Spatial News !!

BIGMaps is live on Facebook

2009-11-19T02:52:00.001+05:30

Hey,

Finally BIGMaps is live on Facebook via an application. This is the first time on web you can see the 'Search' and 'Maps' combo feature provided by BIGMaps.

The URL : http://apps.facebook.com/bigmaps

The Application profile says:

"You can use this application to map your home, office or even your favorite restaurant and add it to your profile. You can also use it to make your profile more interesting by adding the location of your college or university. You can even point out your next vacation spot. Add this application and have fun."

"BIGMaps is a local search platform. Along with local information services, BIGMaps offers directions, movies and events. It is currently available on one of the India's largest mobile network and can be accessed through SMS, Mobile browser and the mobile client. The platform is integrated with GIS, Search, Advertising and UGC and it will be available across web, voice and PNDs. BIGMaps Platform will be open to public very soon. http://www.bigmaps.com"

BIGMaps is now entering into each and every field on Web and Mobile. The intentions are crystal clear.. proliferate and rule the web :)

Cheers !

BIGMaps is finally Launched on mobile

2009-09-10T19:38:00.001+05:30

Reliance Mobile has launched BIGMaps service on its GSM network. Reliance Communications is the first telecom operator to offer BIGMaps service. The BIGMaps service allows search across Business, Directions, Events and Movies by organising local information on a pan-India basis. At present it’s available on mobile through SMS, WAP and downloads. Plans are afoot to offer the service through internet in the near future.

With the launch of BIGMaps service, Reliance Mobile intends to offer world-class local search platform for India with maps data across 15 zoom levels and real time landmark based routing.

Once public beta is opened on web, the platform will allow rich mobile-web experience leveraging on the best in class maps and geo-coded yellow pages information for India. BIGMaps service is available on RWorld for download and WAP search.

Commenting on the launch of the new service, Mr Krishna Durbha, Head – VAS, Reliance Communications said, “Our BigMap service reiterates our focus of driving VAS leadership through innovative offerings. This service will increase the usage of device based search & navigation. Business, Event, Direction and PointnFind search are for the serious users, while Friend finder adds the fun element”.

Mr Manav Sethi, COO, BIGMaps added that this is just a beginning and whole lot of unique features on the platform and across data are in store. He added “ BIGMaps has best Maps data and geo-coded yellow pages information with 20+ Mn geoc-coded buildings across India which once opened on web allows for most accurate search and user generated content. The missing restaurant could be added on the exact building and its possible to search café around atlantis building in Bandra. We are also ready with the mapmaker tool where in a missing building could be added next to the one on the map”.

Source: PTI

Bhuvan .. The Google Earth of India

2009-08-13T14:11:00.003+05:30

Thursday, August 13, 2009: ISRO yesterday launched the beta version of its over-hyped mapping service 'Bhuvan' . The Bhuvan platform allows users to use information on basic maps resources in the geospatial domain, mostly the images and thematic information.

Bhuvan displays satellite images of varying resolution of India's surface, allowing users to visually see things like cities and important places of interest looking perpendicularly down or at an oblique angle, with different perspectives and can navigate through 3D viewing environment.

Snips from ET:
"With Bhuvan, one can: access, explore and visualise 2D and 3D image data along with thematic information on soil, wasteland, water resources etc; visualise multi-resolution, multi-sensor, multi-temporal image data; superpose administrative boundaries of choice on images as required; visualisation of AWS (Automatic Weather Stations) data/information in a graphic view and use tabular weather data of user choice; navigation using the 3D view Pop-up menu (Fly-in, Fly out, jump in, jump around, view point); 3D Fly through (3D view to fly to locations, objects in the terrain, and navigate freely using the mouse or keyboard); drawing 2D and 3D objects; snapshot creation; measurement tools; and shadow analysis."

Combo : Satnav and Survey of India

2009-08-11T16:15:00.002+05:30

SatNav & Survey of India (SOI) will enable SoI maps and build value added products for consumers.

The deal will allow SatNav to launch SOI digital maps and map content for business use in a fields of navigation and location-based solutions (LBS) in India.

Survey Of India, The National Survey and Mapping Organisation of the country under the Department of Science & Technology, is the OLDEST SCIENTIFIC DEPARTMENT OF THE GOVT. OF INDIA. It was set up in 1767 and has evolved rich traditions over the years. In its assigned role as the nation's Principal Mapping Agency, Survey of India bears a special responsibility to ensure that the country's domain is explored and mapped suitably, provide base maps for expeditious and integrated development and ensure that all resources contribute with their full measure to the progress, prosperity and security of our country now and for generations to come.

SatNav Technologies, one of India’s early starters in the IT Products space, offers a wide array of Products both Off-the-shelf as well as customizable, for both the B2B and the B2C markets. These products were developed when the management team of SatNav Technologies working together since the year 2000 was a part of a large Indian IT company. It was spun off as a separate entity in the year 2004. SatNav aims to grow exponentially and be a Billion Dollar entity by 2012. SatNav has strategic alliances with the experts in the Industry and is consistently developing its market intelligence and approach. This has led it to become a Market Leader from a Pioneer in the field of GPS Maps and Navigation.

Geo Names

2009-06-03T14:22:00.001+05:30

GeoNames contains over eight million geographical names and consists of 6.5 million unique features whereof 2.2 million populated places and 1.8 million alternate names. All features are categorized into one out of nine feature classes and further subcategorized into one out of 645 features codes.

source: http://www.geonames.org/

Lost? Need Directions? Call Us!

2009-03-19T15:11:00.001+05:30

Here is what they say on their website :

"We have launched India's 1st Voice based Navigation Directions service LCU (Lost? Need Directions? Call Us!), the latest variant our popular GPS navigation product, SatGuide. The service is available from 6:30am - 11:30pm throughout the week. LCU is presently available in Andhra Pradesh and will cover the entire country over by March 2009."

Giagantic GIS

2009-03-05T00:40:00.003+05:30

GIS in India is proliferating at jet speed !! And not only GIS, but more products are taking birth with solutions built around it. Mostly in Local Search , classifieds, LBS and mapping solutions.

Recently rediff maps came into picture. It was a huge disappointment after looking at this beta product. It looks like they were in real hurry to push this product live without even thinking to correct their basics right. Its a crap, and we know it.

Giants in Indian mapping like google maps, yahoo maps, mapmyindia are steadily progressing at a slower pace. As such, no new innovations are visible, but they are not at all quiet. They are adding up the data on daily basis. Mostly, yahoo maps are pushing more detailed tiles for 2nd, 3rd tier cities of India. Google is more into launching their routing solutions for India. Looking at directions in India on google maps will be fun. Hopefully, the routing features will be similar as they provide on US maps.

Vidteq has come up with a brilliant product for Bangalore Junta. Showing videos of roads and traffic while searching a route is the best feature a user can demand for. Good luck ! Vidteq team :)

Thematic Mapping

2008-07-28T15:04:00.000+05:30

Thematic Mapping Engine (TME) enables you to visualise global statistics on Google Earth. The primary data source is UNdata.

The engine returns a KMZ file that you can open in Google Earth or download to your computer.

http://thematicmapping.org/

The World's Best GIS at an Unbeatable Price

2008-07-17T21:01:00.002+05:30

Manifold® System Release 8 delivers the world's most powerful, most full-featured and most modern Geographic Information System (GIS) package as a fully-integrated application at one low price. By using modern software technology and leveraging mainstream Microsoft standards, Manifold System can deliver more capabilities, more power, greater quality and greater ease of use in the $395 Manifold Enterprise Edition than old-fashioned GIS products costing tens of thousands of dollars.

Manifold also includes a world-class Internet Map Server (IMS), full object library and development environment to create custom applications and GIS-enabled web sites. No need to buy expensive extras or to struggle to integrate separate products. One package, Manifold System, scales from personal use on the desktop to enterprise use within the largest organizations deploying thousands of users simultaneously editing terabytes of data. Get Release 8 now, from $245 for Personal Edition!

WorldKit - easy web mapping

2008-07-14T18:20:00.000+05:30

worldKit is an easy to use and flexible mapping application for the Web. Light weight GIS. It's a SWF based app, configured by XML, data fed by RSS. Stand-alone use or integration in larger projects.

Features
Check out the Documentation for more detail on features. Features include ...

* Ubiquitous use in the Flash Player and with RSS feeds.
* Highly configurable look and feel. Can use images for marking annotations.
* Integrates with weblogging tools, and any software producing RSS.
* Displays photos within the map.
* Zoom & Pan. Integrates with Zoomify for high resolution images, and WMS Sources.
* Lines and Polygons. Time Navigation.
* Accepts input for Collaborative Cartography & GeoWiki.
* Annotations are categorizable. Javascript interface for GIS layer functionality.
* GPS track routes.

Did you ever wish you could display a Google Maps map view—with custom data—on your own web page?

2008-07-08T21:20:00.000+05:30

Did you ever wish you could display a Google Maps map view—with custom data—on your own web page? No? Well, maybe you should go take up geocaching or something. On the other hand, if it sounds like something you'd like to do, read on...

New: myGmaps enables you to create, save and host custom data files and display them with Google Maps.
Visit www.myGmaps.com for custom Google Maps.

Note: The Unofficial Google Maps Embedding How To now demonstrates how you can embed or include a Google Maps viewer widget in your own web page. In most cases you will probably want to use the base technique described there. This page still has useful information though.

First up, read the disclaimer, no web page should be without one! Then, check out the Gmaps standalone mode demonstration (Update: New demo--also features two views on one page) featuring custom XML data and XSL stylesheet.

[content taken from http://stuff.rancidbacon.com/gmaps-standalone/]

Cartographic Boundary Files

2008-06-25T20:48:00.003+05:30

Download Generalized Cartographic Boundary Files
Click on the year/vintage next to the boundary file type you want to download.

Alaska Native Regional Corporations: 2000
American Indian Areas/Alaska Native Areas/Hawaiian Home Lands: 2000 | 1990
American Indian Tribal Subdivisions: 2000
Census Block Groups: 2000 | 1990
Census Divisions: 2000
Census Regions: 2000
Census Tracts: 2000 | 1990
Congressional Districts: 110th | 109th | 108th | 107th | 106th | 105th | 104th | 103rd
Consolidated Cities: 2000
County and County Equivalent Areas: 2000 | 1990
County Subdivisions: 2000 | 1990
Incorporated Places/Census Designated Places: 2000 | 1998 | 1990
Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas: 2003 | 1999 | 1998 | 1996 | 1990
New England County Metropolitan Areas: 2000
New England City and Town Areas: 2003
Oregon Urban Growth Areas: 2000
Public Use Microdata Areas - 1 Percent: 2000
Public Use Microdata Areas - 5 Percent: 2000
School Districts - Elementary: 2000
School Districts - Secondary: 2000
School Districts - Unified: 2000
State and State Equivalent Areas: 2000 | 1990
State Legislative Districts - Lower/House: 2006 | 2000
State Legislative Districts - Upper/Senate: 2006 | 2000
Subbarrios (Puerto Rico Only): 2000
Traffic Analysis Zones: 2000
Tribal Block Groups: 2000
Tribal Census Tracts: 2000
Urban Areas: 2000 | 1990
Voting Districts: 2000
3-Digit ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs): 2000
5-Digit ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs): 2000

The above information is taken from : http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cob/bdy_files.html
This information is only targeting gis developers across the web.

Mapserver Kick start for newbies :)

2008-05-19T16:12:00.006+05:30

I met many mapserver enthusiasts (esp students) who wants to see a map quickly by using mapserver. All though mapserver has an abundance in terms of docs and tutorials, I never found a sinlge straightway solution which can help you to do this :

AIM: Write your first map file, and see the rendered map on the browser.

I suggest few easy steps to show a map using your shapefile. Remember YOU WILL HAVE TO WRITE ONE AND ONLY ONE MAPFILE. nothing else :)

Steps:

a. Download ms4w(For windows). Else install FOSS for Linux
b. Open a notepad (or anyother text editor). Write your first map file which will look like this:

MAP
NAME "mapfilename" #write your map file name here
STATUS ON
SIZE 512 512
imagetype png
SHAPEPATH "/ms4w/data" #path where you kept your shapefiles
EXTENT 68.1271 6.75621 97.4023 37.0675
#(extent of shapefile. you can get this info by using arcgis, qgis, etc)
FONTSET "C:\ms4w\YourDirectory\fonts.txt"
PROJECTION
'proj=longlat' #projection
'ellps=WGS84' #ellipsoid
'datum=WGS84' #surface of the earth
'no_defs'
END
DEBUG ON
CONFIG "MS_ERRORFILE" "C:\Temp\mapserver.log"

OUTPUTFORMAT
NAME png
DRIVER "GD/PNG"
MIMETYPE "image/png"
IMAGEMODE RGB
EXTENSION "png"
END

WEB
IMAGEPATH "/ms4w/YourTempDir/tmp/"
IMAGEURL "/tmp/"
END

LAYER
NAME "your_layer_name"
DATA "/ms4w//data/shapefileName" #name of your shapefile
TYPE POLYGON
STATUS ON
PROJECTION
'proj=longlat' #projection
'ellps=WGS84' #ellipsoid
'datum=WGS84' #surface of the earth
'no_defs'
END #projection
CLASS
Name 'your_class_name'
COLOR 0 0 0
OUTLINECOLOR 0 0 0
STYLE # thick outline (could use a circle symbol with size too)
OUTLINECOLOR 255 218 185
WIDTH 2
ANTIALIAS FALSE
END #style
END # Class
END # Layer

END#map end

3. Save this map file (eg. test.map) in ms4w/apache/cgi-bin/
4. On command line, run this command:
C:\ms4w\apache-install.bat
C:\ms4w\apache-restart.bat
5. Open up a browser (IE,Opera,FF) and write this url :

http://localhost/cgi-bin/mapserv.exe?map=test.map&layers=your_layer_name&mode=map

Thats all !! You will see a map rendered using the shapefile you wished.

Reading Recommendations:
1. Mapserver
2. OpenLayers
3. PostGIS
4. Mapserver tutorial

MADEIRA GPS

2008-05-16T01:51:00.000+05:30

MADEIRA GPS

MADEIRA GPS, a company that started in 2005, with a simple project in mind: Deliver PDA-based navigation, with autorouting, for Madeira Island's tourism. We've achieved that goal and more... Since then our company evolved to provide full fleet management solutions and is currently making business as far as Brasil. All thanks to PostgreSQL and, of course, PostGIS.

All our geographic data (maps) is stored with PostGIS and it serves hundreds of requests per minute providing street name resolution for vehicles locations.

We used OpenJump as our preferred application to edit our geo-data. This application, combined with the PostGIS plugin, capable of reading/writing to/fro PgSQL DBs, proved to be a 'killer' combination.

Why did we choose PostGIS? Simple enough:
-Power
-Robustness
-Effectiveness
-Extendability
-Speed
-Free

Globexplorer

2008-05-16T01:45:00.000+05:30

GlobeXplorer provides web services access to satellite and aerial imagery over the internet. GlobeXplorer manages relationships with dozens of source imagery providers and then provides simple web access to a multi-terrabyte unified collection of images.

GlobeXplorer clients range from individual end-users with Web Map Server (WMS) clients to consumer-oriented web portals serving millions of hits a day. This high-load, high-volume environment requires a very reliable technical solution that scales up efficiently to support millions of requests per day.

The GlobeXplorer (GX) architecture does not store imagery inside the database itself, but uses the database to store metadata about available imagery. The GX middleware handles incoming image requests by first querying the database to determine image availability, then retrieving the actual images from storage and delivers them to the client. So, each image request generates one or more database hits on the database metadata.

Mapnik

2008-05-02T23:11:00.003+05:30

Mapnik is a Free Toolkit for developing mapping applications. It's written in C++ and there are Python bindings to facilitate fast-paced agile development. It can comfortably be used for both desktop and web development, which was something I wanted from the beginning.

Mapnik is about making beautiful maps. It uses the AGG library and offers world class anti-aliasing rendering with subpixel accuracy for geographic data. It is written from scratch in modern C++ and doesn't suffer from design decisions made a decade ago. When it comes to handling common software tasks such as memory management, filesystem access, regular expressions, parsing and so on, Mapnik doesn't re-invent the wheel, but utilises best of breed industry standard libraries from boost.org

holyApp

2008-04-29T14:49:00.001+05:30

holyApp is a pure javascript framework for building desktop-like applications in a browser. It provides a rich environment of services, an ever-growing library of constructors for complex GUI elements, and some big ideas that tie them all together. It was released under the Clear BSD license by MetaCarta in November of 2007.

This framework - and the rich client applications built with it - follow a set of general principles:

The UI works like a desktop app, not a Web site. There is one rich and dynamic workspace, not multiple pages.
The code is object-oriented software, not dynamic HTML. Instead of generating HTML strings and injecting them into the document with document.write and innerHTML, holyApp uses the Document Object Model's ECMAScript bindings to directly create, destroy, and manipulate interface elements.
Data, logic and UI are separate. There are distinct data and UI layers in the code. UI components known as Viewers are coupled with data structures to allow users to view and interact with data.
The 2 Trees: Javascript and the DOM. We create a Javascript reference to every DOM element as it's created. That way, DOM elements will persist while added and removed from the DOM. These JS references are organized in a JS tree - with enough resemblance to the DOM tree that the connections between the 2 trees are intuitive.
Because all elements are referenced through the JS tree, there is no need to reference by their HTML id property, as is the common practice. This is a big improvement because HTML ids are a one-dimensional namespace, and the multidimensional namespace of the JS tree is very well suited to the complex components being generated by constructors. Also, using getElementById() can slow down processing.
All layout data (images, colors, dimensions and properties) is defined in CSS. Having it all in one place is organized. And we can change skins on the fly by swapping stylesheets
The client runs the show, not the server. The server does not sent commands to the client. It sends only libraries and data. The server should know nothing about the client's internal workings. It should act only as a data store, network proxy, and occasionally a Web service for processes that cannot be done on the client.

CartoWeb : Advanced Geographical Information System for the Web

2008-04-28T14:09:00.001+05:30

CartoWeb is a comprehensive and ready-to-use Web-GIS (Geographical Information System) as well as a convenient framework for building advanced and customized applications.

Developed by Camptocamp SA, it is based on the UMN MapServer engine and is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Written using innovative language PHP5, CartoWeb is highly modular and customizable thanks to its object-oriented architecture. It runs evenly on Windows or Unix-like platforms and shows its real power when associated to PostgreSQL/PostGIS.

* Beginners can follow a simple workshop on CartoWeb by follwoing this link : http://cartoweb.org/cwiki/Foss4g07Lab

This is supported by good documents and presentations.

spatialnews on www.opengeospatial.org

2008-04-26T18:54:00.001+05:30

This blog have a footprint on www.opengeospatial.org

http://www.opengeospatial.org/pressroom/newsletters/200710/#C3

NEWS AND OPINION FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE

Below are some of the discussions of OGC specifications in the blogosphere since the last edition of this newsletter:

17 October: Ed Parsons blogged that, based on Microsoft rejoining OGC, "Along with the new support for KML in virtual earth, I would say that the geoweb is beginning to develop quite nicely!"

10 October: Ritesh Ambastha identified a tool, "Explore Our Planet," to search for public WMS layers. 30,000+ WMS layers from 200+ servers are indexed. Predefined searches are available for a quick look.

30 September: Johannes Kebeck posted his paper "Integrating OGC-Compliant Web Mapping Services into Virtual Earth" online for public access . His example is for Virtual Earth used as a WMS client (not server).

Set Map Web GIS Solutions

2008-04-14T19:22:00.001+05:30

SetMap is evolving as one of the best Web-GIS solution.

Evolution of SetMap can be understood by looking at the evolution of Blogger. SetMap is planning to release the first version of Web-GIS solution with limited feature set. The way you feel your own space in a blog site, the way you can customize your blog site, you can do the same on SetMap.

Features of SetMap:
1. For GIS-Data Providers. Now they can host their own web-based GIS solution using SetMap. They can customize L&F of their map, can share UGC's, etc.
2. No need of Google maps, Yahoo maps, etc. Enjoy the freedom of your "own maps"
3. Freedom of sharing Inter-user-generated-content
4. Host your mapping site with 4-5 clicks. Add your GIS data in few clicks, and feel the freedom
etc

SetMap is set to launch the product free-of-cost in next couple of months.

Welcome to Newsmap

2007-11-30T19:15:00.001+05:30

Clicking on a country/region retrieves news about that country.
Switch clickly to another continent by clicking on the continent links in the header.
Zooming in one level will retrieve news at the state/provincial level.
Currently state level news is available for US, Canada, UK(Home Nations) and Australia.
Zooming in a second time will retrieve city news for large cities.
Over 3000 large cities are in the database.
Zooming out again will retrieve news at the respective level.

source:
http://muti.co.za/static/newsmap.html

Sachin Tendulkar's Journey

2007-11-30T19:11:00.001+05:30

Sachin Tendulkar's Journey to Record Breaking
Test Centuries on Google Maps

Begin by clicking Marker #1 or Marker #35. Once you close the popup
window, the map will recenter on to the next test century location.

Source: http://www.mibazaar.com/cricket/sachintestrecord.html

Men in blue mapped

2007-11-30T19:10:00.001+05:30

Virender Ajmani maps the birthplaces of all players on the Indian National Cricket Team. Vital stats for each player and a YouTube video is available.

Source: http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/search/label/India

Yahoo Maps API

2007-11-29T17:46:00.001+05:30

8zero2	Easy to use mashup for finding Free and Pay WiFi hotspots in the US. Search by address or browse by double clicking on the map. Extensive listings.
Acid	Acid is an enhanced Yahoo Local Services processor. It is an interactive way to gather services data in the U.S.
ACME GeoRSS Map Viewer	This is a Google Maps app that displays Yahoo! Simple Maps files. It implements all of Yahoo!'s enhancements to GeoRSS, including address geocoding, plus a couple of things from basic RSS that Yahoo! missed. Use with your own GeoRSS and Yahoo Maps.
Ajax Map Comparison	Map Compare allows you to evaluate which mapping service is best. All three maps are locked together so panning, zooming and changing map types will effect all maps the same. You can also use the tab pane to try out various map features.
Apartments on Yahoo Maps	Craigslist apartment listings plotted on a map, with answers to real-estate and apartment-related questions for your city.
BatchGeocode.com	Geocode addresses in bulk, plot multiple locations to a single map. Built using Yahoo Maps and Yahoo Geocoding API.
Berkeley-area Doctors	Find doctors in the Berkeley CA area via very useful mashup of the Yahoo Maps API + screen scraped healthcare provider information.
Bitter Cyclist	See where to watch-out by viewing these details of bicycle accidents in San Francisco on a Yahoo Map.
Blue Home Finder	Search all single-family homes, condos, townhouses, and commercial properties for sale and for rent in Florida. All properties have both information and photos.
Blue One Realty Related Directory	Blue One Realty is a real estate related directory. It is based on Yahoo Maps and Flex. People can submit their real estate related web site and company.
blueorganizer	The blueorganizer is the smart browser extension for Firefox. With this organizer the web turns into everyday objects like books, cars, restaurants and movies. Collect things with 1 click, find new information and share what you find with your friends.
California State Park Finder	Want to find a California State Park? Select from a list of major areas including Los Angeles, San Diego and San Franciso to get a fully annotated Yahoo Map.
Campus-based Mediation Services Locator Map	This map plots more than 200 college campus-based mediation services using a list from www.campus-adr.org
Census Dashboard	A mashup using two StrikeIron APIs, Zip Code Information and Population Demographics By ZIP Code, plus Yahoo Maps to give detailed information for a specific US zip code.
Chicago Area Blogger Map	Greg Gershman's mashup plotting Chicago-area bloggers.
CityServer	Allows you to plot multiple Yahoo Services, in multiple categories, on a Yahoo Flash map.
CitySlick	Unique mapping search interface and drill-down, with lots of links to local resources. Builds a US city information profile from over 20,000 cities in the United States.
Columbia SC Bike Map	Yahoo's description: Bike maps require back roads and out-of-the-way rest stops on roads don't have names or details for a rest stop. Elena did a Mashup that works around all those issues.
Cooqy	A novel Flash-based interface to search eBay.
CPI Media Tracker	From the Well Connected project at The Center for Public Integrity, the Media Tracker is an online database that, aside from mapping broadcast towers, provides an array of data on the reach and influence of companies that control the flow of information.
CryoFinders	CryoFinders lets you track flight status, flight departures, flight arrivals, airport delays and other flight and airport information in real time.
Dynamic Visitor Map	A dynamic Yahoo Map displaying the physical locations of site visitors.
Earthquakes in Last 7 Days	Real-time, worldwide earthquake list for the past 7 days on Flash-based Yahoo Map.
Easy One Loan and Home Values	Mashup of Zillow and Yahoo Maps as supplement to online mortgage service.
eGoWalk	Flickr photos + Yahoo! Maps. Click on a city to see your Flickr contacts and then hover over icons to get details.
ePartyGuide.com	Nationwide bar, night club, and restaurant reviews. Use this map based search engine to find nightlife across the country.
Equidistant Eats	Enter 2 or 3 addresses and find centrally located restaurants to them. Marker popups include address and phone number info.
Extreme Webcams	Find skiing and windsurfing webcams with this mashup integrating live webcam pictures with the Yahoo! Flash API. Nice use a banding widget to draw zoom area.
FindJira	Multi-search engine, searches within many engines and web services and returns information grouped by relevance and media. Uses FindJira framework, open source middleware that simplifies search from different sources.
Flash Earth	Zoomable mashup of Google Maps, Virtual Earth and other satellite imagery through a Flash application. Try rotating the compass or building a permanent link to a location.
Flex, Yahoo Maps, and RSS Feeds	Demonstration of a mashup using Yahoo Maps and the new AS3 Communications Kit for Flex 2. Maps GeoRSS or RSS feeds directly onto a map as well as displaying traffic or weather data. Source code available.
Florida Real Estate	BLUE ONE Realty real estate. Search homes in Florida. Search homes, condos, townhouses, and commercial properties by MLS or by city.
GameTripping.com Ballpark Guide	GameTripping.com lets you to share and collect your experiences visiting ballparks across the US. Features a guide and gallery powered by Yahoo Maps and Flickr. Ballpark Collection shows an array of all ballparks, highlighting ones you have reviewed.
GangstaMap	Interactive theme your own gangsta map using Yahoo Flash Maps and Google Video. Mashup Camp 3 contest entry.
Geo!Suggest	Geo!Suggest = Yahoo Geocoding API + AJAX. Geo!Suggest, an AJAX interface for the Yahoo! Maps Geocoding API showcases how flexible the Yahoo! Geocoding API is in working with limited input and returning results with floating response level. Source code of
Geotagthings	Simple spatial bookmarking. Use a delicious style bookmarklet system to tag any url with location information.
GeoURL Yahoo Mapping	Interesting application, or hack as author Premshree Pillai says, that shows you sites close to a given URL. Go to GeoURL.org for more examples.
Google vs Yahoo Maps	A nice way to see the any location side-by-side in Google and Yahoo Maps. Even dragging one map drags the other.
Home Locator	Search real estate listings with photos and maps. Winner of the Adobe Flex Developer Derby.
Homethinking	Homethinking monitors real estate transactions to know what each agent has done and also customer reviews about the job they did.
homeValence.com	Web site dedicated to housing appreciation rates. Several mapping mashups being developed but currently available to registered users only.
Hungry Service	Send an SMS to find restaurants offering special deals in your location, then make reservations. Integrates with TopTable.co.uk data.
iamcaltrain	Good use of Yahoo! Maps + Flickr to show CalTrain route and schedule data with station photos.
iPod Directions	Get driving directions on your iPod Video, Nano or Photo. Enter starting and ending address, verify, then export. Supports Mac and Windows.
iWay	Use your iPod as your guide through this service that creates downloadable iPod-friendly directions from Yahoo Maps.
Jauntlet	Jauntlet is a tool for travelers to add travel plans and maps to many popular sites including MySpace, Facebook, and Blogger.
JobsnFeeds	Jobs, feeds, and maps to get you the job.
Libraries411	Find public libraries in the US and Canada. Data for more than 20,000 libraries available. Choose Yahoo or Google Maps.
LIME Local	Community-generated directory of Green places. Users are asked to submit and share environmentally friendly, sustainable and healthy businesses and services.
Local eBay Auctions	Save on shipping with this Yahoo Maps + eBay mashup to show auctions within your local zip code.
LookLOCAL	LookLOCAL is a unique online mapping and local search service. View over 6,000 traffic cams, view travel related KML files and import your own, search or get directions, and compare Google Maps, Yahoo Local Maps, and Live Search Maps.
Map of Bucharest	A comprehensive map of sites in the city of Bucharest, Romania.
MapBuilder	Online tool to generate code for Google and Yahoo maps. Does not required knowledge of the APIs or JavaScript. Share your own maps and explore maps created by others.
Mappington	A user-created atlas of the world. Search for a place and see maps, photos, videos, articles, and user opinions of that place.
Maps by IDELIX	Google Maps, Yahoo Local Maps, and Windows Live Local all in one location. Search for businesses, get directions, explore and discover using patented lensing technology from IDELIX.
Maps for Photos and Wikipedia	Find various US locations and get weather forecasts, Wikipedia geo articles and Flickr photos.
MetroMash	Yahoo Maps, Local Search, Traffic Reports and Upcoming Events all mashed together.
Mile Calculator	Allows users to drag a path using the mouse on a mapped location and finds the miles or kilometers traversed over it.
Mobile GMaps	Mobile GMaps is an application that displays Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Windows Live Local and Ask.com Maps and satellite imagery on Java J2ME-enabled mobile phones, PDAs and other devices.
Molu The Search Spider Places	Developed as an add-on to the search engine, Molu, enter a city and then view it mapped, along with Flickr photos, Wikipedia entries, weather, YouTube videos, and more about the location. Print the image on a custom goodie.
MotelPoint	Extensive motel and accommodation directory. Find information on more than 12,385 motels and 47,831 accommodations.
MP3 ArtistServer Music Map	You can browse and listen to music using a map. If you join ArtistSerer.com you can download the music for free. A listing of nearly 150 musical genres on left, a map and chat window on right.
MusicTonic	Slick music information mashup with photos, videos and news. Search or browse artists by name or genre.
Nationwide What You Need Map	Yahoo! hacker Mike Heideman pulls a lot franchises together under one roof of Americana - fast food, wifi, diesel, hotel, and car rentals.
NewsMapr	Browse the most popular news stories by category using Yahoo Maps.
Nurse Facility Locator	Searchable application for nurse recruitment campaign. Users can narrow results with multiple search parameters and are provided with facility information, a map, demographics and the ability to save sites as favorites.
NYC Movie Locations	Scenes From the City is a great mashup. Find the locations of iconic Made in NY films with the Yahoo Map made for the 40th Anniversary of the Mayors Office of Film. Lots of ways to search including director and scene type.
ocarto a meta map mashup	Cool way to create and save your own hybrid maps using several mapping APIs. This mashup layers Google, Yahoo, MS Virtual Earth, and Terraserver maps into one interface - similar to the way Photoshop layers work.
Official Flickr Map	Millions of Flickr photos have been geotagged and placed on a Yahoo Map. Uses the recently added Geo features of Flickr. Add a special tag for photos from Upcoming.org events and they will be linked to that page automatically.
Ojor.com	World Community, travel, photos, videos. Data from Yahoo Maps, Yahoo Travel, Flickr and YouTube.
Parentography	Map-based parenting community.
PhoneBackr	PhoneBackr is a mashup that acts like a searchable reverse telephone directory. PhoneBackr simulates the functions of a reverse elephone directory using search data and various APIs. The results are then rendered on a Yahoo Flash Map.
Potrero Hill Crime Map	Crime mashup of the upscale San Francisco neighborhood.
Provincial Capitals of Canada	can quiz you on your knowledge of Provincial Capitals of Canada. See if you can guess the name before you click on each icon.
RDF Calendar	RDF Calendar, which is a typical Events handling application, now supports Google Calendar API. It can retrieve events information from Google Calendar, eventful, and upcoming.org, can can map events.
Red vs Blue Media	Choose your news stories based on your political preferences. Newspaper articles will appear spread on the US map in red or blue.
RunningMap.com	Plot a path on a map and the distance is calculated. Locations across North America are supported. Handy measurement tool for running or walking.
San Diego Road Construction	A Yahoo Map of the San Diego road construction projects with details, cost estimates and completion date.
San Diego Trolley Map	Jeffrey McManus from Yahoo!'s Developer Network created this nice interactive map of San Diego's trolleys.
San Francisco Traffic Cams	Collection of traffic webcams plotted on a Yahoo! Map.
Scheedule	Scheedule is a registration website that allows students to schedule for classes by showing them all of their possible schedules.
Schmap Customizable Widgets	Customizable widgets that combine maps with photos and points of interest like restaurants, hotels, attractions, and shops for 200 destinations throughout the US, Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Seattle Italian Food	in the Captitol Hill neighborhood. From food206.
SF Bay Area Home Sales	From Yahoo Maps: Jamie Glenn plotted home sales data for 200+ zip codes in the Bay Area from May 2004 to May 2005. Blue means going up month over month, orange means going down. Click on them to see the year over year details.
SF Caltrain Map	Click on station location to get details including full schedules.
Small Yahoo Maps in Flex	Demonstrates the workaround provided by Yahoo for using Maps in Flex 2. Uses some sample code as base and adds some simple features like plotting geoRSS, regular RSS, and traffic and weather by zip code.
SMS GeoBlogging Service	Blog based on your location. Users can request posts based on their location or subscribe to RSS feeds. It also provides a way for users to enrich their blogs with Yahoo Pipes.
Soccer Fields in Phoenix	A Yahoo! Map to help players and parents plan their soccer outings.
Stuff a Blog	This webapp for bloggers to create content-rich blog posts. Type in keywords, select content, and it returns the HTML. Returns relevant data from Flickr, Yahoo Maps, Amazon and others.
Table Tennis Tourney Map	From Yahoo Maps: Here is a mashup plotting the USATT-sanctioned table tennis tournaments in Pacific Region by Sudhish Iyer.
TagMaps	TagMaps is a toolkit to visualize text geographically on a map. Check out the sample applications, where we use Flickr tags on a map to build a world exploration tool.
Thailand Details	Shows 76 Changwats in 6 zones of Thailand. Provides information in Thai.
The Center of Silicon Valley	Toni Schneider mapped the 10 most valuable Silicon Valley tech company locations and then computed their average location weighted by stock market valuation.
TownKings	Map and local based social community.
TownPup UK Village Guide	The most lovable pooch in the UK is collared up and barking at the door, ready to take you on a mashed-up guided tour of United Kingdom towns and villages. It is built on an ASP.NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005, and uses APIs from Flickr and Eventful.
Trip Organizer	A 360 degree view of a location while organizing a vacation or business trip. Uses 8 different APIs.
U.S. of Ajax	The United States of Ajax allows you to visit 20,261 Cities within 3,140 Counties in the United States. Data is available for each State, County and City. Dozens of data sources linked.
Unthirsty.com	Happy hour finder mashup with Google Maps. Happy hours sortable by drink specials, food specials, wifi, and patios. Also, what is happening right now.
USGuidez	Guide to events, attractions and businesses for cities across the United States.
Verkoops.com Search	Verkoops.com is a search engine for classified ads. You can search products, jobs, housing, and more using a novel faceted search interface. Verkoops.com allows users to search by keywords or use a dynamic navigation control.
Weather Bonk	Rich mashup with live weather, forecasts, webcams, and more on a Google Map.
Wildfires in California	Presents wildfire news stories, using a map. Uses Yahoo Pipes to offer RSS feeds from southern California newspapers, Flickr, and MSN video of the disaster.
WorldGeoMap	Click anywhere on the world map and drill down for country, state, city, and street geo data.
Yahoo MapMixer	Allows other maps to be layered over a Yahoo. Map to show additional detail of a location. Now you can mix together the detail of a point-of-interest map — such as airports, college campuses, sports arenas, historic maps and others.
Yahoo Maps Widget	Official Yahoo Map widget for Yahoo Widgets.
Yahoo Weather+Yahoo Maps	Get the weather via this all-Yahoo! mashup.
Yahoo! APIs Example with Code	Example Yahoo! Map with overlay of Local and Traffic information. With link to article on how this was programmed. By Dan Theurer.

Location Masti

2007-11-27T19:00:00.001+05:30

http://mobiance.com/func/location-masti.htm

Mobiance announces "Location Masti" - inviting all hackers for a month long celebration of innovation, creativity and technology.

Location Masti is an opportunity for hackers to use Mobiance's pioneering mobile location technology with other sources of data/ APIs and build innovative applications

What

Location Masti is a location hack event to build innovative mashups based on Location based services using Mobiance's location technology. The event organized by Mobiance is aimed at exploring the countless avenues to build useful and relevant location aware applications by hackers in a spirit of innovation, creativity and masti.

Mobiance will be inviting hackers to take part in this 30 day event building innovative location enabled applications in the fields of social networking, navigation, local search and a whole lot more. In addition to Mobiance's unique technology to determine the location of mobile phones, hackers can aggregate multiple sources of data, make use of various available APIs and tools to deliver their next "killer" application!

Registrations would be open on the 1st of December, 2007. The event will stretch for a period of 30 days from 15th January, 2008 where the developers will be able to use Mobiance's location feeds and build applications that are useful and relevant to individuals by using their location.

When

Announcement of Location Masti: 26th November, 2007

Registrations: 1st December, 2007 to 31st December, 2007

Event run dates: 15th January, 2008 to 15th February, 2008

Final demo and submission: 15th February, 2008

Announcement of results: 1st March, 2008

Live pilots with winning applications: Second quarter 2008

How

Hackers at Location Masti will have simulated location feeds of 20 people available through a web service that they can use in building their applications. The web service will allow requests for both real time location and the archived location of the person at every quarter of an hour for the past day for use by the applications.

If the participants would like to have live location of privacy approved phones instead of simulated feeds, Location Masti allows that too. Just a form to be submitted online and the location feed will be available.

Details of Mobiance's Location feed APIs and web services will be made available to registered hackers at the time of registration.

Participation

Location Masti is open to all people above 15 years of age and who are accepted by Mobiance as "hackers". Hackers can participate

as individual "hacker" or
as a "team" of hackers with upto 10 members. Hackers can belong to only one team.
Corporate hackers may join in the fun

Number of entries

Hackers or teams can submit any number of hacks but will need to specify their hacks at the time of registration.

Accessing Mobiance location Feed

Hackers will be provided a unique access code for each application at the time of registration. This code will be needed to access Mobiance's APIs and/or web services by the applications. Hackers will be required to maintain the privacy of this access code.

Submission of entries

The hackers can make their application available through a URL for demo purposes subject to presentation rules. For submission of entries, the code will have to be uploaded with documentation and instructions through a mechanism communicated to the hackers by Mobiance.

We are locationmasti on twitter.
Follow us for updates and announcements.

Whereis

2007-11-21T15:08:00.001+05:30

Love Maps?

We do.

And so do a lot of other people. Did you know:

Whereis.com first went live in December 1997
Whereis.com is visited over four million times per month (Source: Nielsen//NetRatings SiteCensus average monthly sessions Aug 06 - Jan 07)
Whereis.com has experienced growth of 53% in average monthly unique browsers in the past 12 months (Source: Average monthly unique browsers 2006 v 2005: Nielsen//NetRatings SiteCensus Jan 05 - Dec 06)
99% of whereis.com users surveyed indicated that they intend to return to the site (Source: Whereis Consumer Experience Survey, 2 Degrees Research Pty Ltd 2006)
Whereis.com has three times more brand awareness than any other online mapping service ( Source: Nielsen//NetRatings Australian Internet & Technology Report 2006)

Whereis.com sources its digital maps from UBD who are Australia's leading brand in street directories. All of the maps are computer drawn which produces clarity and usability that are second to none. UBD is Australia's largest publisher of mapping and travel related products. Its publishing program includes street directories, guides, maps and road atlases.

Visit www.ubd-online.com for more information.

Not only can you pinpoint the precise location of a street on whereis.com, you can also:

View high-quality photos of Australian cities with the ability to see to better than 15cm resolution using the "Photo" button
Get point-to-point directions between (up to) three specified addresses
Search for key points of interest on the map including train stations, public toilets, picnic areas and many more.

Finding your way has never been easier or more convenient.

GPS Navigation and Digital Maps - powered by Whereis®

Whereis® provides a leading map database for Australian and New Zealand navigation systems. Whereis® products include a range of data products suitable for in-car and portable navigation consumers, through to large corporations managing routing and scheduling of fleets.

For more information visit http://poweredby.whereis.com.

Whereis® Navigator

Whereis® Navigator is the low-cost wireless GPS navigation solution for mobile phones and pocket PCs.

With real-time turn-by turn vehicle navigation and access to regularly updated maps and points-of-interest, you'll always know where you are and where you're going.

For more information visit http://navigator.whereis.com.

Whereis.com is apart of the Sensis network of web sites. Visit the Sensis Corporate site for more information http://about.sensis.com.au/

MapDesk

2007-11-19T18:44:00.001+05:30

MapDesk is a UMN MapServer based map editor and viewer.
The built-in map file editor supports syntax highlighting, context-sensitive help and a preview function.

Screenshot

Features

Standalone application, no need of UMN MapServer CGI
Built-in map file editor
Built-in viewer with map file preview, zoom, pan, etc.
Preview of the legend
Platform-independent architecture

Download

You can download the fully functional MapDesk binaries, now in the version 0.7.0:

Debian package
RPM package
Windows ZIP file (Unzip and start mapdesk.bat)

The RPM and the Windows packages are not fully tested! Please give us feedback.

MapServer Getting Started Tutorial!

2007-11-17T18:11:00.001+05:30

GETTING STARTED TUTORIAL
Welcome to the MapServer Getting Started Tutorial! The Maptech MapServer provides you with access to over 65,000 topographic maps, nautical and aeronautical charts, aerial photographs and satellite images covering the United States. Browse, view, print and email the maps for free.
The Getting Started Tutorial takes 10-15 minutes to complete.

Click here to start the tutorial.

Click previous and next at the top of each page to step through the tutorial. Or, select one of the lessons below by clicking on it, then follow the step by step instructions. When done close this window to return to the MapServer.

Tutorial Lessons:
Selecting a map location
Selecting maps, charts or photos
Moving around on a map - panning
Changing zoom level - on same map
Choosing a scale - different map

Making "My Map" with location symbol
Saving in a personalized My Maps list
Printing MyMaps to take with you
E-mailing MyMaps to friends and colleges
Buying maps, charts and software with
advanced GPS, 3-D, and printing

Links: Glider Towing, 3D Bonanza, John Hanke Presentation, Google Maps Profiles, Virtual Earth 3D Modeling

2007-11-17T17:03:00.001+05:30

Glider Towing - GoogleSightseeing highlights a great plane in flight find showing a glider being towed to altitude in southwestern England. See it here . The amazing thing is that this aerial photo is clear enough to see the tow cable - probably due to the right sun angle glinting off the cable. The sighting was discovered by Noisette at the GEC.
3D Bonanza - The 3D Warehouse can help you find all kinds of interesting model collections in Google Earth. Some 3D building collections are amazingly detailed. Fly to " Beaver Creek, Colorado " and turn on the 3D Buildings layer for a very detailed model of this ski village. Even the chair lifts are models (and there's no lift lines! Hmmm). Note: depending on your connection and computer, this collection may take a while to load due to the detail.
John Hanke Presentation - John Hanke, Director of Google Earth and Maps at Google, and the CEO of Keyhole before it was bought by Google, spoke at Berkeley where he got his business degree (video here - Real Player required). This is a fascinating lecture as it tells the story of his several business ventures and the challenging history of Keyhole before it was acquired. Also, at the end he shows some interesting slides about the success of Google Earth. I especially liked the heat map showing all the placemarks on Earth in their search index on a map. He also shared a photo of the fleet of cars Google is deploying to take Streetview imagery which was taken by a blogger. Well worth watching if you want to know more about the history of Google Earth. Video discovered via this blog post.
Google Maps Profiles - Google is increasingly adding social networking elements to Maps. This week they announced you can make a real profile of yourself in Google Maps (picture photo, pseudo, and other info), plus when people look at your photo they can see your reviews, photos, links, and the My Maps you've chosen to share. They also made a video talking about the new profile features presented by SketchUp newsletter Googler Tasha.
Virtual Earth 3D Modeling - There haven't been many blog posts about this, but when Microsoft released their big update to Virtual Earth this week they also released a free application for building 3D models. This is not a SketchUp killer or anything, but it was yet another move to have the same suite of tools Google has created for Google Earth (gee, is this a competition or something?). Earthware Blog has three posts mentioning, showing a video demonstration, and comparing Microsoft's 3D tool to SketchUp.

Google Earth 4.2 - Release notes wanted, new icons

2007-11-17T17:02:00.002+05:30

Google still hasn't updated the release notes for the new Google Earth 4.2. So I'm still discovering little things which have been updated in 4.2 from the last beta. We are well aware of some of the big changes like the new Sky and the new 3D photo viewer. But, I'm sure there are lots of smaller changes like the bug which kept the navigation gadget from going away when on automatic in 4.1 is now fixed. Last night, I noticed that the standard icons used for placemarks have changed. They are now more similar in style to the icons used in the layers and in Google My Maps. The image below shows the new choices (if you create a placemark and click on the icon button, this is what you see).

Click on the image above to see a comparison of the new images to the old.

WMS Javascript Library

2007-11-17T11:58:00.001+05:30

A Web Map Server (WMS) will return a static map image if given the required parameters in the URL.
For example, the URL:
http://wms.jpl.nasa.gov/wms.cgi?VERSION=1.1.1&REQUEST=GetMap&LAYERS=BMNG&FORMAT=image/jpeg&bbox=20,10,80,45&height=150&width=200&srs=EPSG:4326&styles=
will return this image
However, this image is static and any change requires typing in a new URL.

The purpose of the WMS Javascript Library wmsmap.js is to facilitate the creation of dynamics maps using freely available WMS servers. For example to create the dynamic equivalent of the image above, include the javascript files, define the Layer object, create a new map object, and associate it with an html DIV element.

// define layer object
var myLayer = {
 URL: 'http://wms.jpl.nasa.gov/wms.cgi?',
 LAYERS: ['BMNG'],  
 FORMAT: 'image/jpeg',   
 BBOX: [20,10,80,45]
};
// create new map object with layer
var myMap = new WMap('map_div',[myLayer]);

Where map div is defined in the HTML as:
<div id='map_div' style='width:300px;height:200px></div>

The WMS Javascript Library provides an API to allow the creation of dynamic maps including simple zoom functionality, clickable googlemap-like overlays, and GetFeatureInfo queries by clicking the map (coming soon).
See the examples for details.

This EXACT code will create the pan-able map below
Try it: click and drag to pan the map

All of this is done without any server side scripts (no PHP or Perl) Two more lines of code adds zooming capabilities.

Includes

In addition, this code currently uses the incredibly useful prototype library.
Prototype may be overkill for the implementation in wmsmap.js, but provides a lot of tools for cross-browser web development.

This library also uses dragdrop.js and util.js from the script.aculo.us library, which is overkill and these may be removed if their functionality can be encompassed in a tighter script targetted for the dragging in wmsmap.js

Influences

This code borrows from ideas in:

Related Sourceforge Projects :

msCross WebGIS: Mapserver Javascript AJAX Interface

Map Icon Factory!

2007-11-14T19:07:00.001+05:30

Hi Friends if anyone is interested in creating map icons for google maps, yahoo maps, this weblink will help you attain that goal, simplifying your work. Just follow simple steps, choose colors and there you go...

nJoy!!

http://www.terraims.com/dmapicons/

Google map Icon Creator, Applications and the Future

2007-11-13T12:35:00.001+05:30

If you've ever done any development work that includes Google maps and you're not a genius with Photoshop then this should certainly help - Terra IMS' Mapicon Factory.

It has a great UI and has a free option, it's great for creating unique icons for your Google maps.

It's been a busy couple of weeks here at the kitchen table, when Elliott and I haven't been coding we've been discussing the future and more to the point our plans for Roomstr. The conversations have been the usual mix of frank debate and down right excitement about what the project has become.

Yesterday we came to our decision over the application and the future.

The outcome was that we are not going to release Roomstr as a downloadable application, we will be initially launching it as a UK property search site. We know it has huge potential to disrupt the UK property market as some of the user generated map based features will bring a whole new set of benefits to house hunters.

To achieve this will mean some big changes to our own organisation, we'll have to grow and focus, this will mean divesting some of our current projects and so Folkstr will be put up for sale.

We will also be looking at building the team, to add the necessary new skills and once the site has gained enough traction probably look at finding the right equity partner.

Roomstr's unique use of maps, video, sms, mobile and user content has huge potential, it's going to take a lot of phone calls and shoe leather to get Estate Agents on board but we're ready for that

GPlotter : Make Google Maps Easily

2007-11-13T12:33:00.001+05:30

GPlotter is a Javascript object which provides a simple interface to plot markers onto Google Maps using a simple XML file. The interface allows the user to write a few of lines of Javascript to provide this cross-browser functionality. It has been tested and works with MSIE (6 & 7), Firefox and Safari. [ See Documentation ]

Example: Locations in Milwaukee, WI, USA

Map

Satellite

Hybrid

1. The Gig
1132 E. Wright Street
Milwaukee, WI 53212
414 562-0219

2. Trocadero
1758 N Water Street
Milwaukee, WI 53202
414 272-2050

3. County Clare
1230 N Astor Street
Milwaukee, WI 53202
414 272-5273

Usage

Using the GPlotter requires the Google Maps API and Prototype (1.5.0), a cross-browser Javascript library providing AJAX and object inheritance functionality. Simply reference them as is normally done with Javascript. Then reference GPlotter. This page is a working example and can be used as your starting point.

Extending GPlotter

The Prototype object inheritance model can be used to extend GPlotter with your own custom object. Either add your own custom methods or override the GPlotter behavior. This clean separation will reduce to work to integrate your changes with a future release of GPlotter.

var MyMapper = Class.create();
Object.extend(MyMapper.prototype, GPlotter.prototype);
var mapper = new MyMapper();
mapper.plot("map", "labels", "milwaukee.xml");

Downloads

GPlotter.js (v0.90)
milwaukee.xml (sample XML file)
Prototype Library (website)

Free Map Icons

These free icons are in red, green and blue numbering 1 to 25 each as well as an empty one for each color. Please host these icons on your website, just download Google Maps Icons.zip.

XML Format

The XML format is currently marked as 0.9 and the GPlotter object is designed to support this version and future versions. The root element must be named locations and include the version attribute. Child elements may change with each new version. As new XML format version are defined new versions of GPlotter will be published. Also, The XML format is also intended to remain neutral to the mapping system while GPlotter will remain specific to Google Maps.

New Google Maps Icons, Free!

2007-11-13T12:31:00.001+05:30

Collected from:

http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/2005/07/23/new-google-maps-icons-free/

"I have been using the Google Maps API and found I wanted more icons than are provided by Google. They have several red icons going from A to J but if you want to place more icons on your map you will need your own set.

So I created several icons in red, green and blue numbering 1 to 25 each as well as an empty one. Feel free to use these icons, just download Google Maps Icons.zip.

[ GPlotter - Create Google Maps Easily ]

[UPDATE: The download now includes the Photoshop file which can be used to created icons with other colors or numbers/letters. (5/27/2006)]"

Links to some ka-Map applications

2007-11-13T12:25:00.001+05:30

Version 1.0

World Climate Analysis by Ominiverdi.org
Embrio - Interface to PyWPS to access GRASS commands. by Ominiverdi.org
Carte des Sols de Rwanda - Soil Maps of Rwanda (Mostly in French) by the Laboratory of Soil Science, UGent

version 0.2

iFrame version - implemented by DM Solutions Group
Chinese map - chinese version - posted by Enri on http://lists.maptools.org/pipermail/ka-map-users
Australia Web-Mapping Site - australian map - posted by Jacob Delfos on http://lists.maptools.org/pipermail/ka-map-users
LOSLRS Project - very nice layout - posted by Pete Giencke on http://lists.maptools.org/pipermail/ka-map-users
Pinnacles National Monument Soil Survey - found on web
Янтра-ГИС - found on web
http://www.freemap.co.il/map/ - posted by Ehud Shabtai, illustrates use of Hebrew in the interface
http://www.hipparc.com.br/veracidade/ - hi-res photos through ka-Map interface posted by Pedro Garcia
http://madhuri.media.osaka-cu.ac.jp/kamap/ - Uji City - Kamap 0.2 demo application found here
http://www.namibia-forum.ch:8080/ka-map/?map=etosha - nice personalization - found on web - Namibia-Forum Karten
http://srv1.jump-server.net/~arunatec/ - found on web
City Government of Naga, Philippines added by Senen Ebio
AIDMap - Sample Application - Cambodia version with tooltips to show images. Found on web.
Minnesota DNR Recreation Compass
Minnesota DNR - iframe/popup ka-map as a feature of an online magazine article. - Minnesota DNR with 3D maps!
NRCS Resource Inventory and Assessment Information System - WebGD ka-Map customization.
Historical Imaging - Humanities Computing and Media Centre, University of Victoria - sample of imaging app based on Ka-Map.
USMapServer.com, WorldMapServer.net, WashingtonMaps.net, MAPSachusetts.com, OlympicMaps.com, NorthCascadesMaps.com - Over 30,000 ka-map maps for each city, county, and state in the US, country in the world, and more.
ZoomIn Australia - Projectx Technology strong personalization.
ZoomIn New Zealand - Projectx Technology strong personalization.
http://www.lapdonline.org/crimemap/ - LAPD | e-policing and crime stats.
Souka City Map - Japanese version - with kml-file generation, printing function, clickable point layer. SUGOI !!!
http://webmap.geog.byu.edu/aup/ - Atlas of Utah's Past - history review of Utah state.
http://www.openmapsihlwald.ch - A map built with ka-map for visitors of a recreation-area (forest) called Sihlwald near Zurich, Switzerland
Neapoljs Locator Sample App - implemented by TYDAC

Mapping Blogs

2007-11-06T18:55:00.003+05:30

GIS SOFTWARES.. WORTH TO GIVE A LOOK

2007-11-06T18:45:00.001+05:30

	PowerMapper Standard - Allows web professionals to create graphical site maps with one click, to visualize site layout and design. Maps show web page thumbnails and can be tailored using 7 different styles then printed, copied or exported to another application.
	Pos HTML Image Mapper - Easily create HTML image maps with this friendly photo and image map editor. Pos HTML Image Mapper includes WYSIWYG interface allowing you mapping images fast and easy.
	ConceptDraw WebWave - ConceptDraw WebWave is a software for web site/application prototyping and design, page mocking-up and site-mapping. It includes many ready-made graphics, shapes, templates and wizards for quickly creating professional diagrams and drawing.
	ConceptDraw WebWave Mac - ConceptDraw WebWave is a software for web site/application prototyping and design, page mocking-up and site-mapping. It includes many ready-made graphics, shapes, templates and wizards for quickly creating professional diagrams and drawing.
	yalips - yalips integrates several visualization techniques e.g. brainstorming, mapping, gantt (project management), flowcharts, and UML modeling. It can be learned within minutes from video tutorials and comes at moderate costs.
	Site Map Pro - Create a site map or Yahoo or Google Sitemap Protocol XML for any website or for offline CD/DVD use. Site Map Pro will create a self contained HTML file. Place this file on your site to provide full navigation facilities for your visitors.
	Altova MapForce Professional Edition - Altova MapForce 2007 Professional Edition is the premier XML/database/flat file data integration tool. It converts data instantly or generates custom data conversion code for use in your apps. It is the definitive tool for data integration projects.
	TransPad - By TransPad, you can change a set of strings or characters in a file or clipboard by one click, according to your mapping prescription called a mapper. TransPad is useful not only for translation or related works but also for encryption.
	MindChart - MindChart,a mindmapping tool that helps in effortlessly and quickly creating mind maps.This software let you create a mmap, add branches and sub-branches, represent them in different shapes, colors and thicknesses, and view the map in different ways!
	Map Suite Desktop - Map Suite Desktop Edition is a powerful and feature-rich .NET mapping control that enables C# and VB.NET software developers to build detailed desktop mapping applications. Map Suite Desktop is a true .NET control.

Book Maps

2007-11-06T15:59:00.001+05:30

Social Networking with Maps !

2007-11-06T15:58:00.001+05:30

Google Maps Games

2007-11-06T15:57:00.001+05:30

Blogs to Read !!

2007-11-06T15:56:00.001+05:30

Google Maps Creation Tools - Part 19

2007-11-06T15:32:00.001+05:30

WebAssist Pro Maps for Google:
Adobe Dreamweaver extension

WebAssist has created a tool for Adobe Dreamweaver which will help folks integrate
rich Google Map features into their websites. A point-and-click wizard guides users through the process. Check here for More information.. or visit this Del.icio.us page for more coverage of the launch.

Terraims Mapicon Factory - A map icon tool for your maps! (Related: Custom icons for your My Maps)
MapChannels - Embed maps created through Google My Maps or other KML / GeoRSS sources easily into a website with no need for coding.
Tutorial: Google Earth, Google Maps and Your Photos - Also see Part II
Get-A-Route - Convert Google Maps routes to OziExplorer (.rte and .wpt) or GPX files.
Use Google Maps from within a Win32 client application
Mashup of Google Maps and VCL
Using Google Maps from VCL sample application

Highlights from the Official Google Maps API Blog:

New Software Applications and Web Tools using Google Maps:

A new Google Maps mashup from The World Bank

2007-11-06T15:31:00.003+05:30

Geo.Worldbank.org: The World Bank Group has just completed their second Google Maps mashup project which is called Geo.Worldbank.org. This mashup presents extensive information about various countries: data, projects The World Bank has ongoing in-country, news, income level and location of their public information centers. In late May/07 I blogged about The World Bank Group's "Doing Business Map". A representative from The World Bank notified me to let Google Maps Mania readers know that this map project has been renamed "Business Planet" and has been upgraded with 20 more maps from their collection. Business Planet features maps that cover over 190 economies across issues like "How easy it is to do business", "How often firms are expected to bribe tax inspectors", and much more. The "About" section at the top has all the details. Related: U.N. Launches Poverty Monitoring Site With Google (Also see this post from the Google Lat Long Blog )

Google map your GPS videos with VeoGeo!

2007-11-06T15:31:00.001+05:30

VeoGeo:

I've blogged about ways to map your photos here on Google Maps Mania but easily mapping videos has been something that has been lacking a great tool that would make this entire process easy. VeoGeo is a new video-mapping site that attempts to address this by giving you the ability to upload your video + GPS info to instantly create a fully mapped viewing experience. This post from the VeoGeo Blog will give you pointers on taking your video and collecting the GPS information, then just register on VeoGeo and upload it for sharing! The VeoGeo site has a great world Google Map that will let you browse videos that are currently being shared. Here are a few good ones:

CARTOGRAPHY

2007-10-29T12:26:00.001+05:30

Cartography deals with the design of maps themselves. There are many good resources for improving your map design - among the best are:

Designing Better Maps: A Guide for GIS Users
by Cynthia A. Brewer ESRI Press, 2005, 220 pp - published by ESRI Press, this comprehensive book is a complete guide to a wide range of design techniques.

Making Maps : A Visual Guide to Map Design for GIS
by John Krygier and Denis Wood 2005 This book is equally useful, but focuses more on the concepts of design. It is less a technical cartography guide than a tour of effective map communication strategies. Purchase from Amazon.com

Other good web resources include:

GIS Lounge Cartography site

North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS)

Cartographic Communication Notes - Univ. Colorado faculty site, with an eclectic and useful array of guidelines

The Map Room - a great blog about mapping

Color Brewer and ColorBlender – useful tools for choosing colors that work well together in map design and cartography

Relief Shading website - for those who want to explore how to create beautiful elevation shading in their maps

Making Maps Easy to Read – A somewhat technical site in the UK that has a variety of good tutorials

ESRI Map Gallery – see this online gallery of users' maps

Communication Arts Magazine – go to Interactive Design Annual

Perry-Castenada Map Library at Univ. Texas - excellent online resource of a wide range of maps.

David Rumsey Map Collection, a remarkable online collection of over 10,000 maps from the 1700s to 1900s. –

ESRI Map Books Online

2007-10-29T12:10:00.001+05:30

Published annually since 1984, the ESRI Map Book is the only publication dedicated to acknowledging the important and innovative accomplishments of GIS users around the world.

ESRI Map Books Online

Volume 21: GIS—Communicating Our World
Volume 20: GIS—Helping Manage Our World
Volume 19: GIS—The Language of Geography
Volume 18: Geography and GIS—Serving Our World
Volume 17: Geography and GIS—Sustaining Our World
Volume 16: Geography—Creating Communities
Volume 1: GIS in State Government

Each volume of the ESRI Map Book showcases a small portion of the work presented at the Map Gallery Exhibition at the annual ESRI International User Conference.

Relief Shading website

2007-10-29T12:09:00.001+05:30

The Relief Shading website is intended to give cartographers, map
enthusiasts, and students in-depth information about shaded relief.

Click on the images below to see selected examples.
Matterhorn by R. Leuzinger Map of Grisons by E. Imhof and H.
Leuzinger Antarctica by H.C. Berann Pik Lenin by R. Spiess

Shaded relief is a method for representing topography on maps in a
natural, aesthetic, and intuitive manner. On this website you will
find rules and guidelines for the design and production of shaded
relief, an overview of its history, examples produced by professional
relief artists, technical tips, and much more.

For additional information about shaded relief and 3D panoramas, visit
this excellent website: www.shadedrelief.com

IRC for MAPSERVER

2007-10-16T18:05:00.001+05:30

Some of the development of MapServer is coordinated through IRC. This page describes how you log on to chat, ask questions, and hack around with the developers.

Server and Channel Information

Server: irc.freenode.net
Channel: #mapserver

Why IRC?

IRC is a primary medium where Open Source GIS hackers congregate, collaborate, and hack. It makes it easy to communicate things like compilation issues, where immediate, iterative feedback allows folks to make a lot of progress. Something that might take days of heavily-quoted emails through a maillist might only take fifteen minutes on IRC.

IRC is a great way to coordinate on-line meetings. Much of the discussion about the development of the new MapServer website was coordinated through IRC.

Some folks find IRC distracting and do not normally participate except for on-line meetings.

How do I join?

Chatzilla is probably the easiest way to get going. Chatzilla works with Mozilla or Firefox, and once you have it installed, you can log on to the channel by pointing your browser at:

irc://irc.freenode.net/#mapserver

There are many other IRC clients available. This page provides a good listing for many different platforms.

GIShosting.net

2007-10-16T18:02:00.001+05:30

GIShosting.net provides specialized hosting services in GIS industry with open source software solutions : Mapserver, PHP/MapScript , PostGIS, etc. It's primary value proposition is to eliminate the complexity of the underlying software installation and maintenance, and help the customer in focusing on the real business.

We offer three basic hosting plans:

In addition to GIS solution, hosting plans also includes email accounts, secured shell access, databases, and plethora of other solutions normally needed by most businesses to maintain an internet presence.

Census / Google Maps Mashup

2007-10-16T16:43:00.001+05:30

This page links to maps that combine U.S. Census Bureau information with Google Maps; the Mapeteria service allows you to map your own data.

See my FAQ and my blog entries about maps.

These maps let you flip between a number of different, related, demographic maps.

Race and density: population density, percent White, Black, Latino, Asian, Hawai'ian/Pacific Islander, Native American
Age distribution: median age and age groups
Housing units: percent occupied, vacant, owner-occupied, rentals
Household composition: percent single men without kids, single women without kids, single men with kids, single women with kids, married couples with kids, married couples without kids

Other maps:

Total population density (min=0, max=10,000)
Male population percentage (min=40%, max=60%) -- find prisons and military bases
Female population percentage (min=40%, max=60%) -- find prisons and military bases
Average Household Size (min=1, max=4)
Average Family Size (min=1, max=4)

Households per family (min=1.5, max=2) -- find unrelated people living together
Blacks per housing unit (min=1.5, max=10) -- find prisons. Also see Blacks per housing unit with markers for California prisons (slow to load)
Percentage of population 18-22 (min=30%, max=60%) -- find universities

If you want to roll your own map, see the expert mode form.

There are some strangenesses in the data.

ROSA Java Applet

2007-10-13T12:08:00.001+05:30

Rosa is a Java applet that improves server-side web applications by adding some simple features on the client-side. It was originally designed with Web mapping applications in mind, but is generic enough to be used in any type of application.

The main purpose of the applet is to extend the standard form control:

 <INPUT TYPE=IMAGE ... >

It displays an image (GIF, JPEG or PNG) on which operations can be performed, these include single clicks, dragging a rectangle, ellipse, or polyline to define an area of interest. It can also have a toolbar and/or floating buttons with various functions attached to them. The information on the user's input will be returned through form parameters that you define.

Rosa is OpenSource, this means that you can use it freely in your own applications, and that you also have access to the source code. Just like with any OpenSource project, we hope that users of the applet will contribute their improvements and report problems/suggestions.

If you can't wait any longer and want to see how this thing works, then you can jump straight to the Applet documentation and list of Parameters.

msCross: AJAX (WEB 2.0) WEB GIS Client

2007-10-11T19:13:00.001+05:30

msCross is a AJAX (WEB 2.0) WEB GIS client, initially developed to be a Javascript interface for UMN Mapserver.
msCross was developed to allow users dinamically display geographical information layers on the web. It was developed to be cross-browser. The main objective is to permit users to simply create Google Maps-style applications, using only Free Software.
The SourceForge project can be viewed on the web site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mscross

Important:
If you are interested in developing msCross, write to datacrossing@crs4.it

The msCross has been tested with the following web browsers:

Mozilla Firefox >= 1.0.5
Internet Exploer >= 6.0
Opera >= 8.51

Features:

Free Software, distributed under GPL (Open Source)
Client side
Cross-browser / cross-platform
Simple use (only one javascript file, no installation is required)
Easily customizable and extensible
Based on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) technique
UMN Mapserver CGI interface support
Point Overlay support
OGC WFS client support (Web Feature Service, Open Geospatial Consortium: pdf) for point layers
new OGC WMS client support (Web Map Service, Open Geospatial Consortium: pdf)
new Easy Toolbar customization
new Debugging mode

Here is possible to try it.

Point Overlay example (WFS)

Simulations analyzer

OGC WMS protocol

Download

mscross.js v1.1.9 (date: 20070218)

MAP MANAGER

2007-10-10T18:35:00.001+05:30

Map Manager is a powerful OGC-compliant Internet mapping solution providing organizations the ability to present, link, distribute and publish geomatics-based data, products and services. Map Manager provides an advanced infrastructure for users to access spatial information from disparate data sources and to display the information in powerful, easy-to-use WWW browser client applications.

Map Manager Client - Client application developed using PHTML and provides Web browser GIS functionality without any plug-ins or downloads.
Map Manager Server - A powerful OGC and ArcIMS-compliant Internet Map Server for hosting and serving a variety of vector and raster layers.
Map Manager Portlet - Contains all the functionality of the Web Map Manager Client but developed and deployed using the J2EE environment. Can be easily embedded into an external Web page with little effort. Map Manager Portlet comes configured with a Map Manager servlet for communication and directional messaging.
Map Manager Search Portlet - A "wizard" type interface for combining and dynamically interacting with search and map operations.
Map Manager Servlet - A servlet for interacting with Map Manager portlets.

WMS and WFS

2007-10-10T18:11:00.001+05:30

WMS

Web Map Server (WMS) is a protocol for requesting and serving raster geodata over HTTP
a WMS server responds to WMS requests by returning images, usually in common image formats like GeoTIFF, JPEG or PNG
a WMS request can either be simply encoded as a URL, or sent via HTTP POST
here is an example of a WMS request URL, to get an idea of what they look like:
- http://terraservice.net/ogcmap.ashx?version=1.1.1&REQUEST=getmap &LAYERS=DRG&SRS=EPSG:4326&BBOX=227476,2221563,232979,2228442 &WIDTH=512&HEIGHT=512&FORMAT=JPEG
the WMS Cookbook is a guide to implementing an OGC Web Map Server
some other useful resources on the OGC Network site
there are numerous free WMS server implementations available, including MapServer and Deegree (LGPL)
WMS is very general-purpose and hence not particularly efficient or optimized for specific clients. WMS-C is a wiki for ideas about how WMS could be extended (or subset) with Tile Caching.

WFS

Web Feature Server (WFS) is a protocol for requesting and serving vector geodata over HTTP
a WFS server responds to requests by returning data in the Geography Markup Language (GML)
a WFS server can even support transactions which allow a client to modify data on the server
there are numerous free WMS server implementations available, including GeoServer (GPL) and Deegree (LGPL)

Search for public WMS layers

2007-10-10T18:09:00.001+05:30

Here you can search for public WMS layers. The result set shows found layers with links, so you can examine them directly as base map or overlay using internal map explorer.

The links are adjusted to the middle of layer's bounding box and try to identify a useful zoom level.

Currently 30,000+ WMS layers from 200+ servers are indexed. There are duplicates, so in case of network failures you may try another server. Search uses a combined index of layer name, title and abstract and is limited to a maximum of 100 hits.

http://exploreourpla.net/gis/maps/

OpenJUMP – The free, Java based and open source

2007-10-08T11:59:00.001+05:30

What is OpenJump?

"JUMP is a computer program that uses a unified mapping platform as a visualisation framework … " (changed ESRI key note on What is GIS? by M. Bobzien)

:o) But to be a bit more serious..

OpenJUMP is an open source GIS software written in Java. It is based on JUMP GIS by Vivid Solutions

First of all… => see also here

It is a Vector GIS that can read rasters as well
OpenJUMP is known to work on Windows, Linux and Mac platforms, but should work on any operating system that runs Java 1.4 or later.
It is not just another free demo viewer, but you can edit, save, analyze etc. with JUMP / OpenJUMP
It works, even with medium size datasets, and with professional touch
It provides a GIS API with a flexible plugin structure, so that new features are relatively easy to develope around the sound mapping platform.
It utilises standards like GML, WMS and WFS
It is already translated in English, Finnish, French, German, Portugese and Spanish. The translation in other languages is in progress.
..and it is free (under the GPL license).

Mobilemaps Nearby-Engine

2007-10-08T11:51:00.001+05:30

Mobilemaps Nearby-Engine can be made to work with most any mapserver, or Web service conforming to the Open GIS Consortium standard. However, our favoured configuration uses the open source MapServer from the University of Minnesota. The hcslmap script is custom to the High Country Mapserver, and uses the rendering engine of MapServer (shp2img) for displaying a single image, but provides it's own map caching mechanism.

It has preconfigured layers for street-level through world-wide level maps, and these layers can be added or subtracted. Much of this document is an extension on MapServer's own installation files, so please refer to the MapServer website for further information. http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/

http://mobilemaps.com/faq_files/install_mapserver.html

Multimap

2007-10-05T16:47:00.000+05:30

Map Widget - Pan/Zoom Widgets

This example shows how to add all of the widgets available as part of the Multimap API to the map. There are three types of widget available that can be added:

Pan/Zoom Widget;

Small Pan/Zoom Widget; and

Small Zoom Widget.

These widgets control the panning and zooming of the map.

The code demonstrates creating, adding and removing each of the available widgets on the map.

The appearance of the widgets is set with a style sheet; the example shows these widgets in the Multimap style, but these can be changed to whatever appearance is desired by changing the style sheet. For more information on this, please see the Advanced Widgets example।

http://www.multimap.com/share/documentation/api/1.1/widgets.htm

MapServer dbox

2007-10-05T13:28:00.001+05:30

dbox is really a collection of DHTML-based libraries for building highly interactive web-based mapping applications. The tools are meant to work directly with the MapServer web mapping system. They provide relatively autonomous functionality without restricting overall design. In fact, they were designed to be used with old fashioned elements like tables.

Functionality includes:

dbox.js (drawing canvas and image manager)
- applied to pre-defined image or div anchor
- "rubber-band" box tool
- drag pan tool
- linear drawing tool
- polygon drawing tool
dLegend.js (legend manager)
- tree-style navigation and layer control based on an XML legend file
dContainer.js (generic, scrollable container)
- applied to pre-defined image or div anchor
mapserv.js (client-side coordinate management)
- coordinates are managed completely on the client using javascript
- MapServer is called as an image engine, no templates are used

LINK: http://maps.dnr.state.mn.us/tools/dbox/

MapLab

2007-10-04T16:18:00.003+05:30

An open source suite of web-based tools that allow for the easy creation and management of MapServer web mapping applications and map files.

Link: http://www.maptools.org/maplab/

MapServer Test Suite

2007-10-04T16:18:00.001+05:30

The MapServer "Test Suite" is a series of examples showing the many features of the most recent MapServer release. In most cases they are extremely simple examples, presenting enough information to show users how a certain function is used. The suite will continue to grow as MapServer matures. In most cases a link to templates and map files are provided. Since template files have a .html extension your browser will try to display the document. Use the view source capability of your browser to see how the template is structured.

Link: http://maps.dnr.state.mn.us/mapserver_demos/tests46/

Simple Recipes for the UMN Mapserver

2007-10-04T15:05:00.001+05:30

When I started using the UMN Mapserver , I found myself often looking for a simple example that illustrated just one concept, and was small enough that I could understand just one piece of Mapserver without having to plow through lots of code. These Mapserver Recipes are my attempt to improve that situation.

These examples are written using PHP/Mapscript. I assume you already have a working installation of Mapserver and PHP/Mapscript on your machine (although the first example can be used to find out whether you really do!).

Take special note that you will have to edit SHAPEPATH ,IMAGEPATH , and IMAGEURL in each .MAP file to match your own installation. If your web server is not configured to use PHP/Mapscript for .PHTML files, you'll have to reconfigure your server or rename the recipe files.

You can download all the the PHTML and MAP files at http://www.mobilegeographics.com/mapserver/MSrecipes.tar.gz , and then follow the links to download the data files from USGS. At the moment this is the useful example:

Hello World . Draws text only, no data file required.

ARCHIVE FOR MAPSERVER

2007-10-04T13:39:00.000+05:30

List Archives

Archive of MapServer Users list. Check here before posting a question to the listserv, your question has likely been asked before...

Public, Searchable Archive of MapServer-Users is available also.

MapServer Workbench

2007-10-03T18:42:00.001+05:30

What?	A set of cooperative tools for development of MapServer web mapping applications.
Where?	See the SourceForge project page at http://sourceforge.net/projects/msworkbench
See it!	Application Wizard (msappwiz.tcl) Mapfile Editor (msedit.tcl) Mapfile Explorer (msexplorer.tcl) Shape Explorer (msshapex.tcl)
Get it!	Download MapServer Workbench 0.3 Download Mapscript/Tcl (includes pre-compiled Windows DLL!) Also, see the CVS and/or download files at the project page.

When generating maps to be displayed on websites, which image output format should I use?

2007-10-03T16:19:00.001+05:30

Although Mapscript can generate the map in any desired image format it sufficient to only consider the three most prevalent ones: JPEG, PNG, and GIF.

JPEG is an image format that uses a lossy compression algorithm to reduce an image's file size and is mostly used when loss of detail through compression is either not noticeable or negligible, as in most photos. Maps on the other hand mainly consist of fine lines and areas solidly filled in one colour, which is something JPEG is not known for displaying very well. In addition, maps, unless they include some aerial or satellite imagery, generally only use very few different colours. JPEG with its 24bit colour depth capable of displaying around 16.7 million colours is simple not suitable for this purpose. GIF and PNG however use an indexed colour palette which can be optimized for any number (up to 256) of colours which makes them the perfect solution for icons, logos, charts or maps. The following comparison (generated file sizes only; not file generation duration) will therefore only include these two file formats:

GIF vs. PNG vs. PNG24 Generated Map File Sizes

	GIF	PNG	PNG24
Vector Data only	59kb	26kb	69kb
Vector Data & Satellite Image coloured	156kb	182kb	573kb
Vector Data & Satellite Image monochrome	142kb	134kb	492kb

(results based on an average 630x396 map with various colours, symbols, labels/annotations etc.)

Although GIF shows a quantitative as well as qualitative advantage over PNG when generating maps that contain full coloured remote sensing imagery, PNG is the clear quantitative winner in terms of generated file sizes for maps with or without additional monochrome imagery and should therefore been the preferred image format. If the mapping application however can also display fullcolour aerial or satellite imagery, the output file format can be changed dynamically to either GIF or even PNG24 to achieve the highest possible image quality.

How can I make my maps run faster (on Mapserver)?

2007-10-03T16:10:00.001+05:30

Some tips on improving performance.

There are a lot of different approaches to improving the performance of your maps, aside from the obvious and expensive step of buying faster hardware. Here are links to some individual howtos for various optimizations.

Some general tips for all cases:

First ands foremost is hardware. An extra GB of RAM will give your map performance increases beyond anything you're likely to achieve by tweaking your data. With the price of RAM these days, it's cheap and easy to speed up every map with one inexpensive upgrade.
Use the scientific method. Change one thing at a time, and see what effect it had. Try disabling all layers and enabling them one at a time until you discover which layer is being problematic.
You can use the shp2img program to time your results. This runs from the command line and draws an image of your entire map. Since it's run from the command line, it is immune to net lag and will give more consistent measurements that your web browser.

Does MapServer support geocoding?

2007-10-03T15:36:00.000+05:30

No.

Geocoding is an activity where you take a list of addresses and generate lat/lon points for them. This kind of spatial functionality is provided by proprietary packages such as the ESRI suite of tools, as well as services such as those provided by GDT. MapServer is for map rendering, and it does not provide for advanced spatial operations such as this.

If you are using MapScript, there is a free geocder available through XMLRPC and SOAP at http://geocoder.us . You could hook you application up to use this service to provide lat/lon pairs for addresses, and then use MapServer to display those points.

Features of mapserver

2007-10-03T15:18:00.000+05:30

Features

Advanced cartographic output
- Scale dependent feature drawing and application execution
- Feature labeling including label collision mediation
- Fully customizable, template driven output
- TrueType fonts
- Map element automation (scalebar, reference map, and legend)
- Thematic mapping using logical- or regular expression-based classes
Support for popular scripting and development environments
PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby, Java, and C#
Cross-platform support
- Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, and more
A multitude of raster and vector data formats
- TIFF/GeoTIFF, EPPL7, and many others via GDAL
- ESRI shapfiles, PostGIS, ESRI ArcSDE, Oracle Spatial, MySQL and many others via OGR
- Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web specifications
  - WMS (client/server), non-transactional WFS (client/server), WMC, WCS, Filter Encoding, SLD, GML, SOS
Map projection support
- On-the-fly map projection with 1000s of projections through the Proj.4 library

Open GIS World !

2007-10-03T14:26:00.000+05:30

Few weeks back I was assigned an evaluation work of available Open Source GIS engines. My key interest was to check & compare the features of Web based Open GIS engines. I downloaded few of them, configured and checked different properties. After fighting hard in configuring new engines and checking the features, I started reading articles, blogs and other online data about other available open engines.

I looked at :

After thorough assessment and evaluation, I was in LOVE !! And, all of my requirements are fulfilled by MAPSERVER.

The analysis work proved the superiority of MapServer over others on following grounds:

Intelligent Line Labeling (over curves).
Partial Labeling.
Intelligent Point Labeling (avoiding overlaps)
Rendering Speed.
Good documentation.
Works with Multiple Platforms – Windows, Linux.
Support for multiple data formats.
Easy configuration.