news

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

BCS, SOTM, SoC, AGI and FOSS4G

It's a busy conference season for Webmapper! Check out the list below:

Looking forward to actually meeting some of you in real life!  permanent link for this entry

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Mapping EU election results

The results of the election for the European parliament that took place between 4 and 7 June have been consolidated. While most news websites simply map the results for their home country, some map the results from across Europe. No static maps or Google Maps mash-ups this time: all maps are interactive and make use of Flash.

NRC: Cartogram and choropleth in one.

The German newspapers Die Zeit and Der Spiegel, the Dutch public broadcasting corporation NOS and the Dutch newspaper NRC simply use the map as an index to the charts of the election results of the respective countries and country-specific background information. Colour only enables you to distinguish between countries that are part of the European Union and countries that are not. A typical example is the map on the Die Zeit website

Additionally, on the Der Spiegel website, the map instantly shows you the amount of representatives as a number on the map. Only after some exploration, I discovered that if you hover your mouse over any of the wedges of the pie chart, you get a choropleth map, indicating the percentage of votes for each party. The number for the total amount of representatives from each country changes into the number of representatives from the party you highlight. Unfortunately, the map lacks a legend to fully grasp the variations in grey scale.

On the NOS website, the map is a redundant feature because there is also a list of country names next to it. Clicking on a country, the map zooms in to the country's full extend. Even the pins indicate only a rough geographic location of news item in text, video, or audio about the elections.

Besides the country-specific background information and election results, the NRC has also mapped the voter turnout of 2004 in a choropleth, even with a proper map legend! Furthermore, there is even a cartogram: the size of the countries are scaled by the number of representatives! Hovering over a country, the corresponding bar in the bar chart is highlighted as well.

The maps in the French newspapers Le Figaro and Libération and the British newspaper Financial Times do not simply serve as an index to the results, but actually use the maps to show the winning party per country by colouring the countries. Only on the map on the Libération website, the legend is missing. Wheras the Financial Times only shows the overall results in a pie chart and uses tables to show the country-by-country results, the French newspapers use either a pie chart (Le Figaro) or a bar chart (Libération) to show both the overall results and the country-by-country results.

Taking all aspects into account, my top 3 of EU election results maps:

  1. NRC: both a cartogram and a choropleth map with legend
  2. Der Spiegel: various choropleth maps without a legend
  3. Le Figaro: colour-coded map with legend

And now we simply wait for the elections in the UK to happen?  permanent link for this entry

Thursday, June 04, 2009

New name, new logo, new map type

Not only did Microsoft bring Live Maps and Virtual Earth under one name: Bing Maps and Bing Maps for Enterprise respectively, also Google Maps and Google Earth recently updated their looks with a new logo! Will Bing bring some of the much needed consistency in naming Microsoft's mapping activities? Who could really tell the difference between Virtual Earth, Live Local, Live Search Maps, and MapPoint?

The new Google logos will help streamline the user experience:

Since the logos appear in many different locations and sizes on our websites, our new designs are standardized to be the same size and color wherever they appear. This should make it easier for you to recognize which site you are on and navigate to wherever you want to go.

When it comes to Google Maps and Google Earth, it is not only the logos that smoothen the transition between the two. Since May 2008, the Google Maps API and Google Earth API existed side by side. With the reinvigorated map type G_SATELLITE_3D_MAP, the transition from 2D to 3D has become seamless now, thus strengthening the overall Maps/Earth integration.

I just noticed MSN Maps & Directions and MSN Encarta World Atlas even sport pre-AJAX mapping interfaces using the click-refresh paradigm instead of slippy maps! By the way, if you are trying to access Bing Maps Netherlands, you have to be patient: you now get to an error page. Apparently, some extra work is needed to move the Dutch phone directory (Telefoongids) and business listings (Bedrijvengids) to the new Bing Maps. And what about the UK? Check out Multimap from Bing!  permanent link for this entry