Tag Archive for 'Map'

Finding Addresses in Austria

Published
by
joesonic
on July 24, 2008
in GeoWeb
. 0 Comments

I have tried to compare the big three search engines, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live in their functionality and usability for finding address locations. Address Geocoding is an important field of the GeoWeb and should be not problem for these three companies, but during the test I identified enormous deficits or a complete lack of these functionality.

Test address was: Europastrasse 4, 9500 Villach, Austria. This information should be more than enough to visualize the exact location on the map.

Lets Start with Microsoft Live Search. In my test this service completely fails. First of all if you try to enter the address in the search box of the ordinary Web Search you get some results which may be related to the address but it was not checked that the entered string represents an address (complete lack of semantics). Therefore, I changed to maps.live.com, to see if I can locate my address here. First of all you have to change the mode from the default (businesses) to locations. Then I entered the address to search. The results displays the map near Villach but far away from the correct location. Live maps do not have address geocoding for Austria. Hence, it cannot be recommended to search for Austria addresses.

The next service I tested was Yahoo Local Maps. Similar like Live Search it was not possible to visualize the address from the normal web search. In the Yahoo Local Maps mode it is possible to enter the address in the search field. The result does not perfectly fit but it is close. Additional you get a hint that the exact address cannot be found but the nearest address is visualised. In this case much better than Microsoft Live Search.

At least I tested the market leader Google. And it is the test winner of my small experiment. By entering the address as search string the first result is a small map, which visualizes the exact location of the address. From this small view you can directly change to Google Maps. Of course also Google Maps locate the address without any problems through the search box.

So try it for yourself and tell me your Experiences.

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

YouTube now with local search and Google Maps

Published
by
joesonic
on July 12, 2008
in Google and Videos
. 0 Comments

In Youtube now you can also search for videos from a special region or location. To use local search you can enter the name of one location in the search box of YouTube. In most cases there appear a small map with 3 videos form the local search linking to an map interface. If you cannot see this map on the search results you have to specify the location in the advanced search.

The local search uses a Google Maps which is located directly above the search results. The maker and the buffer (as red circle) shows the region where videos are searched. One drawback until now that there is no direct linking between the search results and the map.

The marker in the map can be changed to search for another region.

[via GWB]

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

Map interaction with Adobe Acrobat 9

Published
by
joesonic
on June 19, 2008
in Software
. 0 Comments

Adobe will release their new version of the Acrobat family soon. One of the new features is the integration of spatial data and maps in PDF.

Now it is possible to create and share PDF maps by importing geospatial files that retain metadata and coordinates. For this reason Adobe is working together with ESRI. Acrobat user can enable everyone with the free Adobe Reader to measure and comment on geospatial enabled PDF maps.

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

Austrian Federal Enviromental Agency maps measured air quality data

Published
by
joesonic
on May 21, 2008
in GeoWeb and Web
. 0 Comments

The Austrian Federal Enviromental Agency (Umweltbundesamt) maps air quality data from gauging stations distributed over the area of Austria. The recorded data from the sensors can be actualised by the user from the map interface. Used technologies are Google Maps and geonames.org for georeferencing.

Values for ozone, particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monodixe and some other are recored and mapped. I’m not sure if the application works for any browser, becuase I had some troubles with Safari.

Link: http://luft.umweltbundesamt.at/pub/gmap/start.html

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

Augmented Reality and mobile GIS - An interesting topic

Published
by
joesonic
on May 11, 2008
in GIS
. 4 Comments

Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data (see definition at Wikipedia).

The application fields of augmented reality for spatial problems are very broad. The contain navigation, enviromental planning, etc. Object recognition is here also an issue. Currently many GI researchers are dealing with the topic of augmented maps. Some interesting papers are for example:

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