october 2006 archives

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Collaborative navigation

On Friday, TomTom announced that next year it will launch a new travel time information system for its Dutch users: TomTom Mobility Solutions. Using Vodafone's GPRS network, TomTom users will receive Travel Time Information based on the speed and direction of cars traveling throughout the road network of the Netherlands that is derived from anonymous, raw GSM signaling data supplied by Vodafone Netherlands.

The MIT project Mobile Landscape Graz in Real Time attractively explains the technology behind TomTom's new solution. The project creates a picture of the volume and geographic location of mobile phone usage in Graz, Austria. TomTom matches consecutive geographic locations similarly collected to a possible paths along the road network geometry to infer the speed and direction of the car. Whereas traditional, road side equipment such as cameras and induction loops covers just the motorway network, this solution covers may cover all roads.

The announcement did not come from nowhere. TomTom Mobility Soltions builds on the example of the Traffic information portal of the Dutch province Noord-Brabant. Not surprisingly, Vodafone is one of the partners in this project. The portal was developed by LogicaCMG using its innovative service package for traffic information called Mobile Traffic Services. Ben Rutten, Sales and Marketing Manager at LogicaCMG and responsible for Mobile Traffic Services, is now Product Manager Mobility Solutions at TomTom. Furthermore, TomTom acquired Edinburgh-based Applied Generics Ltd. The company provides high quality real-time road traffic information by anonymously monitoring all of the active subscribers in a mobile network and was also partner in the Noord-Brabant project.

TomTom Mobility Solutions is not quite peer-to-peer yet. The data mining of bulk real-time signalling data retrieved from the mobile telephone network still takes place at one location and is subsequently broadcast to TomTom users. It this sense, it is as much collaborative navigation as OpenStreetMap is collaborative mapping. However, how long do we have to wait until all nodes (i.e. all TomTom users) in the network will together compute the traffic information based on data from surrounding cars and redistribute this information back to their peers? Thus, computation and storage of traffic information will become evenly distributed across the nodes in the network. So much for SETI: now open up your TomTom and go crunch all that mobile phone data and be the first to get the latest traffic information!

Thursday, October 12, 2006

South of the border: election results

The Belgian municipal elections took place last Sunday. It's about time we had a look at the election result maps: a Flash-based map in the Flemish newspaper De Standaard and a Google Maps mashup in the Wallonian newspaper La Libre Belgique.

The Flash-based map produced by Zonky features on various Flemish newspaper websites, although there's a version for Wallonia available on the Zonky website as well. The map in De Standaard shows the winning party for each municipality in Flanders. Notice the little islands of Baarle-Hertog (a Flemish exclave in the Netherlands: a geographic remnant of the independence of Belgium from the Netherlands since 1830) and Voeren.

Users may supply either the name of a municipality or click on the map to zoom in and obtain the election results for that particular municipality. Hovering the mouse over the map, the name of the municipality appears in the tooltip for users to identify the coloured areas. Panning buttons around the map allow users to move the map view. The button Toon trend 2000-2006 briefly changes the map to show the winning party for each municipality based on the election results of 2000 and then returns to the map of 2006. The bar charts below the map show the percentage of votes for each of the parties in 2000 and 2006 as well. Clicking on the party names in the bar charts, the map smoothly transforms to a choropleth map to show the percentage of votes for that particular party in each municipality. All in all, the Flash-based map has all the features and functions we have come to expect from election result maps. Unfortunately, the map does not show the percentage of change between 2000 and 2006. The version for Wallonia also includes the Brussels-Capital Region and works exactly as the version for Flanders.

Users require a bit of patience opening the Google Maps mashup, as the underlying election results are loaded. Once loaded, users find a zooming widget and a map layer widget to change between road map, aerial map, and hybrid map above the map view. Users can also enter the name of a municipality to quickly change the map view to center on that municipality. The default map view shows icons for 6 major cities in Wallonia. The colour of the icons represents the winning party. Clicking on the icons opens an information window with bar charts showing the percentage of votes for each party in 2000 and 2006. Below the map appears a table with the same information and the number of preference votes for each party member.

Whereas the default map view centers on Wallonia, the election results for Flemish municipalities can be accessed as well by zooming in further and moving the map view to Flanders. The cartographic visualisation of the road map is very distracting from the icons, that actually are the primary information elements and thus should also be visually emphasised. Users had better change to the less distracting aerial imagery as a background for the icons. It would be interesting to test displaying polygons for each municipality on the map. Or how about inserting a custom raster-based map layer?

Sunday, October 08, 2006

MapScript: my Open Source experience

Developing an online geographic marketing tool based on UMN MapServer, PostGIS and PHP/MapScript, I only recently experienced the real benefit of using an Open Source development environment. Although I have been writing PERL code since 2000, have read Rebel Code and Cathedral and the Bazaar and nowadays do most development on my own LAMP server, the advantage of Open Source became clear when I came across a small bug in PHP/MapScript.

Shortly after posting to the MapServer-Users mailing list, Steve Lime replied and informed me that he had submitted a bug fix to the CVS. Since I use the FGS Linux Installer to install MapServer with PHP/MapScript and all of their dependencies on my development server, I kindly asked the people at Mapgears to build me a new FGS module for MapServer base and PHP/MapScript based on the latest code that included Steve's bug fix. Really, the next day I received an email with details explaining me how to download the new FGS modules from the Mapgears website.

Having installed the new FGS modules on my development server, PHP/MapScript now actually works as expected. I am happy. My client is happy. Thank you very much Steve and Guillaume!

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Google Maps going Dutch

Every other posting on webmapper seems to be about Google Maps these days. To me, it's only a sign of the times, though. So, what's up this time? Today, the beta version of Google Maps Nederland and Google Maps Mobile for the Netherlands were unveiled. Already in April, Google launched local versions for France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The local version comes with full address geocoding, driving directions and a business directory. However, Google seems to have difficulty distinguishing between Rijnhuizenlaan, Utrecht and Rijnhuizenstraat, Nieuwegein. Furthermore, why does the map show the centre of Amsterdam?

Content partners for Google are among others 9292ov.nl for public transport information, Iens.nl for independent restaurant reviews and the Chamber of Commerce for the business directory. Whereas Google Maps did not seem to pose too much of a threat at first, Dutch directories such as the Gouden Gids (my local search) and iLocal now really should start getting nervous, not to mention mapping suppliers such as Routenet and Falk. Well, should they really?

Sunday, October 01, 2006

AJAX-based mapping: business class

On Wednesday, Multimap.com announced the addition of an AJAX-based mapping API to their range of B2B services, allowing customers to embed draggable maps into their websites. Basically, this service is a productisation of a custom-implementation that Multimap built last year for the Yell.com website. Now, the API is well-documented and comes with full customer support from implementation through to on-going maintenance. It is also compatible with Multimap's existing services, such as its Travel Directions and Storefinder services. I bet the next step is to see draggable maps on Multimap's consumer website.

Both Maporama and Viamichelin already do offer draggable maps on their websites. Whereas most AJAX-based mapping interfaces reserve dragging the mouse across the map for the panning function, these French mapping websites give visitors the option to change the behaviour of the mouse. By dragging the mouse across the maps, visitors can either pan around the map or draw a rectangle to define an area to zoom in to. The default option for both websites is the panning function. Another pecularity is Maporama's approach not to use tile-based maps that seems to be a common characteristic of AJAX-based mapping interfaces, because it makes for a smooth navigation experience. But it's not only the French. Also MapQuest has just added draggable maps to its public website, building on its OpenAPI service that allows you to use JavaScript to easily integrate routing, geocoding and mapping into your website.

Also Map24 now offers an AJAX-based mapping API. Developers can add either static or interactive (using a JAVA-applet) maps to a website. Just like Maporama, Map24's static maps are not tile-based either. The interactive option feels very much like the Flash-based Yahoo! maps website. By the way, Map24 has also added Hybrid and Satellite map types to its UK portal!