Okay, okay…so I’ve pimped these guys out before but I’m gonna’ do it again. I’m really impressed with what The Carbon Project has to offer and I see very little on the blogosphere to indicate to me that they’re gaining a wider audience. (Although curiously I see when I Google them that ThinkGeo is taking a swipe at them in the sponsored adds.)
A few years back, these folks started out by providing an easy to use API and architecture for integrating OGC web map and web feature services. As OGC specs began rolling out the door and evolving, they kept pace which was nice because at the time I was involved in a lot of OGC initiative work and could really leverage an API that meant I didn’t have to read the spec and build the XML parsers and serializers myself.
Fast forward to today. Their original Carbon Tools API has been expanded to include not only your standard OGC interfaces (WMS, WFS/GML, CS-W, etc.) but also Virtual Earth, Google Earth, Yahoo! Maps, and ESRI Shapefiles. In addition, they’ve created a product called CarbonArc that provides full geospatial interoperability for the SDI 1.0 baseline directly inside ArcGIS 9.2. Clearly, full geospatial interoperability isn’t just a pipe dream for these folks…they’re making it happen. But the things their doing with Geosocial Networking via ((Echo))MyPlace and the Carbon Cloud are way cool and will definitely be receiving some attention from me in the near future…if for no other reason than it’ll be fun to play with.
Oh! And Jeff Harrison, the Carbon Project CEO, has a blog here.
