Who needs ArcGIS Network Analyst and TeleAtlas Multinet when you can ask Google Maps with a few lines of JavaScript?
The new Google Maps feature adds drag&drop to routing: adjust start, end or any point on the route as you like and Google Maps recalculates your route on the fly.
Apart from the amazing usability, I think for small and middle sized companies who are dealing with the traveling salesman problem, the Google Maps routing API is in the meantime quite an interesting option to licensing and maintaining full GIS routing applications and the databases behind.
…starts with a nice morning walk in SF.
Microsoft’s Virtual Earth 3D still is an impressing technology, but Google’s catch up isn’t bad at all too.
Somehow it reminds me of Amazon A9′s ambitious street views, seen a couple of years ago. Unlike Amazon, who only had street views available if I recall correctly, Google can offer this nice feature, which definitely provides very helpful information for travelers finding a particular place in an unknown area, as addition to already existing mapping features. That way they can easily evaluate user acceptance and benefit of the new 3D-like feature and decide later if they’re going to extend it to more cities.
The main advantage over Virtual Earth 3D is probably that Google’s Street View doesn’t ask – assuming an available Flash plugin – for installing any additional program. [via TechCrunch]
Has Google silently extended the geocoding service in Europe? Or did I just miss the announcement?
Until today I thought Google’s geocoder doesn’t cover Austria (and some other European countries too), but while trying the new XING features I was surprised to find Google maps based on address searches as well as driving directions within Vienna.
At yesterday’s Web Monday, hosted by Metalab, I attended an interesting presentation about microformats (given by Eric). Among other things the open microformat standard includes a “geo” element to define geographic locations.
As Alex yesterday mentioned, the documents, as well as the documents referred to, lack of declaring a reference system. It’s quite obvious, and has been already discussed in the geo microformat BOF, that the coordinates enclosed by the “geo” tag are based on WGS84.
How come that WGS84 didn’t make it into the document then? I think an “open standard specification” must not allow any room for misinterpretations and therefore should include the declaration of the applied geographic reference system in some section.
…it works in Google Maps, so it seems to be right…
Ouch.
Why is defining a reference system important?
Once you leave Google Maps behind and try to visualize your geographic information in other mapping applications, such as national mapping services based on national reference systems others than WGS84 for instance, you should tell those applications about the framework you used to identify your locations. Otherwise you’ll run into troubles regarding the accuracy of your locations.
Austria is a small country but the national reference system includes 3 different prime meridians. In order to achieve satisfying mapping results you’ll always choose the closest meridian to your mapping area. Without the information which meridian was used for data collection for instance, you’ll end up having at least 3 options where your locations could be.
No serious web developer would ever write an HTML-document without a valid Document Type Declaration. It’s quite similar in geodesy with geographic data and reference systems. Would be great to see neogeographers fulfill minimum geodesy requirements. Geography is for some time around now and things like reference systems have turned out to be very useful.
I’ll see on Yahoo! Maps to find the dopest route. I prefer MapQuest. That’s a good one too. Google Maps is the best. True that. Double true!
…and more in this hilarious lazy sunday skit!
[youtube SRkFW1gjeL8]
Web accessibility is a big issue for public authorities’ IT services. Since eEurope 2002 every new developed web content must claim conformance to Conformance Level A, which means quite a challenge for public webmapping services.
Now Google has added text output to Google Maps too: depending on your search and how much textual information is available in your results, the map is becoming smaller in favor of more textual information. Searching for a place won’t give you any text information at all (how would you seriously describe the result of a place search?), while searching for directions results in 100% speech-friendly textual routing information. (via Official Google Blog)
Google acquired Endoxon, a Swiss based mapping company, today. According to Google, Endoxon’s technology will enhance Google’s geo products Google Maps and Google Earth.
On the one hand, this move means good news for European Google Maps and Google Earth users, because Google owns now with Endoxon a mapping team focused on the European market. So there is a good chance that we’ll see some improvements in Google’s geo data and services on this side of the pond.
On the other hand it’s interesting because Endoxon’s technology powers, among other things, Google’s main competitor on the German market: GoYellow.de, the German version of Google Local.
Endoxon will of course fulfill its obligations of existing contracts. But still, how much effort will a company like Endoxon, now part of the Google empire, dedicate to development and support of its competitors?
If I were a company depending on Endoxon’s technology, operating a service very similar to one listed in Google’s portfolio, I would check out some alternatives on the market now. Looks like Google made some room for new Endoxon successors. (via The Map Room)
Btw, congratulations Greg and good luck with your 20%-project!
Apparently Google has become a bit lazy in updating their API reference. Thanks to people like Mike Williams who give Google a hand and document for the rest of us interesting new features found in the Google Maps API.
Similar to GPolyline, the new GPolygon class, which comes with API v2.69, enables drawing of SVG polygons onto your Google Maps. Two additional parameters define polygon fill color and opacity:
GPolygon(points, border-color?, border-weight?, border-opacity?, fill-color?, fill-opacity?)
See a live example of the new polygon class here. [via gis-news]