The classic functionality for Google Maps is the computerized equivalent of “sticking a pin in a map”, albeit a very fancy pin with the ability to hold and display additional information. ZeeMaps takes that simple Google Maps functionality and moves it towards something a lot closer to a Geographic Information System. With ZeeMaps you can:
- Create standard maps, housing maps (specialized real estate data attributes), or IP maps (data markers based on location of IP address)
- Import and export data in CSV format.
- Import a list of addresses and have them automatically geocoded and plotted. Or, import data with latitude/longitude coordinates.
- Define attribute fields for your data, then filter your data based on those attributes.
- Annotate the map with text (separate from the data markers).
- Display data in map form, list form, or both.
- Select data points based on distance from a specific point (spatial selection).
- Publish maps on the Web, either in read-only format, or allowing others to add and modify points. You can also select subsets of data that is displayed, while hiding other datasets.
- Associate and upload pictures and audio files with data markers.
- “Print” the map in PDF format.
The service is free, and can be used without registration (though registration makes tracking and managing multiple maps easier). The interface is intuitive, and there’s a decent help section. Although some operations take a few more steps to accomplish than I would like, overall there’s nothing major to complain about; it’s a great Google Maps service, especially at the price.
Information Week has an article with the provocative title above making the blogosphere rounds. It supposedly warns us about how easy it would be to blow up a satellite using a free piece of satellite tracking software called Orbitron in combination with Google Earth. If prospective Dr. Evils read the article, though, they’ll see that the inclusion of Google Earth as part of this “system” is gratuitous. Google Earth is only used to “visualize” the satellite position based on the data it gets from the Orbitron software, and would play no part in the actual shooting down. Oh, and you need an operational ground-to-space missile system as well (I have one, but it’s down right now).
There seems to be a fad these days among journalists to treat Google Earth as some kind of military threat based on its satellite imagery; this article pushes that meme to a new extreme. Still, Orbitron is a pretty cool free program for satellite tracking. And if you’re looking for a free multi-platform program to show a visually-appealing map of the night sky, there’s no beating Stellarium.
Nearby.org.uk has a page of useful utilities for both Google Earth and Google Maps. Many are UK-oriented, but others have more general utility:
… and more. The whole site is worth poking around, especially if you’re from the UK.
Download Squad posts that Bryce 5.5, a program that creates photo-realistic landscape renderings and animation with vegetation and realistic skies, is available as a free download (registration required to get a free serial number). While it lets you create your own topography, it also accepts DEMs as input for the landscapes. This is one version below the current 6.1 release, but is still feature-rich. Unfortunately, it also has a very idiosyncratic interface that takes a lot of getting used to. Here’s a review of the program from PC Pro, with some screen shots.
There are other free programs for realistic landscape rendering, with some limitations compared to Bryce 5.5 but also somewhat easier interfaces to navigate:
Genesis IV: Available in a freeware edition for personal use, as well as several paid versions.
Terragen: The free non-commercial version limits the output resolution. There’s also a Technology Preview release of Version 2.0 available as well, though it has a fairly technical interface.
The free program 3DEM can convert a number of DEM formats to Terragen’s native terrain format, and to formats compatible with Genesis IV.
A couple of earlier posts have dealt with sites that allow you to determine a point halfway geographically between two others: a.placebetween.us and Mezzoman. Via OgleEarth comes a third: the Geographic Midpoint Calculator. Enter two or more locations, and the GMS will calculate the midpoint or average location (for more than two points). You can weight the locations by time you’ve spent in that city, though you can use the time-weight as a proxy for other weighting factors. Results are given in latitude/longitude, with the option to plot the original locations and average location in Google Maps.
Simple Spark has a searchable inventory of Web 2.0 apps, with the ability to bookmark them on-site with a free account. Enter “maps” as the search term, and 147 sites pop up, many of which I hadn’t heard of before (GPS currently only yields 4; GIS, 2).
Via Download Squad.
The Yahoo Pipes blog nominally has some examples of how to use Pipes to plot geographically-coded data in the Yahoo Maps interface using JSON and RSS (though they don’t seem to be working for me now).
Via Slashgeo.
Just a brief note to say that the open source GIS MapWindow has reached version 4.4, and the new version is definitely a worthwhile upgrade if you already have the program. A whole bunch of shapefile editing capabilities have been added, there’s now an Undo function in the shapefile editor you can turn on, higher-resolution raster export, plus bug fixes and a few other features. I plan to do a video in the near future demonstrating these new capabilities, similar to the ones I’ve done before on MapWindow.
