Posts Tagged ‘routing’

  • 12 Mar

    Posted by
    joesonic


    Category

    Navigon released for Android Market – But be careful!

    0

    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.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 27 Nov

    Posted by
    joesonic


    Category

    How reliable are Directions (or Routes) in Google Maps?

    0

    Google Maps does not provide metadata about geographical data used for geocoding or routing. This could lead to some astonishment when the user see the routing results in Google Maps. For example a route from Hungary to Bulgaria will direct through Italy using ferry connections and lasting over 3000 km and 1 day and 15 hours. The reason for this behaviour is not well documented or presented to the user. Google Maps does not have routing relevant data (or the proper quality of data) for several countries. For example it is not possible to route in Serbia or Bulgaria. Therefore routes running through these countries will results in detours.

    gm_route

    An other interesting example is Moscow. Yon can calculate routes in Moscow but not in rural Russia. Google provides a document where all countries are listed and you can find out about their current map functionality.

  • 09 Oct

    Posted by
    joesonic


    Category

    Video integration in driving direction of route planners (Google has StreetView, Microsoft videos)

    1

    Google integrates StreetView in their driving directions to give the user an impression about the calculated route. Microsoft tries now tries to integrate videos in their driving directions and synchronize them with the map. According to the official research paper Microsoft Research Redmond and the University of Constance are working on this research project, but as you can see in the video and the test routes Microsoft Graz is also involved in this study (Even the camera car has an license plate from Klagenfurt). I think parts of this geospatial innovation are originating in Austria. Great!

    The following videos shows how this method works.

    This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

    Summary:

    Driving directions to help us get from here to there are an important part of our lives, whether it’s to get to work, vacation, or to a friend’s house. The most common way to obtain driving directions is to go to Google or Bing maps and print them out. In the near future, one could say that driving directions will soon be solved via in-car navigation systems such as Garmin and TomTom. However, sometimes even these navigation systems fail: under tunnels, when map data is not up to date, etc. When in-car navigation fails, we often find ourselves under stress and this can make driving more dangerous. So how can we help drivers prepare for their drive and reduce stress when in-car navigation fails?

    The key idea is to take advantage of our amazing capacity to recognize images/videos we’ve seen before. Studies have shown that humans can reliably recognize images they’ve seen before well beyond a year after viewing them! This ability also explains why it’s easier for us to navigate to a location the second time. So what our system provides is a video preview of your driving route, so that you can familiarize yourself with the route, before actually driving in the car. Creating such a video is possible by merging frames from Google Street View images, for example. When you’re in the car, you’ll be able to recognize landmarks you saw in the video, to aid you in your navigation.

    Of course, if you’ve driving a 30 minute route, you don’t want to watch a 30-minute video. So we shorten the video to only the important parts (such as turns and landmarks) and speed up through uninteresting ones. We also filter the video to make it a smooth and continuous experience.

    This work will be presented at User Interface, Science and Technology (UIST) 2009.

    Further Links:

    [via thekeyidea.blogspot.com]

  • 13 Jun

    Posted by
    joesonic


    Category

    Yahoo Maps with draggable routes

    0

    Yahoo has updated their Map Service for Europe. Now it is also possible to modify routes via drag and drop, as you know it from Google Maps. They included also an function to revert back to the original route and compare route distances.

    In my opinion the user interface in not as intuitive as in Google Maps. You cannot see the route changing while moving the cursor. You have also take care to drag your cursor near an road, otherwise you will not be able to find a solved route. With this update Yahoo tries to close the gap to Google, but if you look at details you can identify some flaws not to mention real innovation in case of performance or user interaction.

    yahoorouting

    According to Mapperz following additional updates were identified:

    In response to users feedback Yahoo made some major improvements to Yahoo Maps

    • Faster loading time -No more waiting for the application to load - Dial-up mode removed
    • Language preference – Choose from one of the 5 European languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish and German*.
    • Interactive print page – Customize the print page to include only the information you need.
    • Personalised routing – Don’t like the route yahoo provide drag and drop the routes interactively.
    • Saved locations – For convenience, previously entered locations are automatically stored and available within Maps and elsewhere on Yahoo, such as Local and Weather.
    • Quickly look up places through auto-completion.
    • Waypoint support – Get driving directions for trips with multiple stops.
    • Save driving directions – Two places to save, Yahoo! Bookmarks and delicious
    • Zoom bar – now with the ‘+’ on top.

    *Yahoo will be rolling out the same set of Maps improvements in Germany in the coming weeks.

    [via Mapperz]

  • 19 May

    Posted by
    joesonic


    Category

    Wolfram Alpha meets Geography

    0

    As many other Internet users I stumbled across WolframAlpha some days ago. Wolfram Alpha defines itself as computational knowledge engine. The concept for using knowledge alpha can be seen as combination between Google and Wikipedia, but it uses quite an different approach.

    It is an Encyclopedia, which tries to combine different information sources and facts matematically to produce a piece of systematic knowledge. answers from Wolfram Alpha can be combined in an arbitrary way. I have tried some example how geographical facts and questions can be combine to produce more or less meaningful knowledge.

    1. Geocoding:

    2. Routing:

    • Flight distance between counties
    • Distance between cities
    • Distance between Addresses
      • (not possible)

    3. Others:

    You can find some more suggestions about places and geography on their examples site. The embedded video shows an talk from Stephan Wolfram talking about WolframAlpha.

    This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

    Unfortunately it was not possible for me to generate thematic maps with wolfram alpha  (for example: all countries population map). Wolframs computational knowledge engine was officially started this Monday and can be accessed via: http://www.wolframalpha.com/

  • 15 Dec

    Posted by
    joesonic


    Category

    Intelligent Online Routing – TomTom Route Service with IQ Technology.

    0

    TomTom has introduced an online routing service with their IQ Technology. The routing service is currently in beta and an only accessed after registration. They use the latest version of Teleatlas Street data, which is a fully-owned subsidiary of TomTom.

    tomtom

    TomTom IQs Routes Technology™ puts the driving information and data of millions of TomTom users into their algorithms to calculate the best route based on actual speeds driven on the roads by the users compared to speed restrictions.

    IQ Routes™ technology is available for roads in the following countries:

    • Western Europe:
      • Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Republic of Ireland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, United Kingdom
    • North America:
      • United States, Canada

    The routing service include also a Locator Feature, where you can find Cities, Addresses and Point of Interests (POIs) on the map. For the input alternative names in different languages can be used.

    Unfortunately I have no detailed information about the used hardware and software running behind this system. The front-end is designed with Flash technology.

  • 11 Aug

    Posted by
    joesonic


    Category

    Test: Samsung SGH-i900 Omnia with GPS

    83

    The SGH-i900 Omnia is Samsung’s newest Windows Mobile Smartphone with a size of 112 x 58 x 13,6 mm. Highlights of the phone are:

    • 5 MP camera with auto focus
    • 8 GB or 16 GM internal storage space and MicroSD card slot
    • HSDPA and WLAN
    • GPS chip
    • 240 x 400 pixel display with 65.536 colors (size: 43 x 70 mm)
    • Windows Mobile 6.1

    The camera is intuitive to use and in combination with GPS a geo-tagging function is provided. The only drawback here is that it is difficult to enable and disable this function.

    The touchscreen seems to be better than in the previous models form Samsung but is still sometimes difficult to handle. Especially at the borders the precision is not so good.

    If you want to buy the Samsung i900 only because of the integrated GPS, this is not recommended. In the test after starting the navigation software it last about 5 minutes until the actual position is located. Additionally Route 66 Mobile Navigator 8 has not the best usability among navigation software. To plan a route or change settings the user has to click on a strange icon in the button left corner. To find an address the user enters city and street directly in the search box. This is different to TomTom or Navigon devices, where you have separate fields for city and street.

    Standard functionality like navigation, route planning, favorites management and POI are available. There is also a link to the address book of the mobile phone.  Traffic infos, travel guides and color profiles, maps and voices can be downloaded directly to the phone. Of course there are fees for these additional services.

    A standard routing lasts about 10 seconds, rerouting only 2 or 3 seconds.

    [via golem.de]

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

  • 22 Jul

    Posted by
    joesonic


    Category

    Google Maps Walking Routes

    0

    Google introduced Walking routes!

    Try it for yourself at http://maps.google.com

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

  • 11 Jul

    Posted by
    joesonic


    Category

    Opensource, OpenLS and OpenStreetMaps for a OpenRouteService

    1

    Open Source GIS solutions gain more and more attention in the Geoinformation sciences community over the past years. Now there are numerous usable and stable Open Source libraries and tools for spatial data management, customization and visualisation available. Open Source in general has a very strong relation to topic of Interoperability and Open GI Standards (e.g., Standards specified by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)).

    The OpenRoutingService.org initiative has worked on the OGC Specification “Open Location Services” (OpenLS) Before the implementation of OpenRoutingService.org several other services based on open standards have been realized. In near futures these implementations should be available at http://www.freeOpenLS.org.

    Since April 8th of this year OpenRoutingService.org is accessible online. The services uses free geodata from OpenStreetMaps (OSM) and provides routing functionality based on the OGC LopenLS Route Service Specification. The plan is to provide routing based on OSM also for other software systems or as web service. Currently the service is enhanced in case of functionality, because until now it is limited to Germany. The area of Germany in OSM covers more than 600.000 streets, which must be transformed into topological graphs for the routing module. During this transformation more then 1.3 million features are generated.

    They have tested the performance with different routing-libraries (geotools, pgrouting) and algorithms (Dijkstra, A*).

    One further interesting feature of OpenRoutingService.org is the “Avoid Area” function. Here the user can enter an area (e.g, dangerous area), which is excluded in the routing process.

    [via: Zur Kopplung von OpenSource, OpenLS und OpenStreetMaps in OpenRouteService.org (Neis, P., Zipf, A.)]

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

  • 29 Apr

    Posted by
    joesonic


    Category

    Streetview & Driving Directions

    0

    Today Google has integrated Streetview in Google Maps routing. If you generate a routing inside a city with Streetview you can see a camera. With a click on this camera a Streetview window is comming up where the street scene of the position is shown.

    You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

    Example

    [via GWB]

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