geo2web.com

Reminiscent of this post describing Scottish officials warning ambulances not to trust satnavs, come this story from Australia. After several incidents were motorists were lead onto unsuitable roads in rural areas, The Age newspaper reports:
Police are…

[Read more →]

The prolific Virender Ajmani from the Mibazaar blog has produced two Google Maps showing the life journeys of Barack Obama and John McCain from birth to … well probably the White House for one of them.

• Barack Obama’s Journey to the White House
• John McCain’s Journey to the White House

Both maps can be set to autoplay or manual. When set on autoplay the map automatically animates from one stage of a candidate’s biography on the map to the next. Both Obama and McCain are better travelled than many past presidential candidates so this geographical biography of the candidates works very well.

Both life journeys are also available as Google Gadgets. Download the gadgets to your iGoogle page here:

• Barack Obama’s Journey to the White House
• John McCain’s Journey to the White House

Related:

• Barack Obama’s Life Journey on Google Maps
• MapTheCandidates.com: ‘08 U.S. presidential election mashup
• Google Map of 2008 Presidential Contributions
• Wikipedia: Iowa Caucus

For more Google Maps elections mashups, click the label below..

_________________

[Read more →]

Police and others in Dover, Delaware are now using GIS to better respond to issues related to the large crowds that come to town twice a year for the races. Credit is given to “Gary Nowak, the city’s new geographic information system chief,” for writin…

[Read more →]

A couple of weeks ago I was commenting to our imagery team that the area around Mt Rushmore would be a great addition to our Birds Eye library; its one of the most recognizable landmarks in the US, but because of its remote location i guessed that only a small percent of folks had visited in person to see it and explore the area. now just a couple of weeks later I see it pop up in Birds Eye. I didn’t realize i had that kind of influence with the imagery team

The West view is pretty amazing. South is OK too, for seeing some of the behind the scenes goop on the mountain.

[Read more →]

Whether my subjective opinion of their projects is positive or negative, I’m always intrigued by the work of Stamen Designs. Like a piece of art, i don’t always know how to feel about it on first encounter but am compelled to dig further into it and develop an opinion. Within their somewhat experimental UI’s usually lies a nugget of genius worth panning for. Their latest effort for Trulia, the Snapshot Geo-Photo viewer, has that in spades. I initially felt powerless against the undulating wiggly-armed photo monsters, but after playing with the slider and options at the bottom it started to feel pretty comfortable even reminding me of a few elements of the Photosynth UI. Techcrunch describes it as being Jello-like. shop around for homes in your area to give it a try.

My thanks to Tom Carden of Stamen for sending this my way. Some comments from Tom-

It’s an alternative view of the homes currently listed for sale on trulia.com, and first and foremost it’s about browsing photos on a map in a playful way. You can search for any city in the USA and either click around the map, scroll the slider or just hit the big play button and sit back and watch!

Once again we’re using Virtual Earth imagery in Flash and we’re really pleased with effect we came up with. We think the black inverted maps really make the photos pop out.

[Read more →]

Matthew Quinlan from our office in the UK brings news of Mashed 08 this June 21st-

We’re delighted to announce that we’re partners for Mashed 08, and the next 100 tickets are available exclusively through Multimap and Microsoft. The event promises to be a great blend of hacking and mixing, with maybe even some sleeping thrown in. If you didn’t attend Hack Day last year, you missed out. I’d encourage you to make your way to Alexandra Palace on Saturday 21st June and get mashed.

So, the important bit. We have 100 tickets now available here. You’ll need the code, which is “microsoft”.

If you miss out, keep watching because more tickets will be released over the coming weeks. Hope to see you there.

[Read more →]

Garmin Edge 705 GPS

Type-A training tweakers, metrics maniacs, peripatetic two-wheeled geo-cachers and the geographically challenged now have something to collectively rally around: the Garmin Edge 705. This latest fitness offering from the GPS giant has more than a little somethin’ somethin’ for the can’t stay put, always get lost, urban treasure hunting, serious bike training, [...]

[Read more →]

The company Nokia announced the release of the final version of navigational applications Nokia Maps 2.0. Since last February beta program has been downloaded 240000 times, said the company. The updated version of Nokia Maps includes several new features, such as media guides for cities, satellite maps, treatment for pedestrians and new interface. Download the [...]

[Read more →]

It’s being developed at Harvard.

The CEGRP website is a gateway to maps, GIS data, and GIS analysis to facilitate and to share research efforts focused on the recent earthquakes in China.

Building upon the Task Force initiative of Bao Shuming (China …

[Read more →]

Clickz reports on this, the paper’s 25th widget called Washington Area Apartment Finder:
Apartment hunters in the Washington Metro area can use the widget, which is being sponsored exclusively by residential real estate company The Bozzuto Group, to fi…

[Read more →]

::: via :::

We created the Google Maps API Blog in November 2005 to better connect with Google Maps API developers. At that time, Google Maps itself was still a young product. The blog offered timely and targeted announcements of interest to Maps API developers, as well as best practices and code samples. Fast forward to 2008, though, and the breadth of Google’s geo-related developer tools has expanded dramatically. For some time now, we’ve been letting the Maps API Blog serve up info on much more than just the Maps API itself. There are posts on KML, Maps API for Flash, Static Maps, Mapplets, Google Earth, and many other geo-developer topics. It’s become obvious that the title “Maps API Blog” just doesn’t cut it anymore, so we’ve decided to launch a new blog in its place that welcomes all geo developers, not just Maps API developers.

So stay tuned (on this channel) for the same kind of content you saw on the Maps API blog, but with a broader emphasis on all of Google’s geo developer products (including the newly announced Google Earth API). You’ll still be able to find and access past posts from the old blog at their existing URLs, but starting now, the main Maps API Blog URL will redirect here, to our shiny brand new home.

Posted by Michael Weiss-Malik, KML Product Manager

[Read more →]

“Another piece of the international iPhone puzzle has been jammed into place. When we detailed the contracts signed between Apple and telcos worldwide, there was a conspicuous gap in the map, above and to the right of Western Europe.”

- Charlie Sorrel…

[Read more →]

Posted by Ben Lisbakken, AJAX APIs Team

JavaScript and Flash are great for putting Google Maps on your website, but sometimes they just won’t do. For mobile browsers or users with dial-up connections, simpler is better. So I wrote an open source non-JavaScript version of Google Maps which is designed to show how easy it is to write an application on App Engine that makes use of two new APIs from Google: The Static Maps API and the Local Search API’s REST interface. It doesn’t have advanced features like street view and public transportation, but it gives you a searchable map that you can zoom in/out on as well as save locations. It also automatically saves your last map view so that every time you go back to the site it will show you what you were last looking at. Check out the source code.

It uses App Engine to store saved points, the AJAX LocalSearch REST API for search functionality, and the Static Maps API to display maps. App Engine is easy to learn and the data store is useful for this kind of application. The REST API for LocalSearch is also very simple. For more information on it, go here.

To use the Static Maps API, you just need to create a URL with the proper parameters for your desired map view. Keep in mind that you need to set the zoom level (unless you are specifying multiple points — then it’s calculated for you). In the vast majority of cases, this is completely fine. In my case, though, I needed to know what the zoom level was, so that I could give the user the option to zoom in/out. That meant coming up with calculations of the zoom both for the multiple points and single point case, and that was the trickiest part of the app.

If you use the AJAX Local Search and it returns one result then there will be a viewport object returned with it. This viewport contains the Northeast and Southwest latitude/longitude bounds that are optimal for displaying this point. However, Static Maps only accept zoom levels and center points. Here’s the Python to generate that information:

viewport = json['responseData']['viewport']
mercator_projection = MercatorProjection(18) # Checkout the MercatorProjection class
southwest = [float(viewport['sw']['lat']),float(viewport['sw']['lng'])]
northeast = [float(viewport['ne']['lat']),float(viewport['ne']['lng'])]
bounds = [southwest, northeast]
zoom_level = mercator_projection.CalculateBoundsZoomLevel(bounds, MAP_SIZE)

At this point you will have everything you need to construct the map: the center point (the Local Search point), zoom level, marker point.

Then there’s the case where you have multiple points returned by the AJAX Local Search. Since we will have a collection of latitudes and longitude points that we want to display we can just find the min/maxes, do some rounding, and voil? you get a bounding box. With a bounding box and a calculated center point, you can repeat the same steps as before.

mercator_projection = MercatorProjection(18)
bounds = CalcBoundsFromPoints(lats, lngs)
center_point = CalcCenterFromBounds(bounds)
zoom_level = mercator_projection.CalculateBoundsZoomLevel(bounds, MAP_SIZE)

From line 121 to about 285 you’ll find all the necessary functions for the situations described above. Try using this code to create your own interactive version of Static Maps, and let us know in the forum if you have questions or just want to show off your nifty app.

[Read more →]

Northern Ireland Food Review

The Northern Ireland Food Review is a useful tool for finding restaurants in Northern Ireland. To start a search you simply enter your postcode, how far you wish to travel and what type of food you are looking for and all the nearby food outlets are tagged on a Google Map.

A shaded circle is also shown on the map indicating the distance you are prepared to travel. Clicking on a tagged restaurant opens an information window with a photograph and the address of the restaurant. There is also a link to a review of the restaurant.

Ireland Reserve Defence Forces
Ireland Reserve Defence Forces is a map of army and navy reserve units. The map shows all three territorial brigade areas in Ireland, with the ability to zoom in and get contact information and directions to each individual unit. The units themselves are indicated on the map by the unit’s shield.

Via: Silicon Republic

Town and Country

The Town and Country website has produced a nice Google Map showing all the bed & breakfasts in Ireland.

Clicking on a tagged B&B will take you to a review of that establishment. Each individual review also includes a small Google Map showing the exact location of the bed and breakfast.

Casualty Figures
Casualty Figures is a map showing the number of patients awaiting hospital admission in Irish hospitals. 35 hospital locations in Ireland are shown on the map. The figures are for 2005-2006 so the map won’t help you to discover the present number of patients awaiting hospital admission but can help you find a hospital in Ireland.

________________

[Read more →]

Before this weekend, I spent time trying to determine if my Memorial Day weekend mountain bike trip to Tahoe would be a bust or not. Word is that snow remains on trails above 7000′. Yet we had planned rides at or near that elevation.

To determine if we would be skunked on our ride, I launched Google Earth and navigated to the area. Simply by mousing over particular locations, I could view exact elevations at the bottom of the 3D viewer (see image).

In the end, we aborted our Tahoe trip and stuck to lower elevation rides. This was unfortunate, but certainly not as bad as wasting hours of driving only to find a wall of snow across our favorite trails.

[Read more →]