Tag Archives: web mapping

New directions in GIS

The world of the geoweb is advancing apace with cloud based data storage, mobile platforms and web based applications/geoprocessing coming to the fore. Esri have boosted their presence with the release of ArcGIS 10, its updated desktop, web and mobile components and associated resources. Continue reading

OS OpenSpace

The Ordnance Survey released their equivalent to Googlemaps called OpenSpace a while back now and I’ve been experimenting with it. I love having access to the high quality maps produced by the OS, other offerings such as Googlemaps and OpenStreetMap are simply not a match for the cartographic output of the OS. Having said this, there is still much room for improvement on the technical side of things: Based on OpenLayers, the OS OpenSpace platform is far from easy to get to grips compared to eg the Googlemaps API with simple tasks such as adding GeoRSS feeds and KML layers proving rather tricky let alone including external base layers. And the help and support is rather poor with few examples and much of the forum activity on the part of the OS team being far from explanatory. But still, as we start to see editing tools capable of working with these Javascript APIs, things should improve; I for one am looking forward to this!

Schmap!

Some of my photos are being used in the Schmap online guidebooks! Seems like a nice way of building a guidebook; use Flickr for the photos and WCities for the descriptive information and present it in an easy to use web map. Perhaps a bit of a cheeky way of avoiding paying for professional photos from one point of view but I quite like the messages telling me I’ve had a photo selected, warms the cockles of my heart and all that, plus the Schmap guides do give full credit and a link back to my Flickr account; I’m just glad people want to use my photos, that’s what they’re there for!
<