The End Of Flickr?

Well, certainly not today, and certainly not soon, but the introduction of georeferenced photos on Google Maps this week will certainly rock the online photo communities’ boat. Sure, there are tons of websites overlaying flickr photos on top of a web map, and most are richer than what Google Maps currently offers. Take for example loc.alize.us, a flickr/Google Maps mashup that has been around for a while. It offers tag filtering, user filtering, and a very nice and clean interface. To top it off, it offers a bookmarklet that integrates georeferencing into flickr.com very nicely. I still use it, although Yahoo Maps, the mapper of choice for Flickr’s mapping needs, of course, has had adequate coverage of the Netherlands for some time now.

But still.. It’s not directly ON Google Maps, which is – at least in Western Europe at this time – the ubiquitous web map. The general public will rarely discover any layer of the geographic web beyond Google Maps and Google Earth. ‘So, if I want my photos to show up on the web, I need to be on Panoramio.’ – Panoramio being the photo sharing community that has been showing off on Google Earth for as long as I can remember, and as from now on Google Maps as well. Panoramio was acquired by Google in May, 2007.

No, I don’t expect a mass flux of flickr users towards Panoramio. The latter will see a good number of new members though, and if Google remains as picky about which photos to display within Maps – I’m still confused as to where this leaves Picasa; I guess the user base is not large enough – Panoramio might become a force to be reckoned with in the online photo community universe.

OpenStreetMap Mapping Party ‘Saendelft’

The Dutch like to live in new, modern homes with a garden front and back. This leaves the country with many a suburban jungle like the one depicted below. This also means steady jobs for surveyors with the commercial mapping companies – and many a free weekend spent mapping for a Dutch OpenStreetMap contributor.

Virtual Earth Custom Tile Layers in 3D mode — not anymore.

The Microsoft Virtual Earth API lets you add your own tile layer to your VE Map. My colleague StevenO wrote about preparing a suitable TileCache setup. This used to work in both 2D and 3D map modes. Recently, Microsoft introduced the latest version of the API, 6.1, along with a major data upgrade and a new version of the 3D control. A step forward in many respects, but the tile layers will not show up in 3D mode anymore. Let’s investigate. UPDATED 080508 11pm, see below

Importing the GML 3.2.1 namespace into .NET

There comes a time for every geo-ict professional to have his first encounter with GML. Most of the time, this is not a pretty sight. Until now, I have managed to steer clear from GML when it comes to actually incorporating it into my own software. But today, this day dawned.

Benchmarking TileCache, part 1

I have been doing some benchmarking in the wake of my TileCache installation ‘endeavor’ of last week (part 1 - part 2). In a series – well, probably two – articles, I will try to provide some insight into the performance of the TileCache – Python – Apache ensemble.

How the iPhone and iPod Touch are location aware

Being inside a Conrad store in Germany just makes you buy stuff you normally might not. I was in the Hannover branch last Sunday, on the tail of a CeBIT visit, and bought an iPod Touch. And I’m about as close to being in love as you can be with a non-human subject.The iPod Touch got a (paid) software upgrade in January, and now all of a sudden it has a Maps application, and what’s more: Maps has a location button that invokes some magic to determine your location. Without GPS. This magic is courtesy of Skyhook Wireless and uses the broadcast signals of WiFi access points to triangulate your location. It’s called WPS, WiFi Positioning System.

TileCache on Windows part 2: mod_python

The 5 minute install guide for TileCache on Windows I wrote last weekend was intended to show how easy it is to get a TileCache map server up and running. Now that it works, we should be concerned with performance. As my colleague StevenO pointed out, a CGI solution is probably not the way to go if you want to take it to production level. So I decided to try a different approach: install TileCache as a module into the local Python setup and have mod_python handle the python scripts of which TileCache is made up directly. That way, we can dispose of the CGI wrapper and thus the need to call the python interpreter for every tile request being made by the client. In theory, that should give us a huge performance gain.I’m going to look into two topics:

1. Getting TileCache to run under mod_python
2. Benchmarking TileCache and more optimazition techniques

The first topic will be covered in this post, the second in a future post.

Uninstall Silverlight 1.0 Templates for VS2005

UPDATE –> I got it fixed in the end. See bottom.

Silverlight 2 beta 1 is out. I’m excited about the DeepZoom / SeaDragon technology making its way into this first beta! If you haven’t seen it, have a look at Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ presentation at TED 2007 and see it in action at the Hard Rock Memorabilia site that got some attention at MIX08.

The 5 minute guide to setting up TileCache on Windows

TileCache is a caching layer between OGC WMS services (and other tools that generate map images, like Mapnik) and a web map client like OpenLayers.I found the ‘install guide’ on http://tilecache.org/ just a tad concise so here’s my 5 minute guide to setting it up on a Windows XP box:

Turning OpenStreetMap into a WFS

Yesterday we discussed making OpenStreetMap data available as a data source for the Tripod project in which we @ Geodan S&R take part. For that to work, we need the data available as an OGC WFS service. This is a nice opportunity to explore the tool chain needed. In short:

1. Getting the OpenStreetMap data
2. Setting up a PostGIS database
3. Getting the OpenStreetMap tools
4. Importing the OpenStreetMap data into PostGIS
5. Setting up deegree

That’s it. Let’s explore the different steps a little further.