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Posted by Pamela Fox, Maps API Team

In the first release of MapIconMaker, we gave developers the ability to create dynamically resized and colored marker-shaped icons. Now with the second version, we’re adding two entirely new types of customizable icons. The table below (stolen blatantly from the documentation) compares the three available functions. To get more of a feel for everything that’s possible with all the icons, play around with the updated wizard.

createFlatIcon	The icons can be dynamically sized and colored, can be either circular or rectangular in shape, and can have text overlaid on them. They will appear to lie ‘flat’ on the map because of their shape. View example (createflaticon-simple.html).
createLabeledMarkerIcon	The icons can be dynamically colored and can have text overlaid on them, but can only be one shape and size (marker-shape, 32*32). They can optionally have a dynamically colored star attached to the corner. View example (createlabeledmarkericon-simple.html).
createMarkerIcon	The icons can be dynamically sized and colored, but cannot have any text overlaid on them. View example (createmarkericon-simple.html).

As a demo of what kind of maps are possible with the new icons, I’ve created a gadget that uses the Visualization API to pull rows of U.S. address data from a Google Spreadsheet, clusters the rows based on what state code I find in the address (yay for RegEx!), and then creates icons for each state cluster that are dynamically sized and labeled according to the size of the cluster. As an added touch, I overlay a transparent state polygon on marker mouseover, and I change the color of the marker and polygon on marker click. Much thanks to the 2008 Election Trends map for inspiring the UI and making its code and states data available. Check out the demo map below, and if you’re inspired yourself, read through the MapIconMaker reference and documentation (or code - it’s open source!).

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TNRIS just launched their new Emergency Resources web site just in time for Gustav to touchdown over Texas. The site overlays Doppler weather with a Virtual Earth map for storm tracking. You can also get down to a specific city, by geocoding places in the search box.

There are few things that compare to a hot, heavy, Texas rain pouring down on you during a warm afternoon, but this is ridiculous! Batten down the hatches, Texas! Use this site to plan appropriately.

CP

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The long holiday weekend means that we are heading out to visit relatives in western Colorado.

Seems like the perfect excuse to have an open thread. See you guys next week.

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At the Royal Geographic Society’s annual conference in London, British Cartographic Society president Mary Spence complained that satellite navigation and Internet mapping were obliterating knowledge of the landmarks lining the way from point A to B. See coverage from the Independent, the Times, and the Daily Telegraph. There’s also the RGS’s press release, which said that, at the session, Spence was to warn

that the focus of internet maps on providing driving directions produced by internet giants has meant that the whereabouts of the thousands of churches, ancient woodlands, stately homes and eccentric landmarks which make up the rich tapestry of the British landscape could disappear from public consciousness. …

“Corporate cartographers are demolishing thousands of years of history — not to mention Britain’s remarkable geography — at a stroke by not including them on maps which millions of us now use every day. We’re in real danger of losing what makes maps so unique; giving us a feel for a place even if we’ve never been there.”

My own reaction, based on what I have here (I’d love to have seen the full text of the session, which Ed Parsons also participated in), is that I don’t think I should be obliged to use a map showing these landmarks if I’m not looking for them. It’s the cartographic equivalent of forcing me to eat my vegetables — a GIS layer you can’t remove. But Glenn raises the point of spatial reference systems: I might not need to know the location of a cathedral to get from point A to B, but someone else might.

I think we’re looking at competing views of how to do a map: a comprehensive, all-in-one method showing plenty of extra information you might need, and a focused method showing only the information you will need. The fact that one has historically been paper-based and the other has generally been computer-based is not necessarily always true. There’s nothing to stop computer maps from showing cathedrals or other landmarks; as Ed Parsons is quoted as saying, you can have many different maps showing — or excluding — many different things. Where we are, in other words, is at the end of an era in which one map has to perform many tasks. This may well be a difficult concept for some cartographers to grasp.

(I wonder if this is an Ordnance Survey map thing; I don’t think North Americans would assume a highway map would be an adequate substitute for a topo map, or vice versa.)

Spence’s argument about the loss of map-reading skills is something we’ve seen before. (For example, her point about failing to recognize Ordnance Survey map symbols conflates general map skills with a familiarity with Ordnance Survey products.) The democratization of information invariably leads to complaints of a decline in quality — e.g., more people are reading, but they’re reading trash. An argument can be made — and Ed did make it — that Internet mapping is making cartography accessible to the cartographically clueless.

To what extent were Britons who currently use MapQuest or in-car navigation systems previously using Ordnance Survey maps with a high degree of skill, anyway?

Via All Points Blog, GeoCarta, and Vector One.

Previously: GPS Isn’t Making Us Dumb; A Third of Britain Can’t Read a Map.

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On display outside a French High School, there’s what is claimed to be the world’s largest key.

The key measures around 10.5 metres long, although may have lost its title earlier this year when Bethlehem claimed the crown¹.

It’s still impressive, especially in the fact that it’s completely useless.

Not as large, but much more mysterious, is a 8.5m key lying around a carpark in Denver.

This key doesn’t appear on Live Search Maps² or the Google Street View imagery, so it was either dropped by a careless giant, or isn’t a key at all. So what is it?

Thanks to Felippo & dda.

Locations: France / Categories: Weirdness

View in Google Earth

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Nevada in Maps is a nice collection of more than 4,000 maps and atlases from the collections of the University of Nevada at Reno and Las Vegas, the State Library, and the Nevada State Historical Society. The collections mostly date from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries, and include topo maps (1863-1968), geologic and mining district maps and atlases (1863-1968), highway maps (1917-2005), and survey plats (1867-1927).

A sub-site, Nevada History in Maps, goes further back, draws on more sources, and focuses on the discovery and settlement of the area. At right: Colton’s Territories of New Mexico and Utah (1855) (Nevada Historical Society and the DeLaMare Library, University of Nevada, Reno). Via MAPS-L.

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The gallery is here. Among the winning geo-related apps:

BreadCrumbz - picture based nav
Locale - reconfigures app based on location among other things (big winner)
Piggyback - carpooling app
Pocket Journey - touring app
PebbleBox - collect and share location-based information
cab4me - gets you a cab!

via Phones Review

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Good news for mobile phone users. Walking directions are now included in the transit directions provided in Google Maps for Mobile.

Google will also soon be receiving satellite imagery from a new source. GeoEye Inc says it will be providing satellite imagery from its $502 million high-resolution satellite to Google Earth and Google Maps. The satellite is due to be launched on September 4.

GeoEye Inc say that the new satellite will be the world’s highest resolution commercial earth-imaging satellite, providing images at 1.65 meters resolution in colour.

Google will continue to use imagery from other sources as well.

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The work was done by Knight Ridder and suggests that many of the assumptions about those who died in Katrina are perhaps misplaced.

Knight Ridder took addresses where bodies were recovered from data from Louisiana state officials and and plotted them on maps of Orleans and St. Bernard parishes. Those locations were then compared with census data on income in those neighborhoods. A number of bodies were excluded including those recovered from hospitals and nursing homes, and body collection points.

What does the study show?

- the victims weren’t disproportionately poor
- they also weren’t disproportionately African American
- the elderly were disproportionately impacted though many had cars in the driveway

- Knight Ridder via The Olympian

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If You Are A Cow Turn to the South

Scientists claim that cows and deer tend to align their bodies in a north-south direction when they are grazing. The researchers surveyed Google Earth images of 8,510 grazing and resting cattle in 308 pasture plains across the globe and found to their surprise that the animals tended to face either north or south.

Interestingly my own exhaustive study of exactly one image of elephants suggests that pachyderms tend to align their bodies in a west-east direction.

Via: BBC

Thank You Very Much

View Larger Map

No face blurring? Via: Street Viewer

Happiness Map



Denmark is the ‘happiest place on earth’ according to Adrian White’s Happiness Map (pdf).

Map Making

Mapperz informs me that India has been added to Google MapMaker, which seems appropriate as I think Map Maker came out of Google’s Bangalore offices.

Whilst on the subject of map making I think Google should check out the map making interface in Far Cry 2:

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The news popped Thursday night. Of course the bird is not in the sky yet (it launches next week) and the imagery won’t be available for another 45- 60 days. But after that assuming all is well with the satellite and receiving stations, Google will add the .41 meter to Google Maps and Google Earth.

No word on the price tag, but it should be a good deal: the deal stipulates the imagery not go to any other on-line mapping websites. And, if it matters, Google’s logo is on the rocket.

- Reuters

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TypeBrewer is a site about font choices in mapmaking. “TypeBrewer offers a quick and easy way to explore typographic alternatives and see the impact that various elements of type have on the overall look and feel of a map. TypeBrewer is designed for mapmakers who want to learn more about map typography and get practical design specifications for starting a map project.” Using a Flash-based interface, you can select different type styles and see the impact of font size, density (how much is labelled) and tracking (letter spacing). Via La Cartoteca.

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The Journal of Terrestrial Observation is a new peer-reviewed journal that is published simultaneously online and as a hardcopy quarterly. Its mission is “to examine the multi-disciplinary theories, models, technologies, and applications associated with earth observation in the broadest sense. The Journal will cover a wide range of topics including satellite remote sensing, aircraft reconnaissance, and proximate sensing utilizing in situ instrumentation.” Via Slashgeo.

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