DSC06971Speed has and will always be a critical factor in developing fast and responsive web applications. The cost of computing power has seen a rapid decrease over the years allowing for fast and powerful pc’s capable of handling much of the server side processing, thus allowing most web apps to load faster and respond quicker to client requests. But then came big data. In the web mapping world where huge amounts of data needs to be served to the client, maintaining a high level of performance and usability can only be possible through pre-computing on the server.

A well known example of pre-computing is Map Caching in which tiles are pre-generated and cached on the server allowing for faster map services.

Over at the ArcGIS Server blog is a nice post highlighting the importance of pre-computing in a GIS server environment and techniques such as

  • Eliminating on the fly projection
  • Pre-calculating geoprocessing results
  • Building spatial and attribute indexes
  • Converting labels and annotations

that can be employed in publishing faster GIS web services. These practices are not just limited to the ArcGIS product domain but can also be applied  in any web mapping environment.

Boosting performance through pre-computing

 

Wikipedia followed its anti-SOPA blackout last week with the launch of its native app for Android. Finally !!! Although, there are quite a few apps on the Android Market trying to provide a similar wiki experience, the need for an native app has always been there. The app comes with some nice features that include:

Save page for reading later

Search articles from nearby based on user’s location

In-app page translation

Share a page using Android’s built-in share functionality

It is a must have app for every smartphone user and I hope we get to see some interesting features with future updates that make it worthy competitor to its iOS counterpart.

Go get it here - http://bit.ly/Attxil

 

 

http://www.qgis.orgUnderdark at Free and Open Source GIS Ramblings reports of a great new addition to the QGIS Wiki – a set of step by step tutorials complete with graphics and categorized into tasks dealing with vectors, rasters, map projections, spatial analyses, format conversion and map making. This is a great reference for anyone just beginning to get their feet wet as well as for existing users trying to get a glimpse of the latest features.

 

LiDAR, acronym for Light Detection and Ranging is a remote sensing technique to capture precise elevation including any vegetation or buildings on the earth’s surface. Over from the Lidar News blog is a short video from the Department of Geosciences at Idaho State University, introducing the principle of LiDAR and its application in elevation modeling of Snake River, Swan Valley in Idaho.

 

Quantum GISWith all the rave reviews that Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx has been getting over the past couple of months, I couldn’t help myself upgrading and checking out the exciting new features and the enhanced interface, which I think was a much needed overhaul for the best desktop Linux OS.

A new version meant fresh installation of all the open source GIS goodies starting with QGIS. The latest version 1.4.0-Enceladus for Lucid is already available in the Launchpad UbuntuGIS repository and with a new command (add-apt-repository) for updating /etc/apt/sources.list with locations of repositories, the installation is simple and straightforward.

Bring up the terminal and issue the following commands.

Add the repository using:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntugis/ubuntugis-unstable

Make apt aware of the new repository:

sudo apt-get update

Install QGIS

sudo apt-get install qgis

Once the installation is done, open QGIS from Applications -> Science -> Quantum GIS

 

This week marked the end of the 2010 ESRI Worldwide Business Partner Conference (BPC) and the 2010 ESRI Developer Summit at Palm Springs, California which was host to the largest gathering of GIS developers.

The BPC set the tone for the Developer Summit by showcasing features of the upcoming release of the ArcGIS product suite – ArcGIS 10. For those of us who couldn’t get to attend and see the demos first hand, the Plenary Session videos have been made available for viewing which cover the following topics:

ArcGIS.com
Desktop Usability
Server and Web Clients
Mobile Platforms
Editing Improvements
Imagery Platform
Analysis
Business Analyst Online
ArcLogistics
ArcGIS Server on Amazon

What started off as an overview of ArcGIS 10 during the BPC was picked up at the Developer Summit with demonstrations delving more into the new features and enhancements that ArcGIS 10 is going to support. ESRI has been quick to upload the Plenary demos which cover the following topics:

Opening by Jack Dangermond, President of ESRI and Jim McKinney, ArcGIS Program Manager
DevSummit Plenary Opening
ArcGIS 2010 and Beyond
ArcGIS Online and Explorer
ArcGIS Server, Part One
ArcGIS Server, Part Two
Developer Community
Mobile GIS
ArcGIS Desktop, Part One
ArcGIS Desktop, Part Two
ArcGIS Desktop, Part Three

Jithen Singh on his blog http://geo.geek.nz has a detailed write-up summarizing the Plenary Session events of the Developer Summit.

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