Free Geography Tools

Batch Geocoding And Reverse Geocoding With MicroPath Geocode

Leszek Pawlowicz — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:45:52 +0000

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 [...]

Web Fire Mapper

Leszek Pawlowicz — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:00:48 +0000

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 [...]

The US National Atlas Website

Leszek Pawlowicz — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:25:33 +0000

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 [...]

More Laptop Blegging

Leszek Pawlowicz — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:02:29 +0000

Many thanks to those who have contributed to help replace my dying laptop (and chief blogging tool when I’m out in the field). I’m still only about 40% of the way to procuring a cheap replacement, so if you can spare even a few bucks, I’d really appreciate it. Since I’ll be in the field [...]

gMapExplorer - A Combined Google Maps / Google Earth Browser

Leszek Pawlowicz — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 12:19:31 +0000

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 [...]

Regional Statistics From The Organization For Economic Cooperation And Development (OECD)

Leszek Pawlowicz — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:21:23 +0000

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 2 for large-scale geographic data, Level 3 for small-scale data) : There’s a limited number of plottable datasets (about 17), but the interface is [...]

KML Interactive Sampler

Leszek Pawlowicz — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:11:54 +0000

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 [...]

Breaking Up A Garmin gmapsupp.img Map File Into Separate Map Tiles

Leszek Pawlowicz — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:27:42 +0000

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 [...]

More Garmin Maps From Open Street Map Data

Leszek Pawlowicz — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:49:33 +0000

Apropos of the previous post on Garmin maps from Open Street Map (OSM) data, there’s a listing of Garmin mapsets for a limited number of countries at the OSM wiki site. Some come with installers, others are .img files that you will need to install into MapSource using MapSet Toolkit. Included are a set of [...]

World OpenStreetMap Data In Shapefile, XML and Garmin Formats

Leszek Pawlowicz — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:36:42 +0000

A while back, I posted on GeoFabrik’s repository of Open Street Map (OSM) data in shapefile format, covering mainly Europe and parts of Asia. CloudMade now has this data freely available for download as well, but not just in shapefile format, and not just Europe, but every continent (including Antarctica). Broken down by country/state, you [...]