This whitepaper is an update to my How to Set Up an Esri Geoportal Server
article from the Summer, 2011 issue of ArcUser. It gives step-by-step instructions for installing the Esri Geoportal Server on an internal Windows server.
How to Set Up Esri Geoportal Server 1.2.2 on Windows
Creating the Esri Geoportal Server LiveDVD Demo: Part 2
This a continuation of Creating the Esri Geoportal Server LiveDVD Demo: Part 1. I didn’t mean to make it a month between posts, but development of this DVD was a complicated processes and I wasn’t sure how to write about it.
As I wrote in Part 1, there were 5 parts to creating the LiveDVD:
- Getting the Geoportal up and running.
- Customizing the Geoportal
- Customizing the Linux operating system interface.
- The informational website, which pops open when the LiveDVD is started and provides information about the Geoportal as well as how to get started using the demo.
- Converting the virtual machine to a LiveDVD.
The part will cover Part 2: Customizing the Geoportal.
You see, the Geoportal comes with a default interface that’s great for people to use when setting up their own geoportal.
But wouldn’t quite work for the demo.
First, the color was wrong. If you go to the Geoportal’s webpage on esri.com, you’ll see that the product’s official color is a dark green. Second, the existing text is just placeholder text that’s supposed to be replaced with custom content. I wanted it to be useful for people who are loading up the Geoportal for the first time and have no idea what to do next.
So, making the Geoportal green.
Fortunately, the Geoportal also comes with a blue skin.
While that wouldn’t work either, I thought it would be easier to customize that than the red skin.
And for the most part it was. The bottom banner and headings to the two central boxes were easy to changed; just some quick Paint Shop Pro work. The top banner proved to be much trickier. I wanted to use the same banner that appears on the Geoportal’s webpage. The problem is with where the text has to appear on top of the banner; the title in the bottom left corner and some text links in the top right. I just couldn’t get the banner placed so the text all appears over the dark green parts. I finally had to flip the banner over. It was the only solution that worked.
Finally, with the help of the Geoportal Dev Team, I updated the text. The final Geoportal home page looks like this:
Next Time: Customizing the Linux Operating System
Posted in GIS, Open Source
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Defining Open – ArcUser Article
My article from the Summer 2012 issue of ArcUser.
http://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/0612/defining-open.html
Zillow Takes a Page Out of Trulia’s Book
For the several weeks Words with Friends on Android has been showing me nonstop ads for Trulia’s Android app. Someone at Zillow must have been paying attention because now I’m getting nonstop ads for Zillow’s Android app. Sometimes it’s not a bad idea to take a page out of the competitions book; now Words with Friends players know about both Trulia’s and Zillow’s app.
Is Zillow “stealing”? I don’t think so. Trulia and Zillow are just advertising via the same medium. Google’s not “stealing” from Microsoft when it runs commercials on TV just because Microsoft did so first. What do you think?
Posted in Marketing, Uncategorized
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Esri Geoportal Server LiveDVD Demo
The Esri Geoportal Server LiveDVD Demo was released on Monday, May 14th. The demo provides a self-contained Linux operating system with a fully operational geoportal. You can evaluate your own personal geoportal without having to worry about installing or configuring one on a test machine. It works both as a bootable LiveDVD or a virtual machine (VM).
To use my copy from the esri.com website…
Esri Geoportal Server is a free, open source product that enables discovery and use of geospatial resources including datasets, rasters, and Web services. It helps organizations manage and publish metadata for their geospatial resources to let users discover and connect to those resources. The Geoportal Server supports standards-based clearinghouse and metadata discovery applications.
You can request a copy (physical media or digial download) by going to www.esri.com/geoportaldemo.
Creating the Esri Geoportal Server LiveDVD Demo: Part 1
The Esri Geoportal Server LiveDVD Demo was released on Monday, May 14th. The demo provides a self-contained Linux operating system with a fully operational geoportal. You can evaluate your own personal geoportal without having to worry about installing or configuring one on a test machine. It works both as a bootable LiveDVD or a virtual machine (VM).
To use my copy from the esri.com website…
Esri Geoportal Server is a free, open source product that enables discovery and use of geospatial resources including datasets, rasters, and Web services. It helps organizations manage and publish metadata for their geospatial resources to let users discover and connect to those resources. The Geoportal Server supports standards-based clearinghouse and metadata discovery applications.
In the spirit of openness, I thought I’d talk about the development of this LiveDVD demo. I won’t be able to go into all the details and it will be greatly simplified but I’ll share the highlights.
As I was writing this post I realized that this article was going to be really long, so I’m breaking it up into a series of shorter posts. You see, there were five major parts to creating the LiveDVD:
- Getting the Geoportal up and running.
- Customizing the Geoportal
- Customizing the Linux operating system interface.
- The informational website, which pops open when the LiveDVD is started and provides information about the Geoportal as well as how to get started using the demo.
- Converting the virtual machine to a LiveDVD.
This is Part 1: Getting the Geoportal up and running.
Most of the work on this part actual came before I started development on the LiveDVD. I had written a whitepaper, How to Set Up Esri Geoportal Server on Linux.
While the whitepaper makes it easy to set up a test instance of the Geoportal Server, I wanted an even easier way for people to try it out. And what’s easier than a LiveDVD with the geoportal already running?
LiveDVDs had been on my mind a lot. While writing the above whitepaper I was installing many different versions of the Linux operating system onto virtual machines for testing. There are many different distributions (versions) of the Linux operating system and most of their install disks are LiveDVDs where you can try out that version of Linux without installing it. I noticed that many of these LiveDVDs had sample software included and I thought that it would be cool if there was a LiveDVD with the Geoportal already installed for people to try out. It would be simple; just boot and go.
I also thought it would be easy to make because I had all these virtual machine with the Geoportal running on them from testing my whitepaper. I would just have to customize one, convert to a LiveDVD .ISO, and be good to go.
First I had to decide which version of Linux I wanted to go with. It had to be easily customizable, run on a wide variety of computer hardware, able for me to turn into a LiveDVD, and open for redistribution. I looked at Fedora, Ubuntu, CentOS, ArchLinux, and Debian. I went with Debian because it met all my requirements and was the easiest for me to customize.
I decided that the best way for me to create the LiveDVD was to create it first as a virtual machine that I would then convert to a LiveDVD. I created a new virtual machine in Oracle Virtual Box and installed a clean copy of the Debain Linux operating system. I then installed the Geoportal Server by following the steps from the How to Set Up Esri Geoportal Server on Linux whitepaper. That was the easy part…
My Geoportal Articles from ArcNews, Spring 2012
These articles are both on page 7 of the Spring 2012 issue of ArcNews. Here are the links to the web versions:
How to Set Up an Esri Geoportal Server on Linux
How to Set Up an Esri Geoportal Server on Linux
This new whitepaper of mine was published on Monday! It’s my ArcUser article, How to Set Up an Esri Geoportal Server, converted for the Linux operating system. It gives step-by-step instructions for setting up the Esri Geoportal Server on PostgreSQL and Apache Tomcat. It exclusively uses the command line, so it works on all the popular distributions of Linux. There are some differences depending on the version of Linux you’re using but I highlight them as they occur. I’ve already received some great feedback; let me know what you think.
SNL Verizon Ad: Blending of Marketing and Entertainment
This was hilarious.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xoktxh_saturday-night-live-verizon-ad_fun
I just wonder: is this an SNL skit about Verizon or a Verizon ad with SNL actors (a la the McGruber/Pepsi ads)?
I’m leaning towards an ad…
The Unknown Marketer 