As of early this month ESRI has started shipping the release candidate version of ArcGIS 9.3. I hear that a few people have already received this. James sounds excited to have received this. The release candidate version is going out to a much broader audience which is a great for testing purposes. Support for this is also going to be provided by ESRI Support Services with special forums setup just for this release. The RC version is looking very good and ESRI has invested quite a bit of time in making sure that ArcGIS 9.3 will be a quality release. I have been using ArcGIS 9.3 now since the first eap...

I mentioned a while ago that the presentations from the ESRI Developer Summit 2008 were posted on EDN: http://mandown.co.nz/events/… Sterling has posted a nice summary of the presentations available for the relevant topics. This makes it easy to get to the technical workshop presentations. This summary can be found here:...

Something a bit off topic but a big congratulations to Manchester United for winning the 2007-2008 Barclays Premier League! “United retained the Barclays Premier League title after a 2-0 win over Wigan Athletic secured by a first-half penalty from Cristiano Ronaldo and a second-half clincher from substitute Ryan Giggs” Due to the time difference, football matches in the UK are shown live in NZ at about 2-4 am. So after all the long nights during the season watching lots of football a great win for the the team I support with passion. Well done guys for winning their 10th Premier League...

Possibly the biggest IT event in New Zealand is fast approaching and this year promises to be even bigger! Microsoft New Zealand Tech-Ed 2008 is set to kick off on September 1st in Auckland at the Sky City Convention Centre. Registrations went live at the end of last week and to give you an idea of how fast the early bird registrations are selling, already 49% of the 1000 early bird registrations have already been sold. A new web site has also been launched as part of Tech-Ed 2008 with a nice indicator showing the number of tickets that have sold. Tech-Ed in New Zealand always sells out, every...

With ArcGIS 9.2, we have been doing quite a bit of work in the mobile area. ArcGIS Server 9.2 Enterprise Advanced offers users the ArcMobile SDK. This is a powerful yet flexible SDK that allows users to built rich mobile GIS applications. The SDK not only allows users to build applications for offline users, but applications that work in a synchronous nature as well. This can be a very powerful feature depending on the use case. Up until now we have been been using Trimble Juno ST devices for development. The Trimble Juno ST is a great little device that’s affordable for most users. It runs...

Things have been ticking along and I have been reasonably busy with ArcGIS 9.3. With the final release due out in a few months, I have been getting to experience and learn a bundle of the new features coming in ArcGIS 9.3. ArcGIS 9.3 has a bundle of new features and capabilities to offer. The server side has had a massive upgrade with new API’s coming for Microsoft’s Virtual Earth and Google Maps. Along with this their is the new REST and JavaScript API’s. Information about these have been posted around the web and on the ESRI web page so check it out. Two weeks ago I was in...

I missed this last month when the geodatabase development team at ESRI released their new blog. The new blog titled Inside The Geodatabase has some hot news and tips about geodatabases in the ESRI world and this all comes direct from the development team members. The scope of this blog will range from introductory information regarding general Geodatabase functionality to some more advanced topics and developer related material. We’ll be blogging on things like best practices, new and existing Geodatabase functionality, example workflows and updates from events team members are part of. Also, when...

Microsoft has released Windows XP SP3. The long awaited release RTM’d on Tuesday and is now available to all MSDN customers. These customers can access the downloads by browsing to the top downloads section. Windows XP SP3 will be available via Windows Update and the Microsoft Download Centre as of mid next week. There has not been any news from ESRI regarding the long awaited release of SP3, so you can assume it is not supported yet. I am sure they will add support in the next service pack. I will give it a test with ArcGIS 9.2 SP5 see how this runs. The MSDN top downloads section can be...

ESRI has made the latest version of ArcNews available online. The Winter 2007/2008 Volume 29 Number 4 issue is jam packed with some nice articles. Highlights include information on what’s coming in ArcGIS Desktop 9.3, a review of ESRI in 2007, and a special section on Enterprise GIS in local government. There is also an article on ESRI’s demonstration of the full integration with Microsoft SQL Server 2008. You can find all of these articles plus a bundle more here:...

I thought I would mention about this change in Microsoft Windows Vista SP1. If you have installed SP1 and like me spend most of your day in remote desktop sessions, there is often a need to remote desktop to the console on the server or machine. Normally one would use mstsc /console /v:127.0.0.1. You will notice that after installing SP1 that /console does not work anymore. Why? Well that’s because Microsoft has decided to change the name to make it more descriptive I guess. Now you use mstsc /admin /v:127.0.0.1. Basically it’s the change from /console to /admin. You can see this by...