On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 12:48 AM, David G. Smith PE PLS
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Seems 'neo' comes full circle and returns to what the 'paleo' guys have
> already been doing for decades in desktop GIS...
>
> *ducking tomatoes and exiting stage left...*
>
> Seriously, the excitement factor of it is in bringing true, robust
> geoanalytical capability to this Mashup-oriented self-service Web x.0
> paradigm in the form of easy-to-feed, easy-to-consume web services.  Grab
> dataset 'a' on the fly from here, run your analysis on the fly there, and
> show the results in your [insert framework du jour here:  Google Earth /
> Virtual Earth / WorldWind / OpenLayers / Widget / iPhone / whatever else we
> dream up ]
>

Good points, but a little off as well.

There is a mix in this discussion between Neogeography, GIS, and the
land that is betwixt the two. And in this mix is the desire by various
domains to have the utility of the others.

The problem with GIS in the Web x.0 world hasn't been that the utility
wasn't desired, it's that it is couched in interfaces and
functionality that is targeted towards a different kind of user than
the one asking the question "find me a camping site".

So what is interesting is that all this data we're begging to collect,
collate, and aggregate, and the innovative interfaces for visualizing
the results are that they will be potentially just as useful for
asking the question an 'average user' may ask "find me a good camp
site on my route to B" as the question a geospatial analyst may ask
"what is the density of campers along highways in the western US".

However, the two are still distinct. There will be different engines
that power analyzing these questions and different pieces of interface
that provide exploration and querying depending on the type of answers
desired.

Andrew
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