I've been a huge fan of FME for many years and have been a beta user of FME Server for over a year. Most of the projects I'm currently involved with include some RSS, KML, or GeoRSS output for spatial data, there always seems to be a desire to spatial information across platforms. For aggregating feeds, things like Mapufacture are awesome. However if I want to control the aggregated feeds and combine them in new ways or create new file types FME Server is the way to go.

The rarely used and often misunderstood CAD client finally made it onto the ESRI deprecation list. The CAD client allowed a way for AutoCAD users to connect directly to ArcSDE and both view and edit CAD data could be loaded directly into ArcSDE as a layer using the command line loader. Several years ago I loaded an entire cities worth of utility data into SDE. I could use an ArcIMS ArcMap Image Service to create a simple web site. What was so great about the solution is that the surveyors could edit their SDE data from AutoCAD and those changes we're reflected in the ArcIMS site.

I've been working with the ArcGIS Server Release Candidate 9.3 REST interface - pretty slick, I must admit!
However, the documentation is pretty thin as of now.

So, for those of you out there wanting to specify a date or date range in the WHERE CLAUSE of an ArcGIS Server REST Request, here's the skinny:

//Javascript - assumes you've got a Javascript Reference pointing to the ESRI Google Maps Javascript Extension

var _query = new esri.arcgis.gmaps.Query();
_query.where = "MyDateColumn >= date ’01-01-2007’";

Civil Infrastructure has been implemented since the beginning of humans civilizations. Spatial data collection, its integration and management also has a long history.

There has been alot of talk about the announcement by Google and ESRI at the Where 2.0 conference. The opening up of the Geo Search API by Google is definitely a step forward. ArcServer has had the ability to create generic KML documents from existing services for a while so making the service indexable and findable is a nice incremental step.

Because of the nature of our systems integration work at CH2M HILL we are big users of GeoServer and the OpenGeo stack. We have been using GeoServer on a number of projects since version 1.4 integrating spatial database backends to different front end mapping applications.

The World Food Program is ramping up its Comprehensive Food Security Vulnerability Assessment. Some of these surveys have already taken place, many others are planned. This is a major effort to collect baseline household surveys in 16 countries in Africa.

I've had an outside editor approve the legitimacy of this word which is making the rounds at a libraries and information science conference held at the University of Minnesota. Geographers and GIS people have been working on the semantic interoperability of spatial data forever and I've always believed the library people have a lot to teach us. Libraries have been conducting distributed bibliographic searches for years, one just has to look at the Dublin Core standard.

I had the opportunity to attend the semi-annual CGIAR-CSI meeting in Nairobi this year. It was my first visit to Kenya which was great despite the bad weather. It was good to actually see the people I communicate with electronically on a daily basis.

The quantity of good research in agriculture coming out of this group is remarkable. As part of the program committee I was able to convince Chris Holmes from GeoServer and Jeroen Ticheler from GeoNetwork to come and present. Hopefully in 2008/2009 we'll be able to find some additional bandwidth and get critical mass for data sharing.

This was my first year attending (and presenting at) a GSDI conference and I was struck by the variety of definitions and approaches to creating SDI(s). In the opening session, Ed Parsons of Google tried to find the Grand Cayon using an FGDC node. Then he typed it into Google and a map came up instantly. Clearly its an ill fitting example since GMaps does not deliver any downloadable data and FGDC nodes are not aimed at casual users but the point was well taken.