Friday evening on my way home from work, after a pretty intense week, I started feeling the first symptoms of an upcoming flu – cold, probably little fever already, body aches and generally feeling very exhausted. Great, I thought, right on time for the weekend.
Vienna seems to be the center of flu-word these days btw, every other person I know is or has been sick lately.
Not really in the mood of becoming sick and actually, looking at my agenda, not the best timing for a week out of order either, I tried with the help of some good old home remedies to conquer the beast. With great success as it turned out today, 48 hours later all symptoms are gone.
The following combination worked for me so far:
hot home made lemonade with honey
hot chicken soup
one day resting in bed and staying warm
hot Grippostad
Vitamin C and resting makes sense to me, but the thing with chicken soup is still surprising. I just can’t see the connection between chicken and fever, maybe it’s only the hot liquid and it can basically be any soup. Don’t know…
WOM World approached me and asked if I would be interested to test Nokia Maps 3.0 on a Nokia 6210 Navigator. I agreed and they sent me a test device last week. This is the first post out of a short series, I hope.
Unlike others, I received a two-pin plug in a two-pin plug country and am actually able to recharge the device. All manuals are written in some nordic language, Swedish I guess, but since I own a Nokia E71 myself with basically identical menus, I didn’t really need manuals. The other problem was that all Nokia Maps licenses were limited to Scandinavian countries too, which doesn’t help a lot when you want to test the application in Central Europe. A quick email fixed the problem. Good.
The device itself has a Navigator button which loads the map application immediately. Positioning works very fast, it instantly had me located on the map and the cartography looks very good at a first glance.
One annoying thing is that the back cover, where battery and SIM are hiding, opens really hard. “Aufquan” would be the best Austrian term to describe the process of simultaneously pushing and pulling the button with a pen or knife, which supposedly should release the back cover. I’m using my own SIM from my cell phone and need to change it frequently in order to try the 6210 Navigator. So that’s a small problem I have with the device.
Full disclosure:
I’m not getting paid by Nokia or WOM World.
I have to return the test device after the two weeks test period.
WOM World covers my carrier expenses during the test period.
I’m not obliged to post anything.
Why I’m doing it?
Because I like maps, gadgets and was curious about Nokia Maps 3.0. I guess I’m not hard to convince when asked to play around with some tech toy for two weeks.
What does WOM World / Nokia get out of this?
Some backlinks, little buzz and maybe some useful feedback.
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:
Romania – Bucharest, Ploiesti and Prahova Valley, Constanta and the Seaside, Brasov and Poiana Brasov, Cluj-Napoca, Timisoara, Iasi, Sibiu, Pitesti, Targoviste
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.
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.
Stefan Knecht, co-founder and CIO of United Maps, got in touch with me providing information about his company and their products. United Maps works hard on adding more value to existing maps, as we know them on Google Maps or in automotive navigation systems, and create digital maps for humans. Considering the increased popularity of GPS enabled mobile devices and the given potential of pedestrian navigation systems, it seems to be the right thing to do these days.
Over at Vector One and at United Maps‘ website (blog) you’ll find detailed information about their product and vision.
I took the chance and asked Stefan some more questions, see below.
Q: United Maps creates digital maps optimized for pedestrian use, a perfect addition to many mobile mapping applications. Who would United Maps consider as primary target group? Is your focus rather on the white labeled map as data product or are you working on API like services to attract individual developers for instance too?
Stefan: I’d like to reframe “target group” to something more universal like “use group”. At the time being, we concentrate on delivering what we carry in our company name: a unification of maps, attributes and use cases to enable mobile people finding their way and discovering things around them.
So the focus is on comprehensive, nationwide and B2B data products rather than on public APIs and just another mash-up. We’re not mashing-up what’s already out there — we try to drill deeper and possibly beyond what’s easily visible on the web.
Q: The OpenStreetMap foundation is currently working on a new licensing model: ODbL should basically allow OpenStreetMap features and copyrighted map features being held in the same database. Have you considered OSM-integration in United Maps?
Stefan: First of all: OSM does a great job, all kudos to them. The recently completed dataset of Hamburg is incredibly good. I wonder how OSM will perform in “flat world”, outside of larger cities and how OSM will be able to scale into less populated and geek-prone areas.
To answer the question and as far as I can judge from the ongoing debates within the OSM community: the modularity of a dozen CC license types shouldn’t be brought into ODbl. The legal situation already is far too complex – and it doesn’t become easier with just another set of derivative licenses and constraints to consider.
Q: I believe gathering detailed cadastral maps across Europe can easily turn into an exhausting process – different legislations, different mapping traditions and INSPIRE implementation has just started. Do your GIS experts consider other and maybe easier accessible sources, such as vectors derived from commercial EO data, rather than official public data to “fill the gaps” in Europe and push United Maps rollout forward?
Stefan: One of our goals is to match INSPIRE specifications on a base level to enable users of our United Maps gather and aggregate data on top. For other data sources besides federal information: any valuable source that can deliver coverage for a given set of national boundaries is welcome and might be licensed and matched with the data we already have. We’re positively testing options – and expectedly, both data availability and legal constraints change at every administrative border … or any 150 miles in Europe.
Q: Nokia Maps is probably a serious competitor for United Maps. As far as I know Nokia Maps, their approach is to provide landmarks instead of precise building footprints to support orientation or even suggest shortcuts through buildings for pedestrian navigation. Where would you see the main difference to Nokia Maps or what aspect do you think makes United Maps the better choice for pedestrians?
Stefan: It would be impudent to name United Maps as a competitor to Nokia Maps. Nokia Maps is a B2C product and naturally powered by Navteq data. For the time being, United Maps is in a B2B space.
I don’t see that precision of footprints is a real issue: it’s rather the availability and rollout of supplemental data to enhance the usage experience on Nokia Maps. If landmarks are helpful – why not integrate them? I don’t see us producing 3D-mockups for a simple reason: if you’re a human on the move, trying to orientate yourself on the 3-inch-screen isn’t really simplified by 3D-models that you rarely see in entirety in the urban jungle. If 3D-models remain picturesque building hulls they act as visual landmarks. The pedestrian shortcuts through buildings can only be produced with a topologically closed and hence routable network beyond — and this ultimately is, what United Maps does: gather content, attributes and pathways that are relevant for people outside of cars.
Q: You’re partnering with the Technical University of Munich. How important is the scientific input for United Maps? Is United Maps a research project?
Stefan: United Maps draws from the research we commissioned at TUM before we started the company. We repurpose the initial scientific results into a commercial setting and take academic aproaches onto a industrial scale. The scientific input is most valuable and will be perpetuated to specific domains and settings. We’re just developing a multimodal pedestrian routing application that seemlessly routes you back and forth through automotive traffic and mass transit alternatives.
The mother of all Q: Will there be an iPhone version of United Maps?
Stefan: United Maps does better, hyperlocal maps at large. The iPhone and all other smartphone devices will use the web for mapping and possibly web services navigation. If there’s a business case for a tailored iPhone application, we’ll do that in-house or offshore it to a partner. We’ll have Germany ready as comprehensive hyperlocal dataset in April, then Austria and Switzerland — everything beyond is subject to change and upcoming partnerships. And we’re naturally open to partnerships of any extent.
United Maps presentation at the Telematics Munich Show
…is something you may consider turning off if you’re unhappy with VMware Fusion’s performance.
As for ArcGIS Desktop, it works noticeable faster in VMware Fusion (aff link) if the entire workspace is moved inside the VMware image instead of accessed via “Shared Folders”. ArcMap feels snappier and geoprocessing runs about 35% faster as my quick benchmark showed. Performance issues caused by “Shared Folders” is mentioned at an ESRI Discussion thread too.
My benchmark test was just a geoprocessing task I needed to do for a project, executed in 3 different workspace environments:
#1 – inside the VMware image
#2 – on an external USB harddisk, mounted in Windows
#3 – on an external USB harddisk, mounted in Mac OS X and accessed through VMware Fusion’s Shared Folders feature
The task was to intersect 2 layers, everything done inside a File Geodatabase:
Layer A: 11,932 features (20,4361 vertices)
Layer B: 3,100 features (arcs from point buffering)
The intersect-process returned a 300MB feature class containing 952,265 features and 5,724,810 vertices. Below is the chart showing the time needed to complete the task for each workspace environment.
ArcGIS geoprocessing task performance in different workspace environments
In figures, option #1 took 8 minutes 57 seconds, option #2 9 minutes 3 seconds and option #3 needed 13 minutes 29 seconds to finish.
Clearly, the performance bottleneck in VMware Fusion is “Shared folders”. No doubt, it’s a handy feature and makes file sharing between host and guest-OS very easy, but for performance reasons you better turn it off.
Once in benchmarking-mood I ran the same task with increased memory and 2 CPUs. Out of curiosity, just to see the effect of more memory and CPU power. My standard setting for VMware Fusion is 1 CPU and 512MB RAM allocated to the guest-OS, which turned out to be the best setting for working at decent speeds in both host and guest-OS so far. The result for the same geoprocessing task with 2 CPUs and 1024MB RAM was 8 minutes 17 seconds. Little faster, but, because of experiencing a sluggish host Mac OS X, not worth it.
Despite performance I ran into another problem with “Shared Folders” and File Geodatabases a while ago. Well, I actually never verified that this problem is related to “Shared Folders”: a File Geodatabase corrupted while executing “compact database” in a “Shared Folder” workspace. According to that thread at ESRI it happened on network drives too. However, I experienced it only in “Shared Folders”, not in other workspace environments. Quite annoying bug though.
Simple, yet interesting: search Twitter for a place name, bundle returned tweets in a new stream and watch what’s going on there.
02138now – What’s happening in Harvard Square now?
Compared to a pure geographic search, the semantic search returns tweets about that place, instead of tweets located nearby. The content of geotagged tweets isn’t necessarily directly related to the place, as the geographic search results show. A combination of both methods might be useful though.
What if you search for directions from place A to place B while you are only able to use a keyboard as input and navigation device on websites?
MAIN_web, an Austrian initiative for media accessibility, asked to try and navigate the web only by using the tab key. I tried to get directions on three popular mapping sites: Google, Microsoft Live Maps and Mapquest. That’s how it went…
Google Maps initially focuses on the search bar and you can start typing the search query right away. Use “to” between both addresses and Google reads it as search for directions between 2 places. No tab yet needed (“enter” triggered the search) to get the first results. Unfortunately there are more options for one of both places and Google suggested some alternative addresses. Hoping down to the right suggestion took about 33 tabs. After that, the right directions showed up on the map, together with textual descriptions beside. The problem then was that it’s not possible to look up detailed views of the route only by navigating with the keyboard though.
The site doesn’t focus on the search bar. It takes 9 tabs to reach the point where you can start typing the search query. The search engine didn’t understand “to” as search for directions, so I had to enable direction search first: 7 more tabs. From there you hop 19 tabs around the page to access the “start” field and one more to enter the “end” address. One address wasn’t found immediately, but the suggested correct address was only 4 tabs away. As before, the result page shows the route on the map and descriptions, but it’s not possible to access further or more detailed information on certain route items by only using the keyboard.
Mapquest puts the focus on the search bar. For directions you have to use the form below on the page: 5 tabs away before you can start typing start and end locations in different form fields. As before, one address wasn’t unique and Mapquest offers several suggestions. Unfortunately there’s no way to access those by using the keyboard only, the page sends you around in circles in the header area. So no directions from Mapquest at all.
It’s an interesting experiment and gives a feeling about web accessibility. I checked some other (own) mapping sites too and I guess there are some things we should look into. At least the main information or purpose of a site should be accessible that way.
This is going to be a list-post, a must-have item on blogs as I read recently.
Last week I attended Richard Weait’s OpenStreetMap presentation at the Boston LUG. He gave a good overview on what OSM is about, why it’s so fascinating and showed how to participate. Even though I’m a bit familiar with OSM for some time now, I learned a couple of new things about OpenStreetMap:
North America is only covered superficial. It looks good on a small scale, large areas appear mapped in OSM, but as you zoom in and look at it more closely you’ll find many problems. I’m not sure if motivation would be higher if people start mapping from scratch and “create” their own maps of their places instead of working on existing data and fix errors. On the other hand, the AND data donation of Indian and Chinese road data (mostly of poor quality) helped to create awareness and interest in mapping those countries, as some people mentioned during the discussion.
Germany has the largest OSM community. Not surprising that this country is among the first ones where OSM is integrated into business models (e.g. Geofabrik, WhereGroup or GDV).
Open Database License: the idea of Creative Commons transferred to suit database licensing.
“Edit wars” taking place in Cyprus about the default place names, shell scripts vs. manual edits.
OpenPisteMap: an OSM side project for ski slopes which adds hill shading and contour lines to OSM. One might think that it’s Austria’s #1 mapping project. Well, I’m afraid that’s not the case. Apparently not many fellow citizens have ever heard of it because we look like a desert in terms of available ski slopes at OpenPisteMap. Shame on us!
If you discover OSM flaws and can’t fix them directly on the map, then just go to and add a note in OpenStreetBugs.
Another interesting OpenStreetMap routing service I didn’t know before. It even considers elevation profiles for cyclists or pedestrians where available.
The parts of Cambridge I know so far are mapped fine (was a MassGIS data donation). The only thing I’m doing here in OSM is adding bike lanes to existing streets in my neighborhood. Since I really enjoy exploring this place by bike, that’s probably the most useful map layer to me.
Another option to integrate rendered OpenStreetMap images in a GIS desktop client or web application is to add OpenStreetMap as OGC compliant Web Map Service. For the European continent such a service is now provided by the German WhereGroup.
The service is available as a free basic WMS (GetCapabilities), updated biannually, and two commercial versions, updated daily, for specific map customization needs and high performances.
OpenStreetMap is on the way to become a serious alternative map source in professional GIS environments. The question how the professional GIS community responds to Creative Commons licensing will surely open some interesting debates anytime soon.
Friday evening on my way home from work, after a pretty intense week, I started feeling the first symptoms of an upcoming flu – cold, probably little fever already, body aches and generally feeling very exhausted. Great, I thought, right on time for the weekend.
