June 16, 2005
Google Maps modifies API: map sites drop like flies
Yesterday, the Google Maps team made changes to the API, upgrading to version 7, and sites like mygmaps.com, housingmaps.com, National Weathter Service Storm Tracker, along with many others who host their own maps based on the mygmaps script went down until directing scripts to the old APIs. In my case, it was maps.keyhole.6.js.
What was interesting was the speed with which folks helped others get their code bugs ironed out, and the cooperation that took place in the Google Map hacks community present on the Google-Maps Google group. The folks there getting people on board with working with the javascript, understanding the API and the different changes in each version, as well as regular XML 101 being taught is pretty impressive.
A lot of grass roots and communtiy mapping is getting it's legs with Google Map hacks through the rendering of demographic data like crime stats, sex offender data, land use and now even transit data.
I imagine an interesting byproduct of this Google Maps mania must be that a lot of folks are examining local maps closely, and submitting corrections to Navteq to correct vector data at a prolific rate.
Pretty ingenius way to get users to improve the qualtiy of their data set. I just hope the Google Maps API remains open to being hacked. It would be a shame if once they improved their vector data sets, they shut the door on free API access.
Posted by cystdog at 08:31 AM | TrackBack
June 13, 2005
A few GIS/Map related RSS feeds
Here are a few GIS/Cartography/Google Maps RSS feeds you might find useful.
The Map Room: A Weblog About Maps
Posted by cystdog at 05:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 08, 2005
A Linux MapServer bundled distro based on CorelLinux
HostGIS Linux 2.3 - a Linux/GNU distribution specifically made for handling GIS information
Caught news of HostGIS on Mapping Hacks and plan on checking this out using VMWare. It's based on CoreLinux, PostGIS-enabled Postgres database, and is benchmarked on a Pentium 2.
From Host GIS:
HostGIS Linux is a Linux/GNU distribution specifically made for handling GIS information. HostGIS Linux saves hours or days of installing MapServer and its components, and will have you serving GIS maps in minutes. It includes:
Being a Linux, HostGIS Linux is of course completely open source and may be downloaded free of charge.
- All the usual amenities of a Linux distribution: compilers, Perl, etc.
- Apache webserver, with PHP
- MapServer, and MapScript for PHP, Perl, and Python
- PDFlib, with support built in to PHP, Perl, Python, and MapServer
- PostGIS-enabled Postgres database server
- MapServer Web Client (MWC) to display great interactive maps without designing any HTML or JavaScript
- Example apps already installed demonstrating WMS layers, PostGIS layers, and PHP/MapScript
Download and documentation links:
The current manual and technical details
The current example docs and manual, downloadable
A list of what was changed in each version
version 2.3, Feb 2005
version 1.0, Aug 2004
For other assistance, FAQs, and announcements, visit the Forum.
Posted by cystdog at 10:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 28, 2005
~GISUser: Mapping Birds with the USFWS and USGS
GISuser.com - GIS & mapping news, jobs, software, data, education, and forums
Mapping Birds - NBII Bird Conservation
Friday, 21 January 2005
Interactive map from the NBII Bird Conservation Node features Bird Surveys, Conservation Units (Regions), Physical and Vegetation data, and political units. This site is made available through partnership between the US Fish and Wildlife Service and USGS's National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII).
This application was developed to facilitate informed querying of certain bird monitoring databases accessible through the NBII Bird Conservation Node as well as to display the results of geospatial queries of these databases that are of general public interest. The capabilities of this site are intended to be of use to professional wildlife biologists and conservation planners as well as to the general public.
This application enables the user to interactively view various elements of select bird population survey designs (e.g., strata boundaries, transects, segments, routes, zones). The user can display these design elements over a backdrop of political boundaries, NABCI Bird Conservation Regions, landcover, hydrology, and/or elevation.
Using these views, the user should be better able to define efficient queries of the bird population databases and retrieve data relevant to their interests. Additionally, certain queries of the population and geospatial databases that are of general interest to the public are also enabled by this application.
Examples of query output that can be generated using this application include: a) maps of estimated population abundance within survey units, b) maps of percent change in estimated population abundance within survey units between user selected years, c) maps of active survey routes, and d) maps of species relative abundance. More information on individual databases may be found by selecting that particular database through the "Retrieve Bird Data" button in the application.
Posted by cystdog at 10:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
