february 2007 archives

Thursday, February 22, 2007

NMAs and online mapping

National Mapping Agencies (NMAs) are currently investigating various approaches regarding the uptake of free online mapping services. For example, PSMA Australia simply joined the bandwagon and has assumed the role as the primary source of mapping data for Google Maps Australia, instead of Navteq or TeleAtlas.

The British Ordnance Survey has gone through different stages. First, the OS interactive mapping application was powered by Multimap, until the launch of the Get-a-map service in 1999. At the UK Geospatial Mash-Up 2006, the OS unveiled their next step in online mapping. They announced their own mapping API, called OpenSpace to take on Google Maps. Thus, the OS aims to expose geographic data to a wider community and to allow the development of new ideas. Developers will be able to create highly interactive mapping applications using OS raster maps down to 1:25,000. Furthermore, address geocoding will be use the OS gazetteer derived from their 1:50,000 map series. OpenSpace is said to be released in the near future subject to legal and licensing concerns.

Whereas GoolZool is a third-party mash-up of Google Maps and cadastral mapping from the Spanish Dirección General del Catastro, the Dutch Land Registry Office commissioned the website Vind je eigen huis (still in beta), serving their own raster mapping as a custom map type in the Google Maps API. Through the new website, the general public will be able to access and buy information about the legal ownership and the price paid/value of a property (title register) and about its actual location and parcel boundaries (title plan).

Will the launch of this website herald a new round of map hacking in order to obtain topographic maps of the Netherlands? Now there's a challenge for you...

Monday, February 19, 2007

Books about mapping APIs

With Yahoo's four mapping APIs, ranging from fetching a simple image to creating a full-featured mapping RIA, I bet this new book, Yahoo! Maps Mashups, might come in handy!

It was about time, especially as the Google Maps API is covered in quite a few books already. The Google Maps Hacks publication by O'Reilly was quick to seize the opportunity. However, it became outdated just as quickly, as the Google Maps API matured to version 2. Fortunately, there is the Beginning Google Maps Applications with PHP and Ajax covering the new Google Maps API. Also, there is the Hacking Google Maps and Google Earth book published by Wiley in their ExtremeTech series.

Microsoft's MapPoint is covered in O'Reilly's Programming MapPoint in .NET and also goes into Virtual Earth. Anymore titles you can think of? Just in case you are looking for someone to author a book about your mapping API, don't look further...

Friday, February 16, 2007

Local warming

As of Monday, visitors to the Dutch classifieds website Marktplaats can browse the listings by location using the new mapping functionality. Already for some time, the website allowed users to provide their postcode and a distance to narrow their search geographically.

Visitors can browse the search results in their neighbourhood, or all across the country using the stepped scales zooming widget with descriptive labels. Furthermore, arrows around the map provide a familiar interface to pan around. Visitors can also drag and drop the map Google-style. Hovering the mouse over the icon, a small pop-up appears with an optional photo of the item, a short title and the price.

Have you noticed it as well? This is already the third posting this year, that discusses a Dutch online mapping application! It's a very convenient truth: even the Dutch are warming to the idea that location matters these days. Having worked for a London-based online mapping supplier, I found it odd that the Dutch did not really seem to care much for maps when I returned to the Netherlands a few years ago. But nowadays, I'd say things have certainly changed for the better!