Looking for a Park in the City of Poway?

There are quite a few parks within the City of Poway.
Here’s a map of them to aid you in locating where to go for a walk, or party, or dog walk, or whatever.

Want to make a map with your topic of interest on it, and use it in your web site? It’s easy!
Esri continues to update and expand ArcGIS.com with new features and functionality. Lots of great stuff there now, and more continues to be released every few months – you can do things like the embedded maps you see on this blog, and all for free!

A nice feature is drag & drop of CSV files to create “dots on a map” – this is how I got the Poway Parks on the map below. This functionality was recently upgraded to allow for your CSV file to be stored online in the location of your choosing – and when updates happen to that online file, they are reflected on your map without you having to reload & re-symbolize the data! Very nice.

When you are creating your map with the ArcGIS.com map viewer your searches will now be more relevant – it used to be that a search for “fire” brought back a LOT of layers to dig through, many from other states, or around the world. Interesting, but generally not very useful when building a map view focused on a single city. Well, the December 2011 ArcGIS Online update added Spatial Search. So now when I am zoomed into Poway and I search on “fire” – I get a much more relevant list of map services returned to me.
Also be sure to check out the bottom of that post because it has some information on ArcGIS Online subscriptions. More on this in the next few months,

Also remember that the maps you create and share with ArcGIS.com can be used in multiple ways. Below is an example of how easy it is to embed a map. But I could have also chosen to use this map as a web application. Check it out: http://bit.ly/vF0c2I 
A new feature in a recent update was the ability to share a map, select one of the ArcGIS.com map app templates, and then actually publish that map into the ArcGIS Online cloud! This is fantastic for community groups or agencies that don’t have a public facing ArcGIS Server box, but want to be able to share information publically. More and more important these days for public agencies looking to increase transparency into their data and work. Feel free to ping me if you want to do this but aren’t sure where to go.

I highly recommend keeping an eye on the ArcGIS Online Blog – it is updated often with tips & tricks as well as announcement and descriptions on updates as they occur. There’s a lot to keep up with Enhanced HTML5 support, KML support, enhanced sharing, more symbols & symbol search, support for secure ArcGIS services (this is huge for many agencies),

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Have fun in Poway! Be sure to also visit the city web site.

Also – let me know about maps you are creating and embedding, or that you publish with an ArcGIS.com template. I’ll highlight it here on my blog!

Happy mapping!

City of Carlsbad Libraries

Here’s a quick example of a simple locations map showing the libraries in the City of Carlsbad.

And this blog post serves as an example of embedding a live map from ArcGIS Online into a web page, and I will also register this on ArcGIS.com as yet another example.

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The HTML code for this embedded map was auto-generated by ArcGIS.com in the map viewer, from the Share button. This is an example of the Large sized map with the zoom control included.

Check it out here: http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=fc2ef60171d441aab41886ba01172c23

Locations for Sandbag pickup in San Diego County

The County of San Diego is nice enough to provide free sandbags to folks that live in the unincorporated areas. Great on days like today when we get the first real rain of the season - or for people that still have fire scares on their property, etc.

The County website has additional information here: http://www.countynewscenter.com/news/county-giving-free-sand-bags-residents

Quickly you will see that there are seven locations. There are partial addresses and no map to help you get your bearings.

I decided to map it out. I did a little copy/paste work putting the location info into a CSV file. Loaded that up into ArcGIS Explorer Online to geocode the locations and do some editing of the icons and such. Dropped that into the ArcGIS.com Map Viewer and shared it out publicly, and also generated the HTML code to pop into this quick blog post.

Now I know where to go in Valley Center if I should need some sandbags!


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Hopefully I won't need them, but if I do...

GIS Managers' Open Summit - Esri UC 2011

Did you attend the Esri User Conference (UC) last year? Did you make it to the GIS Managers' Open Summit? It was an interesting day, and our first time having an unconference as part of the UC. Most of the folks there were not really familiar with the idea of an unconference or how it works, but they all survived and I think most got a lot out of it.

At the end of the day I asked Victoria if she thought we would do this again next year. She didn't know, but hoped we would. I had to agree.

Well, here we are a year later. And guess what? Not only are we doing the Open Summit again - but we are doing it over two days! Tuesday and Wednesday, with a few twists to the schedule, and a few little changes from last year.

More to come on that. Watch for Tweets on the subject - specifically follow @geoTC and @VKouyoumjian for updates on Open Summit. Also follow @EsriUC for all things UC.

So plan on coming by for a day, or a morning, or an afternoon. We would love to see you there. If you would like to add it to your "My UC" agenda - here's the link: http://events.esri.com/uc/2011/infoweb/onlineagenda/?fa=ofg_details_form&ScheduleID=2096 for Tuesday. Then at the bottom for that page is the link for Wednesday.

You can also follow along and keep the conversation going on the LinkedIn 'Managers in GIS' group.

Look forward to seeing you there, hearing about your work, and discussing all things GIS in an unconferency way.

Metadata in ArcGIS 10

I have had some clients asking about the changes in the way Esri is handling Metadata in ArcGIS 10. If you missed the session at the 2010 User Conference then you will be extra interested in this new series of blog posts related to the topic.

A new approach to Metadata with ArcGIS 10 (part 1)

A new approach to Metadata with ArcGIS 10 (part 2)

Be sure to review the comments and replies as there is additional or updated information contained there.

More to come!