Geocloud: ESRI ArcGIS Online Reviewed

This is the third part in a series of articles from Georelated providing a summary of some of the major cloud mapping services, their capabilities and key differentiators. This article will examine ESRI ArcGIS Online. Previous articles in this review series:

1. Part 1 - Google Maps
   
2. Part 2 - Bing Maps
3. Part 3 - ESRI ArcGIS Online  

The articles are aimed at a technical audience of architects or developers. 

ArcGIS Online is a large collection of GIS capability and data. ArcGIS Online provides "Hosted" and "Content" web services, mobile and web application programming interfaces, web mapping explorer application for sharing and collaboration, ArcGIS integration and Excel integration. It offers broad range of capability with ESRI product suite wide integration and support for a wide range of development technologies.

Technology: 3D GIS Moving from Desktop to the Web?

In the recent Web Mapping post series Georelated.com examined the new opportunities that have emerged for vastly improved web mapping through HTML 5 and its support for SVG, WebGL, Canvas and massively improved performance. We examined the practicality and benefits of vector web mapping as an alternative to web mapping using pregenerated tile images and the potential of globe web mapping visualisation without plugins or desktop software. In this post we will examine the opportunities for 3D web mapping created through advances in browser technology, HTML5, WebGL and new evolutions in web mapping.

Development: The Fall of the Tiled Map Image

Pregenerated tiled map images as used by Google Maps, Microsoft Bing and many GIS focused vendors has been the dominant solution GIS web mapping for solutions for many years. Pregenerated tile maps were a clever and highly successful solution to the technology limitations of the time (circa 2004) however, these limitations no longer exist. Is it time for a change of approach?