Bing Augmented-Reality Maps Demo
Stunning. Microsoft has exceeds expectations with their Bing Map augmented reality demo at TED2010 by Blaise Aguera y Arcas.
Courtesy TED.com
New Product: Eye-Fi Geo
Eye-Fi has just released a new product that couldn’t help but catch my eye. The new Eye-Fi Geo is a “smart” SD card that includes wireless JPEG photo uploads to your computer (Windows or Mac) and geotagging. Geotagging is provided through Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS), which is different from Global Positioning System (GPS), and happens whenever you are in range of any wireless network, open or closed, private or public (according to the Eye-Fi website). Eye-Fi Geo is a new product available only at the Apple Store ($60USD). Though I haven’t tried it myself, the customer reviews seem a bit mixed. Definitely worth following this interesting technology.
Hold World Landmarks in Your Hands with ARSights & Google Earth
A while back I reported on virtual digital holograms, wondering when they would make their way into the mapping arena. Over the past year ARSights, a project by Inglobe Technologies, an italian company specialized in the development of Virtual and Augmented Reality applications, has been building a community-based collection of 3-d virtual models of landmarks all over the world. This fascinating use of the technology is focused on education. Imagine… your students fly to Europe, glide around Italy – looking at the topography of the country as they zoom into to Rome. Now they pick up the Colosseum to really examine it, turning it round and round to really examine what’s there. Requires Google Earth, a web cam, and the ARSights download.
Noel Jenkins of Digital Geography posts this YouTube video showing how things look:
According to the ARSights, there are over 400 contributors now who have started “to share interesting content from many parts of the world. You can take a look at new models mainly in the USA, South America and Europe. Among others, you will find many important landmarks, like for example the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Memorial, the “Fiscal Island” in Rio de Janeiro, the University City in Buenos Aires and il Ponte di Rialto in Venice.”
Ortelius Has Launched!
A big thank-you to all of our testers and reviewers – we’ve made it! Check out our new web site for all the details on Ortelius, including a downloadable trial version. We’ll continue to add tips & tricks and screencasts to our web site to maintain it not only as our product site, but also as a rich educational resource for map making. To celebrate, we are offering an introductory special of $79 until September 30th. Development continues and we’d love to hear from you.
How To Use ScreenSteps Pro to Create An Apple Help Book
Software, web programs, even business processes all require documentation for the best user experience and long-term project value. I’ve been using ScreenSteps for the past couple years and I recommend it. Lately, I’ve used ScreenSteps to create an Apple Help Book for Ortelius. This isn’t a traditional way to use ScreenSteps and involved a few tricks and a bit of support from the good folks at Blue Mango. It has been so valuable I wanted to share the experience.
(Also note I’m no expert at this stuff so this is just an example of how I’ve done it. I can’t provide help and there are surely other/better ways, but this works 
Read more
Maps Using Virtual Digital Holograms? It’s Only A Matter of Time.
I’m looking forward seeing the first mapping application using virtual digital holograms. What is a virtual digital hologram you ask? It is very cool technology that creates a 3-d image you can move around via tracking from your webcam. The best place to check it out is GE’s fantastic implementation Plug Into the Smart Grid.
Think of the pieces that might be used for a mapping implementation – it may be aerial photography, digital elevation models, Sketchup and other 3-d models of buildings and cities. And now FLARToolkit is available as a free non-commercial license to pull those pieces together to create virtual digital holograms viewable by anyone with a webcam, printer, and Internet connection. Due to the novelty aspect of the technology, its biggest potential may be its use for marketing, communication, and education campaigns. If you’ve seen mapping or other fun uses of this technology, please share them!
Side Postings from Mapdiva Blog
Exciting times. At Mapdiva, we are getting prepared for the initial release of Ortelius map illustration software. On our new blog we’ll be posting news about Ortelius, as well as tips, tricks, and tutorials on cartographic techniques. There are some topics (such as map font basics) that I’ll be continuing on the Mapdiva blog rather than here, so I’ve added Mapdiva’s postings to the sidebar for a quick glimpse of what’s there. Enjoy!
Ortelius Will Be at AAG: You’re Invited to Learn More
Does your mapping software inspire creativity? Ortelius is a new breed of mapping software designed to make your mapping easy, fun and beautiful.
Come find out how Ortelius can help you create publication-quality maps without the high learning curve or costs associated with other software.
In this workshop we’ll introduce Ortelius and demonstrate its capabilities. Attendees will learn how to create custom maps from scratch and with templates. Learn about Ortelius’ robust tools and palettes, and how to create unique and inspiring symbols in a flash.
Attendees will receive a FREE Public Beta copy of the Ortelius software for evaluation. Come learn how Ortelius can work for you.
Association of American Geographers
Workshop Details
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Wednesday
March 25, 2009
Capri Meeting Room 108
Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas
Ortelius is Powerful Map Illustration Software for Mac OS X
Learn more at www.mapdiva.com
Walkscore.com Using Free Zillow Neighborhood Boundary GIS Data
I’ve been very interested in the news stories I’ve read about neighborhood boundary data and its usefulness. About a year ago Adena Schutzberg, Directions Magazine, wrote about neighborhood data offereings and the announcement by Zillow.com that they would provide their neighborhood GIS shapefile data freely through a Creative Commons license. First of all, I am very interested to see the CC licensing being applied to geospatial data – this alone is worth following. And I applaud Zillow.com (which I love) for making their data available in this way. So I was really interested when I came across another very excellent site providing my home’s walkability score (which alas is moderately low) and my office (which is very highly walkable).
walkscore.com
Walkscore.com is a site worth visiting. “Walk Score helps people find walkable places to live. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc. Walk Score measures how easy it is to live a car-lite lifestyle—not how pretty the area is for walking.” The Walk Score algorithm awards points based on distances to the closest amenity in a number of categories. I especially love the heat maps showing the most walkable neighborhoods in the top 40 U.S. cities. And certainly turn around is fair play… Zillow is already leveraging the benefits of having made its neighborhood data available (in February, Zillow.com added WalkScore to each of their 87 million properties).
Company Launch – New Mapping Software for the Mac
I’m pleased to announce the launch of Mapdiva, LLC, a partnership among Graham Cox and Jill Saligoe-Simmel, to develop Ortelius™ – powerful map illustration software for the MacOS. Ortelius™ is characterized by its ease of use and beautiful graphics capabilities for which Macs are known. Our new company anticipates the release Ortelius™ (Standard Edition) in the first quarter of 2009. A Professional Edition will be released a bit later with some sweet higher-end functionality.
