Esri FedGIS: Data-Analytics-Action (Day One)

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Esri FedGIS: Data-Analytics-Action (Day One)

The Esri Federal User Conference kicked off yesterday with another inspiring video calling to arms those of us in the spatial IT industry to become even more engaged in making a difference in the global struggle against poverty, lack of education, social justice, ethnic conflict, deforestation and climate change.  I would say that the 4000+ member audience consumed this opening video and Jack Dangermond’s initial presentation segment with rapt attention.  I especially loved his annual ‘GIS Heroes’ awards presentation to individuals making significant contributions to the field including John Brockhaus, who for the past 22 years has been educating our young command staff at the US Military Academy at West Point how to leverage geospatial technologies.

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The Problem for Developers – Open Source and Non-Proprietary is Complicated, Part Two

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The Problem for Developers – Open Source and Non-Proprietary is Complicated, Part Two

Programming languages that target a particular hardware or operating system platform, and are not open source, tend to support a small number of robust application frameworks.  The canonical example is Apple’s Cocoa Framework built using the Objective-C language.   The platform for JavaScript is the web browser – it does not target a particular hardware or operating system, and JavaScript has evolved in an open source eco-system.  The original web browser started as simple document display software, and has evolved at an incredible rate to turn into the great feat of software engineering that the modern web browser truly is.  This is why we have 64 JavaScript Frameworks to deal with!

 

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Nine things you didn’t know you could do with Story Maps

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Published by Esri® on the ArcGIS Blog.

Story Maps let you combine authoritative maps with text, images, and multimedia content, and make it easy to harness the power of maps and geography to tell your story. Story Maps can be used for a wide variety of purposes; for advocacy and outreach, virtual tours, travelogues, delivering public information, and many more. You can browse a large collection of examples by visiting the Story Maps Gallery.

Many of the ways you can use Story Maps are obvious, but others aren’t. Read the entire Esri blog post for a list of nine things you can do with Story Maps that you might not have thought of before.



Mapping Snowmeggadon 2016

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Mapping Snowmeggadon 2016

Less than two weeks after Winter Storm Jonas delivered record-breaking snowfall, the Mid-Atlantic is enjoying a Spring-like thaw. Our favorite East Coast weather prognosticator, Punxsutawney Phil, even predicted an early Spring after seeing his shadow (thinking warm thoughts)! Here on the eastern side of the Keystone State - hit particularly hard by Old Man Winter 2016 - we took time to enjoy a mound of interesting images, business data, and maps created in snowmeggadon’s aftermath.

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