Thursday, June 25. 2009

CamMobSens May Share Data Using OSM

CamMobSens is a project to measure air pollution in real time using sensors on bicycles. It's expected to start up in earnest later this summer. Peter Murray-Rust, a Cambridge chemistry professor, who happened to meet Mark Calleja, the head of the CamMobSens, is suggesting the results be shared via the OpenStreetMap project. The Guardian, as is its way, notes that while the Ordnance Survey has made it easier to use its maps, there are still barriers.

- The Guardian

Cuil Maps Results with Maplines

Admit it, you vaguely remember that a new, "better-than-Google" search engine debuted last summer called Cuil (pronounced "cool"). Like me, you probably never tested it. I let the search engine folks look at it and they all said, "meh," so I never looked at it.

Today, though, I did look at it. Why? Because it has introduced Maplines (Cuil blog intro), a mapping of results that it's trying (not too successfully) to link to timelines. Cuil already had timelines.

I queried on "cuil" (hey why not?) and in addition to a list of results got a (MapQuest!) map with several pins located in Ireland. The text under the map said, "On this map: Loch Linnhe, Carro wmore, Bay at the Back of the Ocean, Carro wkeel Megal ithic Cemetery, County Sligo, Coolkenno." Each location in the list was linked and a quick mouse over each had a description of how the place related to a region of Ireland called Cuil. Clicking on the title "Mapline for Cuil" provides a larger pop-up map. A search on "kite boston" did not popup a Mapline. One for kite did, but like "cuil" just noted locations where the term "kite" as in a person's name or a region's name appear. The map still centered on Ireland though there were hits all over the map. One nice feature: instead of mapping all results (default) selected a subset tab on the search result page updates the map (for say "kite flying").

My experience aside, it's great search engines are realizing the importance of space and time in search and are trying out ways to integrate them in results.

via Search Engine Land

Montana Stimulus Map Goes Live

Gov. Brian Schweitzer showed off the new website yesterday. Like many other state's sites, it uses ESRI's Flex API. Unlike those solutions, the map is much simpler and cleaner, though I found the animation of the pie charts and flashing of the counties a bit much. Otherwise, it's nice nice to see a "different" looking map using this API.

- Billings Gazette

CartoVista No Flash in the Pan

I got a demo the other day from Dany Bouchard, President of DBx GEOMATICS, a  Quebec-based company, about their product CartoVista. If I translated this correctly, the product means, “map view” and that’s exactly what the product does. It is not a desktop GIS but renders data from other sources using Adobe Flash to provide rich data visualization. If you didn’t know better you would think you were looking at a business intelligence software dashboard (charts, graphics, data window, etc.) that has been augmented with a map window. The strength of this product is clearly its ability to do thematic mapping in a much more visually appealing and cartographically pleasing (albeit in a digital sense) manner.

The company is a Pitney Bowes Business Insight (PBBI) business partner so it works very easily with .TAB data. However, the product does a very slick job of updating each data window (chart, graph, etc.) as the user selects or zooms to a particular region. Labeling of data is very good and the dynamic analysis tools are extremely useful. Version 2.0 of the product is just now being released and it features customization using Flex and Java Script. The image below provides an example of some of the data windows you can open to display your data but it doesn’t do it justice. You need to see the product in action. You can download and evaluation copy. Try it out.