Online GIS - a quick test of GIS Cloud

I've spent my fair share of time playing with the tools over at ArcGIS.com. I've used ArcGIS Explorer Online to develop a few tools for my Introduction to GISci class at Utah State University, and have been generally pleased to be able to pass the knowledge of an online GIS tool to my students. There aren't many bells and whistles over at the Esri stie, but the point isn't to give it away free - just provide a simple GIS-for-everyone application. At least that is the impression I get.

I've had my eye on GISCloud.com for quite a while. I signed up months ago to test it out and never really got into it. At the time I was busy getting into the swing of a new job, working on developing lecture material, and madly writing grant proposals. So this past week when James Fee blogged that GISCloud had abandoned it's beta tag, I figured it was time to give it a once over and evaluate the basic features.

I hadn't intended on sharing them here, but, it's a slow day on campus so here are a few notes:

• It's easy to start! Creating a new map didn't take too much. There are standard and advanced features. Advanced allows you to set up the map extent and select your projection. It helps to know your EPSG codes if you want to start off with a specific projection.
  
  

I downloaded a shapefile from the Utah Automated Geographic Reference Center (AGRC) depicting oil and gas wells around the state of Utah. The file has hundreds of records in it and I though it would be a good opportunity to see how point files were handled as well as an opportunity test the hotspot analysis tool.

I uploaded the 3mb shapefile, zipped, and it seemed fairly fast. The file appeared to save in my File name directory - somewhere in the cloud.

• For some reason, data display after loading the file required me to refresh the map, but the data showed up right away after that.
  
  
• The layer properties window is available by double clicking the shapefile. It seemed to hold all of the familiar tools for displaying the data, labeling, rendering, etc.
  
  
• When I tried to get a distinct value from the shapefile it got a little testy with me. Oops, okay.
  
  
• Clicking on any feature quickly opened up the feature attribute table, which was easy to read and navigate.
  
  
• GIS Cloud has allowed the user to tap a good selection of data. Everything from uploads (I don't know off hand what the size restrictions are - I expect it depends on how much you pay) to PostGIS, Web Map Service, Tile Map Services (OSM, Google (Maps, Satellite, and Terrain), Bing, 3Tier Wind), other GIS Cloud maps, and, of course, mobile uploads.
  
  
  
  As a side note, I did install the GIS Cloud app on a Xoom tablet and went to work taking photo points - it worked very well once the kind folks over at GIS Cloud told me how to set up the mobile device to upload data. Data was captured, uploaded, and ready for viewing in seconds. I don't want to minimize this feature by not going into it in more depth- it works very well. The GIS Cloud folks have a few kinks to work out, but they assured me they would do so.
  
  OSM base layer added:
  
  
• I found out that it helps to set the map extent under Map Properties. If you don't you may find yourself zooming to 0,0 each time you restart the map. I'm not sure if that was unique to how I created my first map or not.
• On to a little analysis. The analysis toolbar didn't have a whole lot on it straight away, but perhaps that will change with future development. I went ahead and gave the Hotspot tool a run:
  
  
  
  The tools seemed to work fairly well. I'm not sure what algorithm is being used - and I didn't look at the documentation to see if it was there. I also didn't run any comparisons in other software to compare results. The transparency slider, located at the bottom of the table of contents, seemed to do the job well.
  
  
  
  Simple to embed too:

Overall, GIS Cloud looks promising. The work the team has done with HTML5 is solid, the functionality appears to be good, albiet a little limited at the moment. There are a number of other tools available that I didn't cover and I would suggest signing up for a trial period and giving it a go.

Back to the "not-so-smart" phone

For many people the smart phone has become a way of life. Checking in, verifying prices and reviews, directions, calling cabs, mapping out a local coffee shop, looking up long lost friends, and on and on. All of this, and, all for a price. And, I've discovered that I have grown tired of paying that price. In fact, I'm tired of always being connected.

I'll preface the rest of this post with this statement: I'm not naive enough to think, that other than a very few individuals, people would ever switch back to a feature phone- and luckily so for the cellular companies. As a recent article on CNET pointed out, even  feature-minimized phones are a relatively low cost option for a simple smartphone running some flavor of the Android OS. That, and I'm sure that at some point in the future there is a yet-to-be-made smartphone with my name on it. That I assume is almost inevitable.

The price I was paying for my original Droid (which I got the day after they became available) was $39.99 for the account, $5.00 for text, and $29.99 for a true unlimited data plan - so $75 + assorted E911 fees and taxes, nearly $100/mo, $1,200/year, and $2,400 for a two year plan.Wow.

I say true unlimited because I signed on with Verizon when data was still unlimited and unlimited meant unlimited. With the plan I could stream video, listen to music, connect my laptop, all over 3G. I far exceeded 1GB, hell, even 20GB and still paid $30/mo for the service. Those were good times.

Alas, times are tight. We've had a few medical issues in our small family of two humans, two dogs, two cats, and a mortgage (also part of the family), and even with good insurance (for the human contingent) times are pretty tight. I started looking for simple ways to save money. The most obvious low-hanging fruit were cell phone data plans. So, two weeks ago, I called up Verizon (you have to call to cancel a data plan), and talked to a very nice woman who insisted it was a terrible thing to get rid of the plan I was on, but in the end, she did as I asked.

I re-activated my Moto Slvr L7 and went to work updating the contacts and learning how to text with no keyboard (takes for ever to send messages by the way), all for $50/month (still seems like a lot when I write it out). The first thing I noticed, I didn't check my email before bed or right when I woke up (to be honest, I do have a Xoom tablet, but it is staying tucked away at night - nowhere near the bedroom). The second thing I noticed, I couldn't tweet when I was drinking a very good beer. Third, my God, I had to actually wait to read the news. Oh, and my Latitude account will forever (until I update it with the Xoom) say that I am at home. Sorry, Boss, you can't verify my location without checking my office (or calling).

My lack of connection didn't change the world over the last two weeks, I never thought it would, - but it is changing me, just a little. I can still tweet and stay connected - just not that connected. My SAR has decreased, a little, so maybe cancer, heart problems, or plain old age will take a little longer to get to me in the end. All of this and I'm saving about $1,200/year, which isn't bad (that's one extra mortgage payment or a vacation).

Over the past two weeks, I have realized that the idea of needing a smartphone, plus the fact that the cell companies are bending us over the proverbial barrel and giving it to us in the pocked book for "unlimited" data, is pretty short-sighted. Sure, it opens up another world, or maybe some would say, it opens up the world, but it certainly shuts us off from other, more immediate and human and physical components of the world. At least I think so.

So, I've rejoined the ranks of the feature phone crowd. At least I still have a cell phone, I guess. Luckily for Verizon, they still get that little chunk of cash from me each month, dammit. Maybe one day they (cell companies) will realize that they will have to reduce the overall costs of data. Of course, why would they do that when most people are willing to shell out the bucks?