january 2002 archives

Tuesday, January 22, 2002

The most boring place of the UK, or the climax of British cartography? The blank grid square rears its head again. This time, the Scotland Online Web site features the article “GRID SQUARE EYED”. Again some interesting references! Might put up some links to the notorious grid squares if I find a bit more time this week...

Saturday, January 19, 2002

Under the header “travels”, you will find a map, made by your host himself! I admit, it has taken a long while before I published my own maps on this very Web site...

Downloaded the data from the ESRI Geography Network, reprojected it in ArcView and exported to Illustrator. Then I did a lot of cleaning after loading the Illustrator file into FreeHand. The finishing touches I performed in Fireworks. This package is great for adding graphic effects and creating image maps. At the moment it is still a dumb image, but it will eventually become a gateway to my holiday destinations. Wait and see...

Tuesday, January 08, 2002

According to the “Take the 100 Acre Personality Quiz!” you would think of me as:
Winnie the Pooh

Well, fortunately that makes sense, as the actual name of “Winnie the Pooh” is Edward Bear!

I saw some great films over the weekend. First of all, I went to see “The Myth of Fingerprints” at the National Film Theatre as part of there film specials around Julianne Moore. Really great film. Whereas the Dogma film “Festen” provides a conclusion to the family matters, this one does not and leaves matters as they are. An amazing idea. The psychological workings are addressed, but no solutions are sought for them. Eventhough one of the characters is a therapist, he is given only a supporting role.

Talking of Dogma films, on Sunday I went round Tim's place as he invited me to come and watch “Kingdom”. This was first released as a mini series on television. Therefore it was 4,5 hours of continuous watching. Definitely worth it. Was a great ghost story, but not one to be compared to all the Hollywood stuff. Not even to “The Blair Witch Project”. Today Tim told me there is even a part 2. Really looking forward to seeing how the story ends. Although there is some sort of an end to part 1, in part 2 it takes things even further.

Monday, January 07, 2002

For more information on Webmaps, mobile maps and everything else about online maps, have a look at “Web-Mapper, a Spatial Community Resource”. Yes, indeed, their URL and name may be confusing for the regular visitor to my Web site. Furthermore, they present themselves as “the first and only site dedicated to Web mapping”. Just see it as another interesting, additional resource on your quest for making THE killer-app for online maps. Good luck!

Saturday, January 05, 2002

It had been a while since I had a look at megnut.com, but at this late hour it was well worth it. In a posting a few days ago, she discussed Yahoo! driving directions. Most of her posting is about resolving the user's input to an address to geocode.

However, she also rants on about the disclaimer that comes with Yahoo! driving directions. I see her posting on the very day I have been looking into the disclaimers online travel directions services provide. The disclaimer from Yahoo! reads:

When using any driving directions or map, it's a good idea to do a reality check and make sure the road still exists, watch out for construction, and follow all traffic safety precautions. This is only to be used as an aid in planning.

Another one to add to my list. Will post them here shortly.

Thursday, January 03, 2002

When I finally thought of an appropriate title for my Web site, I was still convinced that maps in Web browsers were THE thing and that we were only just at the start of a revolution in cartography. And yes, maybe we still are. However, a few months ago I already expressed my doubts about maps being the main means of communicating geographic information.

Dynamic generation of user-specific geographic information and communicating this to users on the Web have their apex in online travel directions services. However, apart from the Web, all other online devices have poor graphic capabilities. Travel direction instructions in a textual form are becoming more and more important. The other day I found two Web sites that both provide an online travel direction service to SMS. These services really take my “no maps”-argument to the extreme: dynamically generated, user-specific geographic information displayed as condensed text! Let's have a look at them.

First of all, there is SMSroute. This is an ASP service provided by Emexus as a B2B solution. Clients sign up for the service, enter driving instructions for each of the start locations their users can choose from, paste a snippet of code into their Web site and pay a one-of-fee for setting up the service and a per-hit fee. Users coming to the site select the start location, enter their mobile number and the driving instructions entered by the client are sent to the users as an SMS message. The geographic information is not dynamically generated (though the user may perceive it as such), neither is the service versy user-specific: users can only select the start location from a pre-defined list.

Using their demo, I selected asked for directions from Groningen. The following SMS messages were sent to my brother's mobile phone:
Linked: 1/2
Groningen(A6)
afslag
Almere-Haven/Almere-Stad
Stedewijk
stoplichten
linksaf
Parallelweg
stoplichten
rechtsaf
Havendreef
stoplichten
rechtsaf
Stedendreef

Linked 2/2
4e stoplichten
T-splitsing
rechtsaf
Waddendreef
eind van Waddendreef:
Alnovum
PJ Oudweg 5

The second SMS-based travel directions service is smsrouting.com, a service provided by Marketing Map as a B2B and end user application. Unfortunately, the demo does not work properly yet, but there is an animation, showing driving instructions from one location in Antwerp, Belgium, to another:
SMS 1
R.MOLSSTR(0.11)
=DURLETSTR(0.25)
<LANGE LOZANASTR(0.27)
=ANSELMOSTR(0.44)
=KASTEELPLEINSTR(0.02)
>BRITSE LEI(0.54)
=FRANKRIJKLEI(1.03)

SMS 2
=ITALIËLEI(0.55)
<PAARDENMKT(0.5)

These two examples almost seem to beg for a comparison. Let me keep that for later. Have a look at the Comet Web site. Once you have selected a single store, it gives you general driving instructions, but also allows you to dynamically generate user-specific driving instructions!

Wednesday, January 02, 2002

Happy New Year to you! I am home again after celebrating New Year's Eve in Venice! Had a few great days: it was my first time in Italy. My Italian is very limited, but the place is soooo touristy that English got us a long way. It's a very interesting place and definitely worth another visit. Saw lots of culture, food and food. Definitely gonna start a new regime... tomorrow. Let's see what the new year will hold.