#5Things on Friday 1 - Admin Tools, Collector, NASA

Welcome to 5 Things on Friday. Part of my onboarding here at GEO Jobe has involved coming up to speed with some of the solutions that we develop, implement, and support. Therefore, I’d like to kick off this “5 Things on Friday” series with 5 cool things I discovered this week, starting with Admin Tools. and several other goodies.

1: Admin Tools – Somewhat of a “swiss army knife” type of solution, Admin Tools really is a must-have for anyone who manages an ArcGIS Server or Portal installation for an organization or enterprise. Crammed with functionality, Admin Tools enables fast and painless for the ArcGIS Administrator to clone an ArcGIS online organization (this is huge for Academic and EDU users) and for users needing an ArcGIS Online presence for their industry but don’t have an easy way to deploy it, Admin Tools enables “One Click Deployment” resulting in substantial time savings. Admin Tools is available in 3 flavors, Free, Pro and portal.

2: Collector for ArcGIS – Released just this week (July 19, 2016), Collector for iOS (v 10.4.0) has a number of noteworthy new features and functionality including enhanced support for connection with high precision GPS (see this how to) . Back in June, Collector for Android Beta came out and added such features as notifications and alerts, added metadata support, and more. According to the team, an update for Windows will be available soon.

3: GISFaces – I have to admit, the catchy name got my attention and made me want to know more. I still have to dig deeper but given the buzz on Twitter this week, this is something worth digging a little deeper into. Simply put, GISFaces is the only GIS mapping component available for JSF and is free and closed-source. GIS Faces uses the ESRI® ArcGIS API For JavaScript mapping engine, supports ESRI tiled, image, and dynamic map services, supports KML, feature, and graphics layer. According to the docs, no GIS programmer or analyst experience is necessary to start integrating GIS maps into your applications – very cool!

4: Casual Fridays – I’m a big fan of having a casual Friday (hence my desire for this 5 Things on Friday series) as a result, this resource got my attention. Based in sunny San Diego, the content marketing team has been around since 2009 and provides complete marketing and social media strategies for businesses. San Diego has evolved into a bit of a start-up and marketing company hotspot and with that, there’s a number of fine marketing resources there that wold be useful to include in your regular readings, this one included. Be sure to browse the Casual Friday blog for some fine tips, brand management, and social media strategies.

5: NASA DEVELOP National Program – DEVELOP, bridging the gap between NASA Earth Science and society, is part of NASA’s Applied Sciences Program, and addresses environmental and public policy issues through interdisciplinary research projects that apply the lens of NASA Earth observations to community concerns around the globe. Jamie Thompson, Application Developer here at GEO Jobe, was fortunate enough to intern at DEVELOP while she did her degree in Computer Science, enabling her to be exposed to exciting technologies and put her skills to the test on a number of GIS projects. If you want to know more about DEVELOP can always connect with Jamie on Twitter @jamJamDev.

I could easily keep sharing but there’s always next time! If you have an awesome tool, GeoTech tip, cool web service, new ArcGIS implementation, or something just down-right amazing to share, please ping me @gletham and I’ll consider it for a future edition of 5 Things. Thanks to my old friend & marketing mentor James Whatley @whatleydude, for inspiring me with the 5 things concept!