ArcGIS Explorer Blog : ArcWatch

ArcGIS Explorer and ArcGIS Online articles in the latest ArcWatch

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:30:00 GMT

ArcWatch is ESRI's e-magazine for GIS news, views, and insights. The latest ArcWatch includes a couple of articles of specific interest to Explorer users.

The first is a preview of what's coming in the next release of ArcGIS Explorer.

The second covers new sharing capabilities of ArcGIS Online, which will be available as a public beta prior to the upcoming ESRI User Conference.

Exploring Crane Lake and the Crane Lake Web cam

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Mon, 04 May 2009 20:15:00 GMT

(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!

Explorer used in Search and Rescue Operation

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:02:00 GMT

An article just published in the April, 2008, ArcWatch describes the use of ArcGIS Explorer during the search for a man lost in California's San Bernardino Mountains. Here's an excerpt from the article that describes using ArcGIS Explorer:

The 2008 search used a server that accessed a satellite broadband connection to retrieve ArcGIS Explorer 3D visualization enhancements. It was easy to overlay the polyline shapefiles created from the GPS track logs and display them in ArcGIS Explorer to create a 3D map. Aerial imagery or topographic map data was displayed as a background and draped over digital elevation models. Roads and administrative boundaries could be added for reference. This gave a true representation of the terrain difficulty, which was much easier for field teams to understand than a two-dimensional topographic map with contour lines. SBSO personnel were especially impressed that all this information is available for the entire country and can be accessed through the freely downloadable ArcGIS Explorer application.

ArcWatch is a monthly e-Newsletter that provides up to date information on what's new with ESRI, its software, and the desktop mapping and GIS industry. Subscriptions are free.

ArcWatch on Explorer

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 21:50:00 GMT

The recently published issue of ArcWatch includes a Q&A covering ArcGIS Explorer. ArcWatch is a monthly e-Magazine, and covers topics of interest to the GIS Community. You can subscribe to get ArcWatch automatically, and there's lots of great information and good articles that you will find in the ArcWatch archives.