We are very impressed with the direction ESRI has taken to make the
end-user experience as simple and productive as possible with ArcGIS Online.
Anyone, without any prior GIS experience, can now navigate through the
intuitive drop down menus and publish fancy ready to use online maps and
share it with everyone on the Internet with a few key clicks.
We are very happy with the rich set of online basemaps that ESRI has
provided for free.
I would like to submit an enhancement request for a future release of
ArcGIS Online.
You must have seen the Apple iPhone 4S ads for SIRI - the new voice
assistant:
http://tinyurl.com/3rofpb6
Here is a more detailed demo of what SIRI can do:
http://tinyurl.com/66wxx3x
Just like the iPad revolutionized the Tablet market, this Voice
Assistant will be the new game changer on how ordinary folks access
information.
Apple saw the potential of SIRI and moved quickly to buy out this
vendor.
Not too long ago, SIRI was available as a free download for the Apple
iPad and iPhone from the App Store.
Here is a review of the original SIRI application showing how one could
find information on:
Restaurants
Movies
Events
Local Businesses
Taxis
Weather
Twitter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVkOEL7gPyY
The syntax mimicked normal human language, for example for Finding a
Restaurant one would say:
- of Style (Italian)
- serving (pasta)
- named (Restaurant name)
- in (City or Zipcode)
- near (here, home, work)
- available for reservation (time or date)
- described as (Romantic, kid friendly)
Or, to find a Movie, one would say:
- for (Time or Day)
- in (City or Zipcode)
- near (here, work, home)
- with Title (Name of Movie)
- by genre (Comedy)
- rated (G, PG, R)
- at the theater (theater name)
- starring (Angelina Jolie)
Or, to book a Taxi, one would say:
- in (City or Zipcode)
- near (here, work, home)
- at (time)
Apple took this idea and pushed the envelope to its current form where
SIRI can act as an intelligent search tool that responds to normal human
speech.
Perhaps the ESRI development team can come up something similar to SIRI
to enable the end-user to navigate and query the online maps with spoken
phrases like:
- Find me all the public libraries in Phoenix, Arizona.
- Draw the symbol in a larger size in color red.
- Show the Zip Codes having a median household income over $50,000 per
year near my location within a radius of 20 miles.
- Draw the selected Zip Codes in Green with a 50% Transparancy.
As you can see, the possibilities are endless, if you can integrate the
SIRI engine into your Online maps.
Having the ability to drive the map with voice commands and perform
queries makes it even simpler for the novice user to interact with a GIS
application.
Any individual is now able to unleash the full potential of a GIS
application without having to learn the GIS lingo.
The speech recognition engine will make the necessary translation
between normal human speech and the specific GIS commands to perform a
task.
Cheers!
Tapas Das
Arizona State Land Department
