Wow, that is a lot of time spent to get a useable (?) map. I've been asking myself a similar question recently, except it has been "Who needs ArcGIS when you have Google."
Certainly we need ArcGIS, but for many of our maps and data sharing needs, I'm wondering if updating shapefiles and sending them to a Google Map might be all that end users need to explore and digest spatial datasets. I started thinking about this more after I saw Tonya Kauhi's presentation at the meeting. Google has already done a lot of work for us - like populating their imagery with historical aerials, USGS quad maps, 3D buildings, etc. Interested in how many of us are already doing this, planning to explore, etc. We recently produced a final "deliverable" for a phase I that was a pdf of our text, plus a .kmz file.
Wow, that is a lot of time spent to get a useable (?) map. I've been asking myself a similar question recently, except it has been "Who needs ArcGIS when you have Google."
ReplyDeleteCertainly we need ArcGIS, but for many of our maps and data sharing needs, I'm wondering if updating shapefiles and sending them to a Google Map might be all that end users need to explore and digest spatial datasets. I started thinking about this more after I saw Tonya Kauhi's presentation at the meeting. Google has already done a lot of work for us - like populating their imagery with historical aerials, USGS quad maps, 3D buildings, etc. Interested in how many of us are already doing this, planning to explore, etc. We recently produced a final "deliverable" for a phase I that was a pdf of our text, plus a .kmz file.