ian c. bryson
geomatics . ecology . design . . .Archive for GIS
Photosynth is cool
Not exactly news, but worthy of a mention…
Photosynth may change the way you look at photography. All i can say is ‘Wow, cool.’
It takes a collection of photographs and analyzes them for points of similarity. It then generates a 3D point cloud and uses this to display the pictures in three-dimensional space. The end result looks a little bit like a LiDAR point cloud (for those who care about such things) with photos overlaid. The user can then click on photos in the browser, and the point of view changes to conform with the original location of the camera. And, of course, you can zoom in very smoothly to view more detail of a particular photo.
Lots of applications spring to mind.. generating georeferenced 3D models from geotagged photos in Flickr perhaps?
It’s a pre-beta product, so no guarantees about performance and support. It will be interesting to see what happens when this one graduates!
Create custom maps with MSR Mapcruncher
Microsoft research has a neat application for DIY map layer creation for Virtual Earth (VE). ‘Mapcruncher’ lets you georeference a custom map using the VE base mapping, and then generates the iamges tiles and basic Javascript/HTML to display your custom imagery.
Here’s an example
MSR Mapcruncher website
Creating Google Maps KML using EditGrid
The online spreadsheet service EditGrid allows users to easily generate kml features in google maps. Currently, the Grid2Map addon which enables this function only supports the creation of point or line features. It would also be nice if there was an option to plot polygon features as well.
The ability to link online spreadsheets to web mapping hints at more sophisticated GIS capabilities waaaaay down the line. The ability to attached (multiple) attributes in tabular form is the essence of vector based GIS.
Heres an example:
The EditGrid spreadsheet containing a few points, and the resulting Google Map with points only, and with points and lines.
The formatting is rather crude, but bearing in mind that this took approx 5 minutes, not too bad. A rather nice and user friendly way of generating some points/lines in Gmaps.
Cool.
Viewing ESRI Shapefiles in Google Maps
The Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) has developed some free software gadgetry implementing the google maps API. ‘Google Map Creator‘ allows a user to perform thematic mapping from ESRI shapefile based data within google maps. The software magically spits out a html containing a default map layout, which can be customized to your liking. One limitation, however is it’s ability to only display a single thematic layer.
CASA has also developed another neat application for tiling large (in their example, non-spatial) images, called “Google Maps Image Cutter‘. The example is worth checking out! Seems Gmaps can do more than just maps!
DNR Garmin
A very handy little (FREE) utility for transferring tracks and waypoints between your Garmin GPS and various GIS software. Developed by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
The following from the Minnesota DNR website, where you can download the extension:
“This extension was built to provide users the ability to directly transfer data between Garmin GPS handheld receivers and various GIS software packages. Using this program a user can use point features (graphics or shapefile) and upload them to the GPS as Waypoints. Line and Polygon Graphics or shapes can be uploaded to the GPS as Track Logs or Routes. Conversely, Waypoints, Track Logs, and Routes collected using the GPS can be transferred directly to ArcView/ArcMap/Google Earth/Landview and saved as Graphics or Shapefiles. “
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/mis/gis/tools/arcview/extensions/DNRGarmin/DNRGarmin.html
