Christoph Niemann is a New Yorker graphic designer. One of his collections includes illustrations in Google Maps roadmap style and is called “My Way“. View some of his illustrations:
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Location in 2010: Social Networks and ennobling raw data
Location in 2010 – What are the trends. Through my point of view there are two:
- (Mobile) Location (APIs) and Social Networks
- Ennobling of Raw Data
Socail Networks are Location aware. We all know this. According to the NY Times, Facebook will start a new location service, during its f8-Developer Conference in April 2010. The service should be very similar to Gowala and Foursquare and developer can use a special Location API for their third party applications. Facebook will definitvely profit from such service, maybe more than other social networks, simply because of their size. About 25% of their 400 million members are using Facebook on their mobile device. With locations there will be even more. Facebook, Location and Privacy for sure will be an issue again. I assume all location related services will be off by default and it will be possible to activate for friends and single members.
Facebook has is a private driven community while others like Fourquare could focus more on the business segment. For example museums or restaurants could use such platforms for target marketing.
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Navigon released for Android Market – But be careful!
NAVIGON is a well known car navigation manufacturer and has now released Mobile Navigator for Android. NAVIGON Mobile Navigator was released before also for the IPhone and Windows Mobile smart-phones. There are several navigation applications out now for Android but none of them can be used on a regular basis. From the optical impression NAVIGON could be the first software for serious or semi-professional purposes.
There are special promotional prices for the market release: The regional version for Germany, Austria and Switzerland costs 49,95 Euros and the europe edition 74,95 Euro. You can use the “Try & Buy” option, which allows you to test the product for 30 days without obligations.
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Twitter and the Map
The microblogging site Twitter has emerged from a nice service to one to the biggest players for social networks. With only 140 employees and an estimated revenue of $400,000 in Q3 2009 the Californian company is on rank 12 of the most visited websites all over the world.
The people behind twitter have realized very early that location plays a critical role in their business idea and focused on this topic from the very beginning. In August 2009 there was a post on the official Twitter blog entitled: Location, Location, Location. (Compare the three L’s statement of Michael Goodchild)
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Google learned from OpenStreetMap
The Haiti earthquake disaster showed us the incredible contribution of the comunity for creating a detailed map in the area around Port-au-Prince. Apparently this was the initiation for Google to write following tweet:
Google recently promoted their Map Maker tool to gather more community driven data (called volunteered geographic information VGI). They continue their philosophy to become more and more independent from conventional data providers like Teleatlas. Public aware events are used to promote volunteered data production. But in comparison to OpenStreetMap (which is under public license) the data/knowledge produced with Map Maker is transfered to a private company located in the US.
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Map Mashups can tell a story
ESRI recently announched the 2010map mashup challenge and invites developers to present a map mashup and tell the story behind their mashup. One interesting and creative example is the mapshup by Dave Bouwman – Visualizing Executive Compensation. The story behind this mashup:
Executive Compensation packages are so large that they are hard to comprehend. We gathered compensation data from the New York Times, county income data from the IRS, median household income data from ArcGIS Online and mashed it all together in the ESRI Flex API.
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March 2010 Open GIS Jobs
I’ll introduce a new section on the “Geospatial Talk” blog called Jobs. Each month I’ll describe 5 GIS or Geo-related jobs around the world. This month selection includes:
- Senior GIS Programmer/Analyst (N/A, Anchorage, USA)
- Doctoral Research Assistent (University of Technology Vienna, Vienna, Austria)
- GIS Software Analyst / Developer (CMRC,Cobh, Ireland)
- Geospatial Analyst (Boeing, Saint Louis, USA)
- GIS / Imagery Analyst (Thermopylae Sciences & Technology, Arlington, USA)
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Virtual journey on the Transiberian Railway
The combination between Google Maps and YouTube allows you to make a virtual travel from Moscow to Vladivostok. The video is georeferenced and synchronized with the map. This feature allows you to navigate on the map an see the corresponding section in the video.
Original text to the application:
The great Trans Siberian Railway, the pride of Russia, goes across two continents, 12 regions and 87 cities. The joint project of Google and the Russian Railways lets you take a trip along the famous route and see Baikal, Khekhtsirsky range, Barguzin mountains, Yenisei river and many other picturesque places of Russia without leaving your house. During the trip, you can enjoy Russian classic literature, brilliant images and fascinating stories about the most attractive sites on the route. Let’s go!
You can see this widget on : http://www.google.ru/intl/ru/landing/transsib/en.html
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Scale of the to-date known and mapped Universe
The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.
Data: Digital Universe, American Museum of Natural History (http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/universe)
Visualization Software: Uniview by SCISS
Director: Carter Emmart
Curator: Ben R. Oppenheimer
Producer: Michael Hoffman
Executive Producer: Ro Kinzler
Co-Executive Producer: Martin Brauen
Manager, Digital Universe Atlas: Brian AbbottMusic: Suke Cerulo
For more information visit http://www.amnh.org
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New Topographic Map-Resource in Google/Microsoft tiling schema
ArcGIS Online has migrated map tiling scheme of their map services to Google Maps and Microsoft Bing Maps well known tiling scheme. All ESRI Map resources can now overlayed and mashed-up with Google Map layers and Bing Map layers, because they use the same coordinate system, map DPI and tile size. Also cached levels of detail match with the Google/Microsoft “Industry Standard”.
For example their new topographic Map looks great and has a lot of details (at least in some parts of the US):
Some Map details from ArcGIS Online
Server URL: http://services.arcgisonline.com
Coordinate system: Web Mercator Auxiliary Sphere (WKID 102100)
Units of measure: Decimal degrees
Global Extent: Maximum Longitude: Approx. 180 Maximum Latitude: Approx. 85 Minimum Longitude: Approx. -180 Minimum Latitude: Approx. -85 Map DPI: 96
Tile Size of Map Cache: 256 pixels by 256 pixels
Levels of Detail: The number of cached levels of detail varies among map services. The scale levels are calculated, based upon the tile size (256 by 256) and the WGS 1984 Web Mercator coordinate system, such that when tiles are laid out starting at 180W and proceeding eastward, the final tile aligns perfectly (no overlap) with the first tile at the international date line.
These are the standard map scale and cell sizes:
Layer level Map scale Cell size L00 1:591,657,528 1 pixel = 1.40624 Decimal degrees
(Meters at equator:156,543.033928)L01 1:295,828,764 1 pixel = 0.70312 Decimal degrees
(Meters at equator: 78,271.516964)L02 1:147,914,382 1 pixel = 0.35156 Decimal Degrees
(Meters at equator: 39,135.758482)L03 1:73,957,191 1 pixel = 0.17578 Decimal Degrees
(Meters at equator: 19,567.879241)L04 1:36,978,595 1 pixel = 0.08789 Decimal Degrees
(Meters at equator: 9,783.939620)L05 1:18,489,298 1 pixel = 0.04395 Decimal Degrees
(Meters at equator: 4,891.969810)L06 1:9,244,649 1 pixel = 0.02197 Decimal Degrees
(Meters at equator: 2,445.984905)L07 1:4,622,324 1 pixel = 0.01099 Decimal Degrees
(Meters at equator: 1,222.992453)L08 1:2,311,162 1 pixel = 0.00549 Decimal Degrees
(Meters at equator: 611.496226)L09 1:1,155,581 1 pixel = 0.00275 Decimal Degrees
(Meters at equator: 305.748113)L10 1:577,791 1 pixel = 0.00137 Decimal Degrees
(Meters at equator: 152.874057)L11 1:288,895 1 pixel = 0.00069 Decimal Degrees
(Meters at equator: 76.437028)L12 1:144,448 1 pixel = 0.00034 Decimal Degrees
(Meters at equator: 38.218514)L13 1:72,224 1 pixel = 0.00017 Decimal Degrees
(Meters at equator: 19.109257)L14 1:36,112 1 pixel = 0.00009 Decimal Degrees
(Meters at equator: 9.554629)L15 1:18,056 1 pixel = 0.00004 Decimal Degrees
(Meters at equator: 4.777314)L16 1:9,028 1 pixel = 0.00002 Decimal Degrees
(Meters at equator: 2.388657)L17 1:4,514 1 pixel = 0.00001 Decimal Degrees
(Meters at equator: 1.194329)L18 1:2,257 1 pixel = 0.000005 Decimal Degrees
(Meters at equator: 0.597164)L19 1:1,128 0.000003 Decimal Degrees
(Meters at equator: 0.298582)
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