… join the
Boston OSGeo Enthusiasts Meetup
next Tuesday, May 18th, 6:30-8pm
at the Bocoup Loft (319 A St, Boston, MA 02210)
… and meet other Open Source mapping software users and developers, share experiences, learn about tools, discuss projects and developments.
To RSVP, please just add your name to the Doodle.
For more information and to participate in planning the meetup, please join the mailing list and follow the May meetup thread.
See you there!
I know, it eventually all boils down to maths. But it still blows my mind that you can re-project geographic features on-the-fly with a few lines of JavaScript in a web browser.
How?
There is this great library PROJ.4, that does everything you’d ever want in terms of cartographic projections. A few smart people have ported PROJ.4 to JavaScript, called Proj4js then.
Proj4js works great in combination with OpenLayers, a popular JavaScript web mapping framework, and allows on-the-fly projections between any spatial reference systems browser applications.
<script src="proj4js-compressed.js"></script> <script src="http://openlayers.org/api/OpenLayers.js"></script>
Define the spatial reference you’re planning to use. Check Spatial Reference for the exact projection parameters and include them in your code.
Proj4js.defs["EPSG:26986"] = "+title=Massachusetts Mainland NAD83 +proj=lcc +lat_1=42.68333333333333 +lat_2=41.71666666666667 +lat_0=41 +lon_0=-71.5 +x_0=200000 +y_0=750000 +ellps=GRS80 +datum=NAD83 +units=m +no_defs";
Adding all desired projections to the OpenLayers script…
projOSM = new OpenLayers.Projection("EPSG:900913");
projWGS84 = new OpenLayers.Projection("EPSG:4326");
projMassGIS = new OpenLayers.Projection("EPSG:26986");
map = new OpenLayers.Map ("map", {
maxExtent: new OpenLayers.Bounds( -20037508.34, -20037508.34, 20037508.34, 20037508.34),
maxResolution: 156543.0399,
units: 'm',
projection: projOSM,
displayProjection: projWGS84,
allOverlays: false
});
osm = new OpenLayers.Layer.OSM(
"OpenStreetMap",
"http://tile.openstreetmap.org/${z}/${x}/${y}.png"
);
openspace = new OpenLayers.Layer.WFS("Open space", "http://giswebservices.massgis.state.ma.us/geoserver/wfs", {
typename: "massgis:GISDATA.OPENSPACE_POLY"
}, {
projection: projMassGIS
attribution: "<a href='http://www.mass.gov/mgis/'>MassGIS</a>"
});
…results in an interactive map with MassGIS Open Space WFS vector features overlayed on an OpenStreetMap base layer, using WGS84 lat/lon as display coordinates.
On a sidenote: OpenLayers comes with a Python proxy to retrieve information from remote servers via an XMLHttpRequest. Here is a good how-to get Python play well with IIS 6 on Windows Server 2003, which was quite useful.
Don’t forget to add the domains you’re trying to access to the Python proxy. For MassGIS you would add following string for instance:
allowedHosts = ['giswebservices.massgis.state.ma.us']
Norc, a Romanian company, is providing “street-level imaging” a.k.a. Street View for selected Central and Eastern European countries:
According to their website, the current coverage includes:
The interface is compared to Google’s Street View still a little rough around the edges, but otherwise, Norc did a fantastic job!
However, it would be interesting to know if Norc has developed its own business model based on their Street View services, and how it would work, or if they are just preparing to become the next Google snack.
[via Helge.at]
That’s pretty exciting: just came back to Vienna, spent the morning poking around in OSM and the OSM wiki to figure out who the mappers are and if there are any community activities planned and ended up reading a press release saying that Vienna is completed in OpenStreetMap.
Awesome! Big kudos to the local mapping community! The quality of the map is impressing!
As for the rest of Austria, there is a huge data import going on since Fall ’08. More information on the process you’ll find at the wiki page. People all over Austria with good local knowledge are needed to support the import process, help identify errors and improve OpenStreetMap in rural areas.
If you want to make your town visible in OpenStreetMap, sign up and start mapping. It’s very easy and can be done using nothing more than an internet browser. Even better: spread the word, host a Stammtisch, tell your neighbors about OpenStreetMap and create your own map of your village.
For interested people in and around Vienna, the next Wiener OSM-Stammtisch is scheduled for Friday Jan 23rd ’09, 2pm, at the Metalab.
…preferable in OpenStreetMap as Helge from the NGO Laafi suggests and support development in Africa with unrestricted access to free public maps.
Google basically asks for the same thing, with one small difference: your edits go to Google, and not to Africa:
… By submitting User Submissions to the Service, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display, distribute, and create derivative works of the User Submission. …
Mr Timoney pointed my attention to possible SVG support brought with the latest iPhone OS 2.1 update. Unfortunately I sold my iPod touch on eBay last week – got a brand new Nokia E71 instead and am totally happy with it. So I couldn’t verify or test SVG on the iPhone Safari myself and had to ask somebody for help. Richard was kind enough to quickly try and access a SVG site on his iPod touch and send me a screen shot.
Guess what, it works!
SVG is supposed to be the flash killer since its first appearance, and never really succeeded as we know very well. SVG is still a good choice for mapping applications in my opinion, for light-weighted thematic web mapping applications to be more precise. Vector graphics handled by an AJAX front-end, used to visualize statistical attribute data provide a user-friendly interface and are usually easy to develop. Mapping APIs like Google Maps or Open Layers support and use SVG. Web browsers like Firefox and Safari for instance natively support SVG elements, no “but you need an extra plugin discussion” anymore. There is good portion of potential users for SVG based mapping applications.
Anyways, the odd thing with the iPhone and SVG is now, that a quite popular and hyped platform supports SVG but doesn’t play Flash. That’s maybe the time SVG developers have waited for.
I haven’t had the chance yet to play with SVG on the iPhone by myself. But I’m curious how far SVG support goes, what functionality is possible and how the iPhone’s multi-touch gestures can be used in mapping applications. Maybe somebody else can offer more insights on that. I’m not expecting our clients moving to the iPhone, but I would like to see if our simple mapping applications work on the iPhone or can be easily ported to suit the iPhone dimensions – should be easy with *Scalable* Vector Graphics though. However, accessing interactive maps and dig into some regional data while being in meetings or on the way could be a valuable option sometimes.
The problem: friends live in an area which is not covered by any map – it’s not in the local street map, Google map or any navigation system. Every time they give away the address, they have to explain where it exactly is and how to get there.
The area is old, but it was formerly used for garden plots only. As it happens often in Vienna, people started building small houses in their garden plots, then small houses start growing and transform the area into a (legal) residential area for permanent living with all necessary infrastructure provided.
Maybe their street doesn’t appear on a map because it’s a small and not a new area. Landuse slowly has changed over the past years, streets and pathways have been there for a long time but weren’t always publicly accessible. Maybe that’s the reason this area is still not in the radar of the big 2 street mapping companies: the area isn’t flagged as “recently developed, please map”.
The solution:
I showed them how to map their street in OpenStreetMap, with the result that they finally can point visitors to a nice map when asked where it is and how to get there. Mapping in OpenStreetMap through the browser interface is very easy and they will probably map their neighborhood too since it’s a totally blind spot on maps.
CloudMade, the professional service around OpenStreetMap, is offering a pre-alpha web and mobile maps API to developers.
The interesting thing about the CloudMade API is easy access to OpenStreetMap data. Compared to commercial map data used in other APIs, like TeleAtlas or NAVTEQ maps, OpenStreetMap shows addtional features like footpaths, bike lanes or tramway tracks in urban areas. Not a crucial feature, right, but here OpenStreetMap is closer to traditional city maps, maps made for pedestrians, than others are. it’s surely an interesting aspect for providing tourism or travel mapping services. Nokia maps go into that direction too and provide special features like pedestrians navigation for instance.
Another point for OpenStreetMap is its appealing cartography. Since it’s possible to export and download OpenStreetMap as vector data, I wonder if the CloudMade API provides methods for manipulating and customizing visual attributes of the map, like colors or stroke widths. That would really make a difference compared to other mapping APIs. Service providers or developers could almost draw their own maps, make their mapping service visually different from others or just highlight map elements they want to emphasize.
Thanks to the export feature of OpenStreetMap’s web interface, I started using it as background map on my GPS device. A lot of places are still missing, some places aren’t as accurate as in other maps, but it’s pretty easy to cut a map slice out of OpenStreetMap’s web interface and load it onto a GPS device (instructions). [via Nick]
What’s the point of having a national mapping agency when even semi-public agencies like our Umweltbundesamt (environmental agency) are doing data dissemination based on Google Maps and Geonames? [via joesonic]
Speaking of paleogeography is in that case certainly appropriate: neogeography makes the national mapping agency look like an endangered species. Even though I never really liked the terms and heated discussions about paleo- vs. neogeography. To me, paleogeography sounds way too negative for what it actually does. Paleogeography still provides a major part of the backend and a lot of necessary knowledge for the so called Geoweb. Period.
While neogeography is the cool thing. It’s fresh, slick, easy to use and attracts a lot of bright people outside the geography area who are doing amazing things with geographic information. Personally I see myself somewhere in between and try to get the best out of both.
Obviously some paleo organizations, like our national mapping agency is for instance, should look slightly to the left and to the right of their very straight path. It seems they are still serving the geo market of the last century. Their traditional products, like the topographic and cadastral maps, are certainly great and important works, but in the meantime they have to face the fact that the geo market has a little changed in the last couple of years.
Believe it or not, even in Austria there are map based businesses growing. Companies or start-ups who arrange their business models around easy and affordable access to local geographic information. Most of them depend on the goodwill of global players like Google or Microsoft. The EC usually is very quick when it comes to express concerns about monopolies of those companies and threaten them with law suits. I think, as for the geo market, the European mapping agencies have enough resources – in terms of geo data, infrastructure and knowledge – to throw into the game. They are powerful enough to compete with the big players, provide alternative map services and eventually support local economies. If they only wanted to.
Besides, the above mentioned example shows very well the benefits of neogeography for the public sector and that there is growing demand for such technologies.
So, again, where is the point of keeping a huge tax funded public body when it rejects to move on, serve current public needs, support local economies and public wealth?
These are very exciting news: CloudMade, a commercial service based on the collaborative mapping project OpenStreetMap, got funded and now they announced “a year of mapping”, an open call for ideas to improve OpenStreetMap.
The grants (£100 – £1000+) are probably aimed to enthusiats rather than companies, but they will make life for everyone involved in OSM easier and help to spread the project. Application sounds very easy and uncomplicated:
To apply, email grants@cloudmade.com
Congratulations to CoudMade & OSM!