Slashgeo

Does speed matters? Spatially Adjusted links and discuss a speed comparison of MapServer and ArcIMS. From the blog: "The bigger issue with the speed of both GIS server applications is how and where your data is installed. It is easy to get caught up on these speed claims with server software and they are fun for posting to Digg, but in the real world there are way too many variables to worry about 1/2 a second waiting for a map to be served." Don't miss Hobu's link to a MapServer vs ArcIMS comparison (from Spatially Adjusted comments).

Spatially Adjusted links to a blog relating the experience of someone switching from ESRI software to open source GIS from scratch and with limited knowledge. Learn more of his experience on the Datum Shift blog and read the comment to see how the open source community tries to help.

Directions mag offers an article named open source geospatial software provides an enterprise alternative for small agencies. From the article: "Even though OSS has been on the market for years and despite the established developer and user communities for many OSS products, my clients offer a standard set of objections to using OSS. They worry that OSS is not robust or well-performing. Managers at small agencies judge that their staff cannot support non-proprietary products and believe that there is no enterprise-class support for the software. Finally, these managers and their GIS advisors already 'know' that their CAD data cannot support geospatial applications." See the numerous related stories below.

The ESRI User Conference is coming fast. Very Spatial will cover the event with their great podcasts. They're also celebrating their first year, congratulations! (I personaly listen to every episode and even like their music selection :-) Meanwhile, Spatially Adjusted details the split up of ArcGIS in 3 versions. Slashgeo now has a new poll on the User Conference. The previous poll related to this story tells us 80% visit slashgeo for the news it aggregates and the RSS feed, while the remaining 20% come mainly for its potential future or the user comments. I also updated the slashboxes to show PlanetGS RSS feed on Slashgeo's main page.