Exploring the world of free tools for GIS, GPS, Google Earth, neogeography, and more.
New from Google, a Google Earth network link that shows near-real-time US flight positions, full 3D position:
Mouse-over a plane, and see the route it’s taken up to that point in blue:
Click on a plane, and get a pop-up with flight info, on-time status:
Click on “Download flight path”, and download a KML time animation of the plane’s flight to that point; click on the play button at upper right to start the animation.
Flight info is delayed roughly 15 minutes.
For some reason, I have this mental picture of Europe being at about the same latitude range as the US, and I’m often startled when reminded that much of Europe lies well north of the lower 48’s northern border. The Iso-Longitude-Latitude site shows this graphically; put a marker on a point in a Google Maps interface, say near New York City:
And lines of constant latitude and longitude will be drawn through that point in the first map window, and in a second one directly below it. By scrolling the map eastward, I can see that Madrid is at about the the same latitude as NYC:
And that most of South America is east of NYC:
You have the option of showing the “anti-latitude” and “anti-longitude” of a point as well; anti-latitude is the equivalent south latitude of a northern latitude (and vice-versa) e.g. +40 and -40, while anti-longitude is180 degrees opposite longitude, e.g. –75 and +115. “Anti” lines are drawn in red.
You can enter multiple point positions on a map, and their coordinates will show up in a text box; alternately, you can copy and paste coordinates into the text box and display them on the map. Finally, you can save a URL that will save and display all the points you’ve entered.
Another route-drawing app for Google Maps, but with some unusual features. The Gmaps Pedometer lets you create a route by clicking in a Google Maps interface, as do many other similar apps. Some of its features are:
Map/route and elevation display:
Control panel and info readout:
Tips:
Several posts at other blogs over the past week about cartographer/artist Denis Wood’s upcoming book Everything Sings: Maps For A Narrative Atlas; see Making Maps and The Map Room for examples. This looks like a unique depiction of aspects of a community not captured by normal maps, sort of a true geography of neighborhood. Showed this to a friend who’s interested in maps as way of framing the distinguishing aspects of a community, and she pronounced it, “Great Stuff!”. Exploring outward from the blog posts, I found direct links to a number of sites of interest, either directly or tangentially related to the book:
I can remember as a kid (way too many years ago) being impressed with a map of the lower 48 United States that had the outline of Alaska superimposed on top of it. The Alaska outline virtually covered the entire map, and there was a comment to the effect that,”Alaska is almost as large as the lower 48 states”. It wasn’t until years later that I realized the creator of that map had just traced an outline of Alaska off of a Mercator projection map and laid it on top of the US map without compensating for the change in scale.
If only the map maker had had access to Mapfrappe’s Move Outlines site, he might not have made that mistake. Draw an outline of a geographic area in one Google Maps window:
And have the outline be superimposed on top of another Google Maps window, scaled correctly to compensate for changes in the Mercator scale at different latitudes:
Alaska’s still pretty dang big, but this shows it at its true scale, roughly one-third the size of the lower 48.
Another classic example of this is Greenland, which looks humungous on a standard Mercator projection:
In true area, though, it’s roughly the same size as Mexico; big, but not gargantuan:
The site has some pre-drawn comparisons, like the Great Lakes against the Black Sea:
ESRI’s GIS And Science blog posts about a new ESRI program to provide GIS software for non-profits:
The program allows qualified nonprofit organizations to request up to 75 seats of ArcGIS Desktop and 2 seats of ArcGIS Server software per organization. Alternatively, organizations can choose from four levels of a special nonprofit organization enterprise license agreement (ELA) designed to meet the needs of larger operations. Both ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Server software include all extensions.
You have to sign up for membership to find out how much it costs; the page for ArcGIS Desktop mentions an administrative fee, but for full info you have to sign up for a membership (which I can’t). If anyone does find out cost info, please drop a note in the comments section.
Given that a full copy of ArcGIS Desktop with all the extensions can cost close to $10K, this is worth a look if you’re eligible and need the software. The Free Geo Tools site is all about free, and free is great for many uses, but having cheap copies of industry-standard software for some applications doesn’t hurt.
With the Google Planimeter site, click on the map to add polygon points:
And have the area enclosed by the points be calculated in multiple units:
One of the more interesting Google Maps mashups I’ve seen in a while, OMGRainbows! mixes information about where it’s raining in the United States along with the angle of the sun, and plots areas where you’re most likely to spot rainbows. To see a rainbow, you need to have the sun behind you, shining towards an area where there’s rain falling. If the sun angle is too high, you’ll a solid yellow overlay:
But if the sun angle is acceptable, you’ll get a plot in red that shows the areas where you could see a rainbow if the sun is visible:
And when night falls, you’ll get a dark overlay showing where there’s no sun to generate a rainbow:
And if you don’t understand the post’s “intense” title:
