Spatially Adjusted

Tag: google maps

  • About Google Maps hackers just don’t get it – “It’s all moot”

    From the comments about Google Maps Hackers:

    It’s all moot. Hardly anyone, including the GIS professionals, attaches metadata anyways. Even when you do, nobody else knows what do with it.

    Actually ESRI does include metadata with their ArcWeb Services datasets. Take a look at the U.S Street Map Service metadata page. This information is available for every ArcMap service. But it isn’t just ESRI. Geodata.gov has extensive metadata as well as other providers of data (when you get satellite imagery from DigitalGlobe, they give it to you).

    Before the API was released, it really wasn’t a big deal to know how up to date the information is on these web mapping services, but now that they have opened up the API, publishers need to know how relevant the information is before investing time in Google Maps. Do the hackers care? Maybe not, but if they expect professionals to ever develop using the Google Maps API, this will have to change. ESRI’s ArcWeb does offer this and I suspect when AWS 2005 is released will reap the benefits of having their metadata available for every data layer they offer.

  • Google Maps hackers just don’t get it

    [on my high horse]
    I wrote up a long rant about how ignorant these Google Maps hackers were to think that one should obfuscate history on old imagery, but I decided to delete that post because I don’t think they can handle it. [/on my high horse]

    Look, stick to making great hacks and leave the back end GIS source to professionals. There isn’t anything wrong with the images that MSN Virtual Earth uses. Sure they are old, but a great GIS database includes time and historic aerial/satellite imagery is wonderful to see changes in places. If there isn’t a better reason to keep investing in GIS professionals that post on Google Maps Mania, I can’t think of one.

    Rather than tune out Jack Dangermond at Where 2.0, you guys need to listen to what he is saying about this stuff because you might learn a thing or two about GIS. The power of products such as Google Maps is in more than just an easy to use API. It’s the data behind the server and without GIS professionals, you’ll end up with what happened at MSN Virtual Earth on launch (no metadata available to tell users the data was old) and Google Maps hackers (wanting to reduce the accuracy of datasets).

    Update – Let me just add that Google Maps doesn’t have metadata attached to their imagery either. The copyright says 2005, but that doesn’t mean that the images date from 2005. At least were I live they date from about late 2002/early 2003. Google too should let users know how old the imagery is.

  • Zoom “rubber band” for Google Maps API

    Link – Implementing a selection box for Google Maps – via PubSub

    An enterprising Google Map “hacker” has created some code that will allow you to zoom in via drawing a window on the screen. To zoom into an area, click the ‘z’ button and move your mouse to select an area, then release ‘z’. It works pretty well and I suspect we’ll see many Google Maps “mashups” to use this. The Google Maps API continues to impress me on how easy people are able to take advantage of it.

  • Google Maps Goes Hybrid

    Just noticed that there is now a new option at Google Maps. In addition to “Map” and “Satellite” there is a new “Hybrid” version which I think works pretty well. You get road names, streets and landmarks right over the top of the satellite image. I didn’t spend too much time looking at how well the roads line up with the satellite images, but they look pretty good from what I saw.

    GoogleHybrid

  • Google Maps and the Transpacific Yacht Race

    Link – Transpac 2005 Tracks via Google Maps Mania

    The Transpac race from Long Beach to Honolulu is run every two years, alternating with the Pacific Cup. 2005’s race, the 43rd, got started on July 11th. Position reports from each boat are collected by radio at 9am PDT, are posted on the web by about 1:30pm PDT, and show up here some time after that.

    How cool would it be if someone took this data and created a ArcWeb Services application that had even more data in it such as weather? Heck ESRI should just do it as an example and post the code. A very nice mashup indeed.

    TransPac2005

  • Dave Bouwman Has Thoughts About How Google Will Make Money With Google Maps

    Link – Google Maps Future? Prognostication starts now! (dead link)

    Some interesting thoughts Dave. I’m sure those ads will be in there and the big question isn’t if consumers will care about them, its how will the developers feel about them. If you have to pay for using Google Maps without ads, many of them might be more inclined to take a look a more robust ArcWeb Services solution. Then again, if you can make money off of Google AdWords in your maps that might open up a whole new marketplace.

  • The gMap Workout Tracker

    Link: Visualize Your Exercise Routes with Google Maps.

    Our implementation loads the XML file (GPS coordinates) and draws a polyline between each point on a small delay to give the animated effect and route taken. We thought it would be cool to spice it up and added some other calculations like total time, total distance, pace, markers at different colored intervals, a loading bar, and stats.

    Quite a big jump from the Gmap Pedometer. I’m just amazed at how quickly programmers have jumped on the Google Maps API. This implementation of the GMap API allows you to import your routes from the GPS unit, but I think that it has hit the wall as far as the API can go. Elevation is very important in these kinds of applications and at least for the time being, GMap API won’t be able to do this. Sportsim still runs circles around gMap Workout tracker, but given how quickly the have caught up it could only be a matter of time before we see a similar program using Google Maps especially since Google has all that terrain data in Google Earth.

  • Sanction your mashups with Google Maps API

    Link: Sanction your mashups with Google Maps API (dead link).

    A few days ago a visitor posted (dead link) a link to a news story about a patent infringement case involving a successful real estate agent making use of a computer mapping system without acquiring a license for it first. The mapping system wasn’t the same as Google Maps but does hold a patent and royalties are owed for those who profit from it. In the story it states that “an average residential real estate agent may owe royalties of as much as $50,000 before the company’s patent expires in 2008.” The case raises some important questions when considering the possible actions that could be taken for those not making use of a sanctioned API (such as the Google Maps API), thereby licensing the application or mashup you are creating.

    A good lesson to anyone thinking about using the Google Maps API in their applications. As the dust begins to settle on the Google Maps API, people are beginning to think about the implications of a “free” API. As I’ve said before, they’ll eventually either want to pay for a license to use one or go open source. Another great reason to open the ArcWeb Services API to these people as when they need to have a deployment license, they won’t have to learn a new API.

    I doubt ESRI could have ever generated the press Google has for web mapping, but they might as well take advantage of it.

  • ZDNet – Google Map API transforms the Web

    Link: Google map API transforms the Web – ZDNet.com via PubSub: Google Maps.

    “We are getting a great demonstration right now of open source power, as applications using the Google Maps API begin to appear. Mapquest, owned by AOL, has been around for many years, but it’s a proprietary offering. Yahoo Maps has been around for years, but it has been late to this party. It’s Google, using the open source process, that has blown the field apart. The code has only been out a few weeks but already we’re seeing several really great applications.”

    Yea, yea Google Maps API is great, but yet another article that doesn’t mention ESRI or their API. It isn’t open source, but they’ve had it much longer than Google has had theirs. But the point they do make at the end of the article is very true.

    “And remember, this is just the start. I guarantee that hundreds of programmers are now poring over the Google Map API documentation, thinking about applications that will drive both them, and Google, to new heights.”

    I hope we’ll hear an announcement at the ESRI UC that ESRI will release a version of their ArcWeb Services API that these programmers can freely use. If it is features these programmers need and what for their applications, it is ArcWeb Services that can deliver it today, not Google Maps.

  • The Cost of ESRI Products Causes Potential Users to Turn Elsewhere

    Link: Guns, Germs, and Steel and GMaps Census (dead link).

    “A quick word on GIS software: ESRI’s ArcGIS is the industry standard, but it can be a challenge to learn and costs way too much. My wife, who does some GIS in her research at the Prevention Research Center in Berkeley, has recently become a big fan of another software called Maptitude. It’s extremely intuitive and an order of magnitude cheaper than ArcGIS.”

    I posted about this a couple weeks ago as well as my posts about opening up ArcWeb Services to more users. People want to use ESRI products, but the first word out of their mouths is always it costs too much and in many cases it does. ArcExplorer is about the only free tool that ESRI offers to get into GIS. Compared to products such as Google Earth and the many open source GIS tools, it is very weak and not worth mentioning.

    It appears that most users are willing to spend about $500 for a professional GIS system, but their choices are very limited.