Mapping News by Mapperz

Google Map Maker USA Launches

Start adding your local knowledge to the map.

Add businesses and building outlines.
Move place markers to the right locations.
Build a detailed map of your school campus.

(note: Open Street Map does have a service with one major benefit over Google Map Maker - data you create (with many thousands of others) is available to everyone for free even if commercial organization.

Google Maps retains this information only limited places have MapMaker Downloads
http://www.google.com/support/mapmaker/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156852

but read the terms... first.

8.1
You Must Be a Non-Profit Entity, a Government Agency, or an Individual. You must be a non-profit entity, a government agency, or an individual acting on a not-for-profit basis. For-profit entities and individuals acting on a for-profit basis are not permitted to use the Map Maker Source Data, but may be eligible to use Google's other geo-related products, such as the Google Maps APIs, according to the terms of service for those products.

8.2 Your Map Project Must Be Non-Commercial and Free of Charge to Users.

(a) Your Map Project must be for non-commercial uses only. You cannot use Your Map Project to either directly or indirectly generate revenue as part of a for-profit enterprise. For example, Your Map Project cannot be hosted on the website of a for-profit company. However, Your Map Project can be hosted on the website of a validly-registered non-profit or governmental entity (as determined by the applicable law of your jurisdiction).

(b) Your Map Project must be free of charge. You may require users to log in to Your Map Project but you cannot require users to pay a fee (unless you have entered into a separate written agreement with Google or obtained Google's written permission to do so).

8.3 Your Map Project Must Provide Google with Attribution. Unless otherwise agreed to by Google in a written amendment to these Terms, in every instance in which the Map Maker Source Data are used in Your Map Project, Your Map Project must include the following attribution notice in accordance with the requirements below:

Live (real-time) updates of edits to google map maker service - http://www.google.com/mapmaker/pulse

YouTube Video the USA MapMaker

source:
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/04/add-your-local-knowledge-to-map-with.html

Labels: Edits, Google Map Maker, Launch, Real-Time, USA

Closed Contour SPS Maps

Closed Contour SPS Maps

SPS (Sierra Peaks Section)

Version 2 of the SPS Map by Closed Contours

New Specs:

Whiter glaciers/permanent snow with blue contour lines, talked about this in a previous post.
Change forest color depending on density (only in Yosemite and Sequoia/King’s Canyon NP so far). I also mentioned this in a previous post.
Non-SPS peak names. Discussed earlier as well.
Pass names.
Trail names, mostly in the NPs.
Removed many bogus ‘lakes’ which were actually mis-characterized permanent snow.
Added styling for scree, talus, and meadow/marshes.
Changed font for SPS peaks to slightly larger, darker, and italic to set them apart from non-SPS peaks.
Not a tile change, but added UTM coordinate display in lower right.

The SPS Maps have 248 peaks in the Sierra Nevada range of eastern California (plus Mount Rose in Nevada). The list is maintained by the Sierra Peaks Section, Angeles Chapter, Sierra Club. The map was designed to encompass all of the peaks on the list with a small buffer around them.

Cartography

Using a Transverse Mercator projection with a central meridian of 120° W, origin latitude of 0°, scale factor of 0.9996, WGS84 ellipsoid, and no false easting or northing. This projection was chosen as a compromise between UTM zones 10 and 11 which unfortunately split the Sierra Nevada vertically right through Lake Tahoe. Here’s the proj.4 string for the projection:

+proj=tmerc +lon_0=120w +k=0.9996 +ellps=WGS84
Data

Data sources:
DEMs are from the USGS NED program. (To generate hill-shade and contours.)
Road data are from TIGER.
Hydrology data are from the USGS NHD program.
Trails data are from the NPS and Forest Service.
Land cover data is from NPS and FRAP.
Buildings are from NPS and Mono County.

Map
http://www.closedcontour.com/

More information
http://blog.closedcontour.com/sps-map/

Full Credit to Dan the Contour Man
http://blog.closedcontour.com/2010/05/23/what-is-closed-contour/

Labels: Contours, Custom Maps, Hillshading, Nevada, Topographical, USA

OpenTripPlanner Portland

OpenTripPlanner Portland

A trip planner with a difference

"A trip planner helps you figure out how best to get where you want to go. A multi-modal trip planner lets you plan routes using multiple "modes," for example, on foot, bike, train, bus, or some combination thereof. A good multi-modal trip planner allows you to easily tailor your trip to your preferences, for example by eliminating transfers, walking a more scenic path, or only riding buses with bike storage."

What is OpenTripPlanner?

OpenTripPlanner is an open source multi-modal trip planner. It brings together work from a number of existing open source projects, including Graphserver, OneBusAway, and FivePoints, and aims to be easy-to-use, flexible, reliable, and fast.

Planning a trip is very straightforward - right click to create start point and right click to add destination.

Lots of Options - like Transit only - with changes includes - clearly laid-out.

For Developers

Plans true multi-modal trips combining walking, biking and transit
Plans wheelchair accessible trips
Plans depart by/arrive by trips
Takes road type, bike lane, and elevation data into account when planning bike trips
Show elevation maps for bike trips
Imports data from GTFS, shapefiles, OpenStreetMap, and the National Elevation Dataset
Plans trips in about 100ms in a moderate sized city
Exposes a RESTful API (XML and JSON), which other apps or front-ends can build on

Try the OpenTripPlanner for Portland
http://maps5.trimet.org/otp/

wiki for developers
http://opentripplanner.org/wiki

Labels: OpenStreetMap, OpenTripPlanner, Portland, USA

Make An ESRI Map

Make a Map—The Make a Map feature includes a simple interactive Web map showing seven different U.S. demographic layers. Visitors can zoom in to an area of interest, select a demographic layer, then embed the map into their own Web pages simply by copying and pasting the automatically generated HTML for free map services.

Quick to embed, limited datasets and seems to be USA only (datawise).
(Even geo-locates Area 51 above)

Make your map here

Related
http://www.esri.com/software/mapping_for_everyone/index.html

source:
http://www.esri.com/news/releases/09_4qtr/mapping-for-everyone.html

Labels: A, Demographics, Embed, ESRI, Make, Map, USA

Live Traffic Reports Google Maps (Los Angeles)

Live Traffic Reports Google Maps (Los Angeles)

"The Los Angeles region is widely known for its extreme traffic, and a study released just this week by the Texas Transportation Institute reports that LA has the most significant congestion in the United States. It goes on to estimate that commuters in LA spent 485 million hours idling in traffic, wasting 367 million gallons of gas."
(hint: have a smaller engine or get on a bus)

Go to Google Maps (in Los Angeles) and hit Traffic and you get real-time incidents mapped.
A click-able icons and informative data to help advise on an alternative route.

The LatLng Blog Highlights the Los Angeles Traffic and Transit issues

"However, Los Angeles also has an extensive public transit network, operated by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro), and today we're excited to introduce them as the newest addition to Google Transit. Metro operates 5 rail lines and nearly 200 bus lines within Los Angeles County, logging an average of 1.5 million weekday boardings."

"As a part of Google Transit, Metro's itineraries will now appear as an alternative with the "Public Transit" link when a user searches for driving directions within their service area to remind commuters of the availability of public transit. Turning on the Traffic layer in Google Maps to get an idea of what congestion awaits may provide even more motivation to try take advantage of Metro!"
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2009/07/take-ride-with-la-metro-in-google.html
(and source)

How useful is this?
Well being real-time and accurate it seems to work extremely well. If only all cities made this data available then the amount of fuel consumption and wasted hours in traffic could be reduced.
Well done Google and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority for making it available for the public.

Labels: Google Maps, Live Traffic, Los Angeles, Metro, Transit, USA

US National Weather [RADAR] Animated

US National Weather Animated

"A very good visual way to mix Openlayers and Google Maps with near real-time Radar information"

Animated Weather and Hazard Warning (Fire Risk, Flash Flooding etc)
Very Smooth and Animates in near real-time over the next 24hrs

Speed of animation can be controlled as is the Opacity of the overlays.

Individual Weather Monitoring Stations can also be displayed

At the time of this post South Dakota has Flood warnings across the state
http://radar.srh.noaa.gov/?zoom=3&lat=43.8511&lon=-98.4131&layers=B000TTTTTTTT

Feedback Survey - Good to see they want feedback from users

http://www.weather.gov/survey/nws-survey.php?code=RIDGEII

KMZ Overlays for Google Earth (and Other KMZ accepting applications)

"While the RIDGE radar display allows for the use of interactive toggles with the image, RIDGE images can be best utilized with GIS software. This page allows you to create "kmz" files which are compressed "kml" files compatible with several GIS software applications"

http://radar.weather.gov/ridge/kmzgenerator.php

UK Met office related post (take note UK MET OFFICE ;)
http://mapperz.blogspot.com/2009/06/met-office-google-maps-weather.html

Labels: Animated, Flood Warning, Radar, USA, Weather