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By markgreninger, on October 31st, 2011 Hello everyone,
We crossed a pretty big threshhold today – this site just reached 100,000 views! I track these statistics pretty regularly to ensure that the information that I provide shows value for everyone. Thanks for checking the site out! The other cool thing is that it’s not just my content (a lot of what I am doing is forwarding things from other experts in the field) – so if you have information you would like to share let me know!
It’s been fun watching the growth on the site -from a few hundred visitors per month to over 6,000 now.
 Monthly statistics
But watch our – our GIS Data Portal is catching up – it’s over 80,000 views, and has only been online for only 1 year …
By markgreninger, on October 28th, 2011 Check out this new software: http://www.esri.com/software/cityengine/index.htm
There is a video on the page. At first I was thinking that the software is a bit ridiculous, and then about 30 seconds it clicked and I went “WOW!”
A VERY cool tool for planners. Who needs 3D analyst!
By markgreninger, on October 28th, 2011 LA County’s Board of Supervisors approved a motion this past Tuesday to declare November 16th, 2011 as GIS Day! I’m looking forward to the 15th, where the GIS Day committee, who has been working very hard on the upcoming event, while attend the Board meeting and get a beautiful scroll, which we plan to have on hand at the free LA County GIS Day event, open to the public, on November 16th at the Department of Public Works Headquarters.
For more information on GIS Day, see to the GIS Day website.
Click to see the motion: Approved Motion for GIS Day (.pdf file)
Here is the text of the proclamation:
By markgreninger, on October 27th, 2011  Map Style Samples In looking around regarding Google’s new charging model, I saw documentation about Google’s Styled Maps – where you can customize the look of the Google Maps. This is super cool!
Link to a page showing 8 different samples.
When will ESRI allow us to do the same thing? One map source, many map styles? This would be especially useful with the concept of the map “canvas” that I discussed in relation to an ESRI discussion – click to get to the map canvas post. A valuable addition to the ESRI Community Map Program, I would think.
Some Links
Here’s a site that discusses it: http://blog.programmableweb.com/2010/05/20/make-your-google-map-stand-out-with-styles/
Here’s their API: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/styling.html#map_features
 Style Wizard Here’s a fun site to try your hand at making change: http://gmaps-samples-v3.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/styledmaps/wizard/index.html
 ESRI Map Canvas Has anyone built a map application using the styled capabilities? Note – if you use styles, Google will begin to charge you after 2,500 hits per day. Obviously this takes some serious processing!
By markgreninger, on October 27th, 2011 Most of us have taken for granted that commercial mapping APIs are free (Google, Bing, etc). One thing that results from that is that a question I always need to answer is why we don’t ONLY use the free services coming from Google. There are a few reasons:
- Google can place advertising on its maps at any time (it says so in the terms of service).
- Information like businesses show us which we don’t really want.
- We don’t have control over the information (we have requested fixes to maps where there are errors but they don’t get implemented or it takes a long time).
We can now add one more – that it won’t be free any more. James Fee passed that information along in a recent post. Click to read his take on it.Note – the usage limits are still very high – 25,000 loads per day are still free, so it still is a great platform, and a great standard.
I do like the fact that geographic data is now being given a value – if you give something away for free, generally people don’t think it’s hard to maintain it (Google tends to use as much open source – i.e. government created data as possible. Aerial photography isn’t free (we spend $3 million every few years to refresh the County’s data).
Background – the County does maintain a Google Maps Enterprise License so that we can reduce advertising and have clarity in terms of the services we can expect over time. It’s a great resource for us – we are using more and more constantly, but still at around 10% of what our ESRI servers are serving …
By markgreninger, on October 26th, 2011  Floor plan The GIS Day Committee has completed the final versions of the floor plans for this year’s 2011 GIS Day. Thanks to Public Works and their great team for putting this together!
There are two floor plans – one for a nice sunny day, where booths will be outside, and one in case of rain. We’ve had great luck so far with nice sunny days – let’s hope it continues for another year!
We currently have 50 booths for GIS Day, of which 37 have been reserved. If you are interested in reserving a booth or a map gallery slot for you organization, you can register at the GIS Day Reservation Page. You can also see the areas where we will the LA County Fire GIS Truck and other GIS vehicles.
To request a specific booth number
For folks who have already registered, the GIS Day Committee will take requests for specific booths, based upon needs such as power, display items that you are bringing, and various other space requirements. Review the GIS Day Floor plans above and contact Richard Ledesma (RichardLedesma@dpss.lacounty.gov) for any requests.
By markgreninger, on October 24th, 2011  Live feed of changes Google just opened up Canada for updating their maps – and along with it they had a link to a map that shows what people are updating right now. It’s pretty darn cool!
http://www.google.com/mapmaker/pulse
By markgreninger, on October 20th, 2011 Jim Wilkinson from ISD passed this news along to me. The County uses SpotOn to integrate our Countywide Business Intelligence (CBI) Software, Cognos, with our ESRI GIS software – the CBI has had a license for SpotOn for a while.
Jim’s group will be demonstrating the power of this integration at our coming GIS Day even (click for details).
Here is the information that Jim passed along:
Continue reading SpotOn acquired by ESRI – their Vantage product integrates ESRI and Cognos
By markgreninger, on October 19th, 2011  MapRank A good friend of mine, Joel Myhre, turned me on to this site: http://www.davidrumsey.com/ where they have a GIS interface to search for old maps.
Very cool site – you’ll see a lot of old information there.
I found a cool old map of LA City there – now we just need to georeference it and we can REALLY go back in time!
Here’s a cool link to old aerial photographs from 1938 of San Francisco.
By markgreninger, on October 19th, 2011  Flyer Following up on a recent post, Marianne Jeffers wanted me to pass along this further information about the new CSUN GIS-T Program. There is an upcoming information session at DPW on Monday, October 24th. More details in the flyer.
Link to the flyer: CSUN GIS-T Flyer (.pdf file)
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