Archive for the ‘Webservices’ Category

  • 23 Nov

    Posted by
    joesonic


    Category

    Cloudmade – An alternative Javascript mapping API

    0

    CloudMade was founded by Steve Coast and Nick Black in 2007 to provide services around open mapdata. Steve Coast is also the founder of OpenStreetMap (OSM), one of the most prominent source for free map data based on the wiki idea. Therefore there is a strong relationship between OpenStreetMap and CloudMade, with the aim to “continue the democratization of geo data and to expand access to open geo data through a range of simple yet powerful tools and APIs.”

    The current version of their APIs allows developers to integrate OpenStreetMap data into mobile and web-based applications. The major differences between most of similar services (beginning with Google Maps API), the CloudMade team highlights to be free from restrictive licencing.

    Currently their APIs are closed pre-Alpha and is only available to registered users. To take part on this program you can sign up. They follow a bottom up approach and try to reduce complexity in terms to use geographical tools.

    [via CloudMade]

  • 18 Aug

    Posted by
    joesonic


    Category

    Check the Air Pollution in Beijing online

    0

    The Wall Street Journal povides a service where you can compare the air polution near Beijing. With a time sider you can go back to 2005. The data is baed on the Beijing government.

    Link: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-BEIJINGSMOG0807.html

  • 13 Aug

    Posted by
    joesonic


    Category

    Yahoo launches FireEagle – a service to track your locations

    0

    Yahoo has launched their contibution of “track your location” sites with the release of Fire Eagle. The basic idea behind Fire Eagle is to become the link between your location and the services that you want to give your location to. You can feed your location to Fire Eagle from your GPS unit, cell phone, laptop, etc, then their applications can use it for whatever task you give them permission for. Even though it has just launched, there are a large number of sites already using it (e.g., Dopplr, Facebook, etc.), many of which tie into Google Maps.

    In other words, Yahoo’s Fire Eagle, what I like to call a meta-app because it manages many location-enabled apps, is now open to all.

    Links:

    [via Google Earth Blog]

    Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.

  • 09 Jul

    Posted by
    joesonic


    Category

    EveryScape – StreetView inside buidings

    0

    EveryScape is a web service similar to Google StreetView but it allows also indoor navigation. Therefore it is possible to navigate though the streets of an city and go inside buildings along the city. Of course only public buildings are recorded.

    EveryScape uses Adobe Flash technology for visualisation.

    Excerpt from their homepage:
    “EveryScape’s patented HyperMedia Technology Platform allows anyone with a browser to experience a first-person, eye-level walk down a scaped street, gathering and sharing information on businesses and attractions, entering a store and shopping, checking the menu and reviews of a restaurant or the upcoming performances of a theater.”
    Currently EveryScape is in beta and parts of following cities are included:
    Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.
  • 19 Mar

    Posted by
    admin


    Category

    New Aerial Photos for Austria

    0

    Biside high resolution aerial photos of the provinicial capitals of Austria Herold.at provides enhanced photos for Wiener Neustadt, Wels, Villach, Kitzbühel, Steyr, Hartberg, Linz-Umgebung, Leoben und Kufstein. This was communicated by the Herold company on Tuesday.

    They assert that their service is ahead of others in Austria:

    “Damit beweisen wir einmal mehr, dass wir bei Luftbildaufnahmen von Österreich eindeutig die Nase vorne haben”, so Herold-CEO Thomas Friess.

    The high resolution photos were taken on October 2007 with an altitude of 2500 meters. It is not possible to recognize any peole on the records.

    Simmilar to other services like Google Maps, Yahoo Maps or Live Maps the user can choose between “map“, “satellite” or “hybrid” view. Additional Points of Interests (POI), like ATMs, hotels, parking areas, post offices, restaurants or gas stations can be visualized.

    [via derStandard]

    Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.

  • 30 Jan

    Posted by
    admin


    Category

    GeoNames – A Free GeoWebservice

    3

    GeoNames is a geographical data base freely available and accessible through various Web services, under a Creative Commons attribution license.

    The GeoNames database contains over 8,000,000 geographical names corresponding to over 6,500,000 unique features. All features are categorized into one out of nine feature classes and further subcategorized into one out of 645 feature codes. Beyond names of places in various languages, data stored include latitude, longitude, elevation, population, administrative subdivision and postal codes. All coordinates use the WGS84 system (World Geodetic System 1984). Those data are accessible free of charge through a number of Web services and a daily database export. The Web services include direct and reverse geocoding, finding places through postal codes, finding places next to a given place, and finding Wikipedia articles about neighbouring places.

    Each GeoNames feature is represented as a Web resource identified by a stable URI. This URI provides access, through content negotiation, either to the HTML wiki page, or to a RDF description of the feature, using elements of the GeoNames ontology. This ontology describes the GeoNames features properties using the Web Ontology Language, the feature classes and codes being described in the SKOS language. Through Wikipedia articles URL linked in the RDF descriptions, GeoNames data are linked to DBpedia data and other RDF Linked Data.

    500px-geonamesdensity.png

    Desnsity Feature map. Bright areas indicates a high feature density for GeoNames. Dense regions are Bosnia Herzegowina (1.008 features per km²) , Germany (0.447), North Korea (0.318), Pakistan (0.154) and the east coast of the US.

    [www.geonames.org]

    Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.