Its almost here… can’t believe its almost April and that means the long awaited iPad will be available. Lots of buzz about it in “Macland…” One place is giving an iPad away (site might be busy) in exchange for ~ 600 old CDs and DVDs you have to have the original artwork and jewel cases though. I don’t think I own that much CDs esp. with the cases. I would love more than anything to have one of them but when you have to decide between that and a bed to sleep on the choice is pretty clear at least for me. Ah I long for the irresponsible days when I could go slap down some cash on an electronic feat of fancy Oh well for now I’ll watch and wait and read the blogs and check out the ‘>cool videos and wait for my birthday perhaps someone will slap a gift on me (a gal can dream).

Need I say more? This can be had for some change at this place. The description is quite clear and uh comes in lived in red. Don’t make me explain why this has me in stitches.

Man as soon as I don’t have my Mac anymore they release all this cool software that I was waiting on. One of which is this little Mapping illustration program called Ortelius.
Ortelius is a Mac OS X program that allows you to create you own maps with layers, labels, colors, and a nice set of drawing/editing tools (including auto junctions). Best of all you an import ESRI shapefiles so you don’t have to start from scratch and it includes scales, geographic intelligence. Its a cartographer dream and a mapmakers fancy. Wish they had this for PC so that I can download and test it out.  Ortelius goes for $99 standard and $49 for student. The professional version is in the works. Tons of tutorials here and screencasts so you can learn how to use the product. I’m just glad to see that the product was released after hearing about it a few years back. If you would like to do more traditional GIS work on the map look no further than Cartographica. Ortelius will help you to make maps quickly especially for presentations and publishing.

I had to go to the store yesterday to pick-up another quart of paint since we didn’t get enough the first time. It was a batch that was color matched so I took a picture of the label that was on the can with my iPhone the evening before and presented this at the counter after entering the store.

I just handed the guy my iPhone and he was looking at it and tried to scan it because he could not make out the numbers in the lighting. The first time he tried to scan the photo it didn’t work so he gave it back and I zoomed in on the picture and handed it back to him. He scanned again and this time it worked beautifully and after adding the colors and mixing he handed me my paint and I went on my merry way. I was glad that the iPhone came in handy coz peeling that label off the can or having to take it back to the store would have been annoying. I suppose I could have looked for the color sample… not happening when things are all displaced in the house…

Last week, a friend of mine alerted me that there was a mobile GIS app for the iPhone called iGIS by Geometry never heard of them until last week.  She asked if I was planning on getting it since I have an iPhone and I’m interested in the latest and greatest . We don’t do as much mobile GIS work in my office but I figured what the heck I’ll go check it out and give it a try. I have to warn you that I’m pretty impatient when it comes to app testing if an app fail my 5 minute test, I tend to stay away. That said, I bit my lip (it still hurts) and paid the $19.99 to download and test. After the download, I spent a few minutes creating a new project and set off to importing some shape files that I had sitting on my computer. These shapefiles were >50 MB with the exception of one file that was 65 KB. I pressed the import button, which gave me an IP address to upload the files and watch the progress of the uploads. You basically have to specify the spatial reference if your data had none… That was pretty painless once I figured out that I needed my Wi-Fi turned on for this to work. A wired network won’t work you need Wi-Fi. The instructions actually specify that “A Wi-Fi network is required to import or export data…” after flipping the Wi-Fi switch to on all was well and the data import wizards started doing their thing. This was not a long process and it is as fast as they claim…

Unfortunately for me, only one of the shapefiles imported. I’m assuming that it had to do with the size of the files and number of features. The smallest file imported fine but the rest did not. I also had some problems displaying the attributes for the layer that did import. The screen was blank when I tried to ID a feature on my map. Having big fingers don’t help. I can’t wait for this to be ported to the iPad it makes more sense there but is a little tricky on the iPhone. You can add comments but no way of editing data which seems to me to be a requirement for this type of application. If not straight edits the ability to add and export markups would be helpful.  I give it 3 stars for nice try… but for it to be useful as a mobile app it should not only allow you to view but to edit/mark-up the data on the maps as well. A nice list of current features as well as several videos are on the iGIS website. I think its a great app sans the aforementioned issues above. Also perhaps there should be some warning as to the limits of files that can be imported somewhere in the help.

Wow! Those folks at Apple did it again! Yap they made me say yum! That new iPad looks sweet actually as one friend said “its a big ass iPhone sans the phone…” Indeed that about sums it up for me. To think that if I had save my money and not bought the original iPhone I might have some bucks to shell out for one of these beauties. What’s there not to like about this new “magical and revolutionary device.”  They took the iPhone dumped the phone part and made the screen big I mean 9.7” of pure screen real-estate… and 1.5 lbs… Lots more room for your fingers to do that flicking, typing, pinching goodness. Its a little bulkier than the Kindle but the Kindle does not compare IMHO so we’ll leave it at that. I won’t go on and on about the possible uses for this thing. If you happen to see me in line on release day just smile and nod… 

Back when my Mac Mini was the only hardware that I used at home I was searching desperately for GIS software program that could run on my Mac natively without crashing. I tried a few freebies but found them slow, buggy, and lacked the ease of use and features that I was looking for. I don’t quite remember how I heard about Cartographica from a company called ClueTrust. but I got my hands on a beta release at some point and was quite impressed it. Cartographica has matured since my early testing last year and was recently updated to 1.1. It is not free it will cost you $395 (limited time), $495 regular price.  If you do need to work with Geospatial data on your Mac and you don’t have the money or wish to install any of the ESRI software products via Bootcamp and such then look no further.  Cartographica has a nice list of features including shape file and KML import/export and there are instructional videos incase you get stuck. I like the rapid filleting feature and wish this was something that they had in the upcoming ArcGIS 10. Check out the Cartographica blog for sample maps and upcoming features.