a personal website slash blog
Virtual Earth got a 35.13 terabyte data update yesterday and covers now some Austrian cities with Birds Eye View too:
The Lentos Art Museum in Linz:
Vienna didn’t make into that update, so I can’t check my rooftop right now, but according to the MSDN team blog Vienna 3D is going to be added within the next couple of months to Virtual Earth.
Maybe we can already explore 3D stadiums in Virtual Earth during EURO 2008? [via rolf]
Given the tense situation in Serbia right now, I wish some ad agencies would get their maps right: since June 3, 2006, Montenegro is a fully recognized independent country, even for Mercedes drivers.
Found on the frontpage of Der Standard print, Februar 24, 2008.
Yesterday we found out about the NUTS region codes update at EUROSTAT. Today I had the chance to dig a little deeper and try to find a workaround for non-matching regional data. So far we’ve got an updated EUROSTAT which looks, in combination with non-updated GISCO geographic data something like this:
The map illustrates the coverage of available regional data in Europe. For testing I’ve chosen an unproblematic regional indicator which is usually available for entire Europe: population 2004 on NUTS3 level.
A verbal description of all region code changes can be found in this document. The map above visualizes most changes (because change = no data available any more).
It used to be possible to cover EU27 (with a few region code tweaks even Romania and Bulgaria), EFTA and candidate countries. Seriously, that’s not my understanding of a successful data update.
However, all overview maps I’ve seen so far (well, only those in the *new directory* of the NUTS documentation) are already updated to NUTS 2006 codes. So there is hope that GISCO updates the downloadable data soon.
Update
The definitive geographical dataset with the new NUTS 2006 boundaries is presently under development. We expect that the data will be ready for downloading before the end of May.
What’s TIGER in the US, is GISCO in Europe. Not quite as detailed and up to date but at least free to use under following conditions:
a) the data will not be used for commercial purposes;
b) the source will be acknowledged. A copyright notice, as specified below, will have to be visible on any printed or electronic publication using the data downloaded from this page.
The available geodata is aimed to use in combination with other EUROSTAT products (which are also available for free on their website) in the first place. The scale is too small for detailed map production and on most layers the date is indicated with 199x.
If the left hand of EUROSTAT would know what the right hand is doing, everybody who is interested could now start creating statistical maps and analysis across Europe by simply downloading all necessary data. Unfortunately it’s not as easy as it seems to be: the left hand changed the statistical units in Europe (NUTS), while the other hand didn’t. So what we now have is a statistical database using new region codes and a geographic database using old region codes. Needless to say that a lot of GIS out there, working with EUROSTAT data, are now somewhat screwed because geographic and statistical data doesn’t match anymore. A workaround until updated geodata is available is not using the NUTS3 level, NUTS2 (and larger) data seems less problematic. Not the best solution if you’re in the field of regional analysis of course.
Just one more detail on today’s EUROSTAT confusion:
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/ramon/nuts/changes_1999_en.html
http://ec.europa.eu/comm/eurostat/ramon/nuts/changes_1999_en.html
Apparently the www-directory was copied. One copy was updated. Now which one of both sites holds the correct information? All bookmarks lead to the old one, no hint (or redirect??) that the entire site has moved and was updated…
Update
Regarding interoperability and openness, the downloadable geodata comes as ESRI Personal Geodatabase 9.2, not sure how many GIS applications can cope with that file format. Whereas provided metadata is excellent, well, GISCO already had excellent metadata in 2001.
New patent application from a well known fruit company:
CREATION, MANAGEMENT AND DELIVERY OF MAP-BASED MEDIA ITEMS
[via fscklog]
Update: Adena did some more investigation on that.
A year ago or so, we added a Google Map to a website friends of me are running. The website is about reptiles and amphibians. In one part of the site users can enter details into a form, including the location, when they’ve seen an interesting species. In the meantime their database has grown to a comprehensive collection of (crowd sourced) information like species distribution among our country. It’s not only a hobbyist project, the database means quite a valuable input for species research and protection projects too.
Anyways, before we added a Google Map to the form, user provided location information was very poor. Only a rough location description or coordinate information based on the national topographical map were possible to enter. For national coordinates users had to go to another website, look up the place and copy and paste the coordinates from there back into the form. Definitely not what I would call a convenient solution.
Once we added Google Maps where users could simply pinpoint the location on a map, the collected data turned into something like this:
Green dots … located with Google Maps (92%)
Red dots … located with a service of our National Mapping Agency (8%)
That says something about the benefit of public available mapping APIs. Especially for projects like this, with no commercial but a strong public interest.
Ordnance Survey heads into a good direction by releasing OpenSpace. OpenSpace is a mapping API, based on public geodata and OpenLayers, the Open Source JavaScript library for mapping. OS is probably the most progressive European mapping agency, so there is hope that others will follow (once they have all fulfilled INSPIRE and are done with metadata updates). It took some time until maps showed up at public authorities’ websites, followed by interactive maps and nowadays you even find WMS here and there. The next evolutionary step is probably public geodata made available through APIs.
During the INSPIRE process it became pretty clear that European mapping agencies don’t favor free public geodata. The API concept could help here: it enables flexible usage of data for users while retaining full control over both, functionality and data, for the mapping agency. Seems like a workable compromise to me.
User generated content means users care what happens to their content. They even might act like shareholders and want a vote or at least share their opinion. It’s a totally interesting aspect in business decision making processes – asking the crowd before the board.
I personally don’t care if Yahoo! is taken over by Microsoft or not. If the service is good and works for me, I use it, no matter what label is on it. [via Max]
Companies who admit failures usually gain credibility.
This isn’t new at 9.2; it’s been like this for a while. Why there isn’t a better error message, I don’t know.
John Doe
ESRI Product Specialist
Anyways, if there would’ve been a better error message, I’d not have gone in circles around the problem for quite a while and finally ending up at the support forums searching for users who experienced the same issue. I hope this error message made it on the task list for 9.3…
