2008 October Archive at Tim Warr’s Blog

Monthly Archive for October, 2008

Smoking Complaints

Published

on October 29, 2008

. 0 Comments

Here in Austria smoking is still alive and well as well as a favourite pastime. Bars still have that wonderful fug of smoke and smoking in offices is still fairly common. So far anti-smoking legislation has been resisted (apart from the odd token gesture).

Seeing this Cincinnati Enquirer (Gannett) web mapping application made me realise how different ’smoking culture’ is between Austria and the USA. In the column on the right hand side you can choose to see ’smoking complaints’ and display incidents, like ‘ashtray present’ and ‘Infiltration of Smoke’, on a map.

If you are a more health conscious society, serious about a smoking ban, making information like this easily accessible must be one way to have impact.

Oh, and BTW, this site just happens to be a very cool implementation of Virtual Earth. More details on this here.

Stretchy maps

Published

admin

on October 27, 2008

in Maps

. 0 Comments

A cool new book, The Atlas of the Real World by Daniel Dorling, Mark Newman and Anna Barford (published by Thames & Hudson), has a whole new series of cartograms. Although using cartograms for representing demographic (and other) information is nothing new, the visual impact and qulaity of these are awesome. I would love to know what software and processes they are using (I am assuming it is automated).

More info is on the CR Blog and Mark Easton’s Blog.

Thanks to Nick Wade for finding this.

Update

I have now noticed that these are done by http://www.worldmapper.org, using “Diffusion-based method for producing density equalizing maps“.

Multimap API - New Mapping in the Middle East, Northern Ireland and Great Britain

Published

admin

on October 23, 2008

in Multimap and Web Mapping

. 0 Comments

Multimap have recently released new street level maps for countries in the Middle East. The countries are:

•    Bahrain
•    Kuwait
•    Oman
•    Qatar
•    Saudi Arabia
•    UAE

We have also added:

Additional zoom levels of maps in Malaysia
Collins Bartholomew Road Atlas maps for Great Britain
Ordnance Survey Northern Ireland maps

Here are some examples:

Middle East (zoom levels 13-18)

Two additional zoom levels of street-level maps in Malaysia

Collins Bartholomew of Great Britain (Road Atlas)

Ordnance Survey Northern Ireland (zoom 13-15) – this data is similar to our OS Land Ranger data in GB

Localising the Multimap API

Published

admin

on October 22, 2008

in Multimap and Web Mapping

. 0 Comments

It is now possible to localise the Multimap API for a specific language. This means that when I am in Austria, I can develop a mapping application using localisation and see the world from German speaking perspective. So at last German speakers no longer need to know that Map = Karte.

To do this I add a LOCALE_CODE parameter to my Multimap API request like this:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://clients.multimap.com/API/maps/1.2/[API_KEY]?locale=de-AT"></script>

Then the API version I get has all of the following localised:

labels, tooltips and messages;
alternative language map labels (currently available only in China);
translated Virtual Earth hybrid aerial map labels (where available);
Local Information categories;
default units (Imperial or metric) in map copyright bars; and
route instructions.

You can see this in action in the excellent demo application my colleague Alexis Harakis put together here.

Localisation is all documented here and the locale codes are described here

Happy localising!

Morbid Maps

Published

admin

on October 21, 2008

in Maps

. 0 Comments

The BBC has a slightly more morbid use of maps here.

Thanks to Kev Pridgeon for spotting this.

Update

Jason Lee points out that these maps were originally done by the guys at Sheffield University. They do some other interesting stuff including defining an actual England North/South divide.

Multimap.com - Now with Embedded Maps

Published

admin

on October 20, 2008

in Multimap and Web Mapping

. 1 Comment

Last week Multimap released a new service for small businesses, personal web sites and hobbyists. The service, available for free from www.multimap.com, provides a single line of HTML to cut and paste into a web page, like this:

So basically this allows you to easily embed a map in your website, without having to write any of that pesky JavaScript yourself.

The user gets a slippy map in a choice of map styles (Navteq, TeleAtlas, Ordnance Survey and Barts) or aerial for anywhere in the world (US included, using Virtual Earth maps and aerial). The pasted HTML includes hyperlinks back to www.multimap.com:

The service is limited to 50,000 transactions per year (which Multimap tracks) and cannot be used for internal applications (eg BI, CRM).

The uptake has been amazing, with over 500 web sites implementing the new embedded maps in the 1st week.

So how do I use it?

1. Go to Multimap.com

2. Search for a location

3. Select Link (top right of map)

4. Check the box for T&Cs and cut and paste the line of HTML which will look something like this:

<div id="MMEmbeddedMap" style="padding:8px">
<iframe width="500" height="400" frameborder="0"
scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0"
src="http://www.multimap.com/client/embed/?lat=47.26269&lon=11.3947
&zoomFactor=17&mapType=hybrid&moveMap=-85,-394&
qs=innsbruck&emid=yAstqbmcYmb1ZLXDxu4eDCV95BurZAwb">
</iframe><div><a href="http://www.multimap.com/maps/?l
at=47.26269&lon=11.3947&zoomFactor=17">
View map of Innsbruck, Tirol (Tyrol), Austria</a>
on Multimap.com<br /><a href="http://www.multimap.com/maps/?
lat=47.26269&lon=11.3947&zoomFactor=17&mapType=oblique">
Bird's Eye view of Innsbruck, Tirol (Tyrol), Austria</a>
<br />Get directions <a href="http://www.multimap.com/directions/?
lat_2=47.26269&lon_2=11.3947&countryCode_2=AT&displayName_2=Innsbruck,
Tirol (Tyrol)&qs_2=Innsbruck, Tirol (Tyrol)">to</a>
 or <a href="http://www.multimap.com/directions/?
lat_1=47.26269&lon_1=11.3947&countryCode_1=AT
&displayName_1=Innsbruck, Tirol (Tyrol)&qs_1=Innsbruck, Tirol (Tyrol)"
>from</a> Innsbruck, Tirol (Tyrol), Austria</div></div>