Andrew Bidochko

I’ve found a very interesting post about mashups and Google Platform.

The online mapping arena is changing so quickly, and I obviously am not able to cover the details of all these changes. Nonetheless, it’s helpful to speculate on what I believe to be the long-term trends in this area as a way of priming yourself for future changes.

• I think that you’ll see a migration of many features found in typical full-fledged GIS system — e.g., shading of layers — into programmable web applications. (e.g., Pushpin Multi-layer map server)
• Not surprisingly, we’ll see the platform players (such as Google Maps) incorporate functionality started off as extensions to the platform into the platform itself. For example, sites such as mapbuilder.net provided a user interface for building Google (or Yahoo!) map before Google made it easier to build a Google Map via its “My Maps” functionality. Google’s My Maps doesn’t exactly duplicate mapbuilder.net but it’s bound to win a major audience by virtue of its tight integration with Google Maps.

One of my friends and former co-worker Andriy Kit has decided to change residency. He’s moving from Ukraine to Canada. I wish him all the best on a new continent!

PS: Andriy doing Progress development, project management, etc. Interested to hire? -  post in comments.

Today I was working on PHP upgrade on my servers. Basicaly I was moving everything from from php-5.1.x to php-5.2.x .

I was surprised to see ‘./configure’ error during PHP installation process:

configure: error: installation or configuration problem: C++ compiler cannot create executables.

After taking a closer look at configure.log I had more details:

gcc: installation problem, cannot exec `cc1plus': No such file or directory.

To resolve that problem I simply installed gcc-c++

yum install "gcc-c++"

It helped.

Interesting discussion about PHP frameworks is going on today. Programmers release more and more new “frameworks” nowadays. And I’m wondering why… What’s a difference between frameworks A, B and C? Why do we need yet another PHP framework?

Looks like developers have no true understanding what it takes to build a quality framework, build a community of users around such a framework and actually support and improve framework. I had experience doing that job building XYZ framework and I’ll tell you, its tough one.

Definitely no. If there is a room for a better project, build it and try to succeed.

Iain Lamb, co-founder of iconic webmail startup Oddpost and currently part of Yahoo’s DHTML/Ajax Evanglism team gave a valuable statement:
“It’s not so much the speed of your tipping; it’s just the quality of your input.”

Movie can also be viewed directly on Yahoo! Video.

Along with new Google Maps API features folks from GMap team continue to update imaginary for Eastern Europe. Today I was surprised to see high resolution imaginary for a northern part of Ukrainian city Lviv.

Check it out!

On a map you may see a bridge on a crossroad between Volodymyra Velykoho street and Naukova street. That bridge is not functional - it used to be a huge parking lot. Night club Mi100 is located on the bottom right corner of a map (see building with a blue roof)

So I’m waiting to get high-res maps for the rest of Lviv. Just want to show folks here in the US where I lived in Ukraine, were I worked and were I kissed my wife first time

In my last post I’ve announced focusing on a distributed software services.
You wondering what the heck is that. David Berlind mentioned in his post that

software as a service is a delivery style that’s about three guiding principles:

• don’t own, rent
• don’t buy applications. buy solutions based on service.
• don’t buy features. Buy capabilities.

Effective July 28 2006 I’ll resign my position at IonZoft.

Working for IonZoft, together with Jason Garber, John Herren and Daniel Kovacik has been a great experience for me. But due to number of my own projects I have to leave IonZoft. My personal projects need much more time for management, development and support.

I’m very excited to be independent again - manage my time, take care about revenue income and finally be my own boss. I plan to continue MapBuilder.net development and focus on distributed software services and increase my participation in some Open Source communities.

PS: as someone said “It’s better try and fail than fail to try”