With Centigon Solution's new GMaps Plugin 2.0, I wanted to give my Xcelsius Earthquake tracker dashboard an upgrade. The new and improved earthquake tracker 2.0 now displays worldwide activity as an interactive heatmap, so you can visualize not only the density of earthquakes for a specific region but also color intensity based on the magnitude. In addition, I wanted to provide visibility to the tectonic plates, so I downloaded an ESRI shapefile with tectonic plates and hooked it up to GMaps Plugin using the new shapefile connectivity option.

Like version 1, I have provided the dashboard source files which are available on the Centigon Solutions dashboard templates page. Download a GMaps Plugin trial first so you can see exactly how simple it is now to integrate rich Google Maps functionality for Xcelsius.

This morning I read a great article from Evan DeLodder, whom I work with at Centigon Solutions, about his take on the future of Flash and BI: "The Future of Flash in the BI Space." I have previously posted about the topic on my blog, and since have had discussions with other industry experts and the consensus seems to be in favor with Evan when it comes to interactive visualization for the enterprise. For web banner advertising, video distribution, and rich vector graphics for web design, I would say the future is absolutely HTML5 but we not there quite yet.

Flash and MS Silverlight will continue to thrive for a long time as long as the innovation and rapid advancement of these technologies continue, specifically in the mobile space. Not too long ago, we said anything that can be digital will be. The same goes for mobile technology..

Here is a quote from Evan with regard to Flah technology for enterprise applications:

"This advantage ultimately means a faster time to market/delivery, lower development costs (because so much is already baked in and easily extensible), much more flexibility and feature-rich applications that can continuously evolve in shorter cycles with much less effort."

To read the entire article, visit Evan's Flexcelsius page at EverythingXcelsius.com.

Unfortunately some last second items are keeping me from attending the ASUG/Sapphire event this year. I hope everyone has safe travels to and from the event and I look forward to catching up with all of my readers, colleagues and partners at the fall ASUG/BOBJ conference.

Over the weekend, we had an earth quake south of San Diego in Baja. I appreciate some of the emails asking if we were ok. Luckily, other than a broken lamp everything is ok. Several months ago, I created a simple dashboard that used a live RSS feed to display earthquakes in a Google Map. You can track the earthquake activity in southern California with GMaps Plugin within an Xcelsius dashboard:

Source Files
*Requires GMaps Plugin- Get a free trial here.

This month I will be presenting several webinars showing what myself and my team have been heads down working on. With Essentials Bundle 2.0 and GMaps Plugin we have helped to shape the way people look at using Xcelsius as a dashboard tool. If you want to learn more, this is a great opportunity to see how to use these tools as an Xcelsius developer.