For the past six week so so I’ve been beta testing the ArcGIS for iPhone App. I have to admit I’ve found it hard to contain my excitement, I’ve had to keep it to myself – that’s why I haven’t been blogging. I’ll tell you now I’m an avid Apple fan, I’m typing this on my iMac, and I’m inseparable from my iPhone. I don’t have to tell you I’m also an avid ArcGIS fan, if you don’t know that you’ve stumbled into the wrong blog! So today is a red letter day for me, the ArcGIS for iPhone App was released on the AppStore, I’m happy that now I can share my enthusiasm with everybody!
ArcGIS is the world’s most popular GIS platform. The iPhone is the world’s most advanced smartphone. Put the two together any you get a synergy that has huge potential. The iPhone is great because of its own unique capabilities and characteristics but what really makes it kick is the thousands of app’s that others have developed for it, the catch phrase “There’s an App for That!” is now part of the vernacular. Today ESRI has given us the chance to apply the same model to the GIS industry. If we take that chance, I predict that pretty soon we’ll be saying “There’s a Map for That!”
Now with ArcGIS, ArcGIS.com and the iPhone you can put a Map for any topic quickly, easily and cheaply into the hands of the millions of consumers with iPhone, iPad and iTouch devices. I’ve been doing this for the past six weeks, now you can do it too. The reaction of everyone I’ve shown has been universally positive. The power of seeing your own Map on a device as beautiful and accessible as an iPhone is indisputable. People crowd around, they look over your shoulder, they want to touch it – it is the ultimate evolution of the Map as a document that can be available any time anywhere on any device.
So what’s involved? Well you can simply use ArcGIS Desktop to author your Map service, publish it to ArcGIS Server, register it on www.ArcGIS.com creating an interactive Map. Download the ArcGIS for iPhone App from the AppStore, use it to log on to ArcGIS.com and the iPhone will display your Map. You can browse it, query it, idenitfy features, measure lines and areas, evaluate location and geo-locate yourself using the on-board GPS.
And you know what? You can do it again and again, I did my first one in 10 minutes and I’ve published about 20 or so now. You can do one today, tomorrow and every day – in fact every time you want to illustrate a point with a Map you can now quickly publish it to ArcGIS.com and from there to the iPhone.
The real beauty of this is that I can do it, you can do it – in fact anyone can do it. You don’t need to develop anything, that’s been done for you. Much of the content you will need is provided for you by ESRI and others on ArcGIS.com. Sure, if you want to serve you own original data into the Map then you need access to an ArcGIS Server. But for this sort of flexibility, capability and accessibility – that’s a small price to pay.
You can download the App from the AppStore – just search on “arcgis”. And yes, its free.
If you’re stuck fro a Map please use this one of mine http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=2f87cb789d8846b898c807a341530d32 . Or on ArcGIS for iPhone, click Find Maps and use “habitats ireland” as the search term and then click on the response to open the Map.
