(submitted by Carla Wheeler, ESRI ArcWatch editor)

As a professional editor and writer covering a wide variety of GIS topics I still sometimes feel like a GIS novice when it comes to using software. But even a GIS novice will find ArcGIS Explorer easy to use, and in this particular case easy to share near real-time geographic information with colleagues, organizations, or friends.

I looked at an earlier post on this blog and read about how to add a live Web cam to Explorer. Using what I learned there I was able to add my own live Web cam, in this case from a location close to my hometown near Crane Lake, Minnesota.

This time of year many people in the northern United States and Canada wait with baited breath for the ice to go out on the lakes so they can begin to plan trips to catch walleye, northern pike, and crappies. Like seeing the first robin of the year, a sure sign of spring up north is the ice disappearing from the lakes. 

Many resorts operate Web cams that face the lake so the current conditions can be viewed online. But I wanted to take that a step further and view the Web cam in a better geographic context, and also share my results with others.

I used the Find Place task to enter "Crane Lake, MN" and zoomed to the lake.

This got me quickly to the general area, and from there I zoomed in further. Handberg's is a local resort that has a Web cam facing the docks and water.  I visited the resort’s Web site, clicked the Web cam tab, and then copied the URL for that page.

I then went back to my Explorer map of Crane Lake, and navigated to the dock where the cam was placed.  Using Create Notes I added a point at the cam location. A red pushpin appeared where I pointed, and I right-clicked the pushpin to open its properties. I pasted the URL for the cam there, then hit OK.

Now when I click the pushpin the Web cam appears in the popup, showing a live view of the lake. Last week the ice was in. Today when I checked the ice was out, which means it's time to buy a new rod and reel.

I wanted to share this with some colleagues and doing that was easy. I just right-clicked the pushpin and chose E-mail to send it along (of course keeping my best fishing holes a secret).

The E-mail is automatically created - the result is added as an attachment and the E-mail text with instructions is automatically inserted. Easy enough even for a crappie fisherman!

And don't forget to bookmark the ESRI ArcWatch site. If you're fishing for interesting news and information, you'll find it there!