OpenTripPlanner Team Navigates Away from OpenPlans
Update I didn’t know today was going to be blog about Transit App for iOS 6 day but AllThingsD has some more info on the situation.
One Kickstarter project I backed was Transit App for iOS 6 from the OpenPlans team.
Basically Apple punted Transit directions for reasons I can’t understand. Getting transit feeds for a company like Apple wouldn’t be hard at all. But that’s all water under the bridge I guess. When using Apple’s Maps application and you want transit directions, you get the following screen:
Apple Transit Options
Basically if I click the route button on those top two apps and you get transit navigation. It’s an extra step nobody wants, but at least it works. OpenTripPlanner was supposed to be an option for iOS users wanting transit. But then something happened:
Despite the successes so far, we’re stopping work on Joyride, and refunding you. Here’s why: the trip planning in Joyride depends on up to date, accurate transit data, which we assemble from open data feeds provided by hundreds of individual transit operators. In the new year, the OpenTripPlanner team is spinning out from OpenPlans. With their departure, we won’t have the capacity here to keep the app up to date, and we’re not prepared to launch without being certain we can offer a viable ongoing service that people can depend on for their daily travel needs.
Not sure what happened, the code is available on Github so I guess that’s something. OpenPlans suggests The Transit App but it proves that open data feeds aren’t a cure all (screw you ValleyMetro).
OpenTransit es no Bueno
The One Where Di-Ann Says Crowdsourcing Makes the World More Efficient
This week we had a great guest in Di-Ann Eisnor of Waze who was kind enough to join us right off stage from her talk at APPNATION. It was a great conversation about why Waze did what they did, how they’ve evolved, how crowdsourcing is improving their map, and how they see advertisers as the way to make their map better for their users (very interesting). Di-Ann was on WiFi at Moscone Center so the connection wasn’t great, but it is worth watching (it did clear up a bit later in the show).
You can watch the video anytime on the WeoGeo Video page (as well as the IRC log with a lot of questions and discussions) or see an archive of all the previous shows.
The One Where Di-Ann Says Crowdsourcing Makes the World More Efficient
This week we had a great guest in Di-Ann Eisnor of Waze who was kind enough to join us right off stage from her talk at APPNATION. It was a great conversation about why Waze did what they did, how they’ve evolved, how crowdsourcing is improving their map, and how they see advertisers as the way to make their map better for their users (very interesting). Di-Ann was on WiFi at Moscone Center so the connection wasn’t great, but it is worth watching (it did clear up a bit later in the show).
You can watch the video anytime on the WeoGeo Video page (as well as the IRC log with a lot of questions and discussions) or see an archive of all the previous shows.
ogr2ogr every Shapefile
Earlier this week I was working on a map in TileMill and ran into an issue with a layer. At the time I couldn’t figure out which layer but Dane was good enough to help track it down. It ended up being an issue with the shapefile spec being vague and the Natural Earth shapefile being problematic. Mapnik and thus TileMill were not at fault, but the shapefile itself.
Shapefiles are used because they basically are the interchange file for GIS information. Others have tried with SpatiaLite and File Geodatabases, but neither has been accepted at large by the community. After spending half a day debugging my Carto for no reason, I’ve come to the conclusion that you must run ogr2ogr on every shapefile you share and every shapefile you consume.
Freaking Sweet
ogr2ogr ne_rail_fixed.shp ne_10m_railroads.shpAssume every Shapefile is corrupt and your life will be much easier. I’m going to move to KML personally.
https://twitter.com/jamesmfee/status/277164421674057728
Or as a very wise man puts it:
@cageyjames ogr2ogr this is the opposite of photocopy degradation ;)
— Nathaniel V. KELSO (@kelsosCorner) December 7, 2012
Thanks for the Support
I’d like to thank everyone who has taken the time to donate to Planet Geospatal. I’m going to start the process of getting a CSS guru to take a look at the formatting and make it much easier (and quicker) to read.
Thank You
Thanks for the Support
I’d like to thank everyone who has taken the time to donate to Planet Geospatal. I’m going to start the process of getting a CSS guru to take a look at the formatting and make it much easier (and quicker) to read.
Thank You