Published at April 11, 2008
in GPS and Garmin.
Last week, I posted on how to convert a point shapefile to a Garmin custom POI file, and how with some manipulation you could include a fair number of the shapefile attributes in that POI’s data screen. But with only 6 lines of dataspace available, and only about 20 or so characters per line, you can only fit so much data onto a single data screen before you run out of space. And there may be times when you need to fit in more data.
The solution is pretty straightforward - just create another set of data for the same set of POIs, and give this new dataset a different name. It’s easy to access this new dataset using standard POI database management; you can make it even easier to distinguish between different datasets by modifying the point name slightly, appending a letter or number to every POI name in the new dataset, distinguishing it from other datasets with the same name. Using this technique, and using a Garmin that takes external data cards, there’s virtually no limit to the amount of attribute data you can include for every point in a shapefile.
Host of few features for Microsoft’s Virtual Earth, including new imagery, new 3D buildings, direct support for MapCruncher, movie capture, export to KML and GPX files, and more. Announcement at Virtual Earth / Live Maps, good roundups at Mapperz and Google Earth Blog.
Via Vector One, I discovered Kelso’s Corner, a blog by an award-winning cartographer for the Washington Post; it’s been added to my blogroll at left. In turn, that blog pointed me to Color Oracle, a free Java tool (Windows, Linux and Mac) for evaluating the effects of several kinds of color blindness. I was surprised to learn that 8% of the male population suffers from some variety of color blindness (that’s about 1 out 12), so keeping their limitations in mind is important. Run the program, and it lets you choose between the three most common kinds of color-blindness: Deuteronapia (most common), Protanopia (rare) and Tritanopia (very rare). It changes the coloring of the entire monitor to reflect what it would look like if you had that specific kind of color blindness, and plasters a big label on the screen to let you know which kind of color blindness is being simulated. Click anywhere on the screen to return to normal color. The program also lets you get a screen capture of the color-blind view.
Continue reading ‘Evaluating Map Graphics For Color-Blind Viewers’
I’ve covered the free GeoPDF plugin for Adobe Acrobat and Reader before, but the latest version adds a lot of new features:
- Create a point on the map, then open and view the corresponding point on Google Maps
- A lot more coordinate systems supported, including MGRS, Lambert Conformal Conic, Mercator, etc.
- Import and display shapefiles, re-projecting them on-the-fly
- Import Google Earth KML/KMZ data; also CSV and GPX files
- Annotate points with “sticky notes”, or with a GeoStamp symbol in various categories (incidents, infrastructure, operations)
- Draw rectangles, polylines and polygons, and annotate them
- Export annotated and imported data in shapefile format (automatically split into points, lines (arcs) and polygons)
- Export annotated and imported data in KML format for use in Google Earth (another way to convert shapefiles to KML format)
One capability that’s still missing is the ability to export the view in georeferenced raster format, like GeoTiff; hope that’s coming soon.
The TerraGo Technologies tutorials page has a video tutorial on GeoPDF, and brief written tutorial with sample data for you to play around with. You can also download free USGS topo maps in GeoPDF format from the USGS Store’s Map Locater and Downloader. While these are still mostly in raster format, the next generation of USGS topo maps will come in vector GeoPDF format, letting you select from up to 37 different data layers.
Via Directions Magazine.
Published at April 4, 2008
in GPS and Garmin.
Garmin POIs (Points of Interest) datafiles can contain up to two lines of text data for the name, and up to four lines of data for the description, far more than the more limited space for the same data in a GPS waypoint. This gives you enough room to include at least some of a point shapefile’s tabular attribute data for a location, and take it into the field with you for reference. And while there’s typically a limit of 500 to 1000 waypoints on many Garmin GPS units, you can put tens of thousands of locations into a POI file, along with that associated data. Here’s one way to create Garmin POI files from a point shapefile, though you could use comparable tabular data as well.
Continue reading ‘Creating A Garmin GPS Points Of Interest (POI) File From A Point Shapefile’
Google has just announced the addition of topographic contour lines to their Terrain view in Google Maps. It’s for the entire world, so I suspect they’re using SRTM 90-meter resolution data; not ideal, but not bad, either. Here’s Popocatepetl, just SE of Ciudad de Mexico:
You have to zoom in to at least the 1-mile / 2 km range for the contours to appear.
Got an email from David Rothschild, the founder of Seero.com, inviting me to take a look at his new web service for combining media content (text, pictures and video) with geographic location. This really isn’t my thing, but what I saw on their website was interesting enough for me to post briefly on it. Basically, you can create a dynamic network KML link on their site, and have it either open in Google Earth or in Google Maps. Each time you add a placemark to the dynamic link, you can embed text, photos, and links to video hosted at Seero; the video can supposedly open in the Google Earth pop-up, but on my system, it opens up in the Firefox browser. Examples include this KML link to a walking tour along the Sierra Nevada / Cascades in the Western US, and a Google Maps interface on the One Man Walking blog, where the placemarks on the map link to blog posts for that location.
There’s more, including apparently the ability to do a live webcast with streaming video, while your current location by GPS is plotted on a Google Maps interface. Like I said, not my thing, so I haven’t delved too deeply into it, but if you’re interested in creating geographic travelogues, it may be worth a look.
