Month: March 2012

Categories
Research Technology Thoughts

App Engine for Academics

As the geospatial world moves every closer to the mainstream IT, the potential of “Cloud” based technology to share mapping data and provide distributed processing for spatial analysis is increasing relevant to academics and researchers working in higher education.

Yesterday Google announced a programme to allow academics use of Google App Engine for their research projects. App Engine is the service used by Google for building and hosting web applications and offers fast development and deployment, simple administration and built-in scalability.

This new award programme will support up to 15 projects by providing App Engine credits in the amount of $60,000 to each project for one year. In its first year, the program is launched in a limited number of countries, including the UK.

See the RFP for details.

Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)

Categories
Thoughts

Beyond the pin..

The redesigned Google Maps Developers site is a great resource not only for documentation for the now numerous API’s but also a great showcase of how developers have brought mapping to their sites. Of particular interest to me are the case studies from the creative agencies where mapping and in particular Street View has resulted in some really cool sites.. forget pins on a map, how about Zombies outside your house!

The family of API’s have long ago moved beyond fixing pins on the map, complex routing between multiple points can be calculated using the distance matrix web service, visualised using the styled maps API and integrated with location aware applications using the places API.

And despite what you might have heard all this comes free for most sites !

The maps API has come a long way from Housing Maps

Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)

Categories
Google Maps StreetView

The other pin on the web..

When talking to people about Google Maps I always mention the unique ability of Street View to provide a sense of place, the final level of zoom of Google Maps takes you beyond the abstract world of Cartography to “standing on the street corner”. Images are incredibility powerful often bringing back memories of places we may have visited.

This year marks the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II,and to commemorate this Google has worked with Historypin to launch an interactive online gallery filled with memories of her time as Queen.

The Pinning The Queen’s History project will be made up of photographic images, videos and audio clips pinned directly onto a Google Map on the dedicated Historypin site.  There is a crowd-sourcing element to the site as users are invited  to submit photos, videos and other memories of the Queen during her many visits around the UK and the rest of the World..

Of course the most interesting images will be the ones local to your neighbourhood for me, my favourite so far is this one taken in Kew Gardens !

So go search under the bed for your shoebox of old photos and get scanning !

Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)