to force quick quit ArcGIS and I see its churning away on the shapefile. Hmph…

ArcGIS 10 Progress Bar

Back to the ArcGIS Desktop window and what do I see in the lower right hand corner? This bizarre feedback…

I’m sure all the ArcGIS 10 users know that thing pretty darn well. All part of the “multi-threading” that ArcGIS 10 does. But it is so counterintuitive that I wonder how many times I might have force quit ArcGIS while that thing was moving along.

So What am I Looking at Here?

It’s an interesting design choice for sure. I wonder if they were in a conference room and couldn’t agree if it should be a progress bar or percentage complete feedback. I can only imagine the “eureka!” moment when they came up with this design choice.

"It's like a progress bar, only better" -- Esri UI Design Specialist

No it could be the most annoying Esri status feedback since that “Cylon eye” thing that ArcView 3.x used to do. I admit, I’m not the youngest rooster in the coop and my eyesight is poor, but I feel like I have to struggle to see what the darn thing is saying. I’m not the only person who feels this way either. I’ve had about 5 emails about this in the past two weeks asking me essentially, “WTF?”.

Neither Here nor There

We all know ArcGIS Desktop 10 is not multi-threaded. Before this hack2, we had that dialog with the progress bar that was usually modal in nature. Click dissolve and then go to YouTube to watch Justin Beiber videos until ArcGIS was done. Now you don’t have to worry about keeping yourself busy while running a geoprocessing task. It does slow down ArcGIS (at least heavy processing), but it is surprisingly workable. But this half-empty solution clearly leads to weird design choices.

No I Don’t Want the Processing Dialog Back

What would work? For me, I like the percent complete feedback over a progress bar. But don’t scroll the darn thing. Just leave it up in the corner where is. If you have to have some sort of indication that something is going on, throw a throbber up there like happens when ArcMap redraws the view. That’s such a more elegant solution than this current one and it won’t make me put my nose on my screen trying to read what the darn thing is saying.

Oh and my dissolve is still running/scrolling along…

1: I love the basemaps being integrated in to the toolbar. So much easier than going to ArcGIS Online and clicking on the LYR file.

2: Now that might be a strong word, it does work pretty darn well. Let us not kid ourselves though, it is just a bandaid solution until they get true multi-threaded ArcGIS out.