A tale of two cities, or Bauhaus for maps

I attended two shows back-to-back in London yesterday. Esri(UK) Annual Conference was daytime at the QE2 Centre in Westminster a stone's throw from the Parliament. London Geomob was that evening in Shoreditch, the swanky London digital hub where Ordnance Survey just opened the Geovation Hub.

If the 20 min tube ride in between might have been through a wormhole, such was the contrast, both meetups strove to do the same thing, substituting maps for arts as the Bauhaus movement: "founded with the idea of creating a 'total' work of art in which all arts, including architecture, would eventually be brought together".

"Free Google" e-Book review

JM Internet Group published a guide to "Free SEO, Social Media, and AdWords Resources from Google for Small Business Marketing". I am offering it an honest review as a former net'preneur - I use the internet social media round-trip to help along this blog today and oilelefant.com a while back, and shared my experiences on SlideShare. I also create web maps, and without any further technical ado let's say Google were less than forthcoming in providing help with crossing an API upgrade... This echoes  author Jason McDonald's (JM) reason to write "Free Google..." in the first place! He set out to render explicit for the rest of us what is implicit to geekdom and help 'free Google' from itself.

Google Fusion Tables for new Google Maps?

[Update: I noted on many of my Google Fusion Table posts that, while the data are still on Google Drive for you to view, GFT no longer offers a polygon or heatmap option, only geocoding by country centroid as evidenced below. Not sure why, but on this, this, this and another example posted as Iframes not Scripts preserved the old GFT maps.]

I posted on my old website a number of Google Maps in v.2 API that I have not converted to v.3. I also used Google Fusion Tables a number of times under the 'old look' - the 'new look' doesn't afford Heat Maps and polygon rendering as yet out-of-the-box - along comes a Google Fusion Tool that helps both on v.3 API and the new régime with very simple Google Fusion Table templates and new  rendering.

"The shots heard around the world"

Recent mass shootings in the US and elsewhere affect me in a particular way: My parents grew up in Nazi then Soviet occupied Pest, on the east shore of the Danube overlooked by the Buda Castle (dark green below), from which guns fired down streets perpendicular to the river (grey at right below), so residents literally ran the gauntlet across those streets, and friends of my parents lost a babe in arms from a stray bullet; my parents thus emigrated just before my birth to give me a better life, but that included six months in Algiers during a revolution where I too witnessed two fatalities early 1961.

Even more Maps R Us

[06 August update: upgraded phone contracts to smartphones and used Garmin's Navigon to great effect, especially finding hotels and hotspots in those twisty medieval cities...]

So how does all this web mapping stack up @ home? Meaning: would my wife & daughter actually use it? We have for home use two roaming laptops, one netbook in the kitchen and one tablet for travel, and a deskside in the office to access printer & storage, but no phone with internet contract.

iPad maps

Here is a small selection of mapping tools available on the iPad. Some are from the Appstore, others simply from the web. These are screen shots that I took for those (thanks my readers for how-to tips).

Multi-modal maps R us, part II

Last week I reported Google Maps' released of multimodal transportation mapping in the greater London UK area (GLA). I mused that this rendition was more visually appealing that Transport for London's website. The 'granddaddy' for train and tube in London extended beyond GLA to be used from larger surrounding centres - I myself used it regularly from Cambridge an hour train to the north.

Multi-modal maps R us

Google multi-modal maps are so significant to greater London Area commuters that I cannot pass it up. Ed Parsons posted it on his blog and I immediately tried it: it's just the ticket (pun intended) living near Cambridge about an hour north of London and travelling around London only by public transit.

On-line spatial data validation, part II

[2013 update: Socium is now 1SpatialCloud]

Three weeks ago I introduced Socium's Online Validation Service (OVS). I showed the Ordnance Survey vector data QC, on the UK Parishes used as a geographic unit for the Medieval Fenlands project. Two weeks ago Socium kindly created a new rule, to post unexpected variations in adjacent feature attributes. In an essentially agricultural era, economic wealth of the Domesday period was quantified by Darby via the number of plough teams per parish. That is the attribute the rule was written for (it's hard-wired right now and Socium plans to add metadata pick lists in the future).

Cloud futures #2: on-line spatial data validation

[Update: follow ups for this project are Releasing Data Really Works Part I and Part IV]

Following vector maps on the web (cloud futures #1), here is a freemium online validation service (OVS) that helps us QC, quantify and clean up spatial data on the web. A speciality of 1Spatial is its spatial validation, an essential first step to setting up proper spatial data infrastructure. They spun off 1SpatialCloud to offer the same service online.

Your team is your friend

I am so proud of my teams at client sites and in our office! One team achieved in 6 months at one site what many thought would take years - to integrate surface and subsurface exploration and production infrastructure for an oilfield in 3D+time. Another team created just this week a real-time GIS data capture system that reduces to 4 steps what took 10 on paper - and of those only the first one is manual.

Critical mass, satellite imagery and GIS

Satellite imagery has been around for almost as long as GIS, and the following may just make them so easy they finally gain momentum. The same way Jeeps and Suburbans had been around for a couple of generations, but only the last generation saw Ford legitimize SUVs with its Explorer.

"... with a little help from my friends"

On my 100th posting last week I found some interesting statistics. I use Google's Blogger for its sheer simplicity. And I just found out it offers stats and maps helping track readers.

Another Take on Climate Change, Part II

[Update 2: thanks Greg Cocks for this April 2019 update
Update 1: Part III, more on plate boundary earthquakes]

A year ago today I posted here on the Chilean 8.8 magnitude earthquake.... The recent earhtquakes and tsunamis in Japan and New Zealand, and China and Indonesia before that, truly indicate an increased rate of incidence in these catastrophies! Add to that the more frequent hurricanes and cyclones off the Gulf of Mexico and NE Australia, and fires or floods in N America, Australia and Europe, and we truly wonder what is going on really?

Mappliance (continued)

Here is one cool map of a favorite outing near where I live.

2D or not 2D, Part Deux

As a 3D aficionado I just had to repost these two YouTube videos, courtesy of a Wired UK article: Kinect hack builds 3D maps of the real world. It goes to show how far lateral thinking can go if you let "boys play with their toys" to make Google Labs or Microsoft Research drool. I'll just let the article and following videos speak for themselves, and you draw your own conclusions...

Web maps and Skype

Brisbane floods in eastern Australia affect areas I grew up in, and where friends still live. There are many map resources online through news media, for example Ushahidi community flood reporting map on ABC News, showing maps becoming mainstream.

Mappliance (continued)

Tripit is a neat app I use via LinkedIn to post my trips:

The power of context, Part III

[Update: I noted on many of my Google Fusion Table posts that, while the data are still on Google Drive for you to view, GFT no longer offers a polygon or heatmap option, only geocoding by country centroid in its new version. Not sure why, but on this, this, this and another example posted as Iframes not Scripts preserved the old GFT maps.]

Ruth Lang created this excellent mashup for the 2010 FIFA World Cup - which coloured all the countries at the beginning and gradually greys them out as they are eliminated - only Spain and the Netherlands are left as at today. This was a labour of love, needing for example some tweeking to work in the Firefox browser, and a testament to SVG.

What's in a name?

I tweeted earlier on Mappliance = Map + Appliance, where maps blend into applications imperceptibly; I found two such instances just today: First I retweeted IPO Dashboard's Tracker, one of two ways to get at technology startup statistics. Second I shared my entry to Google's 9/11 interactive memorial website - not surprisingly, it allows you to enter location, text, photos and videos of your experience on that fateful day if you wish.