The Dirty Little Secret About Esri’s EDN at Version 10

I’m sure all Esri EDN users are running in to the same problems I am with the product, licensing. At WeoGeo, I’m testing our new toolbar on many platforms and OS versions so that we know it works with ArcGIS 10. The problem is that the ArcView license included in EDN only allows you to install ArcView twice. Every time I need to switch from one VM to the other, I’ve got to go through this crazy unregister/register process just to use ArcMap. And you’d better believe I’m headed to a point where I won’t be able to install ArcView anymore because I’ve hit the install ceiling (which I’ve heard is at 999 installs).

So don’t assume that an EDN is licensed per developer because it sure isn’t. Makes you question the value of the product where licensing keeps kicking you in the shins. I have no will to fire up ArcGIS 10 anymore because of Esri licensing mess. This wasn’t a problem at 9 and I can only assume licensing was tightened at 10 so we’d all pay up. But EDN is supposed to be licensed for developers, not production and you’d think Esri would encourage me to make sure my toolbar runs on 32/64 bit XP/Vista/7. Time to cue the Price is Right losing horn…

ExtMap Touch — Mobile Browser Geo Framework

Alper Dincer is one busy guy. Seems like just a couple weeks ago he release iExtMap for iOS. Well if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know I’m always complaining about apps and app stores holding back real mobile development. I mean shouldn’t it be simple to just have one web app that covers iOS, Android and Blackberry? Ah, but no. It just isn’t that easy, until now…

Alper though has a new framework that looks very promising. Says Alper:

Writing a multi-platform viewer is also quite hard due to different code bases on different platforms. Mobile Web is developing very fast due to usage of WebKit on different platforms. Today; iOS, Android, WebOS, Bada, BlackBerry, Symbian and other platforms are using WebKit implementations on their browsers and this lead to a dream of web developer : “One browser to rule them all”

Anyway, I have the idea to write a mobile version of ExtMap, but there is a need for a motivation to start the project. The motivation was “Sencha Touch Developer Contest” and “Sencha Touch Framework” and I started working “ExtMap Touch” on Sencha Touch Framework and Google Maps JavaScript API v3.

Yahtzee!  I’ve been playing with the demo this morning at the GITA Oil and Gas conference (where WeoGeo is exhibiting) and I love what I see.  I can’t wait to get back home and start playing around with this thing.  Check out the live demo and the ExtMap project home for more information.

ExtMap Touch Demo for Sencha Touch Developer Contest 2010
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GeoDesign Friday

Looking for something besides damnyouautocorrect.com for your Friday distraction? A couple interesting GeoDesign links are below for distraction.

First up is a new e-book from Esri called, “Changing Geography by Design: Selected Readings in GeoDesign“. As expensive as that title is, it is available as a free PDF from ESRI. And don’t worry, Carl Steinitz‘s work is way back in the Bibliography, so you can ignore his complicated University-think GeoDesign ideas (yea, works well at Harvard, but us mere mortals live in the real world).

The other is a video demonstrating some GeoDesign workflows to perform a suitability analysis. Cool stuff (though clearly an Esri exercise)…

Oh and Go Giants!