Silently Google added Google Mars to its mapping services. Apart from providing 3 imagery types they offer plenty of information about the surface and Mars missions.
Monthly Archive for March, 2006
Page 2 of 3
Brian Timothy pointed in his comment on my “Flash vs. SVG”-post to the website of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) containing maps done completely in SVG. Apart from the “political matter” he mentioned I would like to stress the potential of SVG for mapping statistics.
The USDA maps let the user change and apply various styles immediately without reloading the whole map. Following the same method you could allow users to change thresholds too for instance. Since every single attribute is stored within or linked to the according map object it’s easy to modify the map presentation by JavaScript and XML/SVG/DOM on the client side. As you can read in this short review by Jeff Thurston the application appears fast and with a snappy user interface.
If you’re interested in webmapping using SVG you’ll find below a few well done examples:
- Interaktiver Atlas zur Regionalstatistik (german)
- Tirol Atlas (german, italian, partly english)
- Swiss weather map 2004 (german, user: schmid, password: wetter)
- Yosemite National Park (english)
- Digitizing Tool (english)
In addition you can find my first SVG mapping experiment here. I stopped development 2 years ago. Neither will it work in Firefox 1.5 (compelled to optimize it for Adobes plugin then, *the* showstopper for SVG) nor is it fully functional because as backend I used a PostgreSQL/PostGIS database which I don’t have available online.
Amazing how people can let time stand still while living in the same hectic world as we do. Even though this photoset on Flickr made me somehow recall the movie Kingpin.
I just found probably one of the most useful commands in iPhoto (which was hiding from me ever since I started using iPhoto): Photos > Revert to Original. How could this have been overlooked by me for such a long time?
Great idea! I’m wondering if it would be possible to run ArcGIS in Virtual PC under Mac OS X at a professional level. Any experiences? Especially the ESRI hardware dongles give me slight headache.
The latest Google Maps API update (to version 2.41) allows to display an overview map to the main Google Map by using the GOverviewMapControl. Read the Google Maps API Blog post or head directly over to the Google-Groups discussion for more information on that update.
Reading the word “overview map” I rembered a discussion we had lately about that issue. Almost automatically, without having a second thought, we put an overview map onto our webmapping application where it is now for more than a year now. There is a big chance that you’ll find in 80% of all webmapping tools those tiny overview maps. I simply was wondering if those stamp-sized pictures mean such an indispensable benefit to users. Background of the entire discussion was to find ways to optimize the user interface, to free some more space on the screen for additional information or enlarging the main map.
An overview map does make sense when a large scale map is presented as entrance point, to give an idea where the viewed area is located. Starting with a small scale map, as we do in our application, and showing the whole explorable area, an overview map isn’t an essential element at this point.
As well I consider overview maps as usefull if the time span between user interaction and map delivery is getting to long (due to server perfomances, bandwith bottlenecks, etc.), in particular while zooming and panning. Disorientation of the user could be the result. In times of AJAX and vector graphic driven user interfaces it shouldn’t be a problem to keep that time span short in order to develop a snappy application and in the end achieve a great user experience. Almost every new mapping product of 2005 showed excellent navigational-usablity. Enhancing the overview map like Yahoo! did, interaction on the overview map pans the main map simultaneously, makes navigation through a large area extremely convenient. Once the small overview map is not any longer needed and would only cover parts the main map you can close it. Since screen dimensions are limited and the focus should be put on the map, I would consider the possibility to hide unneeded elements as an essential feature.
In terms of zoom and pan work-flow I always appreciated back and forth buttons. If I get lost I follow my trace back until I know where I am. Just like hitting ctrl-z, the most used shortcut ever on my keyboard.
The city of Vienna offers a well-built bicycle infrastructure. In September 2005 the 1000th bicycle-track-kilometer was finished. If weather is fine it’s the fastest way to move within the inner districts (1.-9.) of Vienna. I think its share in the viennese modal-split must be around 4-5% now. According to the Transportation Master Plan it should increase up to 8% by 2020. On certain streets you’ll be able to count about 5.000-8.000 cyclists on a rainless day.
Since spring should be arriving within the next few weeks I thought that I’ll have a look if there are some new useful bicycle tracks available. Browsing through the city’s website I came across this service: Routing for cyclists.
As in any other routing service you enter a start/end location and the system calculates the best (shortest/fastest/cheapest) route for you. Like car routing systems consider parameters such as speed limits, fuel consumption, traffic volume, etc. this bicycle routing includes one-ways (in many one-ways cyclists are allowed to drive in both directions), slopes, bicycle tracks and low-traffic-volume roads in its calculation. Sounds pretty exciting for everyone who likes to go by bike in Vienna.
Just to do a short test I entered my home and work address and let the system calculate the best route. The result was surprising because I wouldn’t even had thought of choosing that way to my office. But the route makes sense, maybe it’s better than I’m thinking. When weather allows it I’ll give it a try.
I’m aware that only car navigation and routing is interesting for doing businesses in that market. The business of city governments is basically, among others, to attract residents. One of the “products” a city has to offer is quality of life. In terms of improving quality of urban life and urban transportation systems, increasing non-motorised modal split shares, services like the mentioned bicycle routing can be a valuable contribution.
Of course building more and better bicycle-oriented navigation and routing systems would be nice task for GIS experts too.
Apple, the new inventor of RSS. Ridiculous and yet another proof of how counterproductive patent law can get.
Now that seems to be what I was looking for! Since a few weeks I’m thinking about getting a new mobile device. I excluded notebooks from the very beginning because of their size, even sub-notebooks I considered as too big. The device should be small and lightweighted enough to easily fit in my bag, even better in my pocket, like a PDA. But at the same time I wanted all the advantages of a notebook: comfortably read & edit documents with a fair screen resolution and uncomplicated text-input, put programs on it as I like without too many restrictions (e.g. searching for special “portable” program versions). Neither notebooks nor any available PDA or smart phone fit my needs. I never would’ve thought that it’ll be so hard to find such a small and usable mobile device.
I think there is a good chance that I’ll get one of those new Ultra-Mobile PCs, if the pricing will be ok, approx. EUR 800,- seems quite reasonable to me. As far as I know, only after reading a few reports on various IT news sites, it seems to be possible to edit documents (e.g. notes, presentations, emails, etc.) in a convenient Tablet-PC like way or using this nifty thumb-based text input system. Microsoft already renamed their Origami thing into Ultra-Mobile PC and offer a modified Tablet-PC-Edition of Windows XP as operating system. Of course I would prefer something like a Mac OS X running them, but one can’t have everything.
An essential feature is that I can install my GIS software (ok, confession, since I’m using ESRI ArcGIS it wouldn’t be possible on Mac OS X), which I constantly need, on those devices. Having those applications and geodata with me would be sometimes very usefull in meetings. Even more exciting is that some of the new devices from Asus come with GPS on-board. So I can put my maps on it, let me guide to my desired locations and track all the way within my GIS. Seriously, I see portable navigation as a very prospering market. So IMHO they’re heading into the right direction by adding GPS to those devices.
I doubt that I’m the only one looking for such a device. Without pretending to be an IT market specialist I expect the new Ultra-Mobile PC devices to be a great success. Beside usefull tasks like editing documents, etc. one can put music, videos and other entertaining stuff on it. The screen seems to be capable of displaying videos in a certain quality, so add a good portion of entertainment to the buying reasons.
Update #1:
Watch some CeBit action videos of this gadget at You Tube.