february 2006 archives

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Google Maps app in the Low Countries

Usually, I talk about maps and politics only after an election. However, as the Dutch PvdA party in the city of Leiden is actually using maps to get people involved in local politics in the weeks before the municipal elections on March 7, my habit's changed. Indeed, using the Google Maps API, the party has put Leiden on the map.

To be exact, issues from the party policy have been mapped onto the various parts of the city. In this way, you can easily find out what is the party planning to achieve in your neighbourhood. You can search by postcode, neighbourhood, policy issue, but you can also find out where the candidates live or simply browse around the map.

This is really one of the first public-facing Google Maps apps in the Netherlands. Only the area around Torino has got street-level mapping. Satellite imagery is rather patchy. Luckily, Leiden is one of the sites covered by high-resolution imagery. Another high-resolution site is the area around Amsterdam's main railway station. Instead of the default Google pins, Leiden op de kaart features a different icon for each policy issue. Furthermore, the default zoom widget is replaced with a horizontal steps widget, restricting users to just four zoom levels: more than enough to view the city of Leiden in full. For panning, users can simply drag the map and the default compass for panning is extended to allow diagonal panning. All in all, the navigation widgets were fully customised to blend in with the overall design of the website. Also, the map was augmented with the names of the various neighbourhoods and with the boundaries. Well done!

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Happy mapping anniversaries

Only a few days ago, MapQuest.com celebrated its tenth anniversary Since February 5 1996, users have requested over 16 billion maps and more than 10 billion routes. Although, the note ends with We're looking forward to a new decade of helping you find places!, I am not the only one have doubts about their future. As Google is to search, MapQuest has been to mapping and driving directions (emphasis mine), for it is exactly a year ago since Google Maps was announced!

It's taken them less than a year to start mapping continental Europe. As of the end of last week, Google Local offers now street maps for Torino, Italy in preparation for the Winter Olympics! And we'd better start to take Google Local seriously, if we identify estate agent websites as early adopters of online mapping. Property portals Prime Move and OnOneMap are already using Google Maps instead of an established online mapping provider to show properties on a map.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Estate agents drive online mapping

If there's one business that makes money from location, it's estate agencies. No wonder they offer the best in online mapping to draw home buyers to their websites. Always taking advantage of the latest and greatest is for example Foxtons. Once you get to a property's full details page, the East Enders-inspired button (that little snake's the Thames, I presume) gives you an aerial view of the neighbourhood. Moving your mouse over the image, you get a transparant map for better orientation.

Another good example is the property map search page on PropertyFinder. The map is nicely toned down as not to distract from the property icons, but is still bright enough to serve as an orientation aid. The key to the left of the map even explains the meaning of each icon. It's the sliders below the map to fine tune the selection that caught my attention here. Instead of goign back and forth between the selection page and the results page, these sliders allow you to adjust your criteria on-the-fly. The sliders even gracefully degrade to simple pulldown menus if your browser does not support JavaScript and/or CSS. Well done!

The latest move in attracting Dutch home buyers was made by Funda. Already one of the most successfull property portals on the Dutch market, the addition of horizontal pictures taken at street-level sourced from Cyclomedia has certainly put the website in top position! Really, by comparison A9 Maps' BlockView images are not even half as compelling.

It will soon provide 15 million photographs growing it to 21 million images by year-end. Full-circle pictures taken at 20 meter intervals in metropolitan areas and every 50 meters in rural areas will show the entire country at street level

Okay, to be fair, the Netherlands is just a small country of course so it is easy to cover it all instead of only a few major cities. Nevertheless, it's a great feature to scout properties without leaving the safety of your own house and throwing yourself into the arms of an estate agent...

From the horizontal back to the vertical (I'm talking imagery here, not what you do with the estate agent that is), some people see new business in all the attention for aerial and satellite imagery, according to Wired News. Companies such as RoofShout and RoofAds are exploiting roof tops as new ad space to be picked up by aerial mapping sites! That's putting the reclamation projects in the United Arab Emirates in a whole new light. 1060 Water Homes in the Sea Village will be built on stilts off the coast of Dubai. When viewed from above, these homes will spell out a verse from an Arabic poem:

Take wisdom from the wise
It takes a man of vision to write on water
Not everyone who rides a horse is a jockey
Great men rise to greater challenges

Is there already an H-shaped hospital or a P-shaped parking lot? Now that would make cartographers happy: no need to add lettering to the map anymore.