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.
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)
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.
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)
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)
Motivational Video by ESRI, if you don’t know what a mashup or a mapping mashup is or how you can create one. Important is that your mashup has to tell a story:
Create an innovative mashup using ArcGIS Online and Web Mapping APIs for the chance to win one of four cash prizes. Awards will be based on originality, creativity, and analytic process.
To win the first prize you may be more creative and innovative than the simple sample application on their homepage. You can use all client side technologies supported by ESRI and based on the ArcGIS Server REST Interface. This includes the JavaScript APIs, Flex API and Silverlight API. As datasoure ESRI online provides numerous map and image service as well as geoprocessing services.
In order to apply for the Challenge you have to shoot a video of your Mash-up and give a short description about what is innovative in your webmap and how it can be used. The video should be posted on YouTube.
ESRI 2010 Mashup Challenge is now online and you will find all further information about the application process there.
Recently ESRI (Jack Dangermond) announced to change the name for the next release from 9.4 to 10.0. In my opinion there has to be more than already promoted features for this release there have to be another joker which is not announced yet. What do you think? What will be the next big thing in ESRI ArcGIS 10?
10 suggestion what might come are (these respresent some of the most requested features for ArcGIS):
support for Mac OS X (because of the X in the logo) [chance: 20%]
Full rewrite of ArcObject, which made them native 64bit components. Full x64 support for all components (Engine, Desktop, Server) [change: 40%]
full 3D GIS system (integrated volumetric geographical objects for all components) [chance: 90%]
new approach to serve mobile GIS for new mobile Platforms like Android, iPhone OS and Blackberry. [chance: 75%]
intuitive integration of “cloud” computing (e.g. Toolboxes can be naively published on the web and integrated from the web – from desktop to server) [chance: 60%]
significant performance improvements (especially reading and writing large amounts of data both for filegeodatabases (fGDBs) as well as for SDE databases) [chance: 50%]
close all bugs of features in the current release [change: 1%]
several extensions are integrated in the main product (change of the licensing policy) [chance: 5%]
ArcGIS is becoming a spatial-temporal GIS [change: 90%]
major improvement of the ArcGIS Server REST interface (API will support native Geodatabase writing access) [chance: 80%]
Beta 2 will still be called 9.4. The final release will be mid to late Q2 2010.
ESRI is well known for providing professional GIS solutions from desktop to server. But they always struggling with mobile GIS. For a long time ArcPad was ESRI’s reference application when it comes to mobile GIS. ArcPAD tries to be the baby ArcGIS for mobile devices, with very limited functionality and cumbersome user interface. Of course mobile devices are very limited in their funktionality few years ago and the Windows Mobile platform is a still a hassle, but ESRI has difficulties finding their strategy for mobile GIS solutions both for expert and the broader community.
With their new ArcGIS server platform and REST based APIs ESRI also realized a technology for mobile use. It is easy to embed maps and layers in different environments including mobile phones, PDAs, tablet PCs etc. The following video shows a more professional way to use ArcGIS mobile and in the second part of the movie a demo is given on the iPhone where Base Maps from an ArcGIS Server are visualized within an iPhone App.
The demonstrations of new options for mobile workforces are based on ArcGIS Mobile 9.4, and will be available soon.
Now the questions is will this strategy become successful?
In my opinion ESRI has now a huge potential to gain ground in the mobile GIS world, also for a wide user group. Essential in my opinion will be the continuous development and extension of their ArcGIS Server APIs. For example it is expected to have direct Geodatabase read/write access with the JavaScript API in version 2.0, coming with ArcGIS 9.4. On the other side it is important to have easy to use client software for all major mobile platforms, including iPhone OS, Android, Blackberry, PalmOS and Windows Mobile. ESRI should provide “demonstrative” applications for different use cases ranging from experts (or data collectors) to “traditional” Google Maps users. It will be very important to open up building blocks for application building on mobile Platforms (very important Android and iPhone OS) so that developers could design and implement their own applications based on ArcGIS mobile. It should designed like ArcObjects building blocks on the Desktop and Server.
If ESRI can take this challenge for 2010 the GIS market leader will also play an important role in the mobile GIS sector.
Location based applications (LBS) or mapping applications are very useful especially if you are abroad or in a foreign country. Unfortunately roaming costs are still very expensive and most of these “travel” or mapping applications require Internet connection to download cartographic information. Nearly all Android applications which make use of street maps include the Google Maps related “Map View”. This means you have to enable your devices network connection through a GPSRS or WiFi connection (and current international roaming costs are expensive).
The obvious solution is to cache your map tiles before and save them on your SD card, then these tiles can be used later on without having an active Internet connection. Fortunately there are several applications which allow to download map data for later offline use.
One of the most famous application for offline mapping, OffMaps, is not available for Android phones but in this post I will describe two of them in more detail:
MapDroyd:
MapDroyd allows to download maps from different countries with a kind of download manager. All downloaded maps can be used in the mapping application offline. MapDroyd does not store cached maps like most other applications, it allows to download vector data in a special format called MicroMap. The compressed MicroMap format in theory is fully navigable. Map data source is OpenStreetMap (OSM), which represents detailed user generated street maps for most countries. Depending on the size of the country and the OSM detail level a downloaded map has a size from few 10 MBs to several 100 MBs. In the download manager it is also possible to set the zoom level, for the country to download.
List of features (from the Homepage):
MapDroyd provides a built-in remote map browser that allows you to explore and download selected map files from our map server. The hierarchically organized map repository is checked against your locally stored map files and updateable maps are indicated with a yellow arrow sign. Files marked with a green check sign already exist in the newest version on your local storage card. You can either download maps directly to your device, or optionally just copy an external download link to your desktop computer.
MapDroyd allows to rotate maps smoothly in any direction you want. Since we do not use pre-rendered images or (cached) map tiles like Google Maps or others do, MapDroyd can turn the map view into any angle required. MapDroyd does not rotate images - it renders maps on the fly! This is a very important feature for e.g. navigation applications. And MapDrowd draws all labels (city names, streets names, places, etc.) properly depending on your device’s orientation. MapDroyd includes an optional “auto-rotate” function that turns the map direction according to your real orientation (“head-up”).
MapDroyd marks your last known location with a red cross sign and a circle indicating the accuracy of the last positioning method. The smaller the circle is the better your positioning accuracy is/was. Your position is updated whenever you change your location (“tracking feature”).
You can choose between two different navigation modes: In the drag mode (default) you can pull the map in any direction you want by simply dragging the screen. In order to zoom in or out smoothly you have to click on the zoom buttons on the left and right bottom area, or, just roll your trackball up or down. In the rubber-band mode you simply tap the screen to reposition the map center. In order to zoom into a given region you draw a rectangle from the upper left to lower right screen corner. In order to zoom out you draw the rectangle in the opposite way, from the lower right to the upper left screen corner. In both modes you can roll the trackball to the left or right in order to rotate the map counter / clockwise. You can reset the map orientation to north using the main menu bar.
BigPlanet is an map application, which allows to download cache tiles from various map services like Google Maps, OpenStreetMap or Yandex Maps.
List of features (from their Homepage):
supports different map sources: Google Maps, OpenStreet, Yandex Maps
cache of loaded maps – map tile is loaded only once and than saves in local file cache(so you can use app even without any network connection!). This feature allows you to save a lot of money(app don’t use expensive GPRS connection).
bookmarks – just add you favourite places to bookmarks if you don’t want to find it each time when you use app
zoom in by double tap (like in iPhone): You don’t need to use zoom controls from zooming – you can just double tap place you need.
save map in given radius. Allows to save map around selected place. For example, you can save map around your home using cheap wifi connection and then use map offline.
Google Navigation was announced to push location aware applications on Android one step further. Beside Google Navigation Google Maps Mobile is still the major location based application on Android (also because of the lack of Google Earth for Android).
The new version of Google Maps mobile is called 3.2 and include several new features like layers. Layers allows to add traffic, satellite, latitude, wikipedia, public transport or my maps on top of the basemap. Google maps 3.2 is part of Android Eclair and can only be used on HTC G1 or Magic via a custom rom (yet). You can download a custom rom including some instructions here.
An update via the Android Market should be available soon.
