Just to prove that GIS users are “hip” and “cool” here is a video that takes a contemporary “rap” artist’s song and adapts it with GIS- specific lyrics. I really “dig” this, especially the “sweet” line about geodatabases.

ESRI have released the first service pack for ArcGIS 10. The list of fixes is enormous and having encountered several of the bugs so I would highly recommend you perform the update. The ArcGIS Desktop 10 service pack is 361mb in size so make sure you have a decent internet connection.The download page is here. When I tried it I was getting a download speed of less than 1mb/ sec so if you administer for multiple users it may be worth uploading the file to your own server. It is reasonably straightforward to install. Simply double click your downloaded file and follow the steps. Don’t believe the estimated time remaining as it said 2 minutes for me throughout the installation that took approximately 5. If you rely on a license server you may need to re-approve the external connections required and then re-open ArcGIS Desktop for it to work.

Overall I found the app to be very impressive. You are greeted with a world map that you can instantly interact with by panning and zooming in the usual way.

The map tiles loaded surprisingly quickly- it took approx 5 seconds to zoom from the above view to building level with only 1 bar of signal.

Users can search for places of interest…

…but this provided the only disappointment with the map appearing to lack the required data.

Zooming out a little resolved this problem, but I am not sure how many people would think to do this. I suspect the problem is relatively easily  addressed and may well be in future updates. Offering standard maps is not particularly innovative and not what the app sets out to achieve. The real innovation is the ability to view layers available from the ArcGIS.com website. You can, for example, use OpenStreetMap as the base map

or overlay additional information, in this case the Gulf Oil Spill Forecast:

Navigation to layers is straightforward:

I especially like the fact that users can add their own servers and also bookmark their favourite layers. On top of these features users can measure distances and calculate areas.

I found these tools to be extremely intuitive and I expect they will become an integral part to many field based introductory GIS courses. In a recent talk I attended, Jack Dangermond said that GIS software in the past was made to be complicated. With this application ESRI have demonstrated that GIS can be made to be easy. I think all who use this app both from within and beyond GIS with be genuinely impressed.

**I have just discovered a more in depth review worth reading from James Fee’s GIS blog.**

UCL Department of Geography is proud to be an ESRI Development Center (or Centre). Each year we have to submit a report that outlines the past year’s activities. We have had another busy year hosting two visiting professors (Prof. Keith Clarke and Prof. Keiji Yano), receiving over 1 million visits to our research blogs and outreach websites and helping to organize the AGI Education Keynote given by Jack Dangermond. EDC researchers have presented over 20 conference papers and published in over 20 peer reviewed journals. My own contribution is shown on this blog and my slideshare account. For those who want to know in more detail about the UCL Geography EDC activities the full report can be downloaded here.

Jack Dangermond head of ESRI, the world’s largest GIS software company, presented the AGI Education keynote at UCL on Monday 7th June. The talk entitled “Some Developments in GIS” focussed on current innovations in GIS software and on the direction in which the field is heading. He acknowledged the instrumental role that UCL has played in the development of GIS with, for example, one of the first GIS PhD theses, written by Roger Tomlinson and supervised by Peter Wood, originating from the Department of Geography. Jack also gave credit to Carl Steinitz, a former lecturer of his and now visiting professor in the Bartlett School of Architecture, for instrumental input into his academic development.

The Department of Geography was the first outside of North America to be awarded “ESRI Development Center” status and has been working closely with the company. Each year the Development Center awards its Outstanding Student of the Year prize. This year, I had the honour of being awarded his certificate from Jack Dangermond after the lecture. Jack was interested in my research, having already searched for the spatial distribution of ‘Dangermond’s’ using the UCL Department of Geography’s WorldNames database.

Jack was in the UK to be awarded the prestigious Founder’s Medal from the Royal Geographical Society. During his acceptance speech he spoke of what GIS has already achieved and its growing potential to improve people’s lives throughout the world.

Following a slightly critical post about the map featured on ESRI’s Geomedicine website I thought I would balance things with a post on a good example (in my opinion) of a mapping service from ESRI. I was really impressed with their Free Embeddable Maps website. Users can select from a number of demographic measures such as population density,  median age, average household size and population change between 2000 and 2009 and map them at a range of scales. Maps can be personalised using a title and direct links to the creator’s website or their email address. My map of New York Median Household Income is here. It would be good to get more data and coverage beyond North America. It would also be nice to enable multiple overlays (perhaps using different forms of representation on the map). The page is only beta so these additions may follow.

I know this kind of thing has been done before, such as with the London Profiler Website, but ESRI’s contribution is remarkably simple to use. Users with no GIS experience will be able to create a map in under a minute.  It can then be embedded in a any web page or linked to via bit.ly. The interface is well-thought out and users can read additional information from the pop-outs that appear when the map when they click on an area of interest. The maps deserve to be utilised by a range of users, but I expect educators and their students stand to benefit most from this excellent free service.