ArcGIS Online for Geocoding

As I noted in my last post, UD has an ArcGIS Online subscription. As part of that service we have credits to be used (frugally) towards geocoding. Just let me know you are interested, and I'll sign you up. You'll receive an email with details about logging in and completing the sign up. Instructions for pointing to the service from ArcGIS, with a link to instructions on geocoding a table of addresses, is here: http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//00250000004v000000

Geocodes cost UD 1 service credit per 25 addresses. If you would like to geocode more than 100 addresses, I may refer you to other options for geocoding.

UD's ArcGIS Online Subscription

You'll be glad to hear that the ArcGIS Online Subscription is included as part of our campus site license.  We've been granting access to the subscription for no extra charge.  If you are paying your annual ArcGIS charge, you're already paying for a portion of our campus site license.

However, we have a limited number of service credits (12,500 remaining at the moment).  The administration tools for the subscription are pretty limited, so we ask that you use credits carefully.  Here's a link to see how credits are used: http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgisonline/credits.  In many cases there are desktop-based alternatives for the most "expensive" operations (e.g., tile caching, geocoding, analysis).  I would be happy to suggest alternatives if you think something is looking expensive.  We may also end up charging for the subscription at some point, but I don't anticipate that we'll do that in the coming year.

Once I've invited you to the subscription, you'll see an email notification letting you know how to connect.  If you already have an Esri account, you can sign in with that.  Otherwise you'll be prompted to create an account.  If you already have a "public" ArcGIS Online account, you may want to keep it separate from the subscription.

Doing "Bulk Imports" to OpenStreetMap

Uploading existing datasets of any significant size ("bulk imports") to OpenStreetMap involves serious consideration, above that of ordinary updates and edits.

I have done bulk imports to OSM before for UD/Newark Data.  I used shp2osm (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Shp2osm) to convert from shapefile to osm format and then used JOSM (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/JOSM) to compare to osm data, edit where needed, and upload the data/changes.

Here is a comprehensive page on doing bulk imports: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Imports

OSM gives priority to smaller edits, as part of its grassroots philosophy.  Partially because of this, it's important to tread lightly when doing bulk updates.  That's why I like JOSM. I can see the existing data and how my updates will change that (if so) or potentially create duplicates.  The imports guidelines link (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import/Guidelines) is especially helpful in understanding norms and rules for updates.

Excellent public remote imagery webinar

best webinar I've ever seen on public satellite imagery, though it's by Exelis so expect lots of ENVI examples https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/697671558

csv2gft

I've posted a public branch of code from the Lima Bean project to github as csv2gft.  This might be very useful for someone who is doing daily pushes of new records to a Google Fusion Table from a csv dump.

Render Priority and KML from PHP/Postgres in one example

Working from a Google example I wrote some PHP that outputs KML from Postgres data, using region and lod to provide 'render priority' feel, based on a DB field.  Here you go: https://github.com/bmearns/kml-priority

Sublayers with ArcGIS Online webmap and Javascript API

ArcGIS Online (ArcGIS.com) does a nice job of providing front ends for your web mapping services (particularly of the ArcGIS Server variety).  In fact, ArcGIS Server 10.1 no longer comes with out of the box web mapping applications, relying instead on deployment through ArcGIS.com.  ArcGIS.com provides a couple templates, for different use cases, that you can download and modify (though the performance hit of having the ArcGIS.com middleman is a concern).

One of the stumbling blocks I've identified in this new model is that ArcGIS.com -- and by extension ArcGIS Server -- does not provide any templates to allow the end user to control sublayer visibility.  Thus, in migrating from ArcGIS Server pre-10.1 you may find that the sublayer control that was previously available by default  through the out-of-the-box .NET (Java?) web applications is missing ... halting your entire migration.

After contacting Esri, I found it was necessary to code a custom solution.  

Here is a modified Basic Viewer ArcGIS.com web template, which supports sublayers, through the layers checkbox widget (dojo dijit):  http://www.udel.edu/001761

You'll need to add your ArcGIS.com webmap ID to that code, for it to function.

Or if you'd like to patch it yourself, apply this patch to /javascript/layout.js: http://www.udel.edu/001762

Note that this code will probably break if your map contains multiple map services with sublayers.