Physics with icons

Making maps closer to real world has been in maps-makers scope for long time. What about borrowing idea of physics-law-like behaviors to web-maps form BumpTop desktop interface? It turns your desktop into a 3D space and lets you move your documents the way you would on a physical desktop.

Flash player for the iPhone?

Adobe is actively developing a Flash player for the iPhone— now all they're waiting for is the OK from Apple.
Apple may have many reasons for not allowing Flash onto the iPhone, but if anyone has a good shot at getting their technology into the device, it would be Adobe.

More from: Flashmagazine

ArcGIS server Flex API

ESRI announced the new ArcGIS API for Flex Beta at the ESRI International User Conference in San Diego, California, which was held August 4–8, 2008. Read more at DM press release...

First look and feel is quite good, but it's really still a beta ;-)


Also listen to the podcast at the same topic.

Interactive tourism-map (KOV)

There is new map on our products line. Interactive tourism-map (oftentimes called KOV inside Regio) is a tool for local municipalities, tourism portals etc to promote POI-s, hiking-routes, nature parks etc on map. It has features like route calculation, intelligent address-search, multible map views, emailing and printing map.

Even more noteworthy are its administration possibilities: Administrator can customize whole map interface design, its measures, and behaviour of objects, depth of zoom levels etc. Of course, has total control over object (also upload pictures to POI-s), layer and groups management.



Try our public demo account:
Map: http://teenus.regio.ee/kov/index.php?id=199
Admin: http://teenus.regio.ee/kov/admin
User: „demo“
Pass: „demo123“
NB! User rights in demo are limited.

Examples of projects using KOV:
- Map of MTÜ Pandivere Arendus-ja Inkubatsioonikeskus
- Map of Põlvamaa talurahvamuuseum. More about this project
- With interface using special design.

Baltic maps

Our own map and geocoding database of Baltics is finally ready and first tileset with address search is online for testing. Links to map demos:
Latvia
Lihtuania

Mapsite for kids

New map application for the Estonian most popular kids' website Lastekas.ee is live. Introducing innovations like typing in capital letters, interface and POI-s with sound assistance and special design, it is one of few online maps designed specially for children. Try it here.

Google Map Maker

Google unveiled Google Map Maker, a product that allows users to contribute and edit map data for regions around the world. More from Lat Long Blog, CNet, GOS

Some experiments with GM

Some cool measuring and polylines features made on GM API. Links: 1 and 2

Outdoors touch-screen webmap

An interactive touch-screen webmap that is placed outdoors and connects to internet wirelessly, but not an iPhone.

Põlvamaa talurahvamuuseum (an open air museum reminding how peasants lived in old times) gets an infokiosk with Regio's webmap. The map based on our KOV project will serve useful information about places to visit around the museum to tourists visiting museums info-center.


Info-kiosk hardware was provided by ERD Estonia OÜ

Google Earth Plug-in Puts Google Earth in Your Browser

Windows only: The freeware Google Earth plug-in integrates Google Earth with your web browser, embedding the 3-D glory of Earth in Firefox or Internet Explorer. The results, which you can see in the video above, are impressive. There isn't a ton of Google Earth plug-in integration on the web yet, but check out the samples to understand the possibilities, like switching between Google Maps and Earth on-the-fly. The Google Earth plug-in is Windows only, supports Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Google Earth API [Google Code via Google Blogoscoped]

Wikipedia Added to Google Maps

In what is proving to be another busy day for Google, Wikipedia articles have been added to Google Maps. The new Wikipedia tags can be turned on via a 'More' button that has been added to the top right hand corner of the map.



When the Wikipedia tick box is selected small 'W' tags appear on the map where Wikipedia articles are available. Clicking on the 'W' tag will open an information window containing the Wikipedia article.

Panoramio photos can also be turned on via the same 'More' button. The photos option however feels a little superfluous considering Panoramio photos were added last week and can also be turned on in the left-hand panel. Intriguingly the photos turned on by the 'More' button contain a Panoramio logo whilst the ones accessed by the left-hand side panel don't, even though both sets of photos are served by Panoramio.

Via Googlemapsmania

Mapping orienteering routes

RouteGadget is web utility for drawing and comparing orienteering routes. It is Java applet running on browser and Perl scripts running on server that can be installed on any Unix, Linux, Windows server or used locally on PC / laptop. Free, no quarantees, support etc. Made by volunteer :-)

Hansapank Xdream demo:

Digitizing on Openlayers

Digitizing on Openlayers and many other useful developers hints including GML, KML parsers etc:
- http://www.openlayers.org/dev/examples/modify-feature.html
- http://www.openlayers.org/dev/examples/

Easy way to GIS

This "Easy Way to GIS" seems to be our MapCat PRO competitor: there's less flexibility for IT integrators etc but much more GUI (ready product, "MI Professional" in web). See also GDSK Geoplatform Introduction (PDF)

Whereyougonnabe

Whereyougonnabe application has now gone live, Facebook account users can try it out here. Read more information about the application at our founder Peter Batty's blog (announcement and review).

Whereyougonnabe is a service which enables you to geocode and save locations where and when you will be doing things in the future (where you gonna be?), also you can see when your friends will be close to you. You can view information on Google maps in both in a browser and using Google Earth.

GIS microsite of Regio

Now information about our products, services, demos, references etc also available through GIS microsite at www.regio.ee/gis.

...and demos directly:

Maporama for MC FlashTile

Now Maporama maps available for MapCat customers, click for the demo:

Google Earth gets next major update

The Google Earth Blog has produced video highlighting some of the newly added features like streetview, day/night lighting effects, faster loading 3d buildings and more in Google Earth 4.3.

Dual maps

Our demo of Google Bridge combined Regio's and Google's maps. Dual maps lets you display side-by-side for a single location and combines the features of Google Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth Maps within one embeddable control.

Google Bridge

For LBS demos we often need clobal content, more and more often "for tomorrow" and sometimes for very exotic and unexpected regions. It's not possible to integrate Navteq, Leaddog or TeleAtlas data into our GIS Engine with such short notice thus we created Google Maps support into MapCat. Google Bridge covers basic GIS functionalities (navigation, search, routing) and enables to use MapCat search, routing and light digitizing components in combination with GM (show adresses, POI's, routing results, geofences on top of the maps etc).

See also:
- Routing demo
- WMS demo
- GC Admin demo

Google Bridge is also useful for our webmap customers in Baltics who're willingly ready to pay for internetmap applications but not monthly fees for the maps (and for whom maps quality is not critical issue :-)

3D in Google Maps

The guys behind the Digital Urban blog obviously don't think that Google Maps are pretty enough because they have created an undeniably beautiful 3d map of the London Underground.



The map was created using CASA's free Image Cutter software, which helps create maps from any image.

This tube map doesn't include any real-time tracking of trains or fancy search facilities, in fact it isn't actually much use in helping you find underground train stations. In this instance it is a case of being just a pretty face.

Via googlemapsmania

Map portals in Latvia

There're three main local players in Latvian internet-mapping market:

Jana Seta: best quality and coverage of maps and addresses, operating mainly raster images not GIS databases, limited software functionalities.
See demo here

BOD and Datorkarte: good map scales but not the best coverage, quality and updatedness, many additional layers, limited software functionalities.
See demos here

Envirotech (H-Nit daughter-company): local ESRI reseller, available ArcGIS server functionalites, not active in public internet market, state owned data:
See demo here

MapCat homepage

Our MapCat homepage is finally ready (yeah, almost - use FF please :-). Here you can find lots of demos, product descriptions, reference projects and information about us:


Demo site is funded by Enterprise Estonia within Finnish export plan of Regio. Finnish version will be available soon.

MapCat integration

There's sometimes not enough "space" within web-page for a map-component and using pop-up windows is not allowed either. One nice option for map integration in those cases is as follows:

"...we have lot's of employees working remotely in Regio. For example our team members work from Narva and Tallinn as well as from our our main office at Tartu, Riia 24..."

GISSER prototype III

We started to create prototype III for GISSER project (EAS funded technology project for animated maps). For short instructions how to use demo click here...

GC Admin

GC Admin is software for geocoding addresses and digitizing objects within 3-rd party CMS/intranet solution:


See also our GC Admin with Google Maps and integration hints:

• http://mapcat.regio.ee/demos/gcadmin-helloworld.html
• http://mapcat.regio.ee/demos/gcadmin-shadowbox.html

QVIZ prototype 2

QVIZ new prototype has been integrated to faceted search lately: narrow your search results using map as a filter or determine time-period using time-bar component:

Travel Planning wizard

During last couple of month we've had great chance to cooperate with Affecto and develop TravelPlan map-wizard for a finnish tourism portal. Application uses maps, geocoding and routing services from GeniMapper platform (Affecto's mapserver service for Finland) and is built up using MapCat Medium software.

Route animation demo

New prototype for route animation is ready, functionality is available for our customers through MapCat upgrade next moth (new version will be released soon):

Vector optimization demo

Using MapCat architecture it was sometimes tricky to quarantee quick client-server communication for vector data handling. Those times are history! New MapCat enables drawing vector data as quickly as raster handling, sometimes vector is even quicker (see the picture):

Newly discovered old one

Map for Biological Diversity web-page. NB! It was developed as early as 2004 (wasn't common approach then technically) and wasn't in active use couple of years but now it's quite living its own life :-)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!