I now have a reply back from the author or WinAPRS on support for ESRI world files. He is working on it, but has one last problem to figure out before it will work. In researching the standard, I came upon an old problem I learned about many years ago, but which never spent the time to find the proper solution for.

While the full-blown GeoTIFF raster image format includes not only the basic georeferencing information but the projection, datum, and units. The commonly used ESRI-created World File (.jpw for JPEG images) lacks the latter three items, and includes only pixel size, image rotation, and origin.

So, when using a world file with a JPEG, GIF, PNG, or other image that lacks the georeferencing capabilities of GeoTIFF, you must also use a projection file (.prj) that includes all this missing information. This has also been defined by ESRI, and has had several flavors over the years. The original format was a multi-line one, used by Arc/Info 7.x, but that has been replaced by a new .prj format originally defined by the OpenGIS consortium as the Well-Known Text (WKT) format, and has since been revised slightly by ESRI, and it’s not clear if WKT has been updated to match the ESRI changes.

But guess what? The National Weather Service doesn’t include a .prj file with its georeferenced weather radar images. And now that I know about this little item, I suspect that most of the so-called georeferenced files floating around are also lacking this important metafile.

Now that I’ve found a source of georeferenced weather radar images, I thought the next useful bit of data would be a vector overlay of all the fault lines in the Bay Area. This should be simple, right? After surfing for a couple of hours, the closest I’ve found to usable GIS data is a Google Earth KML file of just the Hayward fault. After another hour of fiddling around with conversion utilities, I have managed to convert this KML file to a GPX file (an open XML standard for storing GPS waypoints, track logs, etc.) using Fish-Track’s KML to GPX converter, but since WinAPRS can’t read GPX files, I need to convert this data to something it can, such as raw NMEA sentences, which another conversion utility, gpsbabel, fails at.

It looks like I have another feature request for the WinAPRS authors…GPX support.

I have recently redoubled my efforts to get my installation of the WinAPRS mapping application fully configured with as many maps and database files as I think could be of use for general Ham radio use and emergency use in particular. I have loaded the latest TIGER maps for roads, political divisions and so on; the ancient USGS DEM files for the color terrain map, and various locations (EOCs, Red Cross sites, etc.), and a few other things.

My longstanding desire has been to overlay the current NEXRAD weather radar over all of this, but I have long been stymied by the seeming absence of imagery that was ready-made for GIS-type overlays. It seemed as if this would be impossible to achive, until I found something that is but one painful step away from working.

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Today’s task is something that should be simple–I have our radio club logo in vector form as an Illustrator CS2 image (with nothing but vectors, arcs, and text) and need to a scalable vector version that can be used in applications such as PowerPoint. Windows’ Enhanced Metafile (EMF) is the perfect choice for this, since it can support all of these drawing elements correctly, and with 32-bit precision.

WMF, the older 16-bit Windows Meta File standard from Windows 3.1, is not as capable, and is not capable of rendering the line joins correctly, and doesn’t even support arcs and circles. The Windows 95 version of WMF does support arcs and circles, but is still problematic.

Exporting the logo from Illustrator is easy enough, with the Export command. And using Windows XP’s Preview feature in Windows Explorer shows the result to be a perfect copy of the Illustrator file. However, when placing that EMF in Word or PowerPoint (Office XP), the line joins are incorrectly beveled, making the logo ugly and incorrect.

One problem with Illustrator is that it doesn’t let you choose between the two flavors of EMF–the original GDI based EMF from Windows 2000, or the enhanced GDI+ based EMF from Windows XP.

Since Windows XP’s image preview handles the EMF logo just fine but the Office XP applications don’t, I’m fairly confident that the problem lies with Microsoft’s code, not Adobe’s.

There needs to be a reliable way to include high-quality, scalable company logos in a wide range of software that design firms use in their communication and marketing efforts. For at least the Windows platform, this means EMF, so let’s get this right folks!

To borrow a phrase from a former co-worker and tech editor of mine, the Mobile Web “sucks dead bunnies”. Unlike other technologists who believe that WAP was a solution looking for a problem, I’m a firm believer that just reformatting Web pages designed to be used on desktop and laptop computers is not sufficient for providing a fully useful Internet experience to PDAs and mobile phones.

What went wrong, and must be fixed to make the Mobile Web happen for more than just those with deep enough pockets to tie themselves in with the carriers? Something very simple called content negotiation. Every WAP browser I have ever tried makes the same fatal error of claiming to support both (X)HTML and WAP in the header they send to Web servers, and not specifying a preference. When visiting a server that is properly configured for content negotiation with both (X)HTML and WAP pages, the server will properly send the higher-quality file–the desktop (X)HTML one–that most mobile phones can’t handle (either in a usable manner or more oftent not at all). This is relevant for anyone involved in the CAD or design markets because of the coming of SVG and location-based services to mobile phones. Before these can be widely deployed though, this fundamental (and extremely easy to fix) flaw must be corrected.

So the acid tests begin now. My latest site, PDAcritic.com, is properly configured with most pages available in both XHTML and WAP versions. All of the content there fully complies with the IETF and W3C standards, so if a desktop browser (sorry, Microsoft) or WAP browser (sorry, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, SonyEricsson, et. al.) can’t even load the site, don’t blame me–ditch that browser and go find one that works.

I’ll provide updates as I test browsers, phones, and PDAs for compatibility with this and other technologies of interest to this community. And you’ll know who the winners and losers are, because I’ll be handing out letter grades that won’t pull any punches. Sony Ericsson is the first, and their S710a earned a D−.

One of the tasks for the ham radio club I’m involved with is updating the membership “database”. Not updating in the sense of adding and revising records, but updating its structure from an Excel spreadsheet to a proper database. This has been actually been a multi-phase process.

The first time I got involved last year, it was because of the need to quantify the percentage of our members who are also current ARRL members (a requirement for club affiliation with the ARRL is 51% membership among the club members). Part one was straightforward–converting text entries of dates to date values, for example. But then adding all the data needed to be able to calculate paid/unpaid members, voting elegibility, and the other needed calculations proved difficult to do. I wound up adding 10 columns to the spreadsheet, each with complex formulas that resulted in either a 1 or 0 that could then be counted and used in other calculations. It wasn’t the right way, but the most expedient because the maintainer was most familiar with Excel and we needed to put more thought into our database needs.

We’re now in that phase, and I’ve been playing around with a trial copy of FileMaker Pro 8, expecting it to be a snatch to migrate the data and design a proper database. (The two members who will be maintaining the database already have FileMaker, so it’s the obvious choice.)
Hah! The first problem is that FMP imports all 65,484 rows of the Excel spreadsheet as records, even though all but a few hundred are empty. (Selecting and naming a range didn’t help, because FMP doesn’t let you specify ranges, named or otherwise.) Fortunately, deleting all of the blank ones only required 5 separate steps. Of course, FMP imports all fields as type “Text”, so you have to go re-define all the number and date fields that already had been marked as such in Excel.

After all of this nonsense, I decided to design the database from scratch, then import from Excel. Since my Excel and database field names are slightly different, FMP doesn’t get the mapping quite right. And although the import dialog allows me to reorder the fields, the design completely fails if I only need to fix one field, since dragging it into position forces everything below it that had been correct to be off by one. Talk about fencepost errors!

After working around all these problems, I have a rough database design that I like. I still have to fix some of the formatting (some membership numbers are showing up as 2.0001e+09), convert a few fields to a Boolean type, define pick lists, and restructure a few other fields, then I can enjoy the fun of figuring out how to do a mail merge in yet another application, and discovering if this FileMakre Pro 8 database will work with older versions.

Although the implementation of the mobile Web and cell phones has been badly bungled, last night’s Mobile Monday event, focused on Location-Based Services (LBS) in San Francisco was proof that the mobile Web seems likely to succeed despite the cell phone vendors’ and carriers’ bumbling. Not only was attendance large (about 225 people), several of the speakers were from very large companies. Autodesk ($1.2B annual revenue) and Tele Atlas (€127M annual revenue) are both big players in the mapping business, and their presence helps to validate market potential, while the smaller firms that spoke, such as Bones in Motion, demonstrated the basis for innovation that the co-mingling of mobile technologies can provide.

Autodesk’s Chuck Cone outlined the company’s role in the mobile Web; that of infrastructure and foundation APIs. In addition to providing some of the carriers with back-end technology that enables them to calculate and transport location-based information (from mobile phones with aGPS receivers), they also have partnerships with most of the major carriers to provide mobile application developers with a BREW or J2ME API that is used to retrieve the mobile phone’s location. As is the case with Autodesk’s original AutoCAD developer program, there is no charge for the API or support of it. Autodesk is making its money from the carriers, usually by taking a part of the “dips”, as each GPS location fix is called. If you’re looking to get in on the ground floor of a new industry, now is the time to start trying out the capabilities that LBS will bring to mobile phones and other devices. Currently, the only mobile phone providers with good LBS services are those using CDMA (Sprint/Nextel and Verizon). Cingular and T-Mobile have apparently given up on network-based (TDOA) LBS (except for 911 calls), and will be rolling out aGPS services eventually.
Perhaps the coolest use for LBS I have seen recently was demonstrated by Bones in Motion’s Spencer Nassar. With a small team of just five people, they are developing a location logging tool designed for casual athletes. If you like to hike, bike, or run, their software will let you log your travels and transfer a log to your computer when done, so that you can keep track of your time and distance traveled, post images of your route (on street maps or topographic maps), and perform other analysis on your exercise routines.

Tele Atlas’s talk by was also interesting. Although this company is based in the Netherlands, it has acquired two major U.S.-based navigation companies since 2000–ETAK and GDT. The combination makes them one of the two major players in navigation systems (along with Chicago-based NAVTEQ).

The best laid plans of mice and men…. If you have been wondering what became of me, I have spent the last six months on a completely perpendicular course to what I had set out to take when starting this Journal. I was offered the chance to work for a small ham radio manufacturing and retail firm; an opportunity that combined my desires to be an entrepreneur with my favorite hobby.

While the gig was interesting for a while, it had became clear that it was distracting me from the CAD industry I have spent my career involved in. Despite the frustration with it I found, the experiences were enough to reinforce my beliefs that much of today’s technology is frustratingly inadequate for the smooth and efficient operation of business, and in particular those involved in design and manufacturing. While writing from an ivory tower of sorts at CADENCE magazine, I was often worried that my bitching at hardware and software that didn’t work as easily as I thought it should was much more easily dealt with by those of you in the “real world”.

Having experienced even more frustration in not being able to get all the applications the business uses to work well together (or sometimes, even by themselves) than I ever found conducting product reviews, I have a renewed sense of purpose, and a primary goal of focusing on usability, interoperability, and overall capability in returning to my original goal of creating a new sort of technology journalism.
Now, however, I’m off to Mobile Monday, to find out what Autodesk and others are up to in location-based services. A full report to follow tomorrow, along with an exposé on how the mobile web industry screwed up their browsers big time.

—73

I’ve long advocated the stereoscopic viewing of CAD designs, as it greatly enhances the understanding of a design by non-technical reviewers, as well as the productivity of designers because it allows one to instantly see the real geometric relationships in 3D without having to spin the model around to orient one’s view of the model.

To test the consumer-level technology, I’ve just ordered a pair of E-D Wireless Glasses from eDimensional. This company appears to be the last company with a consumer gaming/entertainment focus selling stereo shutter glasses, so even though I’m not convinced their hardware uses the VESA standard 3-pin Mini DIN connector for stereo sync, I’ve decided that it’s the appropriate device to expect CAD visualization software to support. They can be had in a wired model for $70, little enough that governments and design clients alike could afford them for reviewing your designs.

But despite the benefits, the use of stereoscopic visualization in the CAD market has been little enough that the longest stalwart—StereoGraphics—has been acquired by REAL D—a startup with its sights directly on the entertainment market.

I can’t imagine REAL D will leave behind StereoGraphics’ existing customers in the automotive, aerospace, and scientific fields, but whether the new company expends significant efforts in these markets remains to be seen. In any case, if they do, any harmonization between the entertainment and design markets could increase the likelihood of stereoscopic content becoming successful.

Bear with me for a minute. I know this won’t seem like it’s CAD-related at first, but it is.

I bought a lucite sign holder with a pocket for tri-fold brochures at Staples yesterday, and while they had only the less-desirable one of the three variations in size and layout I was interested in, I bought it anyway, as I need a sample to begin prototyping a brochure presentation for one of the amateur radio events I’m involved with.
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