Steve’s Little world

How long can you phreak the funk

Talk about a straw man

So I see that James has seen fit to place our conversation up in the echo chamber and then fails to leave out my crucial ending line

I agree that other peoples data and analysis may be of little to no use to you without metadata but for your own internal purposes

So I think he is missing my point – this is not about some new great place to go look at interesting maps. This is about the democratization of GIS tools. As James states, and I would say rather predictably, “my posse is backing me…. “. And you know why that is, because I would bet most of those people are traditional GIS users.  And since geocommons did not come officialy baptised by the high GIS priesthood it must be crap. Thanks all for proving my point about why we can’t get along.

One point of clarification - I never liked this as a tool to look at the data other people uploaded. I thought it was awesome for the way in which they can take your data and make heat maps from it. I think it is nice cartography and I think it is nice to be able to save the output as KML.  

Geocommons gives anyone the ability to make a heat map with very little specialized training. You may say that is a bad thing, but I say it is interesting. There is less and less need to purchase and learn complicated desktop tools to do some simple analysis.

Beyond that – all these critiques about interface and user experience and such – tell me how long it would take them to fix that interface compared to how long it takes a traditional software vendor to roll out a new rev of their software.

Do I think this will put ESRI out of business and make all my GIS skills useless – heck no. I know there are a lot of caveats that go into interpolation and there is where more to spatial analysis than geocommons exposes. Will Duke Power, Shell Oil, or consultants doing EIR/EIS analysis use this – ummmmm no. Do I think it is cool that some small business owner, city worker, or field biologist can take their GPS data and make a interpolated map from it without spending two semesters in a GIS class – hell yeah.

June 5, 2007 - Posted by Steven Citron-Pousty | GIS, Programming, Web Development | | 5 Comments

5 Comments »

  1. [...] understandably tries to back up his faulty logic with a gem of a post: So I think he is missing my point – this is not about some new great place to go look at [...]

    Pingback by Slipping down the slope | June 5, 2007 | Reply

  2. My only worry or concern with Geocomms is people taking the data on there and assuming it’s correct. Then just running with the results before doing any background investitgation.

    Otherwise it’s neat and it’s great there is another venue to see and/or get data out to the public.

    KoS

    Comment by KoS | June 5, 2007 | Reply

  3. Well GIS analysis is basically statistics, and we all know that there are 3 kinds of lies: “Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics”.
    The common man are already doing (read: abusing) statistics with tabular data, so why shouldn’t he be allowed to do the same thing with GIS?
    I don’t know… but this whole “neogeography” thing that is starting now is an interesting thing to follow (the fact that we now have a word for it is kinda scary)

    Comment by Morten | June 5, 2007 | Reply

  4. Morten – should I take away excel from everyone who hasn’t taken an accounting class or statistics class? Should we restrict compilers and editors to only those people who have taken more than 2 credits of CS class. What about taking Word away from someone who hasn’t taken stenography?

    Comment by thesteve0 | June 5, 2007 | Reply

  5. [...] think this discussion follows similar lines as the discussion James and I had the other day. Geocommons will not replace Spatial Analyst in the hands of a person with expertise [...]

    Pingback by Jakob pokes a stick in the bees nest « Steve’s Little world | July 10, 2007 | Reply


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