Taking the week off for travel and holiday time with the family; hope you all enjoy doing the same.
Archive for November, 2008
5/2/2009: Doesn’t appear to be available anymore, but you can always check the MicroPath website. Otherwise, click on the “geocoding” category on the right for more options.
A few days ago, I covered the free gMapExplorer from Micropath, a stand-alone augmented Google Maps and Google Earth browser. Micropath has another useful stand-alone program called Geocode that can geocode an address (convert it to latitude/longitude), as well as reverse geocode (take a latitude/longitude position and find the nearest address). And you can do this either one address or coordinate set at a time, or in batch mode by creating a comma-separated value (CSV) file with the required data. Read the included PDF help file to make sure you put the data in the correct format, and also name the file correctly and put it into the program directory. The program comes with sample CSV files for both batch geocoding:
And reverse geocoding:
Output CSV files with this information are generated, and can be found in the program directory under a specified name. If you need to convert them to KML format, I’ve posted before about a program that can do that. Double-click on an address line to open your default browser and plot the address/position in Google Maps.
One oddity, at least in Windows Vista – every time you start up the program, the install program window comes up. But it doesn’t seem to affect the actual program startup time significantly, nor interfere with functionality.
A timely data resource given the recent wildfires in California, the Web Fire Mapper plots the locations of fires across the globe as determined by measurements from the Aqua/Terra earth observation satellites:
- Plot fires as seen by Aqua, Terra, or both, using MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) observations
- Choose a pre-selecting time period, or enter your own start/end times
- Choose the background image: Blue Marble, Elevations and Rivers (as above), or None (just country outlines)
- Enable additional layers: Administrative Boundaries (e.g. states), Cities and Protected Areas
- The Download function isn’t working yet, but includes a link to a page where you can download GIS shapefile data for fires over the last 48 hours or last 7 days
- If you create a view you like, click on “Link to this page” to create a bookmarkable link that saves those settings
I’m never quite sure what to make of the US Government’s National Atlas website. Don’t get me wrong, I really like the site, but that’s as much a function of the serendipitous nature of the maps and data you can stumble across as it is its utility. I don’t know that I’d send someone there to look for a specific set of data, since the datasets and categorization are all over the place. But it’s a fun site to poke around in. Among the stuff you can find:
- GIS-ready data in shapefile, DBF, SDTS-TVP and GeoTiff formats, covering a wide variety of topics both pedestrian (census demographic data, water bodies) and exotic (maps of butterfly distribution; magnetic field intensity)
- An onsite MapMaker that lets you browse through information about different datasets, and then plot them interactively for export or printing
Distribution of Strecker’s Giant-Skipper butterfly in MapMaker
- Dynamic online maps (mostly Flash) that illustrate oddly diverse topics like volcanoes and the spread of avian cholera across the US
- Pre-formatted maps like West Nile virus and US timezones in PDF and GIF format for use in reports, or printing in 8.5 x 11 size.
- Large-format wall maps for sale.
- A very eclectic mix of articles on different topics (Zebra Mussels; Engineering Aspects of Karst; Snow Surveys and Water Supply Forecasting).
You may not find exactly what you’re looking for at this site, but it’s worth checking out just to see what they have.
The gMapExplorer from MicroPath is sort of a combined stand-alone Google Maps / Google Earth browser that adds some additional useful features. Windows only, and you’ll need to have the Google Earth plugin already installed on your system. Start it up, and you’ll see buttons in the upper-left-hand corner to let you switch between the following four Google Maps views:
- Street
- Satellite
- Satellite with streets and labels overlaid (click on the arrow below Satellite to access this)
- Terrain (shaded relief with contour lines)
And the final button to switch you to a Google Earth view.
Controls to the right of these buttons control either both Google Maps and Google Earth views, or set parameters for individual views:
These include options to overlay a latitude/longitude grid on top of a map view, which becomes finer in detail as you zoom in closer:
A geocoding search box at upper-right lets you enter a street address, and have it geocoded and displayed on-screen:
A status bar just above the map view can display several additional pieces of information, including the USGS 1:24K topo map for the area the cursor is over:
Latitude/longitude coordinates for the area the cursor is over, with the options for several different latitude/longitudeformats, and either UTM (WGS84), or MGRS:
If you follow the instructions in the help PDF file that comes with the program, and download digital elevation data from one of several public sources, an additional elevation display become active, and you can create elevation profiles between two points:
This function is actually designed to aid in radio antenna placement; if you’re interested in that, see the help file for more information on how to enter antenna tower specifications (location, frequency, antenna height, etc.).
Sort of an odd mix of functionality, but if you need it, it’s in a nice package (and free to boot).
In the same vein as the StatPlanet app covered last week come another site for world demographic and economic data presented in a Flash map interface. The OECD Regional Statistics sites (Level 3 for small-scale data) :
There’s a limited number of plottable datasets (about 17), but the interface is terrific, perhaps the best I’ve seen for a site of this type. It was constructed using the Geovisual Analytics Visualization (GAV) Flash toolkit being developed at Linkoping University in Sweden. The data can be exported by selecting “Raw Text Data” from the dropdown menu at the upper right, and then copying/pasting the data into a text editor or spreadsheet; even more data is available from the OECD.Stat Extracts website.
Want to learn KML by example, or see examples of the features you can display in Google Earth? The Google Geo APIs team has developed a KML Interactive Sampler page that uses the Google Earth Plugin to demonstrate various features, while simultaneously displaying the KML code used to create the feature:
Always wondered what “tesselated”meant …
Modify the code in the text window and click on “Update Earth!”, and the displayed feature will be updated to reflect the new code. You can copy the text from the window, and then save it as a KML file locally on your computer.
Doesn’t support time yet, but neither does the Google Earth Plugin.
Yesterday’s post was about CloudMade, a website where you can download Garmin map files based on OpenStreetMap data for any country in the world that has OSM data. But all the map tiles for a country or state are combined into a single gmapsupp.img file, which means you can’t install the tiles into Garmin’s MapSource program. Because of this limitation, you can’t combine them with other mapsets and upload them to your Garmin GPS using MapSource. But there’s a simple way to break that gmapsupp.img file into the component subtiles, which can then be installed into MapSource, and uploaded with other mapsets.
First, download the program gmaptool, and unzip it into the directory of your choice; this used to be a command-line utility, but now comes in a handy GUI format that drives the command line tool gmt.exe. Next, start up the program, navigate to the directory that contains the gmapsupp.img, and open the file:
Click on the Split tab, select the directory you want to put the tiles in, and select “single maps” from the dropdown:
Click on the “Split all” button, and the subtiles contained with the gmapsupp.img file will be extracted, and listed in a status window:
You can now use a program like MapSet Toolkit to install the tiles for viewing in MapSource, and uploading individually or combined with other mapsets into your Garmin GPS:
Note: The dropdown on the “Split” tab includes the option for creating files for installing the tiles directly into MapSource, but it doesn’t seem to be working right now. Running the install.bat file gives an error message saying that the needed program cgpsmapper can’t be found, and specifying the path for this file under the Options tab doesn’t solve the problem. I suspect this will work at some point in the future.
The command line program gmt.exe driven by the GMapTool GUI contains many additional advanced functions for handling Garmin map files, not all of which are currently accessible using the GUI, including removing/changing unlock codes (no, this won’t let you pirate Garmin mapsets), making maps transparent, and more. Check the readme.txt file that comes with the program for more info; there’s also a “gmaptool_en.html” help file with more info on the GMapTool GUI.
