California GeoPortal

California has launched its GeoPortal: http://portal.gis.ca.gov

• Read the press release
• Here’s another press item

Congratulations to Scott Gregory (GIO of California) and his team – it’s a great start!

My quick takes:

1. The sound clips talk a lot about mobile apps – looking forward to what that means
2. I really like the application carousel –  it’s a pretty cool interface – but it doesn’t work in Google Chrome.
3. My favorite map could be the Parcel Viewer – but it isn’t working – not good.
4. The Viewer leaves a lot to be desired – throwing data on a map without any tools that provide context doesn’t help too much.  I think that Philadelphia’s map viewer is a bit closer to what we need – where you can switch between maps.  But on that map, too there aren’t tools that let you interact with the information in a way that is specific to each map.
5. If this portal is for California, why is there Oregon data there?
6. Under the gallery, the organization by theme is really cool,  but some of the links are just PDFs – don’t know if that is really what we need.  BUT as this part fills out I look forward to it – I just hope that the search capabilities are robust enough to clear out clutter.
7. I am having some issues searching.

 Here’s a Video showing how to use it: