New feature – POST integration

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In response to some earlier tester feedback, we’ve added in the ability for incoming responses to be POSTed to your server directly.  This is completely optional, but if you’ve got a system you’d like to update in real time from Field Flag, this is the way to do it.

When creating a project, you can now enter in a URL for Field Flag to send a POST to.  Your server will receive a POST with one field – “fieldflag_data”, and the value will be a JSON encoded structure of data.  More details will be coming soon, but we encourage you to test it out, or reach out to us if you have any questions about further integration needs.

Field Flag at the 2012 NYS GIS Conference

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http://www.esf.edu/nysgisconf/

Twitter hashtag: #NYSGIS2012

The 2012 NYS GIS Conference kicked off to a great start with an amply stacked FOSS seminar delivered by John Van Hoesen @Taconic_Musings (John’s blog) and Alex Chaucer @geoparadigm (Alex’s blog). From musings of Vonnegut, straight through to Google Fusion tables and downloading QGIS for a hands-on tutorial- this session had it all. Field Flag even enjoyed a quick moment in the spotlight during a brief demo to the audience.

The exhibitor tables at the Conference were hosted by the usual suspects- ESRI, Sanborn Maps, Intergraph, you know the rest. With the keynote speech delivered by Jeff Howe (author of “Crowdsourcing”) from his home via webcam , and an ‘app garden’ which served as the Conference centerpiece, full of devices, apps, and developers, there were a lot of edgy twists keeping the crowd entertained.

The Conference finished up with another great session, “Get your Head in the Cloud.” Standout presentations included Google’s intro to Google Earth Builder, and ESRI’s demo of the ESRI Maps for Office plug-in (still in Beta).

Met with a lot of encouragement, a lot of great people, and a lot of support for Field Flag moving forward- so, where are we headed next? The Federal Trade Commission’s workshop about Advertising Disclosures in Online and Mobile Media on May 30, 2012 in Washington, D.C.

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2012/05/dotcom_ma.shtm

Stay tuned.

New site launched!

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OK, that took a bit longer than anticipated but…

Here it is!

So, what’s new?  Beyond some cosmetic changes the two biggest features we’ve added to the platform itself are “Export to Excel” and “Live Preview”.  Allow me to explain.

We’ve had “CSV export” since day one, and while it does work, we’d heard from some initial testers that they’d wanted native Excel files.  Excel itself is usually pretty good at importing CSV data, but it’s not 100% perfect. Some times data gets lost or corrupted during import, and it’s not always clear to non-technical users how to deal with CSV files directly.  So, we added native Excel export (other files formats are planned – let us know what formats you’d like supported by emailing us at info@fieldflag.com!).  Users that need to do some number crunching with Excel or share that data in other Office documents can now do so via Excel, and users who need access to the raw data (perhaps for integration with custom code) can use the standard CSV files.

I’m going to write up a bit more about the live preview in another post for tomorrow.  Stay tuned :)

New site coming soon!

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Our old placeholder site (“landing page?”  “launch page?”) will be getting overhauled shortly.  The eternal struggle to find the balance between ‘completely done’ and ‘good enough to go’ carries on, but it will be out soon!

The first few days…

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My partners Simon and Kate and I recently formed Field Flag, a data capture platform designed with mobile consumer hardware in mind.  We’re in the early days of this venture, but invite you to take a look at http://fieldflag.com and let us know what you think at info@fieldflag.com or by following us on Twitter. We’ve got some interesting things in the pipeline, so keep in touch!