Sometimes I have to put text on a path

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Google maps and GPS tracks.


WikiLoc

This site uses the JavaScript Maps API to let users upload and share GPS tracks. It embeds the Panoramio GLayer to let users see photos near their waypoints, and also displays an altitude chart for your track.
It also supports input/export of common GPS file formats. They offer a native mobile phone app that captures GPS points and uploads the data to the site for you.
Additionally, they let you create your own tracks by placing points on the map and rendering them as polylines.

GPSies - Tracks for Vagabonds

GPSies - Tracks for Vagabonds Another site for managing GPS tracks, which works great with free, native mobile applications for Android and iPhone devices.
The mobile apps are simple and easy to use, helping you monitor and save your tracks, and then upload them over the air to GPSies where they are visible in your tracks list.
The visualization is a robust JavaScript Maps API implementation that overlays a polyline across the GPS points. Nice additions include mile marker points (also in metric), integrated altitude charts that follow the polyline with mouse-move events, and integration of the DragZoomControl for easier zooming into an area of interest.

Trailspotting.com

This outdoor site boasts an outstanding collection of hiking trails in Northern California and Hawaii. In-depth reviews, photos and comments are coupled with Google My Maps for visualization.
Stuart and Jenna, the outdoor enthusiasts who run this terrific site, go the extra mile to include enhanced content like area facts, photography, nearby POI, and location web sites.

Topo! Explorer

I bought the 10 CD set of Topo! from NatGeo years ago and really enjoyed browsing/zooming into locations, then printing my own weatherproof map before embarking on an expedition.
Today, they've made this much easier. A free registration gets you access to browse the latest Topo! maps which uses our JavaScript Maps API as a framework to explore their custom map tiles.

Google Maps API and >40 languages

Good morning! G'day! Bom dia! Bonjour! доброе утро! 早安! доброго ранку!
This is how we, members of the Maps API team, would salute each other if we decided to use our native languages in the mornings. And those are just a minuscule sample of the multitude of the native languages for Googlers all over the world.
But this is only one of the reasons we are so passionate about translating our products to as many languages as possible. Our mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Providing our services in the native tongue of our users goes a long way towards achieving the universal accessibility and usefulness aspects of our mission.

You can find the list of languages here. (Right to left languages are notably missing from this list, as we still have some work to do before we can support them.)

Most developers won't need to do anything to take advantage of the new translations, our servers will decide what language to provide based on the browser's preferred languages settings.
Developers can override that behavior (and force all of their users to see one language) by specifying a parameter in the script tag. For instance, to force UI controls to always be displayed in Brazilian Portuguese, use:

2 ex-amples; google maps, Fusion Table; trails; heatmap

If you have ever tried to plot a very large number of overlays on an API map you have probably reached a point at which the performance of your application begins to suffer. With one hundred or so markers, most browsers cope just fine, and clustering solutions like Fluster can help support more. But if you have thousands of overlays that you wish to show, rendering them individually can be problematic.
The Maps API v3 now offers two solutions to this problem. If you have a large volume of geospatial data that can be served as KML, the KmlLayer class can render up to 50,000 features as an overlay that does not impact performance on any browser. To support data sets that are structured as tables, such as a database or spreadsheet, we have also now added the FusionTablesLayer class for rendering data stored in Google Fusion Tables.
Google Fusion Tables is a fascinating new experimental Google Research project offering storage, search, and management of large structured data sets in the cloud. Up to 100MB of data can be stored per table, and each row in a table can have an associated location, line, or polygon feature. Using the FusionTablesLayer class you can render features on an API map as a clickable overlay. When a feature is clicked, the application can access a copy of the complete row of data associated with the feature.
Fusion Tables also supports an SQL like query language, which you can use to filter the features shown on a map. The below map visualises mountain biking trails uploaded to Fusion Tables bymtbguru.com. The slider allows you to filter trails by their length, and the trails shown on the map are updated accordingly. If you click on a trail a custom dialog is shown which indicates the elevation profile for the trail concerned.

 
The FusionTablesLayer also supports rendering data sets as a heatmap. The below map of beaches in Brazil illustrates the benefit of this. When rendered as point features it is difficult to tell the relative density of the beaches without zooming in further. However once you switch to displaying the data as a heatmap the high density of beaches west of Rio de Janeiro becomes immediately clear.

 
The combination of Fusion Tables with the Maps API makes it easy to host large sets of data in the cloud, and visualise them in your Maps API application. It is quick and simple to get up and running with Fusion Tables, and the addition of the FusionTableLayer class to Maps API v3 enables Maps applications to be tightly coupled with data hosted in Fusion Tables. Give it a try, and let us know what you think of this experiment in the Groups!

mashup ; Google Maps API

The Google Maps API turns 5! - add your mashup to the map
 

Map data ©2011 Geocentre Consulting - Terms of Use
Map
Satellite
              

This ProgrammableWeb dashboard shows that of the apps built and submitted over the past 2 weeks, a quarter of them make use of the Google Maps API. Click the 'All Time' tab and you'll see that nearly half of the almost 5000 cataloged mashups use it.
Today, on this 5 year milestone, we really have all of you to thank for this incredible chapter in web and mapping development. The remarkable levels of innovation, creativity and interest have come from all of you. You saw the possibilities the Google Maps API held and what it could be combined with to create, and you built it. Now join us to celebrate! Keir Clarke from Google Maps Mania hascreated a mashup that we want all of you to contribute to. Since we can’t all share a giant cake, I think it’s fitting that we all build a giant mashup of mashups to mark this special API birthday. Please tag your Google Maps mashup or tool to the map wherever you are:

Five Great Fusion Tables and Google Maps Examples


WikiEDdata - Mapping Poverty in Washington School Districts
 

The most powerful maps allow users to quickly understand the significance of large amounts of data. Using Fusion Tables, polygons representing school districts and poverty levels are rendered and colored based on their assigned values in the tables. 

Clicking on a district polygon will bring up an infowindow containing a poverty line data chart, dynamically generated through the Google Chart API. 

Reporting Road Potholes in Spain
 

Fusion Tables makes crowdsourcing easy. Using Fusion Tables, Otrobache.com allows Madrid citizens to log on and report the location of potholes. The newly reported potholes appear on the map in real time (as soon as the map is refreshed). 

The Telegraph - UK Charities Map
 

Fusion Tables is a great way to store and quickly render large amounts of data. The Telegraph used Fusion Tables to catalog and map literally tens of thousands of charities throughout the UK. 

Analyzing Concealed Handgun Licenses in San Antonio
 

From San Antonio Express-News, "The Texas Tribune analyzed a Department of Public Safety database that tracks concealed handgun licenses in Texas. The Tribune's analysis found that the number of gun permits in an area often correlates with income and political beliefs." 

Fusion Tables is used here to overlay the data with boundaries and view possible correlations. The implementation also makes use of Gradient styling. Gradients allows developers to specify a color ramp and a number range; features will be displayed in the color appropriate for where they belong in the range. Much like the built-in Intensity map visualization, but now you can change the colors and use your own boundaries! 

Boris Bikes on Fusion Tables
 

Using geometry styling controls in Fusion tables, this implementation is a live visualization of London Cycle Hire Rank availability using data from the Boris Bikes API

five scientists and Google Maps/Earth

Back in December of 2009, five leading scientists from the American Geophysical Union trekked to the remote Google office in downtown San Francisco. So, for the first time ever, we present, the Lost Archives of the Google Geo Developers Series
  • Jeffrey Cardille of Universitie de Montreal discusses GeoSearch, a new virtual globe application for the submission, storage, and sharing of point-based ecological data.
  • Thijs Damsma of Deltares discusses his use of KML to visualize coastal data.
  • Ross Beyer of NASA and SETI discusses his work visualizing Mars data and imagery using Google Earth.
  • Tyler Erickson of Michigan Tech Research Institute discusses his tools for to visualizing 4-D atmospheric carbon monitoring data using KML and Google Earth
  • Yaxing Wei of Oak Ridge National Lab discusses his Spatial Data Access Tool which enables visualization and access of geospatial data using OGC services and Google Earth.

new Distance Matrix service; Google Maps AND Google Fusion Tables.

Thanks to the new Distance Matrix service, which we are launching today, I can now relive these moments from my youth. The Distance Matrix service is a simple and efficient way to obtain the travel distance and time between many locations when you do not need the full route details for any individual pair. The below applications generates a distance matrix for walking from major London railway stations to several London landmarks. Roll your mouse over the matrix cells, or tap a cell, to see the relevant route.
The Distance Matrix service is also useful for sorting or filtering search results. For example, let’s say your Maps API application enables users to find nearby grocery stores and you want to present the results sorted by drive time. The locations are stored in a spatial database such as Google Fusion Tables, which can return all stores within a given straight line distance. Using the Distance Matrix service you only need one more query to obtain the drive time from the user's location to each of those stores in order to sort them accordingly.
The Distance Matrix service is available for use directly in the JavaScript Maps API as well as a web service returning JSON or XML. To get started, take a look at the Maps API services documentation, and the Distance Matrix API web service documentation.

two styled maps at the same location; google maps

Justin O’Beirne joined us onstage to talk about map styling and how even the most subtle changes to the map can drastically change the user's experience. Below is an example of what can be achieved by using styled maps. The two maps are at the same location and have the same data points but the map on the left has had a custom style applied.

Drag the bar to show more or less of each map
By removing the map labels and decreasing the saturation and lightness we are able to emphasise the importance of the data, make it more visually appealing and build a application that is truly our own. If you would like to play more with map styling check out the styled map wizard.
Check out the slides and make your map application user experience rock!

Business icons; POI point of interest; interactive maps; google maps

If your application does not specify a specific version of the Maps API to load these icons will appear on the map by default from early next week, unless you are a Maps API Premier customer. The business icons will be classified with the poi.business Styled Maps feature type. If you would prefer that your Maps API application not include these icons, you can remove them ahead of next week’s release by setting visibility:off on the labels element of poi.business for your map. Maps API Premier customers who would like their maps to include these icons can enable them today by setting visibility:on.
You can preview these icons, and the InfoWindow that is shown when they are clicked, on the map below:
In order to allow you to control visibility of these icons, and other features, across all the default map types, you can also now specify styles for your map in MapOptions. This enables you to selectively restyle roads, labels, and other features on Hybrid and Terrain maps in addition to Road Maps. Note however that the base satellite imagery (for Satellite and Hybrid maps) and base relief imagery (for Terrain maps) cannot be restyled.

Animated transitions between 45 degree headings;google maps

Take our new animated transitions for a spin! Simply load the below map using Chrome or Safari, and click the Rotate button. For extra spininess, click twice, then zoom out!


5 great Chrome apps using Google Maps API; TripTrace; Wikihood World Browser: By organizing Wikipedia articles geographically;Breadcrumbs is a great GPS management tool; Weatherbug let’s you view your weather and get the latest local current conditions, traffic information.

Many of these Chrome Apps are utilizing the Geo APIs. 
 5 great Chrome apps using Google Maps API.

 TripTrace
TripTrace organizes all the important places that you’ve been to or think you might want to visit; perfect for local exploration or vacation planning. Photos, events, and news are merged with your personal address book, check-ins, bookmarked web pages and more.

 Wikihood
Wikihood World Browser gives users with a unique way to browse and discover knowledge. By organizing Wikipedia articles geographically, users can quickly find information about a given location on the map. Wikihood makes browsing even easier by providing a short synopsis of an article on the left side when the article’s geolocation is selected on the map.

 Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs is a great GPS management tool. Users can visualize, organize, edit, and share GPS data collected from any GPS enabled device (including Android devices!). Breadcrumbs is also integrated with the Google Earth API for 3D visualizations.

 Delta Embark
Whether you’re planning your next vacation, trying to find a restaurant on your next business trip, or just looking for some travel inspiration this Chrome optimized travel guide is a delight to use. Travel planning made fun and easy, brought to you by Delta Airlines!

 Weatherbug
Don’t be late to Grandma’s this holiday season! Weatherbug let’s you view your weather and get the latest local current conditions, forecast, traffic information, and more for thousands of locations around the world. 
To learn more about adding your apps to the Chrome Web Store, check out our developer documentation about apps and the store. 

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