Exploring the world of free tools for GIS, GPS, Google Earth, neogeography, and more.
Digital Inspiration’s Find Postal Address … site is a one-trick pony, but does it well. Zoom to a location in Google Maps, click on the map, and a pop-up will give you the closest postal address to the point you’re clicking on:
A search box aids in zooming in quickly to a desired city or zip code.
I’m not a .Net programmer (I’m still stuck in the primordial ooze that is VB6), but if you are, you might want to check out GMap.Net, a free and open source .Net control for embedding online map services in Windows applications. You have the option of displaying maps from Google, Yahoo, OpenStreetMap, Bing or ArcGIS, with tile cacheing an option for faster performance. Several demo apps are available to show what you can do:
One quick tip: right-click and drag to pan the map (took me a while to figure that one out).
GetLatLon pretty much does exactly what its name implies – gives you the latitude/longitude of a point in a Google Maps interface. A crosshair at the center of the display marks the position for which coordinates are given at the bottom:
Digipoint can perform the same function, plus many more, but if all you need is a coordinate position, GetLatLon has a stripped-down simplicity that makes it easier to use. Just keep in mind that coordinate positions in Google Maps can be tens of meters off from the true position (see here and here).
As a demo of the ArcGIS API for Flex, ESRI has a new page that lets you create an embeddable/shareable map of demographic data by US county. Only seven datasets available now:
Map creation is trivially easy – select the demographic dataset from a dropdown, zoom the map to the desired extents, set a map size in pixels, and you’re done; links to a map with your parameters, and code for an embeddable map, are generated automatically. Here’s an embedded map, scrollable and zoomable; unemployment rate is the defaultdataset, but you can choose other sets with the dropdown menu at upper right:
More datasets would be nice, as would control over colors and ranges …
indiemapper is a promising-looking thematic mapping service that is supposed to come online shortly. But until then, they’ve released a free online Flash application that lets you upload vector data (point, line or polygon) in KML or shapefile format, re-project it into one of 11 different projections …
… and then export it as an Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) file for use in programs like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape. Shapefiles must be in geographic coordinates (latitude/longitude), WGS84; KML files are already in this format. Network KML files are acceptable. Add a file to the display, or choose one or more of their sample datasets:
You can load multiple datasets into the display, move their draw order, and turn them on and off by clicking on the “eye” icon:
The graticule grid can be turned on and off, and spacing set to automatic or manual.
Select the projection using the “Project” button at upper-right:
You’ll get info about the projection, including its pluses and minuses. Here’s Mercator (a screen capture, not SVG):
And Albers Equal Area Conic:
With the center latitude/longitude of view adjustable. Once done, click on the “Export” button at upper right to convert the vector data to SVG format, and download it to your computer for use in vector editing software, or for viewing in a compatible browser like Firefox.
There are limitations for now. There’s no control over layer colors, and no thematic coloring based on the attributes of the vector files. It looks like the full indiemapper application will have those, and the screenshots make it look interesting, but it’s not clear yet whether that full online app will have a free version. Stay tuned.
Microsoft’s Live Search Maps is now Bing Maps.
Virtual Earth is Bing Maps For Enterprise.
As my Brazilian grandmother would say, “Ai caramba!”. The entire Microsoft marketing team needs a dope slap.
Via the Virtual Earth Blog (which I presume will now be the Bing Blog).
Two online applications for mapping IP addresses:
IP-Locator: Plots the location of your current IP address, gives the approximate coordinates and elevation, with the option to export it as a KML file.
You can also type in an IP address, and get its geographic location plotted as well, with KML export. But for more than one IP address, and multiple export formats, there’s ….
IP-Mapper: – Enter a list of IP addresses in the box at left:
Click on Geocode, and get back the position(s) of the IP addresses plotted on a world map, along with the option to export the data in KML, CSV, DXF, shapefile, Tab-delimited or plain text formats:
Two additional notes:
I’ve posted before about Digipoint (version 1 and version 2), a web app that lets you select points in a Google Maps interface, then export their coordinates in a variety of formats. Version 3 of Digipoint is now out, with some modest improvements:
Still supports the same export formats as before: CSV, TXT, TAB, BLN (Surfer), GPX, KML, DXF and shapefile. Versions one and two are still available if you want them, but there’s no good reason to use them anymore.
