Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Absolutely Not a Good Idea

Now liquor companies are weighing in on the battle at the border, like this recent Absolute Vodka ad that ran only in Mexico. In other news, protest groups gained little ground on Monday as they attempted to get followers to boycott the delicious vodka. I mean, it's just an ad, right? Like, just old cartography and stuff. Pour me another.

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Did You Know?

What is a Cartophilatelist?

Cartophilately is the study and collection of postage stamps that show maps. Apparently maps are a very popular theme on stamps, and often have commemorative, political or historical interest.

VIA: Dr. Maps

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

ESRI is the Microsoft of Geospatial



Why is it that every time I think of a shortcoming of ESRI, an equivalent misstep by Microsoft comes to mind? You would think one of these companies can learn from the other. For example:

1. ArcGIS Explorer: Late to the game again with inadequate features to even come close to be a rival to Google Earth.

Microsoft Vista: Late to the game with a subpar interface that Mac and Linux have offered for years.

2. ArcGIS Explorer: What is the deal with not packaging .NET with damn install?? GIS For Everybody? hmm, how about GIS questions for every poor GIS Tech getting a bunch of calls asking about installing .NET.

Microsoft XP/Vista: One word: CODECS. Here's a Media Player. You can only play one-third of your crap on it without scouring the web for drivers.

3. ESRI UC: $1300 to get all the info you could get for free from the exhibition hall, hotel lobby or San Diego restaurants. Then after it's all over, you are treated to a $900 coupon to purchase a DVD of the conference sessions. I say pick one or the other. The geo-blogs do a magnificent job covering the UC anyways.

Microsoft World Partner Conference: $1600 to get all the info you could get for free from the exhibition hall, hotel lobby or Houston restaurants, et cetera, etc.

4. ArcGIS Service Packs: We promise 9.x SPx will be out in November, December, June. And it's 2008, so if you are good we'll throw in a free zoom in/zoom out with the mouse wheel feature.

Microsoft Vista Release: Same issues.

5. Both companies have the Federal Government by the b*lls. No middle management guy is going to risk his career on Geoserver or something open source like Open Office to run their agency. They like paying $5,000 for software licenses that they can put the blame on if something goes wrong.

Microsoft is trying to put together this deal to aquire Yahoo. I say let Yahoo do an about face and take them both under her wing.








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ArcGIS on Your Mac OS X Update

We've previously blogged about using parallels on the Mac OS X to run ArcGIS. So now that you have it all up and running, grab a cool Mac looking shortcut icon from geoLibro to get rid of the ESRI and Microsoft doldrums!


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