In the news:
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/business/210306.php
I wonder how long will it be before all commercial vehicles are monitored for compliance by regulatory agencies? To me, it seems almost inevitable. What will be the reaction from individual drivers and organizations like the Teamsters?
Geocortex IMF 5.2 is now shipping, and I’m really happy with how it turned out. While the demo site is there to explore, we figured we’d organize some guided tours so people can just kick back and get a thorough overview of the new features and capabilities. You’ll just phone in, click on a link, and enjoy the show (there’ll be Q&A time at the end).
We’ve created two distinct presentations; What’s New in Geocortex IMF 5.2 (Nov 14, Nov 20) and Introduction to Geocortex IMF 5.2 (Nov 16).
Click here to learn more/sign up.
If these webinars prove popular, we’ll do more of them in the future.
We’re doing lots of work with Automated Vehicle Location these days, and I’m fascinated by the impact of better information about the location of people and things.
The benefits of tracking non-human assets are fairly obvious, but at first the notion of tracking people didn’t sit well with me (it made me think of a radio-collared moose). However, I’ve come to view it as a positive technology provided it is being implemented in good faith as part of the evolution of business systems designed to ensure parties are following the terms of their agreements (and the law).
Here’s an excerpt from a fairly recent case in New York:
“In a precedent-setting case, administrative trial judge Tynia Richard recommended the firing of John Halpin, a veteran supervisor of carpenters, for cutting out before the end of his shift on as many as 83 occasions between March 2 and Aug. 9, 2006. The evidence against Halpin, whose base pay is $300 a day, included time cards that suspiciously appeared stamped on the same machine, even though his duties placed him in different locations each day.
But there was a clincher: data gathered through the GPS system on Halpin’s cellphone…”
You can read the whole story here.
My work environment consists of a desktop computer and a laptop. I do all of my development work on the desktop and use my laptop for instant messaging, email, testing, and other miscellaneous tasks. The only problem with this arrangement is that it requires two keyboards and two mice – not an optimal workspace arrangement. I found a very useful open-source utility called Synergy that solved this problem nicely. Synergy allows you to use a single mouse and a single keyboard to control as many computers as you would like – similar to remote desktop, only different. Interestingly, Synergy also allows you to “cut and paste” from one computer to another – sort of like a shared clipboard. Seeing Synergy work for the first time can be a bit startling but after the initial shock, you begin to see the possibilities.
Synergy can be a bit tricky to set up. In a Synergy installation, one computer is configured the server and one or more computers are configured as clients. On each participating workstation, you must tell Synergy the physical orientation of each participant. For example, my laptop is “to the left of” my desktop and my desktop is “to the right of” my laptop. It seems strange that I have to do this on both computers, but it is necessary. If you run into any problems, read through the FAQ where most common configuration issues are addressed.
Give it a try. I think you’ll find Synergy to be very useful.
We’re not sending out the press release until Monday, but Geocortex IMF 5.2 is now available. We haven’t done the launch on the main product page yet, but the main demonstration site on our Map Gallery is now running 5.2. I have attached the Geocortex IMF and Site Manager release notes to this post.
We’ve been working on 5.2 for a while now with Moxi. In addition to some new features (e.g. dynamic CSS support and updated UI, configurable WMS layer transparency, built-in drop-down tab support), it rolls up lots of great little client suggestions and tweaks.
Check it out and let us know what you think.
A revision control system is an essential tool allows many software developers to work together on a single project without impacting each other’s work. To use a revision control system, a programmer normally checks out the project from a repository, make some changes, test those changes and then check the modified files back into the repository. If you happen to change the same file as one of your co-workers, the revision control system will let you know and give you an opportunity to merge your’s and your co-workers changes together. A revision control system also tracks changes to your projects over time. If something goes wrong, it’s fairly easy to revert to a previous revision and determine what went wrong.
There are a number of revision control systems available. Three of the most common are CVS, Subversion and Microsoft Visual Source Safe. I’m a pretty big Subversion fan. Latitude currently uses Microsoft’s Visual Source Safe and I must say that it integrates seamlessly with Visual Studio and in most circumstances, is pretty easy to use, but it is not without its difficulties. For many reasons, Subversion is a much better choice. A one-click installer is available from here. There are also add-ins for Visual Studio to integrate Subversion with its IDE. Visual SVN is one that I’ve tried out briefly and it looks promising. Before joining Latitude, I used TortoiseSVN from Windows Explorer and it worked fine. For those like us, who have an existing Visual Source Safe repository, there is a migration tool that will import Visual Source Safe into Subversion, maintaining its change history in the process. Check out vss2svn for more details.
I expect we’ll be looking at Subversion in more detail over the coming weeks. Stay tuned and I’ll let you know how it goes.
TextPad is my text editor of choice for modifying XML or ArcXML files, mainly because it allows me to configure preferences, which color codes my files.
By coloring my code I am able to quickly identify any syntax errors that I may have made – such as a deleted quote.
You can download syntax definition files for TextPad from their Add-Ons page.
We’ve been collecting a lot of useful feedback from our Essentials 1.2 Beta Program participants. Sometimes it can be hard to convey the steps necessary to replicate an issue or system behaviour with text. In some cases, I’ve requested further clarification on defects by encouraging users to replicate the issue while capturing it using Instant Demo.
Instant Demo has a free trial version. It performs some basic screen motion capture functions similar to the more mainstream and feature rich product, Camtasia by TechSmith. We’ve used Instant Demo internally for a while and it’s proving to be invaluable when attempting to replicate scenarios our beta testers have encountered.
I don’t recommend Instant Demo for high-quality output (training material, marketing, website content, etc.); however, it’s a quick and easy way to deliver the details of witnessed application behaviour.
Congratulations to the Capital Regional District on the Award of Excellence they recently received at ESRI Canada’s Regional User Conference in Victoria. This recognition is well deserved and is a long time coming.
Although we’ve helped build lots of applications, CRD’s popular Natural Areas Atlas is special to me. Unofficially launched in April 2001, the Natural Areas Atlas was the first public facing custom-built ArcIMS application developed by Latitude Geographics. At the time Latitude Geographics was about four people, and we volunteered to build the first version at virtually no cost so we’d have something to show HRH Prince of Wales (a.k.a. Prince Charles) during his official visit to Canada. We’d been selected to present our newfangled Internet mapping technology to him in Regina and needed a public facing app to actually demonstrate! If memory serves, the first version of the Natural Areas Atlas was completed about two days before the big demo. It may well be that the first member of the “public” who viewed the Natural Areas Atlas was the Prince of Wales.
The application has evolved considerably since then, and it got redeveloped from the original ASP code (modified and adapted by CRD over time) and migrated to Geocortex IMF two or three years ago.
Scott Guthrie from Microsoft made an exciting announcment on his blog this morning — Microsoft will be making the .NET 3.5 libraries source code available for download under the Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL) later this year. As an ISV, we’re super excited about this move as it will allow us to gain valuable insight into the internal workings of .NET as well as extract best practices for use in our own software.
 |
Subscribe (RSS) |
 |
Subscribe (Email) |
 |
Follow us on Twitter |