Mapping the Future

Over 1 1/2 Years Later & Thousands of Miles

2008-09-15T22:51:00.000-07:00

This is Bruce when he was 9 months old and one of the last few moments I had with him. He passed away unexpectedly and rather abruptly.

My project, SplashPoint, has taken a modified direction and evolved with vigorous undertakings. Several features and functionalities were added to make sure that the final product truly stands as one of a kind. It puts it all together. Today it is ready for prime time. It has now become known as Geospatial Technology Framework (GTF). It is not characterized as a simple nor a complex 'application'. It has now become a development platform with a core specificity that drills on a fundamental idea that the connectivity factor of virtually all objects that is found on earth whether below the surface, on the surface, or above is land.

For those who will eventually understand GTF will realize and greatly appreciate the implicit significance of such technology to the economic state of affair on third world and developing countries. This technology perhaps may even be appropriate for consideration by western and developed countries who does not yet have the full grasp of a nationally integrated land management system.

The backend Oracle 11G geospatial database repository for storage and computation makes GTF a powerful engine for virtually unlimited application. Combined with the 3D visualization of the NASA 3D WW, GTF is supreme platform for land based applications that can handle both static and dynamic data stream. This makes it unique, robust, and with virtually unlimited capability.

August and September of 2008 brought me new experiences and traveling thousands of miles to the Philippines. The problems facing this country are common to other third world countries while the proliferation and advances in the use of the internet and information technology continues throughout the community at an extremely rapid pace. The record keeping and maintenance of vital information at all levels and sectors both in public and government remain far behind those of developed nations. GTF was introduced to a core of interested individuals who are party to big businesses and goverment. I believe GTF and SplashPoint have found a home.

I am extremely delighted but cautiously optimistic on this technology as it now begins a new and promissing future.

Tying Splashpoint & WW Together

2007-03-26T20:47:00.000-07:00

With WW Ver 1.4 you can split screen with 2 optional views. Vertical or Horizontal. I think the vertical looks better and more applicable. The Search Functions are now being optimized and form factors being configured to match this configuration.

It appears that I will need to have two formats to fit the standard web and the other to fit WW.
The communication between the two should be fairly straightforward as demonstrated partially by the Lewis & Clark Expedition layer.

This week begins the heavy surgery to make WW from a simple viewer to a full grown computational and analytical environment. With the enterprise search engine that can perform very complex boolean searches, I should be able to map these points or layout polygons onto the 3D visual maps and thereafter perform technical computation or analysis against these data. What makes this possible? Because the search engine database is intrinsically geospatial. I have a presentation on the 14th of April to supposedly high level audience. I need to have something demonstrable by that time. It's going to be close.

First Opportunity to Apply Splashpoint

2007-03-19T21:16:00.000-07:00

This is Bruce when he was 4 months old. He is a Jack Russel Terrier mix. He pretty much chewed up everything in site and non-stop playing around from early morning 'til early evening with short naps in the afternoon! His eyes were beautiful green. His only means of communication is to whine and bite.

There is a strong possibility that a customer is interested in looking at Splashpoint to build a custom, turn-key Underground Service Alert Management System (USAMS). This would be fantastic. I'll know more in the next few weeks.

Splashpoint is extremely suitable for this kind of application because it does not rely on the internet or wireless communication to work properly. Field Crews working out in the field have to work and tend to emergencies at all times. When the Field Crews are finished from the field, they would be able to synchronize their information to their home office. Try doing this with Google Map!

Shaping Up the Splashpoint Look

2007-03-19T20:18:00.000-07:00

The Main Page is constantly being massaged. I want it to look pretty and equally functional. My work is being designed from a perspective of a professional engineer like I am. If I'm satisfied, I'm sure others will too. I guarantee it!

The three purpose of the site is for users to be able to download the standalone 3D application, to manage information by directly interacting with the database engine and lastly to find things logically. So far the functional stuff are progressing better than expected; but this is just the beginning.

Weekend Progress

2007-03-19T13:28:00.000-07:00

I have identified more log-issues but my team is working feverishly. The website start to look prettier. Definitely the functionalities start to take shape and move smoothly throughout the application.

The loss of my dog is still upsetting me.

Another component of Splashpoint is a full accounting system for all kinds of things. Aside from normal bean counting purpose, it can be used for cost estimating and project costing optimization. For example, if an engineer is designing a power transmission routing, the map can be used to determine best route based on terrain evaluation with project cost options from Accounting, i.e. straight line may not be the best solution to get from Point A to Point B. I've ran into this kind of daily head-aches when I was doing a lot of engineering work .. 8 to 5 type job. I don't think I could ever get back to that again. Anyway, this component is pretty much done. I'm waiting now the approval for our application for Merchant Account processing from Wells Fargo. They have received all of the documents and I should be hearing from WF this week on details how to integrate Splashpoint with the bank.

Some folks have expressed interest - at least curiously fascinated on this project. I'll work on them if I could beg off some financial support. I'm expecting to have something WOW to show by end of the month for sure.

Splshpoint Search Functions

2007-03-16T22:17:00.000-07:00

The simple search and advance search functions are done. I have uploaded all of the PlaceNames data to the database and loaded all of the addresses in San Jose (residential and commercial). Start small and then load all of California by end of this month. The advance search function will perform any mix of bolean query and I would add later for user to custom make their own query and save for later execution. I've done this before when I was working with a USAMS application. I separated the data in two parts. One I called background information - things that don't change that often and the others are dynamic information - things that are constantly changing. I didn't think it's necessary to place certain layers such as boundaries to be loaded in the database and be served by WMS; it's better to have these layers reside locally. Now, how do you maintain the massive database that will exponentially grow very quickly in time? This will be managed through the Web interface with capabilities to mesh with other mapping tools as well as WW via URI protocol.

I do have my own Tiling Server for loading custom and proprietary imageries. I need to automate the creation of WW compatible tiles from raw data. I'll defer this problem for now. The other component that I need to add is an address to lat/long conversion engine which I decided to run in the background at odd hours to continually update the central database; such engine will not be used in the transaction of queries by users as it will add considerable latency in the system response. This engine is already built. I'll just have to connect it to the central, enterprise database search engine. With updates of data from USPS on a monthly basis, the database will reasonably be kept current at least in the coverage for the US.

Mini Proof of Concept

2007-03-15T06:36:00.000-07:00

I have a proof of concept version of Splashpoint that is FREE for everyone, specially the World Wind Community, to download and use. This was based on the the JAVA WW2DPluOne. I'll set up an ftp site for this. The setting shall be ftp.geodac.com, user: splashpoint, pwd: splashpoint101. Download splashpoint.zip file. Full documentation how to use is included. You will need Oracle 10G Express for this. Let me know what you think. It takes more than a casual technocrat to make it work but I think the effort is well-worth it. At least this will provide a taste of what the real mccoy is going to be like.

The world we live in today is in chaos and the future doesn't appear to get any better soon. I have come to the conclusion that information is king; whoever has control of information rules. The two types of information are the abstracts and the tangibles. And the majority of information that we relate to on a daily basis are the tangibles - things that we could reference to the physical world. I also think that we need to think more in terms of global first then down to the level where our feet are standing and to build in terms of personal first from where our feet are standing then up to the global sphere. This is the overall underlying philosophy of Splashpoint. What would happen if could load all of the knowledge (information) to a shareable central core and then be able to relate all of that to the physical world? Knowledge can be from the past, present, and future, static, or dynamic. And then make this 'thing' under the control of the people of the world. The people of the world in a sense becomes the 'Big Brother' of its own dominion. The technology that we have today makes this more than possible. It is achievable. And the urgency to fix our problems is beyond urgent. We are now living under a color scheme. We should be living under one color and the color is Green.

Splashpoint - The Beginning to Current

2007-03-14T10:11:00.000-07:00

I've been working on this project now for quite sometime (several years along with several support team. Many thanks to the NASA World Wind development team headed by Patrick and programmers like Chris and Randy for having introduced their 3D mapping technology to the public. Several months ago I started this collaboration with NASA and see if this mapping viewing tool can be transformed to a fully GIS platform. We are now in beta testing the application that we called Splashpoint.

To make Splashpoint a serious application for professionals, it must have a solid backbone. So we added an enterprise geospatical database and search engine as the core for data repository and functional calculation and analysis. From this we are developing interesting and unique classes of applications.

We are always short of cash but with a lot of prayers and luck, we are still alive and kicking to get this done. So far everyone that remained on the team is commited to reach the end very soon. It's too bad I didn't start this blogger earlier to document the trials and tribulation that we have gone thru to get to this point. We have reached as many as 25 people at one point and then dwindled down now to about 10. It's the survival of the fittest! We've been working for the most part without or with very little funds. Those who had to drop out for survival necessity will be invited back again when we hit big time - i.e. to be able eat a full, hot meal!

There are three big pieces (components) that make up Splashpoint: One piece is the Web interface, the other is the 3D mapping, and the third is the geospatial database & enterprise search engine.

Today we've gone over 30 log-issues. Our target is get all of these resolved plus others in a couple of weeks.

First Blog

2007-03-14T00:03:00.000-07:00

I finally completed the setup of my blog. This will get serious very quickly. I have a mission to accomplish in memory of my beloved dog and my buddy, Bruce, just a few days ago, Sunday, March 11, 2007 - Monterey, CA. I've had him only for about 8 months when he was just a couple of months old. It's amazing how you get attached to these 4 legged friends. What a gift they are from above eventhough it was just too short for me with Bruce. Building history together like trips and hilarious moments of his growing up highlights the happiness he has given me but also compounded the heartaches of loosing him. It's really tough and I'm not yet sure at this time what to do about owning another. I'm thinking of just going through this period for awhile until another moment - right time and place - comes along for another Bruce.