Google Maps – Page 2 – Benjamin Spaulding

March 10, 2011

Sweet 2010 Census Mash-Up

My hard-working friends at the Connecticut State Data Center and the Map and Geographic Information Center (MAGIC) at the University of Connecticut Homer Babbidge Library have started to post data from the Wednesday March, 9th release of the 2010 census data for the state of Connecticut. Talk about a quick turn around!

One of their most interesting 2010 Census Google Map Mash-Ups on their site displays dual-linked Google Maps, with one map displaying the 2010 Connecticut census results by town and the other the 2000 Connecticut census results by town. The dual-linked maps are synchronized, meaning that movement one map happen on the other. The user also has the ability to search for their town, or download the data for their own use. The user can also click on a town and view a table of census data to see how population has changed across Connecticut. I’m looking forward to what other mash-ups they roll out over the next few days.

Take a look at their site. MAGIC has been around for a long time, and they have always been innovators in their field.

and…quick disclaimer, I helped write the code for the underlying mash-up. That’s it, they did the rest and they did a great job.

March 8, 2011

MapServer Experimentation

A few people have requested that I put together an example of data from MapServer embedded in a Google Map Mash-Up. Well, here it is:

MapServer, originally developed at the University of Minnesota, “is an Open Source platform for publishing spatial data and interactive mapping applications to the web.” MapServer is a powerful tool for sharing geographic data and its uses are found all over the web.

The data comes from the Iowa Environment Mesonet, and the current map example displays historical CONUS NEXRAD base reflectivity. Their site has a number of other weather related datasets that are updated at regular time intervals. With this in mind, and using some of my other examples, one could combine a number of these data sources and create a pretty interesting weather related Google map mash-up.

Several of their datasets are also time enabled, meaning that one could create time sliders using this data. When using this code, note that several different settings are used to make the NoData values transparent, and to tack the map data to the Google Map. In this example, the user cannot turn the MapServer layer on or off.

March 2, 2011

Transparency Slider Page Updated

One of the biggest traffic drivers to my site, according to Google Analytics, are people interested in using a transparency slider for use in Google Map Mash-Ups. With this in mind I gave a quick update to my current transparency slider page that was inspired by a project by Klokan Petr Pridal. He has done a lot of great work in regards to the use of outside data sources in Google Maps. The demos on his website have been used in countless mash-ups. If you have a few minutes check it out.

The updated page uses a USGS topographic map layer from Microsoft Research Maps and overlays it over a Google Map. The Microsoft Research topo maps have a quirky loading scheme, which may leave a tile empty, every now and then. Once the user pans or zooms on the map the tiles reload and everything should be in view. Again, I’m not helping my position in my previous post. This code was originally developed using the V2 lineage of the Google Maps API, which has since been depreciated.

When I get some time this weekend I’ll update the code to work with V3. Only a year after V3 debuted…