Mobile GIS & LBS
Posts Tagged ‘mobile’
Offline Mobile Editing with ArcGIS Online
Sunday, December 2nd, 2012Esri’s Water Utility Mobile Map for iOS & Android
Monday, November 19th, 2012
We mentioned in a previous blog post that we have started work on building a version of Esri’s Water Utility Mobile Map but targeting iOS and Android. We thought it might be interesting to share where we are in the development process. The video below shows the first phase of the work.
Let us just point out, we are not using Esri’s Water Utility Mobile Map layers at the moment. We are building a mobile app against the requirements we listed in our original functional spec article, using layers and services we have available. These we will switch when we have the core application completed.
Mobile ArcGIS Online App
Our goal is to make the mobile ArcGIS Online app clean looking and simple to use. It loads on startup a configuration file which sets UI elements. This is a file users can edit themselves. We’ve tried to avoid a cluttered interface, so maximum real estate is devoted to the map. Workflows we will make intuitive. The video shows how we have incorporated online and offline modes. So maps and layers are loaded either from the web, or from sources stored on the devices itself.
Mobile App for ArcGIS Online Next Phase
We will keep moving forward with the mobile app. Next we will be adding online and offline editing capabilities. That will form the centre piece of the next demo.
ArcGIS Online offers many possibilities for building mobile and Web based mapping applications. Applications targeted at GIS professionals and non-GIS users. As a GIS development company, we have focused much of our energy on building this next generation of applications targeted at, and integrated, with ArcGIS Online.
Mobile ArcGIS Online
Monday, October 8th, 2012
Stepping into Mobile Development
In early 2011 we began to turn our attention seriously from development for the PC Web to mobile. Blackberry released their excellent, but not well received, Playbook. As a first step into mobile GIS development we built and launched a mobile ArcGIS viewer to the Blackberry App World. Accompanying this release we wrote a paper for ESRI’s ArcUser publication on the development process, available at this link.
http://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/0112/files/arcuser56/pageflip.html
Feature Editing in Mobile ArcGIS Online
Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012
So we’ve been spending quite some time with the very cool editing capabilities of the ArcGIS FeatureLayer. We are most interested in services published to ArcGIS Online. Editing will be a key advantage mobile brings to the world of ArcGIS. Avoiding the details (maybe in a future post), but not all ArcGIS FeatureLayers are the same. We wanted to put together a demo of the editing of a Featurelayer which contains a featureCollection, from the ESRI docs:
“The featureCollection is used when you want to initialize the FeatureLayer with features from outside of ArcGIS Server.”
This lends itself well to offline editing.
ArcGIS Mobile Editing
In the demo below we are online and accessing the app via a mobile browser (note, this demo needs Flash and thus wont run on an iOS device):
Our Geo-Future is Bright
Tuesday, September 4th, 2012We live in changing times in the geo-space. Our work with location data as a company, began in the 90’s. Its been an interesting ride; from desktop to Internet, to now the cloud and mobile. New conferences appeared like Where 2.0; too many so called experts and innovators were thrust at us. Much of this left us cold; GIS for the masses with venture capitalists lurking in the background. We became a little cynical.
But truly exciting things are now happening. As the term GIS fades; location data and the integration of other business systems (SAP etc) with geospatial services moves our work from its historic niche, to solving real business problems. With mobile, new location data is becoming available. Mobile apps now provide access to location services, for both the consumer and the Enterprise. ArcGIS Online we see as huge. Its a pleasure to hear guys like Sean Gorman talk about our geospatial future. In fact talking about Sean, here is an excellent recent James Fee interview with the man:
Criticism – Future Trends in Geospatial Info Mgment Report
Wednesday, August 29th, 2012
We put up a blog post linking to a recently released UN paper entitled:
Future Trends in Geospatial Information Management: The Five to Ten Year Vision
We noted in the original post that without knowing who the list of experts who contributed to the paper were, we were a little hesitant. We do know that Peter Batty added his thoughts. A good guy, but somebody who still talks about, the rather controversial, neoGeography or “new geography”.
Anyway, we digress. After reading the paper a number of times, we felt a little. Well. Deflated. We regard the new world of location technology as very exciting. The paper made for some dry reading; ok it was for the UN and not meant to have us all jumping for joy. But we hoped for a realistic, useful reflection on where the geospatial world is moving. Too much felt like wild guesses, repetition of the obvious, and the unimportant. Ok, we are being harsh, but this is a panel of experts. We expected some expert insight.
GeoMobile for ArcGIS Online – A Mobile GIS App for Tablets
Tuesday, July 24th, 2012
GeoMobile for ArcGIS Online is a free mobile app we launched in July 2012 to the Android Market. In August it will be released in the Apple market. The app allows users to access their ArcGIS Online maps on their iPad and Android tablets. Multiple maps can be accessed, when users set up and host their own configuration file. The mobile ArcGIS app goes beyond what is available in the excellent ESRI mobile app. We are actively extending the functionality of GeoMobile for ArcGIS Online for our clients.
Working with GeoMobile for ArcGIS Online
There are a number of simple steps needed to use GeoMobile for ArcGIS Online:
Step 1 – Setup an ArcGIS Online standard map service
Free Mobile GIS Apps – GeoMobile for ArcGIS Online
Saturday, July 14th, 2012Thoughts on Current State of Mobile Market
Monday, July 9th, 2012Apple has been praised for its innovation in the mobile space. Criticism of the company has centered around their fixation on absolute control. Their spat with Adobe in 2011 over the Flash Player plugin, effectively forced Adobe to change direction away from Flash and Flex. This was an early sign that Apple would not be playing nice. Legal pressure forced them to allow cross platform apps, like those generated in Mobile Flex, to be made available in their Apple store. But it was not a decision made to placate Adobe. Now we see attacks on rival hardware companies, like the recent Samsung lawsuit:
Mobile Platform Specific Apps
Other interesting developments include; the dropping of Google Maps in favour of Apple Maps, and the suggestion that their Maps app for iOS will include Yelp check-in feature that ties in with review site Yelp, further integrating social networking and location-based services into iOS 6.
Apple Helps Bring Mobile & Location to Center Stage
Thursday, June 14th, 2012
Our thinking has been for the longest time that mobile will revolutionize the field of location-focused technology. Niche areas like GIS will be pulled into the mainstream under the location technology umbrella. Location based services (LBS) will coalesce with other location focused technologies.
As a company, we made a strategic decision nearly 2 years ago to move our focus from GIS development for the PC web, to mobile location app development. This year has been crazy busy. Combine this with Apples recent announcement, the launch of ESRI’s ArcGIS online, and new developments at Google and MapQuest, and we feel our strategy was correct; location is now at center stage in the mobile world. Making the decision when we did has also allowed us to develop expertise, and thus leadership in the location mobile app development space.
