Battlestar Gallactica or Google Maps? Court Currently Not in Session

A truck driver in the UK was driving erratically. When pulled over, officials found a laptop with episodes of the TV sci-fi program. While the trucker at first pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, there was an attempt to get him to plead not guilty, which failed.

His solicitor Nigel Beeson said: “My client’s case is ‘Yes, I was driving along, yes, I did have my laptop on the dashboard but it had a Google map or whatever on it.’ In other words, he was using a large version of a sat nav and “Looking at a map would not be dangerous driving.”

-  Chester Evening Leader

UMapper: Create Your Own Flash Widget Maps Built on VE, GMaps or OSM

Andrei from UMapper pinged APB to share some news and request feedback on the app.

Per his note:

UMapper is a web-based map authoring application that makes it easy to create, manage, and distribute online maps. The application is built on proprietary UMap technology, which allows it to display geo-data and any layer on top of any map data provider (Microsoft Virtual Earth, Google, OpenStreetMap). Once created, maps can be distributed via flash widgets.

Currently UMapper is in public ALPHA and is scheduled to go into BETA within the next month. Despite its early stage, UMapper has an active community of several thousand users who created over 2,500 public maps. In addition, UMapper WordPress plugin received over 5k downloads.

UMapper was created to simplify map-creation process and bring some fun into it. Our application is bridging the gap between the high-end GIS solutions and the consumer-oriented mapping software.

You can add data to the Wiki here, view a gallery of maps made by others here and create your own map here. I enjoyed the very “flashy” environment include some clever simplification of crowded symbols to unclutter the maps.

Google Responds to MapSpam

MapSpam is where individuals “hijack” a business location as their own. Search Engine Land reports on the apparent low number of incidents and how Google has responded via a public forum.