BIGMaps is finally Launched on mobile

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

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."

Giagantic GIS

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

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

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

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?

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

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.

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

CartoWeb : Advanced Geographical Information System for the Web

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.

Set Map Web GIS Solutions

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.