With TileMill, you can create custom maps by implementing your own design to GIS data, which you can then share to the public by embedding into your website.

It sounds and looks pretty amazing as seen with their example of the Afghan presidential elections in 2009.

The only drawback here is TileMill’s steep learning curve. Fortunately, Development Seed acknowledges the issue and promises to revamp for TileMill 2.0 and make it more user-friendly. Hooray!!

Not all mapping professionals are savvy developers, you know :)

If you haven’t heard of the King of Bing Maps Challenge, it was just the most recent of the many successful app contests being held. Winners receive a small amount of cash and some street cred, and the organizers receive a gallery full of apps created by the community in return. Everybody wins!

This year’s King of Bing was Ricky Brundritt with his Taxi Fare Calculator. This app estimates the total fare for most U.S. cities and 18 additional international cities to help residents, tourists, and businessmen navigate around.

My favorite, however, was Ricky’s Data Viewer - another app by Ricky Brundritt. It integrates GeoRSS feeds into the app and also allows you to overlay shapefiles on top of Bing.

For example, if you wished to view the latest earthquakes as published by the USGS, you would visit the USGS Earthquakes Hazards Program and download their Atom XML Feed. Select the GeoRSS file through the app and you’re done!

What am I even talking about? It’s the ability to turn your plain ol’ legend into something spiffy like this:

The shapes shown in the new legend are a smaller representation of an urban area or lake actually shown on the map. The process is not as automated as I’d like, as there are quite a few steps involved.

If the above tutorial is too much work, you can also choose a pre-defined patch shape rather than the dull rectangle.

Yet another alternative is to, you know, just export to Illustrator. Isn’t that what all cartographers do anyway?

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.

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!

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.

We had a stacked panel that led to a rich discussion covering topics related to location-based gaming and services.

Let’s meet the panel…

Jereon Mol, Co-Founder, buzzAR (Holland)

buzzAR is a Dutch company that has developed a new visual search platform and an augmented reality tool for smartphones. Jereon offered a unique perspective on “location-aware” search and devices because his apps use image recognition and are not bound by location. buzzAR is taking a context aware approach to Augmented Reality, not just location aware.

Dan Walton, Co-Founder, Retronyms

Retronyms – GeoSeek; games in the great outdoors. These guys make really cool apps for multiple platforms. They are specifically skilled in developing location-based games and music apps. Their coolest game is Seek ‘n Spell…think location based scrabble where you have to run to collect the pieces you need to form a word. Super fun. They also develop musical apps for the iPad. All of our lunch buddies got a kick out of these apps. Highly entertaining.

Ben Hesketh, Founder, Compass Engine

Compass Engine and Ben are currently working on an app called Catch the Canary. Ben invited me to come visit him at work in beautiful Gastown in Vancouver last week. It was really cool to get to preview his location-based game that will be launched soon… I will likely blog about it when it is ready.

Vladimir Savchenko, Founder,  Sound of Motion

Sound of Motion - creators of an app (VeloComputer) that transforms mobile devices into cycling computers that can track speed; lap and trip distance; acceleration and altitude.  It also records trip data on the phone in CSV files and can be uploaded to a spreadsheet for training analysis or Google Earth for tracking. This computer can be used for more than just biking too!

Here we are!

If you have any questions about this panel session and what was discussed… give us a shout or comment below… would love to keep the dialogue going!

This mashup by Paul Rademacher portrays the size of the spill in relation to major cities.  The map aims to give the reader a sense of the scale of this disaster (you will need the Google Earth browser plug-in).

Grassroots Mapping is covering the mapping of the oil spill. MIT students are using balloons and kites to map the disaster.

BP response maps – Static .pdf files

New York Times has a series of animated maps showing oil dispersion, where oil has made landfall, and links to multimedia coverage of the oil spill.

Also, almost every government agency is addressing the oil spill on their websites.

USGS is using satellite imagery. They also have a series of maps (static made with traditional GIS) showing the coastal washup of oil.

USGS data repository - Hazards Data Distribution System (HDDS). You could use this to make your own mashup!

NASA has the latest images of the oil spill here. They have also stitched together this movie. From a Geovisualization standpoint, this is a very simple animation of only satellite imagery but portrays a very powerful message.

EPA uses Google Earth!

This is by no means an exhaustive list of mapping the oil spill but a start.

Here is a picture of me at the Alligator Bayou about four years ago.

Kumiko and I both did work mapping for FEMA in Louisiana post Hurricane Katrina and Rita back in 2005-2006. I spent about two months in the region and I would return in a heartbeat. The Gulf Coast is absolutely an amazing place full of people who are warm and fun loving hard workers.

The wildlife and ecosystem are extremely unique. If you ever get the chance, you have to check this place out! Holy cow! Actually I see that Alligator Bayou is closed and for sale!!! If you love wetlands and have some cash, buy it and preserve this wonderful place!

We’ve done a lot of work with Google Maps and are glad to finally see some major improvements being made with API v3.

Cartographers around the world will be super delighted over this - Styled MapTypes!! This update now allows you to toggle features on and off (roads, parks, water, transit, etc) and create a new color scheme for Google Maps. Here’s a nice set of potential colors. What will you come up with?

1. NYC Way (Free!!)

A winner of 3 awards at the NYC BigApps Competition, NYC Way is an extremely well designed app that includes all the information you’ll ever need about the city whether you’re a tourist or resident. Location is huge these days and NYC WAY does a tremendous job implementing your location with nearby businesses and events (and restaurant inspections and job postings and subways and more!) and even allows you to check-in via Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.

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2. Topo Maps for iPad ($7.99)

A little pricey but well worth it if you are really really into USGS topo quads. Just navigate to the quad and download for offline use! It will detect your location and have the option to create and import/export waypoints. Beware if you’re expecting to see hiking trails with these maps. Many of these quads are old (the first I downloaded was from 1955 — Conestoga, PA) and only major trails are shown.

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3. World History Atlas by Maps.com ($1.99)

Eh. Another static image dumping atlas with nothing else. Index is too small. Yawn.

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4. MotionX GPS HD ($2.99)

This is a popular app for the iPhone but the iPad version currently does NOT allow you to save and send your tracks.. which I believe is an important feature to have. However, it’s still getting excellent reviews so give it a shot if you own a 3G iPad. I can tell you right now this app is fairly useless on my WiFi version despite its claims.

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5. 123 World HD ($1.99)

Clearly I am too old for this but kids will enjoy this little coloring book app. Choose your color from the palette and click on the state/country/continent to color them in. As you fill your countries with colors, its name and capital will pop up on screen. Not bad, your kids can play and learn geography at the same time!