Books on OpenStreetMap

While being familiar with the context of, and – from a GIS perspective – research into, OpenStreetMap (OSM) and other crowdsourcing efforts in the geospatial field, I was not aware that there are books dedicated to OSM. Over at Po Ve Sham Muki Haklay hosts a comprehensive review (by Thomas Koukoletsos and himself) of two … Continue reading Books on OpenStreetMap

TargetMap let’s you put your data on – well – a map

Today I first heard about TargetMap. TargetMap is a mapping portal in public beta. Everybody can create customised maps with their own data (so-called ReportMaps). The interface for creating a ReportMap and the display of a ReportMap is implemented in Flash – and thus requires a bypass of your Flash blocking software (and cannot be consumed using iDevices).

Using the TargetMap wizard you can choose the world, a region or specific countries to be mapped. TargetMap then offers various options to bring data onto your map. You can:

  • upload an Excel file containing the data
  • type values directly into a TargetMap table
  • paint a map (assign different colours to different regions by clicking on them)
  • load your own ReportMaps or others’ public ReportMaps and use them as a template or background for your own
  • use something called a Sales Territory Manager (this option comes only with a private subscription and thus I haven’t tested it)

Costs
The service is essentially free if used for public maps. If you don’t want your data to be on display publicly, you can opt to create maps for your own exclusive use – this, however, requires you to pay a fee to TargetMap (somewhat hefty 195$ for an annual subscription). Continue reading “TargetMap let’s you put your data on – well – a map”

CrisisCommons

Through this post on GIS and Science I learnt about CrisisCommons which appears to be some kind of meta-organisation for disaster relief organisations. I registered with their Google Group and I’m curious to learn what exactly they are doing and whether I can maybe contribute something to their work. Continue reading CrisisCommons

Intro to Processing

(This post is based on an earlier post in another blog in German)

For quite some time I’ve been following the news about Processing. Processing is an open-source environment for creating visualizations programmatically. The project was initiated by Casey Reas and Benjamin Fry in the Media Lab of the MIT.

Processing encompasses both the Java-based Processing programming language and an Integrated Development Environment, IDE, in which to write code. Processing enables users to generate rather complex graphics and animations (also with interactivity). Considerably fewer code is needed to implement something in Processing rather than in Java itself.
According to the website some of Processing’s feature highlights are: Continue reading “Intro to Processing”

Inception

Nah, this is not about the movie… but about this blog. I launch this blog to have a place to occasionally jot down some of my thoughts, collect stuff I do (visualisations, geo/GIS stuff, coding, …), highlight cool things I come across and hopefully share some interesting ideas and have an exchange with you. Looking … Continue reading Inception