» 2010 » July Mapkist

What is MapQuest up to now?

Jul 9, 2010 @ 12:17 PM by Kumiko Yamazaki -- mapquest

In May 2004, Britta and I met as interns at MapQuest, shared an office, and quickly became best friends as our path towards geoglobaldomination was set. We bragged about working for MapQuest to all our friends and family, received tons of free atlases, and even gave them away as cheap Christmas gifts! Wouldn’t we all?

Then something happened in 2005. Google Maps was unveiled and MQ seemingly made no effort to change. Years went by, and nothing. MapQuest was an embarrassment!!

Fast forward to 2009 - MQ releases an iPhone app. I’m pleasantly surprised. It wasn’t one of those apps where you download once, and never use. I have used it to locate gas stations (needed to fill up rental car before returning it at the airport) and post offices. It’s just EASIER on MQ than Google Maps. Oh, and the symbol used to locate your position? Check out some of their icons.

It’s a minor feature that doesn’t add any value, but this was the first time I realized something was different about the MapQuest culture. It appealed to me!

And today, they launched something new AGAIN, less than two weeks after announcing the new MapQuest.

This time, it’s open.mapquest.co.uk which is built using data from OpenStreetMap! MapQuest took the latest OSM files, changed its style and look, added their navigation, and built a fully functioning map application from user contributed data. Read more about it here. It’s quite a breakthrough what they’ve done with OSM already, and on top of that, they have announced a $1 million OpenStreetMap investment fund.

They’re doing everything right these days!

Everyone, I haven’t worked for MapQuest since 2005 but I love what they’re doing over there. They were once THE major player in the mapping community and they’re fighting to regain some of the ground they’ve lost.

8-Bit City Love

Jul 8, 2010 @ 10:49 AM by Kumiko Yamazaki -- game map

Remember the fantastic 8-Bit NYC map we saw earlier? Brett Camper has continued to design and develop similar maps for other cities. The list now includes:

New York
Amsterdam
Austin
Berlin
Detroit
London
Paris
San Francisco
Seattle
Washington, DC

Check them out! I can’t help thinking these will be great base maps for any sort of location-based gaming. Somebody, get on it :)

Future cities will include Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, Portland (Oregon), Oakland, Boulder, Oklahoma City, Rome, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Nijmegen, Kyoto, Shanghai, and Singapore!

What can ArcGIS.com and ArcGIS iOS do for me?

Jul 6, 2010 @ 9:58 AM by Kumiko Yamazaki -- esri gis ipad iphone

In recent weeks, ESRI has revealed ArcGIS.com, ArcGIS Explorer Online, a new logo, and now an iPhone/iPad app, all in time for next week’s mega User Conference in San Diego.

Naturally, I was curious to see what it can do for me. I have ArcView on my computer but it’s installed on Vista via Boot Camp on my Mac. It’s not ideal and is a pain having to restart the machine in order to switch operating systems. So how can ArcGIS.com help me, the lazy Mac user?

It can’t.

I had a CSV file of local brewpubs I wanted to plot (yummy!), and ArcGIS.com won’t accept it. A CSV file.. one of the simplest, most common file formats EVER. Instead, it only supports:

“ArcGIS map files (mxd, nmf, 3dd, sxd, ncfg, mpk, wmpk and pmf), ArcGIS layer files (lyr, lpk, and nmc), and ArcGIS tools (eaz, and esriaddin).”

Wrong wrong wrong. ArcGIS.com is hardly useful for the average user who doesn’t already have access to pricey ESRI products. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but the potential was there and ESRI screwed it up.

This is all unfortunate considering they had the resources to develop a tremendous product that runs seamlessly across the web and mobile applications, and the ability to create and share the results. Their free app, especially the iPad app, is beautiful. You can browse through everyone’s maps or simply log into your account and bring up your own.

ESRI users are undoubtedly excited over these new developments but the rest of the world, which happens to be quite large, has been shafted.