geo2web.com

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Posted by Pamela Fox, Maps API Team

A lot of map mashups out there have country-wide or world-wide content. That’s awesome because it means there’s something for everyone. What’s not so awesome is that it means that when I get to the map, I often have to spend some time panning and zooming until I’m in my hometown and seeing the local content I’m most interested in. And as you know from previous posts, I’m inherently lazy and get bored whenever I’m forced to engage in unnecessary mouse movement. Wouldn’t it be better if the map could automatically center to my location without me lifting one of my precious fingers? The answer is yes, and now it’s easier to do than ever with the introduction of IP-based location information in the AJAX APIs framework.

To add user-based centering to your map mashup, follow the steps below.

1. If not using it already, include a <script> tag for the AJAX APIs common loader. Call google.load("maps", "2").
2. Once the Maps API has loaded, check if the google.loader.ClientLocation object has been defined. If so, you can use the latitude/longitude and city/state/country information from it to center the map and display the sensed location to the user.
3. If the ClientLocation object is null, just center your map as always. Not all IPs can be located, so you’ll want a good fallback behavior.

Check out the example implementation below, but feel free to make your own implementation snazzier (perhaps by adding a GControl to let the user easily jump to their location):

For more information, read the docs on using the AJAX Loader and using ClientLocation, or post in the AJAX APIs group with questions. If you’re developing a mobile website and want a more precise location for your users, check out the GeoLocation module in Gears.

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Received an email from Mike today in reguards to my latest post on the mis-matching of Google map data.

It makes for some interesting research and reading, and also a class project.

Hi!

This Orangeville, PA thing has me real intrigued to find out what is correct.

I work as a GIS planner for a county in Pennsylvania. One of the problems I’ve had has been the source of the information we present to people. I’ve created a ton of work for myself by questioning the source of information that came before I have been employed here. So this is right along the lines of what I do a lot.

The online maps that use Navteq (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Mapquest) show Railroad St and Ricketts St as you have in your GMaps example.

The maps that use TeleAtlas (Google Earth, Wikimapia, Acme Maps) show Ricketts St and no Railroad St.

OpenStreetMap show Railroad St going to the intersection of Creekside Dr and the rest of the street being Ricketts St.

So having found three separate ‘opinions’, I checked with the Penndot Local Streets layer in ArcMAp ( downloaded from PASDA). It shows the street as one segment, but has no labels.

Then, I went to the Columbia County website to see if they had a street map as well. They did, but it is not working at this time. Oddly enough, the parcel search was working, but it only showed text results. A search for Railroad St parcels pulls up quite a few results, but a search for Ricketts St parcels pulls up no results.

Then I remembered PA DOT has a township and borough map page. The map there shows that Navteq was correct.

Whew. That was a good exercise in comparing sources of information and tracking down the answer. Great way to spend a lunch hour.

Here a list of the links:

I used wikipedia’s map source page for a listing of the online maps for this location:
http://stable.toolserver.org/geohack/geohack.php?pagename=Orangeville,_Pennsylvania&params=41_4_43_N_76_24_52_W_city

Online maps that use navteq:
yahoo: http://maps.yahoo.com/#mvt=m&lat=41.079157&lon=-76.413979&zoom=17
microsoft live local:
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCP&cp=41.078948~-76.415105&style=r&lvl=17&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1
mapquest:
http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=Orangeville&state=PA&country=US&latitude=41.078098&longitude=-76.414703&geocode=CITY

TeleAtlas:
wikimapia:
http://www.wikimapia.org/#lat=41.0790196&lon=-76.4141285&z=17&l=0&m=m

unknown:
OpenStreetMap:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/index.html?mlat=41.078611&mlon=-76.414444&zoom=11

PADOT Borough and Township maps:
http://www.dot.state.pa.us/internet/bureaus/pdplanres.nsf/infoBPRTownshipandBoroughMaps?OpenForm&AutoFramed

Orangeville Borough Map:
ftp://ftp.dot.state.pa.us/public/pdf/BPR_pdf_files/Maps/boro/Columbia/19408.pdf

I am going to suggest this to a friend of mine who teaches GIS as a great exercise in considering your sources.

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ESRI and Microsoft announced that Virtual Earth would be available through the ArcGIS Online Premium Service a couple weeks ago and today Microsoft took that announcement one step further.

Starting today you can license Virtual Earth UltraCam (proprietary) aerial photography without having to license the Virtual Earth platform. This is great for offline use, wrapping your own client or creating an interface that allows for deeper zooming than the VE platform does today. You can purchase the photography through 2 vendors - Mapmart and i-Cubed.

Of course ESRI users will probably prefer to use the ArcGIS Online service (given how easy it will be to integrate into your existing projects), but now everyone has the same access and the freedom to use any software (Photoshop, Illustrator, gvSIG, MapInfo, AutoCAD, etc) they wish.

The only caveat is that this is the UltraCam imagery, not everything so you may not have anything available if you live outside of 200+ cities that have coverage. Of course if you do have it available, then there isn’t anything better as UltraCam blows away everything else. Microsoft’s purchase of Vexcel has really been very smart for them and this is what you can do when you own the data. I can buy UltraCam imagery for Tempe, AZ for about $4,000 from MapMart.

You can’t afford one yourself, but you can use the data captured from it.

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Catching up a little from last week, I missed the news that AGX Build 500 was released. This release isn’t the Build 600 that some have been looking for, but does add the ability to work with the new updated ArcGIS Online, including the premium services (Microsoft Virtual Earth). The update is available from ESRI’s servers.

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MapQuest has partnered with Citysearch to add its content (reviews, menus, photos) to results.

- MapQuest Blog
- via Search Engine Watch

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Announced on Friday, but not really popping until today, is the Google Gears Geolocation API. Gears is a browser plug in used to make Web apps run when not connected to the Internet.

What, then is this API?

Per PC Mag it’s “a platform designed to provide Web sites with location-based information without the aid of GPS.” That said it can tap into GPS, cell-tower triangulation, or your computer’s IP address to determine location and then “pass it on” to an application. So far, lastminute.com, a travel site and Rummble, a social networking site has used the API which runs on Internet Explorer, Firefox, and IE Mobile.

Google states that it will not store location information, but users need to check with the sites they visit about their policies. Users are prompted the first time a site asks for a location. Here’s the Google announcement on the Gear blog.

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Check it from ReliefWeb. “Damaged buildings have been identified with WorldView-1 and Formosat-2 satellite imagery acquired on 19 August 2008 at a spatial resolution of 50cm and 2m respectively.”

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I missed this when I posted that the MapPoint 2009 trial version is now available for free download. Streets and Trips 2009 trial is also available for free download.

Alternatively, soon you can also purchase Streets and Trips 2009 online or visit your local software retailer to find it. However, you can always buy the parent product MapPoint 2009 online right now (far more functionality, plus the basic functionality of Streets & Trips 2009)! Yes, they are the same except MapPoint has geographic data analysis capabilities.

There are two SKUs for MapPoint:

• MapPoint 2009 North America - $299
• MapPoint 2009 North America with GPS Locator - $349

CP

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Last week I announced the plan to begin a 5 year trip to circumnavigate the Earth by sailboat - and to make use of Google Earth in many ways. There are a lot of details behind this trip, so I’m sharing elements of the plan over the next few weeks in posts here at Google Earth Blog. I’m looking forward to telling you about some of the cool ways I will be using Google Earth to share our trip - but, now is a good time to introduce you to our new home and mode of transportation. Since the trip is for five years, we will be selling our house and our boat will be our main home starting sometime next year. We had previously owned a nice sailing catamaran and found it to be the ideal boat type for cruising and blue water travel. I should point out that sailing is an incredibly “green” mode of transportation. The primary means of movement is wind - you can’t get much greener than that!

We attended each of the Miami and Annapolis Boat Shows, did a lot of reading, and communicated with many boat owners during the last 4 years looking for the right boat. We ultimately settled on a St. Francis 50, by St. Francis Marine built in South Africa. South Africa has a reputation of building some of the best catamarans in the world. Our last boat was also built in South Africa. This boat has 4 queen-sized staterooms with a private head (bathroom) for each room (we plan to have friends and family visit along the way). There is a nice galley in one of the hulls; between the hulls there is a large salon area with a dining table suitable for up to eight people , a navigation station (and large desk area), and a TV entertainment center. There’s also an outside dining area suitable for eight, and the helm station with instruments all protected by a large “roof” area (called a bimini) giving protection from the sun and ocean spray - and there are solar panels on top (another important “green” element). The boat has two engines for times when you can’t sail, or while maneuvering in a harbor. And, it has a generator for charging the battery systems when solar power can’t keep up. See specifications including floor plans.

The boat we’ve just purchased was used by the builder at the Cape Town Boat Show last fall, and then at the Miami Boat Show in February (where I first saw it). Then, it was taken to the St. Francis Resort in the Bahamas where their sales representative lives (which is why we went to the Bahamas back in June). Here is a Google Earth file which shows where the boat was built, and the approximate route it took to get to the Bahamas along with the two boat shows. The boat had nearly 8000 nautical miles on it when we picked it up as a “new” boat. But, that’s often the case when a US citizen buys a South African boat. These boats are designed for long-distance travel. Here are some pictures of a St. Francis 50 from their web site (no, it doesn’t come with the cheerleaders). And, here are some pictures of it under sail.

The next part of this series will talk about going to pick up the boat and delivering it from the Bahamas to North Carolina where it will be kept part of the time while we are preparing the boat for the trip. Included will be GPS tracks, how Google Earth was used, pictures, and some other details about what happened during the trip.

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