april 2002 archives

Monday, April 29, 2002

Online and off-line leaders in the mapping arena have teamed up to deliver an integrated mapping experience. It's official now: Multimap.com provides businesses and end users with the high-quality maps from A-to-Z Geographers for the major cities in the UK. Have a look at the website!

InfoWorld on Web apps: “And yet some of the key services that have been introduced that are really world-changing -- that in some previous model would have been recognized as the killer apps -- they're just Web sites,” O'Reilly arched an eyebrow. “And because they have an e-commerce model like Amazon or an advertising-based model like MapQuest, people don't think of them as software products. But MapQuest is just as revolutionary a killer app as the original spreadsheet.”

One of big issues at the TeleAtlas Partner Conference was about in-car or off-board navigation? Which system will prevail? Volkswagen announced it has teamed up with OnStar to provide “Volkswagen Telematics by OnStar”. The service will offer future Volkswagen customers a variety of safety, security and convenience features, which could include automatic notification of air-bag deployment, remote door lock/unlock, stolen vehicle tracking, route guidance and concierge services. In addition, Volkswagen owners will be able to make hands-free cellular phone calls via OnStar Personal Calling and retrieve personalized Internet-based information such as news and traffic reports and e-mail through OnStar Virtual Advisor.

Tuesday, April 23, 2002

Almost off to Bruges, Belgium. That's for the annual TeleAtlas Partner Conference. Unfortunately not as exciting as Marakech, but, hey, the beer will be much better. There are going to be some interesting discussion forums about in-car navigation, or - to use the latest buzz word - Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and telematics and off-board navigation. Really looking forward to meeting other people there who address the same challenges.

Monday, April 22, 2002

This month's edition of the “WirelessDevNet Monthly LBSWire” newsletter features an article about US Patent 6343317. It describes an “Internet system for connecting client-travelers with geographically-associated data”, i.e. a system to send users location-specific information, for example derived from business directories, based on their location as determined by GPS. Apparently, this patent has been granted already in 1999! Hmmm, interesting to see how they will ever enforce this patent...

Talking of business directories, Streetmap have come up with an extended reciprocal linking service as provided by most online map providers: BusinessWebPages. Businesses can create simple webpages using an online wizzard. Clients can pick from different designs and layouts, and edit the contents of website yourself. As if this is not enough, the deal comes with free hosting, full support, and a free domain name. Best thing is (although I haven't seen this feature yet...), the client's business is promoted on Streetmap as well. This is an Interesting service, I think.

Friday, April 19, 2002

A recent thread of the Avenza mailing list gives an interesting insight into the interests of cartographers apart from maps. The thread discusses which in magazines have cartographers found inspiring maps? The discussion was kicked off by the nomination of Bon Appetit for its watercolour-style maps. Another entry is Harper's Magazine, who feature a back map page. The watercolour-style map seems to be a recurring favorite, as this style is also used for the maps in Outside Magazine, The New Yorker, and Sunset Magazine. Of course, the various geography-oriented magazines couldn't be missed out: the Canadian Geographic and National Geographic, and the Natural History Magazine. Funny thing is, only the Sunset, National Geographic and Canadian Geographic really show maps online. OK, to be fair, let me put it this way: these three magazines feature the maps more prominently on their websites then the others.

My favorites are the maps featured in the magazines published by the Netherlands Automobile Association (ANWB), such as the Op Pad magazine for which Peter de Vries makes most of the maps. Other cartographic suppliers to the ANWB are of course CartoStudio en Cartographics. Yes, I must admit: again, it's the watercolour-style maps.

More of my favorite maps are featured in national the newspapers Volkskrant en Trouw. Whereas the maps in the former newspaper are in the watercolour-style again, the maps in the latter newspaper are very functional and almost sober. I worked at Trouw for a while as a cartographic editor, so I am maybe a bit biased... They taught me a lot about communicating geographic information to a large audience with little cartographic knowledge and about playing with the limitations of offset press and black and white. Hopefully one day I'll be able to apply this very knowledge again in creating SVG maps for mobile devices?

Thursday, April 18, 2002

Alright, some mapping news again: the American Association for the Advancement of Science has published an article describing the algorithms that model why it's that difficult to fold a paper route map into it's unfolded state! Well, of course the actual research that is published in “Nature” has a wider application, but it might give some of us a bit of consolation...

The Ordnance Survey have finally developed the online version of their “Superplan” product. For years, the general public, project developers, and surveyers could approach Superplan Agents, larger book stores across the country, to have site-centred, highly detailed and accurate plotted of the any location in the UK. On April 11, 2002, the national mapping agency launched a service allowing users to view its maps online - and then buy personalised maps centred anywhere in the UK. At the moment, this service covers the 1:50 000 scale series only, but this will be extended to include the 1: 25 000 scales series soon.

And as if it wasn't enough: there are quite a few GML/SVG events coming up. First of all, there was the “Hands-on 1 day GML Course” in Toronto. The next one is the “GML Developers' Conference 2002” in Vancouver: from Monday July 22 to Friday July 26. Hey, and don't forget “SVG Open / Carto.net Developers Conference” in Zurich, July 15-17, 2002!

Wednesday, April 17, 2002

Weather here still alright! Really spring here. Had a great weekend: saw the show of “STOMP” in Sadler's Wells. Was very nice. Went for drinks first in Islington and after the show we went down to Clapham North to the Pentagon. On Sunday, breakfast/lunch at the “Great Burger Kitchen” which allegedly sells the best hamburgers in town.

This week is quite interesting: finally programming again! And Coen must be very surprised: I am doing some spatial programming. Some years ago, the two of us took a course in spatial programming at uni and it was really depressing. However, after all these years, it's very good to be back on the case: inclusion, intersection and cookie-cutting: all in PERL.

Today, I went for lunch with Christoph! We met last year in Mexico in the bus to San Cristobal de las Casas. He's working in the City at the moment, so I took the tube to Bank and we went to a nice pub around the corner from where he's working. Was very nice to see him again. He's off to Australia soon for a few weeks holiday, but we have agreed to meet up soon after to catch up again. It's very nice to make some more friends in London now.

Tuesday, April 09, 2002

Been a week now again. Sorry for neglecting you out there. With the beautiful weather outside, it is too much of a shame to sit indoors and writing up a blog... It's been really lovely weather recently here in London. On Wednesday night I went out for a drink with one of my flatmates, Rachel. Theresa joined us later on. This was really what I had always imagined what life in spring/summer would be like once you work: enjoying the nice weather somewhere outside a nice cafe after work. Most of the time, it has been going for a “swift half” in a smokey pub. But this time we went to a nice French bar on Battersea Rise! Am I really turning into a “Young Urban Professional”? Before you know it, I become a DINKy?

Picking up my thesis for ITC, I finished reading “Rebel Code”. Hopefully this will help me to start giving my thesis the twist I would like to give it: GML, XSLT, and SVG... I know: too many acronyms for the uninitiated. If you have been watching this blog for a while longer, you might know that Geographic Markup Language is a new way of structuring and exchanging geographic data. Scalable Vector Graphics is a new technology to render graphics on the Internet. XSLT is the technology to convert GML into SVG. I am almost convinced, that this will be the next big thing in cartography! That's why I would like to apply it in my thesis.

A very interesting book I have just started reading is “Sams Teach Yourself Svg in 24 Hours”. This is a great introduction to SVG. The hard bit, XSLT is going to be the next thing! Oooops.