Steve’s Little world

Just got my sign in to Fire Eagle [previous discussion]- they also gave me 4 signups to share. First emails to scitronpousty gmail get them.

Happy Chanukah everyone! Remember this is a story of the few triumphing over the mighty and not by force but by spirit!

Not updating too much but you can see it here….

http://twitter.com/TheSteve0

If some day you have 3 kids and 2 dogs and you are moving to San Jose and school starts on August 28th but the house isn’t ready until sept 1st so you decide you will all stay in a hotel room and you are going to work and clean the old house - it will be exhausting…

As of July 23rd I am no longer gainfully employed by Jones & Stokes. It was a long process that led to this event. The most important driving factor in this chain of events was that my families’ allergies were terrible in the Sacramento valley. Moving from this area couldn’t happen through Jones & Stokes and so I had to look outside.

First question from some people is going to be “How could you leave ecology after all the glowing posts you gave”. I loved the chances I got to do field work and to talk conservation biology shop with my colleagues. The problem was that I was too expensive for my level of expertise in NorCal flora and fauna. While I am good at field work and know a few things about deserts and birds - most of my ecological experience is as a landscape ecologist. My billable rate was too high to really make it feasible for me to get out in the field that often. I would suppose this is actually close to academia, where the higher up the food chain you go the less time you get to spend outside. So in the end I didn’t get to do that much field work.

Some of you may want to know if I left because I didn’t like Jones & Stokes. This is an easy question for me - I can say without hesitation say that I think J&S is one of the best natural resources consulting firms out there. I really liked almost everyone I worked with. They generally treat their employees with respect. The work is, on balance, interesting and ecology in the real world. When I started looking outside J&S I did not even think about working for a different consulting firm.

I think once I realized I couldn’t stay with J&S I started to think what I did and did not like about being in the consulting world. The biggest problem for me was the whole billable hours thang. While my goal was not that high there were several consequences of the system I did not like.

The first problem was that no matter how many hours you worked if you didn’t meet your billable goals it doesn’t matter. So if I was working 60 hours a week trying to roll out a new service or investigating something that had to be done to take our GIS practice to another level, it wouldn’t count. I mean it would count in that my supervisor would note the extra effort, but it was all secondary to making your billable hours goal.

Second, to insure that I had enough billable hours I had to take on more than I could do, thereby insuring that I would have enough hours if a project got halted or changed direction. This was an uncomfortable position for me to be in and I am not sure I could have grown used to it over time. I don’t think any of these things were particular to Jones & Stokes but are more a fact of the consulting business.

The next logical question in the series is - what am I doing now and for that I will tell the name of the company and my position title. I am now the technology evangelist for deCarta in sunny San Jose, CA. There will be a posting in the near future talking about why I chose deCarta, what I will be doing, and my goals. On of the plus side (or the downside for you if you don’t like my writing) is that I will be blogging now as part of my “official” duties. I am really psyched about my new position and I want my next post do it justice. Then again - putting the weight of doing justice on a post is a sure fire way to make it months before it gets written.

I would write more but I am finding it hard to find time to get the thoughts together. We still don’t have a place to live in San Jose or Oakland/Berkley. This lack of a very basic foundation in life - along with trying to get up to speed in a new position, is consuming most of my mental energy. If you know of a nice 3+ bdrm, 2+ bath house that takes dogs in either the willow glen/cambrian area in San Jose or in a nice safe neigborhood in Oakland or Berkely please let me know.

I don’t have a lot to add to this post - I just think it is a great read for people thinking about what it means to motivate employees, manage risk, product development, and things of that nature. I remember hot or not when it first came it out and ignored it after seeing it once. I never knew the YouTube dudes started there. I really like the parts on managing risk versus preserving the status quo.  Anyway, I recommend the read…

James Hong: Reinventing HOTorNOT, Part I

Cool find from Chris Heilmann at the WhereCamp. A little app that when installed allows you to just start typing the name of the app you want to lauch. It goes to the registry (sorry, windows only) and looks for apps with the letters you have started to type. No more mousing to the start menu or anything. Freeckin shweet!

Launchy: The Open Source Keystroke Launcher for Windows

Hey all - I have added a meebo sidebar widget to play with for a while. I tried this a couple of years ago on some other blogs and thought “holy cow this could be a black hole of time”. For a person addicted to log stats and the ability to be easily distracted by shiny objects I am a bit concerned.

The other interesting part of this experiment is that I find my self back at the desktop application vs. web application thoughts from yesterday. I logged into meebo, checked all my accounts, and then thought about how to get GAIM to connect to Meebo.  It is not because Meebo was deficient, I think it was more my preference for a desktop app and that there is no IRC client in Meebo. Actually the interface to meebo is quite slick for IM’ing on multiple protocols and there is nothing to install.

Oh well, if I am logged in why don’t you stop and chat a while.  And if you are looking at this message right no, don’t be surprised if I suddenly start trying to chat with you - just call me the reverse stalker…

Excellent intro with Jeff introducing the chair inspector application where team members are going around the room and collectitng information about people using the Mobile ADF.

Positioning
Server developer solution for mobile applications
Supports field workflows
data viewing
feature inspection
basic data collection

Direct synchronization with ArcGIS Server
Connected and disconnected environments
Windows Mobile Development
At 9.2 purely an SDK.

On to the Feautres:
Supports multiple connectivity scenarios
Full Support of geodatabase transaction model
Small footprint and high performance
Includes GPS components, Data Sync Components, Map Display and interrogation
???What is the Device Data Store - is SQL Server mobile being used - that could be really interesting for remote data entry hybrid applications. NOPE - IT IS A BUNCH OF BIN FILES.

Targeted .NET compact Framework 2.0
Windows Mobile 5.0 with focus on the SmartPhone
PocketPC 2003, 2003 SE, CE 5.0. and Windows XP

WORKFLOW
Build mobile geodb - information and transaction model considerations
Author Mobile Map - design for environment and form factor
Publish Map Server - with mobile data access capabilities
Design Mobile Application - for form factor and envir.
Deploy Mobile Solution - provision devices
Synchronize Mobile GIS Solution - consider bandwidth and battery

Even with a simple user interface there is still going to be a training need to use the application.
There are ways to pull all the data down when first provisioning the map but it is flexible and configurable as the developer.

General coding guidelines
Multiple threaded environment - use BeginInvoke to push arguments to UI
Dispose of object that implement IDisposable - wrap inside using block
Use try…catch blocks where appropriate
Employ defensive coding practices - such as being careful when casting and not causing a crash.
Menu vs. Tool Considerations.

Maps and the Map Cache
Map component draws data from the map cache (threaded drawing)
Map Cache stores map data on device
Map Cache synchronizes updates with Server
Map supports markup/graphics on Display
Map supports drawing of custom layers
Map Rotation supported

Data extraction - use MapCache Extractor to create Map Caches on your desktop. Use Request_Completed event to monitor synch requests - probably want to do this on antoher thread. Use the State and Notification Broker API and about how connected you are - let’s you poll about what kind of connection you have ActiveSync versus EDGE, and then choose to synch or not. This would be helpful for smart data synching when it would be less expensive.

VS2005 demo - drag and drop of controls in real time - The map cache points to a web service endpoint - you can also say where the data will be stored for the map cache

???How do you change the storage location once you deploy to the device?

GPS Components - Serial and File GPS - the file is for simulation/going through a set of file points. There is also a GPS Display which lets you show where you are are. There are a lot of great design time components to make things look pretty.

There is ADO.NET integration - spatial and attribute queries
The FeatureLayers and some other layer are actuall ADO.NET compliant so you interact with them like any other ADO.NET component.

Editing Features - edits can be performed regardless of connection status
Geometry edits - sketch map action and components for points, lines, and polygons with snapping for feauture layers.
Demo of editing - pretty darn sweet.
Here is one the tradeoffs as I see it:

Custom layers - provides a way to fure in custom data feeds into your map cache, such as weather layers or real time traffic feeds. They are showing the live traffic demo. Allows you to write you own live local or google local for the cell phone.
They are running out of time so things are going quick now

Future Direction:
Improve performance for large base maps
Improve editing - doesn’t work on smartphone or use GPS
Add a mapGraphicsLayer for redlining
Add Web Services security - token based to secure the pipe.

This has functionality similar to ArcPad but to get the value added you need a license for Server. But going that route also allows you to program in VB.NET or C# rather than the heinous world of VBScript or JScript for ArcPad. So if you can afford the Advanced server license I think this would great to have. I think I am going to try and talk to ArcPAD people and see what they have to say.

Overall a good talk with interesting example. Where or where are my EDN DVDs

You, yes you, can help battle childrens’ cancer. I have been growing my hair for at least the last two months, and on my birthday, I will shave it all at a St. Baldricks event. The idea is that you pledge money and I shave my head. With a donation to me you get two feel-goods. One, you help fight childrens’ cancer and two, you spare the world from having to witness my jewfro. Please go to my page (or my team’s page) and donate now. For those of you attending devcon you will get to see me looking like Brian Goldin (aka Mr. Clean). Please for the lofty goal of getting rid of childhood cancer and for the lesser goal of stopping my wife from having to avert her eyes, pledge, pledge, pledge…