Cuil (pronounced “cool”) is a search engine unveiled on July 28, 2008. Recently several start-ups wanted to establish on the hard search engines market, but also big companies like Microsoft and Yahoo managed it to attack Google. But the semantic search of Cuil tries to make it different. Uniquely, it organizes web pages by content and displays relatively long entries and pictures for each result. It claims to have a larger index than any other search engine, with about 120 billion web pages. Cuil is managed and developed largely by former employees of Google.
Today it started their service and provided relatively good results in my opinion. The search results are not in form of a list, it is more like the layout of an online magazine. Cuil can use 33 million $ Venture-capital. Also Tom Costello is on board, who has worked in the field of search technologies for IBM and made research at the Stanford University.
Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.
ArcGIS for AutoCAD is a free application that provides access to ArcGIS Server map services and allows CAD users to visualize and query GIS data without conversion in AutoCAD. As a CAD user, you can work directly with ArcGIS map services to add GIS context to your AutoCAD session.
This introductory video demonstrates how ArcGIS for AutoCAD leverages the spatial data management and cartographic capabilities of ArcGIS Server.
With ArcGIS for AutoCAD, you can (according to ESRI)
- View live GIS maps, displaying GIS symbology of all underlying GIS data structures in CAD.
- Include the results of GIS analysis in your CAD designs.
- Include GIS basemaps in your CAD products.
- Access feature attributes in CAD directly from the underlying GIS databases using the Identify tool.
- Define the coordinate system within AutoCAD to automatically project maps on the fly without transforming CAD drawings or converting GIS data.
Link: http://www.esri.com/autocadapp
Recently I have found this video on YouTube, where ESRI demonstrated the use of ArcGIS Engine and ArcGIS 3D Analyst with a TouchTable. It’s not the wow effect anymore (ony basic functionality), but you can see how far they are.
Written and submitted from CUAS, using their network.
I have tried to compare the big three search engines, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live in their functionality and usability for finding address locations. Address Geocoding is an important field of the GeoWeb and should be not problem for these three companies, but during the test I identified enormous deficits or a complete lack of these functionality.
Test address was: Europastrasse 4, 9500 Villach, Austria. This information should be more than enough to visualize the exact location on the map.
Lets Start with Microsoft Live Search. In my test this service completely fails. First of all if you try to enter the address in the search box of the ordinary Web Search you get some results which may be related to the address but it was not checked that the entered string represents an address (complete lack of semantics). Therefore, I changed to maps.live.com, to see if I can locate my address here. First of all you have to change the mode from the default (businesses) to locations. Then I entered the address to search. The results displays the map near Villach but far away from the correct location. Live maps do not have address geocoding for Austria. Hence, it cannot be recommended to search for Austria addresses.
The next service I tested was Yahoo Local Maps. Similar like Live Search it was not possible to visualize the address from the normal web search. In the Yahoo Local Maps mode it is possible to enter the address in the search field. The result does not perfectly fit but it is close. Additional you get a hint that the exact address cannot be found but the nearest address is visualised. In this case much better than Microsoft Live Search.
At least I tested the market leader Google. And it is the test winner of my small experiment. By entering the address as search string the first result is a small map, which visualizes the exact location of the address. From this small view you can directly change to Google Maps. Of course also Google Maps locate the address without any problems through the search box.
So try it for yourself and tell me your Experiences.
Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.
Google introduced Walking routes!
Try it for yourself at http://maps.google.com
Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.
Recent Comments