"Complaining that neogeographers don't know their Peters projection from their Mercator projection is like complaining that car drivers these days don't know how to crank-start an automobile."which is a wonderful put down but hides the bigger point, some maps put together by neo-geographers maps are wincingly bad, but without the neo-geographers computer maps (be it GIS or other) would still be limping lamely into the future dominated by the whims of ESRI.
The fun of cross fertalising ideas to both groups is pretty much the raison d'etre of this blog.
3 comments:
Whims of ESRI??? Since the 80's they have been one of the only options for GIS solutions. I think the market is big enough for both open source and ESRI as their aims are completely different. ESRI aims to provide an enterprise level GIS solution that is scalable and customizable while Google and other solutions are aiming for a more main stream industry, and actually lowering the cost of ownership in a GIS.
I could ramble more but I will just link to here(Link^])
Aaron W. VanWieren
gisdevcafe.com
Aaron,
I never said ESRI weren't good at what they do and I didn't say anything about OS. What I meant was that the maps mashing revolution didn't come from ESRI, they were busy doing what fitted their development plans. It came from google and a bloke working out the code on his own to mash Craig's list with Google Maps.
It doesn't surprise me, dominant players in a field often aren't prime innovators e.g. Sony missed the online music market which Apple caught.
Rich,
Sorry did not seem to be attacking. Good points though. I think ESRI has been quite innovative as they have been the only solution till the last several years, as they were the main implementers of GIS.
Sony has messed up in allot of ways, especially with not sharing the rights to their formats. Beta is a prime example of this.
I almost think the spatial sphere is very different in the way things are shaping up, but I could go on forever.
Aaron W. VanWieren
www.gisdevcafe.com
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