Google Maps for Mobile Updated

Now on Version 1.4.2.

New Features are:

• Favourite places and routes added
• Save time (and avoid sore thumbs) by keeping a list of residential or business locations and driving routes.
• Insta-KB-o-meterMonitor your data consumption in real-time — just look to the top right portion of your phone screen while using Google Maps.
• Enhanced business info After selecting a particular business, select the "Details" tab for hours of operation, hotel amenities, restaurant reviews and more.
• BlackBerry support - Just visit www.google.com/gmm on your BlackBerry's web browser and you are all set to go.

ArcGIS 9.2 Service Pack 1 Released

For the select few that have ArcGIS 9.2 installed the Service Pack 1 (of?) is available.
It will not solve ArcGIS 9.2 crashing, but hopefully it will, a little less often.

List of files changed here (notice the KmlLayer.dll and PDFExporter.dll to name a few)
Top Tip - Make tea or coffee before reading the links above.

Note: You must download separate ArcGIS Desktop (44MB), ArcIMS(29.3 -148 MB) and ArcSDE(7-14MB) service packs.

If unsure of existing service packs/patches use the service pack checker.
Install as an Administrator

ArcGIS Server for the Java Platform is not yet available.

One not listed is ArcGIS Explorer?

Ask City Maps Supports Reverse Geocoding

Using Ask City now supports reverse geocoding... and supports UK Addresses.

Clicking on the Map or Aerial Photo with the yellow icon will submit a request to find the address and returns the results in a ballon.

Searching an Address

Result

Well done Ask

ArcGIS 9.2 Service Pack 1 Delayed

ArcGIS 9.2 Service Pack 1 Delayed

The first ArcGIS 9.2 service pack, ArcGIS 9.2 SP1 is planned to be available as a download to the public late the week of December 25, 2006.

But the fix list is as long as your arm... here for the full list (yawn -have a spare 20mins)

A very quick summary for the GIS user - some would of thought these issues were ironed out in beta testing.

NIM004780 - With an Open Attribute table, selected records are out of sync with the selected features.

NIM005516 - Right-clicking on a data frame in the TOC crashes ArcReader.
NIM005626 - Deleting a record from a FileGDB that only has an OID (no other fields) doesn't work - code mistakenly thinks it's not a valid row and skips the delete.
NIM005643 - Three Cartography geoprocessing tools, Select Feature By Override, Update Override and Calculate Line Caps are not completing in ArcMap when run on a selected set of features in an edit session from a file geodatabase.
NIM005647 - In ModelBuilder, if the input paramter of Intersect is a variable and you drag and drop a feature class onto that variable, ArcGIS will crash.
NIM005698 - In Manager, log in as admin, you can edit passwords agsadmin, agsuser, and SOM, then display a message to tell admin to change OS password also
NIM005717 - Query task doesn't highlight result properly when the search layer has a spatial reference system different than that of the MXD.
NIM005727 - Clip tool doesn't use the extent of the given template raster dataset.

UK ArcGIS 9.2 will be allowed to download the service pack but pointless until ArcGIS 9.2 has arrived (due Feburary 2007).

UK EDN Developers have ArcView 9.2 but will have to pay ESRI(UK) an additional £500 for the licence key. So EDN now costs £5,500.

To save £500 wait until Feb 2007. Then can be used with your maintence contract.

ArcGIS with PostGIS soon to come?

US Weather Map Updated

Nice weather overlay

Rudolf heads South for Winter

Rudolf heads South for Winter.... maybe lost?


surely he has a map?
kml file

Mapstraction Goes Testing

A One Stop Testing of all three Mapping API's Google, Yahoo and Microsoft


Mapstraction is a library which provides a common API for Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft's javascript mapping APIs to enable switching from one to another as smoothly as possible. The aim of Mapstraction in mainly to protect companies building commercial products on top of Google Maps from changes to terms and conditions, the introduction of ads, or the emergence of a competing library with better maps, different imagery or preferable licensing terms.

It's in early development at present, so this is alpha.

Looks as it needs a little attention so sites provide more functionality but this seems to be bringing the coding side together. Looks promising, updates here when and how.

This site communicates with Google maps version 2, Yahoo maps version 3 and Virtual Earth version 2 (version 3 soon).

A similar site was blogged by mapperz called rockstarapps.com
(back in 31 October 2006)

Google Maps India

Google Found India now it's mapped.


and Singapore and Hong Kong
original source:Google Blogoscoped

Singapore:

Image: Google Maps Mania

Hong Kong:

Image: Google Maps Mania

Google Maps 2007....

A post for all to post requests on what users would like to see in Google Maps 2007.

continuation from http://googlemapsbook.com/

(Possible) New Features include:

UK Geocoding (even if that means buying Ordnance Survey and Royal Mail!)
Directions but including with Air and Sea (distance/time).
Power Find - not only finds nearest but suggests based on search.
Load from local machine or Google Spreadsheets (fields with lon/lat in)
Gmail Mapping contacts addresses - with quickest route plus via.

Possible New Layers
4 D Time (Temporal) Mapping (example, London over time 4th Century to Present 2007)
Underground mapping?
Sea Bed (bathymetry) mapping layer.
Population density/migration

post a suggestion - your chance to speak to google maps!
(they have been known to read this blog now and then.)

mapperz

Care Homes on the Map

Another UK first, Find a Nursing Home on a Map

http://www.carehome.co.uk/care_map_search.cfm

Search over 17,500 nursing homes, residential homes and care homes (only homes with 5 or more registered beds are included in the nursing, residential and care home database).

Another UK first, Find a Nursing Home.

Not a subject we would usually find to able to be mapped, but this shows the extent of geographical data. 85% of all data has a location so it can be mapped.

The search integration is very easy to use and works fast, for the amount of information it is clear an unclutter providing the user with good search results via the google maps api.

Nice and fast mapping - just how mapperz likes it. Well Done.

Free Simple UK Geocoding Searches - via Google

Mapperz is asked a lot about UK Geocoding and Address Geocoding.

The Google Maps API will Geocode Addresses but due to "Contractual Reasons" they are not allowed to provide it for the United Kingdom. But Google does have this information available to you and yes you can retrieve it with simple google searches via Google Maps.

Here is a very basic request
using Google Maps (UK Version)

An address Search term

"10 Downing Street, London"

Gives you this result


Click "Link to this Page" will give you a long url


http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=10+Downing+Street,+London
&sll=53.098145,-2.443696&sspn=6.97008,17.512207&ie=UTF8&;z=16
&ll=51.503253,-0.127544&spn=0.007052,0.02414&om=1&iwloc=addr

ignore the first Latitude and Longitude and take the second pair.

you can also add zoom levels

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?&z=17&ll=51.503253,-0.127544
will zoom in to street level.

This can be also exported to a kml and be viewed in Google Earth.
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?&z=17&ll=51.503253,-0.127544&output=kml

This will create a .kml and ask you to open it or save it.
If you save it - this can be renamed .xml for use in other applications etc.


If your a programmer you can batch this up to make an address database free of charge.


For Real Programmers this looks to be an excellent source for on the fly geocoding

geopy includes geocoder classes for MediaWiki (with the GIS extension), Semantic MediaWiki, the Google geocoder, the Yahoo! geocoder, geocoder.us, Virtual Earth, and GeoNames.

Online Archaeology Google Map Geocodes UK Addresses

Online Archaeology
have integrated a UK Geocoder into the map search this means you can use it to find archaeology near your street.



This clean and very fast website - seamlessly uses Google Maps API, Google AJAX API and Local Search Address Geocoder.



By far the best website in the UK for Address Location searches on one page.

Excellent work SteveW (Webmaster) Mapperz glad to help out.

Hotels Across the World Map

A interesting mash up that combines a very large database of hotels and other points of interest (POI) and displays them on a Google Map.

Other POI's
Capitals
Destinations
Airports
Ports
Landmarks

Also includes
Prices in local currency and accommodation.

via ProgrammableWeb

Google Map Directions - Add Extra Directions

Google Map Directions - Add Extra Directions




Adding destinations automatically recalculates the route and displays it on the map.

A nice update that might of been missed by some.

ArcGIS 9.2 Service Pack 1

ArcGIS 9.2 Service Pack 1 will be released next week (18th December 2006)

No 'Issues Addressed' reported on the website yet.

But since most UK ArcGIS users have yet to receive ArcGIS 9.2

Top Tip: Do not install until SP1 is Downloaded and on CD.

So after months of alpha, betas and release candidates... you still need to patch up the holes.

If ESRI want to win more users, a public beta (one without having to spend 20% of your time reporting back to ESRI for Free).

Embarrassed? (you would be)

UPDATE:
ESRI (UK) confirmed today that ArcGIS Desktop 9.2 will not be available until February 2007.

Even though EDN 9.2 is Delivered to UK EDN Users.

Therefore ArcGIS Engine, Runtime etc cannot be used with Desktop

Nice One ESRI!

So that MapInfo....

Google Earth controlled by Wii

Source:Ogle Earth

LookLOCAL Maps Google, Yahoo and Microsoft

Google Maps, Microsoft Live Local and Yahoo! Maps on one page.




A handy mapping page and comes with a help magnifying window.


Top Tip:
For finding UK addresses use Microsoft Live Local then switch mapping source.

Bristol - Live Work & Play - Mapped

Live, Work and Play in Bristol


Bristol is one of the ten finalists in the Digital Challenge, a government competition to identify and promote the city who is most digitally inclusive.

With a theme of 'Connecting Bristol' this site is our response to that idea, exploring where people live in the city, where they spend their days and how they like to play. By entering three postcodes, we hope to show the shape of people’s lives across the city.

Explore the map (you can scPublishroll around and zoom in & out using the controls in the top right corner) and click on the white dots to open up information on that position and see who does what where. For example, some people might work where other people play and vice-versa - you can browse through the multiple entries using the numbers.

ClustrMaps - Map Your Site Visitors

Map your visitors to your website




No hidden extras: For light users (under 2500 visitors daily) the service is free, forever.

The geolocation hit counter that is simple and powerful:

• ClustrMaps: free, for light users (up to 2,500 visitors daily), limited archive of old maps
• ClustrMaps+ : small monthly fee, unlimited archive of old maps, zoom to continents
• ClustrMaps Pro: larger daily visit limit, embed zoomed maps in your own site's look and feel (you keep logs, we provide maps).

ClustrMaps is the only hit counter that accurately shows you the locations of all visitors to your site on a thumbnail map embedded in your page.

The basic service, 'ClustrMaps', is free, and does exactly what it says below: it is not just a 'trial', and there is no 'time limit'.

Map of Early Modern London

Map of Early Modern London


Tiled together so you can zoom in and Pan (not seamless). Points of Interest (POI's) are then overlaid for that tile.
Good information
More Detailed than London Wiki

PlaniGlobe - Make your own Digital Map

Make your own Digital Map from this Website PlaniGloble



Lots of Ways to make your own map - zoom in, pan across, add/subtract layers,

When ready you can create either a Postscript file or Adobe Illustrator file.
(terms and conditions apply)

layers available to switch on and off.

A good starting page is.
http://www.planiglobe.com/country_maps.html

Open Street Map - Maplexed

Open Street Map is Maplexed (Cartographic Text Placement Software)


OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a project aimed squarely at creating and providing free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them. The project was started because most maps you think of as free actually have legal or technical restrictions on their use, holding back people from using them in creative, productive or unexpected ways.

Because the Ordnance Survey have the monopoly in th UK for Geographical Data and have crown copyright on all it's datasets. Good for standardisation of the data - data must be maintained at all scales across the UK. However the recent change in datasets. Landline being replaced by Mastermap and OSCAR replaced by ITN
(in this there is no link between these two datasets which for updating street maps is ridiculous).
There is one difference. Cost. It's expensive. Licencing is confusing and Ordnance Survey do not like any form of competetion.

So there now appears to be an alternative - Do it yourself (with a few helpers) with a GPS logger
The results are not perfect but they come close, close enough when free.

OSM was converted to Illustrator from a postgis database after

• Downloading data from OSM
• Load in file into postgis
• Export to shape file format
• Re-project the data from geographic to British National Grid
• Re-coded (in arcmap) to match LovellJohns MapVU range
• Maplexed (text placement) this re-coded data
• Exported to Illustrator

Google Earth API

Google Earth API



Not much on this to date but looks promising...


The Google Earth COM API is designed to let third party applications query information from and send commands to the Google Earth software. Through IApplicationGE, external applications can query the current viewport, control the 3D camera, enable, disable, load KML features, traverse features, and more.

Interfacing a 3rd party application with Google Earth through the COM API requires Google Earth to be installed on the machine where one intends to run it. The Google Earth COM interface is registered as part of the installation process.

If, for some reason, the Google Earth COM API needs to be registered again, you can execute GoogleEarth.exe with "/RegServer" as a command line argument.
For instance, assuming GoogleEarth.exe is located in C:\Program Files\Google\Google Earth, the following command line would register Google Earth's COM API:

"C:\Program Files\Google\Google Earth\googleearth.exe" /RegServer

To unregister Google Earth's COM API, execute the following command:

"C:\Program Files\Google\Google Earth\googleearth.exe" /UnregServer

Map To Find Your MP (UK)

Find your MP here



Nice clean interface. Easy to use.

(suggestion needs to zoom to function when the icon is clicked.)

Good work with third party data integration

Drag Polylines in Google Maps (v2.70)

Some nice new functions are coming out of the Google Maps API.
(trying to keep it simple but this post gets a bit geeky)


ESA has been busy and demostrates the draggable Polyline.

So whats the fuss about that? Well there are alot more discoveries in this update.

Mike Williams seems to know whats going on in the latest javascript update (v2.70)
his comments below.

There's lots of strange goings on inside the API this time.

I've not yet worked out how to use it all, or what it all does.

I've not actually tested any of them yet. All this information is my
reading of the source code and crawling through that part of the DOM
that contains the functions. So it's quite possible that I've
misunderstood some of it.

New function
============
GVerify(la)
This one's weird. I can't see where they managed to hide the source. I'm
pretty sure that it isn't in the normal API code or in the API loader,
but the code somehow is present in the DOM.

New method
==========
GBounds.mid()
returns the GPoint at the centre of the GBounds.

Extra parameters
================
new GPolygon()
new GPolyline()
GPolyline.fromEncoded()
all accept one extra parameter, making a total of 7, 5, and 2 parameters
respectively. The additional parameter appears to be a set of
{GPolylineOptions}

New properties
==============
GPolyline.opacity
GPolyline.color
GPolyline.weight
Perhaps you can now do things like changing the weight of a polyline
when the zoom changes, and changing the colour when the maptype changes.
Previously the properties were inaccessible so you could only make such
changes by removing the old polyline and adding a new one.

If so, it's rather strange for Google to be exposing properties instead
of providing methods like GPolyline.setWeight() etc. It's not their
usual coding style.

New event
=========
visibilitychanged
Triggered by GMarker, GPolyline and GPolygon when their .hide() or
.show() method is called. Returns a parameter which is true for .show()
and false for .hide().

New GMarkerOptions
==================
description
name
zIndexProcess

zIndexProcess sounds like fun. You can set it to a function(marker,b)
that returns a zIndex value for the marker instead of using the normal
API internal function that puts the southerly markers on top.

new GPolyLineOptions
====================
id
name
outline
mapsdt

new GMapOptions
===============
mapOrderMarkers
It looks like you can set this to be a reference to an ordering
function, as used in an Array.sort() call. If you use the option, then
the API will call markers.sort(yourfunction). I've no idea why you might
want to do that.

new GDraggableObjectOptions
===========================
restrictX

--
If your a bit of a javascript buff you can access these functions by changing your api key code.
from:
http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&v=2&key=YOUR KEY HERE
to:
http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&v=2.70&key=YOUR KEY HERE

Well done Mike and Esa good work, nice examples coming soon

UK Geocoder Goes into Beta

Been tinkering with this on and off with a good programmer, but made the geocoder more efficient and have checked data is not using and copyrighted data sources.

Uses the Geocoder Map
http://gmaps-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/geocoder/singlegeocode.html

worked from the UK example given
http://geo.localsearchmaps.com/?street=48+Leicester+Square&city=London &country=UK
and using that output
map.centerAndZoom(new GPoint(-0.130427, 51.510036), 4);
to centre on a google map.

try it soon.

pending features - icon displaying in the middle with info window display the input address.
get better results up to 95/96% match or nearest point to input address.

quadruple check data source is not crown copyright (have cross-referenced results with address point and they do NOT match).

Ask City Maps

New Ask City Maps


New Mapping from Ask.com and CitySearch
Drawing Tools make it easy to add graphics to the map point(icon), line (freehand available), polygons and text.

Good you can save snap shots of your cartographic skills (mapperz was playing!)

AskCity is a search service that allows you to find Businesses, Events, and Movies for most cities in the U.S. Ask combines these features with a number of other helpful services, such as:

• Driving and walking directions
• Drawing tools so you can mark places on your map and add text notes
• Editorial and user reviews of local businesses, concert halls, movie theaters and more
• Options that allow you to save one location while you search for another one on the same map
• "Save Map" option that allows you to save up to ten of your maps

But also works in the UK, Road Classifications shows maximum speed for that Road.
(note speed limit in Richmond Park is 20mph now UK does not have a 25mph limit)



To make your map click here

Thematic Google Map Creator

University College London (UCL) has been very busy and using their resources have made an excellent thematic mapping package for overlaying on google maps.



The Google Map Creator is a freeware application designed to make thematic mapping using Google Maps simpler. The application takes a shapefile containing geographic areas linked with attributes and automatically generates a working Google Maps website from the data. It does this by pre-creating all the necessary files and saving them into a directory. Publishing the map on the web is then just a matter of copying files onto a web server, allowing Google Maps to be used with the majority of ISPs, including Google Pages.




"How It Works?
A shapefile is loaded into the application and displayed on the screen. A projection file (.prj) MUST be included with the shapefile, otherwise the data cannot be placed in the correct position over the Google Map. This file is easily created externally if needed. The displayed attribute, colouring of the data, geographic extents and maximum zoom levels are defined by the user. Colouring is achieved by setting colours and thresholds for values in the attribute data e.g. any region over 1.0 is red. The application shows how many tiles will be created, which can be changed by altering the maximum zoom level slider or by limiting the geographic area. When the create button is pressed, the result is an html page and a directory containing all the required Google Maps tiles. As all the tiles are pre-created, all that is required to publish the map on the web is to copy the html page and the tile directory onto a web server, making sure that the Google Maps API key contained in the html file is correct for the site. This allows the publishing of data on 'Google Pages' or any other ISP. The html file is created from a template, but only a limited knowledge of Javascript and html is required to create a completely new design from scratch. This can be done by cutting and pasting from the automatically created template.

The main problem with creating Google Maps sites in this way is that the number of tiles can be very large. The application manages this problem by allowing the user to control the maximum level of zoom and the extents of the geographic area. For example, with a map of worldwide Gross Domestic Product by country, there is no point in zooming in beyond the point where one country fills the whole screen, so the maximum level of zoom is limited and the number of tiles kept within a manageable level. In this example, six zoom levels are adequate for the data, resulting in 962 files occupying 5MB on the disk. At the other end of the scale is data from a GPS tracked carbon monoxide sensor used within a 1KM grid square in London. In this case, the maximum zoom level is used to show the 5 metre data grid, but only 71 files (less than 1MB) were created as the geographic area is so limited. "

Download available from the UCL website

Excellent Work UCL - Mapperz

Open Street Map gets Yahoo! Imagery Boost

Good news for Open Street Map (OSM) as Yahoo! have agreed to let OSM use their aerial imagery

So from this....


to this...

and with a bit of jiggery pokery...


create vector road centerlines

Well done OSM

More info at Geobloggers

The Possible Future of Web Mapping

An Interesting Article
http://datamining.typepad.com/data_mining/


Nearly as if being there yourself...

GetMapping

New Yell.com Maps

Yell have released new mapping for their search. Using Multimap and AJAX (smooth panning without refreshing). Looks much better and easier to use than the old clunky html mapping.
Asynchronous JavaScript (AJAX) seems to becoming the default for web mapping applications.


Here is the link you can see for yourself.


update: a good blog post here

GPSies - Maps and Tracks

GPSies you can view and download tracks which have been recorded by a GPS device.


Whether you are searching for running courses or Mountain Bike Tracks, with GPSies you can see what Tracks others have recorded. And you can download all the Tracks and put them onto your GPS device so you will not lose your way.

Formats supported are:

NMEA, Overlay, Kompass, PCX5 Track, GPX Tracks and Routes, Google Earth KML und KMZ, Garmin Course and Logbook

Includes an Address Geocoder (Google Maps API limits apply - no UK or Japan)

Is still Beta hence
Adresse nicht gefunden (Address Not Found). When searching UK addresses in English.
Suggest the AJAX Search route might be possible here.

Good design easy to use.

Just needs translating better from German to English.

Nice Cows with Aerials (don't suggest you do it to real ones).

To help Threashers out (temporary post)

Mapperz helping crashed website. (temporary post)

Threashers wanted to bring Christmas Cheer

but failed to realise that it would be so popular giving customers 40% discount.

(40%-off wine and champagne small print)
click for larger image to print

Attached is the Voucher for you boozers

source:BBC News

impulse blogging...

*drink responsibly

two days left.. before deleting this post.

Windows Live Search for Mobile (Beta) with Maps

Windows Live Search and Local Search from your Mobile (Beta)





Service available through

http://mobile.live.com/search/

Download needed (Java and Windows Version)

TravBuddy Map

Make a TravBuddy Map



Very easy to make - select the countries you have visited and the map is generated.
Code and paste the code into your web page.

EDN updated to 9.2

Following the release of ArcGIS 9.2 products then ESRI Developer Network (EDN) has been
updated over night to match the 9.2 releases.



Covers:

• ArcGIS
  
• ArcSDE
• ArcIMS
• ArcWeb

included is support for Java and .NET

The Batch Geoprocessing looks promising.

need to check:
in a Model after a new field has been created that field can be calculated.
Spatial Join is available in the Model Builder environment.