april 2007 archives

Sunday, April 29, 2007

French Presidentials: round one

The first round of the French presidential elections a week ago were the theme for quite a few electoral maps. While some newspapers used Google Maps API to show the elections results after the Belgian and Dutch elections, Google took the initiative themselves this time and published the elections results for each department as a KMZ file to view in Google Earth.

The Le Nouvel Observateur and Le Monde websites both have a Flash-based interactive application giving insight into the election results. Whereas the interactive map on the Le Nouvel Observateur website (created by AFP) goes as far as showing the results per department, Le Monde allows visitors to see the results not only for each department, but also for each circonscription. The map shows the winning candidate for each circonscription, each colour representing a particular candidate. On the Le Monde website, this colour is then used to see the percentage of votes for each candidate per circonscription, maintaining the same class boundaries to be able to compare the percentages between candidates. Clicking on each department, visitors are shown a small inset map to drill down to the individual circonscription. It's a nice mix of maps, graphs, and statistics.

The La France Electorale website shows the election results per department, using multiple, static maps. Unfortunately, the colour coding for each candidate is not maintained across the various maps. While the votes for Bayrou are shown in orange on the map showing the winning candidate, a scale of light blue colours is used on the individual map. The website provides two sets of maps to visualise the percentage of votes for each candidate per department. The first set employs different class boundaries to emphasise the distribution of votes for each particular candidate across the departments. The second set employs fixed class boundaries to facilitate the comparison of the distribution of votes across the various candidates.

While Flash-based applications are all over the French journal and newspaper websites, the Le Monde website has put an exceptional effort in making the results comparable. Furthermore, Google's initiative to publish the results ready for Google Earth and Google Maps is certainly another significant event after these elections. The second round is on May 6, so watch this space.

Friday, April 27, 2007

Multimap make over

At the end of last week, the new Multimap.com public website was launched featuring their latest AJAX-based mapping API. First introduced on the Yell.com website in December 2005, a productised version wasn't released until late September 2006. Although version 1.2 has been available since February this year, the soft launch of the Multimap.com public website last week coincided with Location Intelligence Conference in San Francisco, where Multimap officially unveiled the latest version of its mapping API.

So, finally the visitors of the Multimap.com website can enjoy the improved user experience of the draggable maps and fast loading map tiles which most people have come to expect from online mapping ever since Google Maps was launched. Drilling down, users can obtain local content such as cash points, petrol stations and wifi hotspots. Clicking on the icons on the map, users can get travel directions to and from that particular point of interest or store it in the favorites stored in a browser cookie. On the tab hotels & travel you can book a hotel room through various Multimap.com partners.

A feature that makes Multimap.com stand out from other mapping websites is their use of raster maps to compliment the vector maps supplied by TeleAtlas and AND. For the global coverage, Collins Bartholomew provide the maps. At the larger scales, Geoscience Australia and the British Ordnance Survey are the mapping suppliers for Australia and Great Britain respectively. Actually, the OS maps are currently not live, they will be back soon. The process of preparing the OS maps for the new web site had to wait until an agreement was reached with Ordnance Survey on terms and pricing for use of their maps... Why all the hassle? Are people in the UK so much attached to the OS maps that they cannot be dropped altogether in favour of TeleAtlas maps? Or do the raster maps emphasise that Multimap.com is a solid business partner for online mapping? Doesn't the blue colour on the new website sufficiently bring across the corporate look and feel? Anyway, congratulations on the new website, guys!

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

From PND to web and vice versa

While Dash Navigation is currently running a public test of its Internet-connected automotive navigation system Dash Express, Google Maps has just launched 2.5D mapping, a visualisation typically found in navigation systems. These trends certainly overtake previous attempts such as the ViaMichelin navigation solutions.

The Dash Express delivers the latest traffic information, points of interest, and individual entries from your personal address book to the navigation system in your car over the Internet. Assuming the Internet connection with the navigation system is actually using a phone, I reckon Dash Express must have a pretty good deal with them to cover the costs of delivering the data. Imagine a freely accessible wireless network along the road network in the future: you just bypass the telcos altogether!

The 2.5D mapping introduced by Google Maps is a very clever and clear answer to the bird's eye view featured in Microsoft's Live Local. Also, many users of automotive navigation systems are familiar with this visualisation. However, Microsoft has upped the game as well: you can now download Virtual Earth 3D (Beta). This ActiveX control for Internet Explorer shows 3D buildings and landmarks in many popular cities and areas in the US. So, who is taking which next step?