Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with maps

App/site for making/navigating customized map

fingersandtoes — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 11:05:40 -0800

There are a bunch of trips I'd like to take. I read about these places for years. I want to be able to save the addresses of places I'm interested in, as I read about them. I want to, eventually, be able to create a customized map of my destination; and ideally have this map integrate with an iphone app that will display the map and help me navigate among my destinations. Is this a thing? Here's an example of the sort of thing I want. Say I want to plan a trip to Paris. Over the years, I will read a lot of articles about things to see and eat in Paris. When I read an article mentioning a place, I'd like to be able to save the location to this repository. (Or even better, say if a friend just tells me about it, I'd like to be able to enter it by name and have my tool find the address.) Then, when I'm ready to go, I want to be able to view a map of Paris with all my locations indicated on it, superimposed on a regular street map so it's navigable. Then, when I go to Paris. I'll look at my map in the morning to figure out an itinerary that integrates my locations. Then as I wander along, I can also use my phone to figure out what's nearest, like "here we are by Notre Dame, and just a block away is that chocolate place and also the brasserie, choose one and I'll navigate you there."

Is there a tool for this? Doesn't it seem like there should be?

Scraping an online locator?

Halogenhat — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:14:42 -0800

I am trying to scrape online locators that use google maps. I only know HTML and CSS, so, I am looking for programs or fairly simple workarounds. Here is something similar to what I'm talking about, though this is not one of the sites I'd like to scrape. The user inputs their zip, and perhaps selects a few options and a radius, and then some sort of list of dealers or people within that radius is generated.

I have an "outline" of what I could do, but I am no brainiac and would have to research further to learn how to execute my plan, so I would really love some feedback from the experts on ask mefi.

1. Acquire list of all zip codes in US and import into excel. Then, make macro to generate a URL for every possible search of zips on the locator site I am using (EXAMPLE: www.hermanmiller.com/DealerLocator/&postalcode=02133 ; EXAMPLE: www.hermanmiller.com/DealerLocator/&postalcode=09190).

2. Make a scraper that combs through the right fields in the search return (business name, phone #, etc)

3. Make an automation that runs the scraper for every single URL in my excel file.

Can this be done in OutWit Hub? I have managed to make the scraper in the lite, version, at least, but have yet to make a zip list or automation.

Simple, intuitive map software/service for a business

Clandestine Outlawry — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 17:39:16 -0800

My (small) company provides services in people's homes. We'd like to use electronic maps to plan technician routes and better understand where our clients are geographically. What (Mac-compatible) software or web service might help with this? My company serves about two thousand homes in the Toronto area, most of which need to be visited daily by a technician. Right now, we have the region divided up into about forty zones for purposes of work assignments, but the zone borders are pretty much traditional neighbourhoods and we don't have a visualization to confirm that they're sensible.

The idea is to make sure that no one technician is given an unreasonably high workload, nor asked to go too far afield.

Our CRM is a pretty rudimentary web app - definitely not capable of this kind of thing. It can't even give us a dump of the current customer data, so we'll be pulling out addresses and the like manually.

What I'm envisioning is something that will let me plot ~2000 homes on a map, by address, and group them into zones (where I can set the borders). Ideally, I'd be able to get a report on how many clients are within each zone. It would also be nice if I could print maps of zones or arbitrarily defined areas.

Four staff would be operating this system, so it should be fairly intuitive. GRASS GIS would be an example of "whoa, too much".

Desktop software or a web service are both okay. We are willing to pay. Mac compatibility is essential.

The best thing I've managed to find so far is ArcGIS Online, but I'm so very unfamiliar with all this, so I imagine there are more appropriate options. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.

options for mapping celebrities on websites

zug — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:36:14 -0800

I am interested in building a website that will track public appearances for multiple celebs (think stars of a reality show) and I'm not sure what frameworks I could use. The stars of this reality show often make local appearances, but there is no easy way to track them. Some post appearances to twitter, some to facebook, some to their websites, some don't post at all. The information I'm interested tracking is Celeb name, country/state/city (lat/long?), date/time, location (e.g. Memorial Auditorium), and a link for more info that would like to the relevant events page.

I'd like to find a framework that will allow me to build a map that can be filtered in different ways (let's say by name, week, or city). For now, I'll be digging up this information manually myself, but bonus points if I can give the celebs their own access at a later date to update their own appearances.

I'm zero percent familiar with web APIs, but I'm fairly computer adept and can figure it out if I knew which one would work the best for my application.

Looking for specific World War II maps.

Tin Man — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 11:59:19 -0800

I'm trying to find some specific government-produced maps of Allied progress in Western Europe in World War 2 that I saw online once. A couple of years ago I found this series of images online and I can't remember where. It was a bunch of maps showing Allied-controlled territory in Western Europe at twice-monthly intervals (probably the 1st and 15th of each month), from D-Day to the end of the war, with Allied territory in red, obviously growing larger and larger on each map. They were scans from some U.S.-government-produced report created shortly after the war, or in the late 1940s at the latest. It might have been from the Defense Department or the U.S. military.

I might have seen them on some Wikimedia Commons site but I'm not sure. Note: they are not any of the maps here.

I specifically remember that the maps showed progress at intervals of twice a month.

Thanks for any help.

What is the best way to track and share walking routes on an iPhone?

enn — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 10:27:44 -0800

For a personal project, I'd like to be able to track my route as I'm walking using my iPhone and then share that route in some form that can be embedded in a blog post. I see there is an app called 'MapMyWalk' that does something like this, but it seems to require a subscription fee. I don't mind paying a one-off fee for an app but I'd like to not have to worry about paying in perpetuity to keep the shared routes embeddable. (I also don't mind installing software on my own server.)

I'm not wedded to having one app that does everything—if the best approach is to track my route with an app and then export it into a file that I can load into some other software on my desktop or on a server, that is fine.

In their embedded form, I'd be ok with the routes being presented either as maps or as lists of directions. (All of these routes will follow streets and alleys in developed areas, no trails or woods.)

The ability to annotate specific points along the route with comments or photos would be nice but not necessary.

Features I don't care about: anything to do with fitness, tracking calories, telling me my total distances or speed or changes in elevation.

On the wall - a framed Waterman Butterfly projection map. Possibly.

jan murray — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 12:39:23 -0800

My 16 year old son has just re-done his room. With a lttle help from Mum of course - I said he was 16. Anyway. Dust of ages - gone. Childish things - gone. Cuddly toys, bats, monkeys etc relegated to the cellar. Even the torn Sex Pistols poster has come down. The naked walls round his multiscreen rig cry out for decoratian of some kind. He thinks a Waterman Butterfly projection map of the world would be the coolest thing ever - for some reason. He would frame it himself. Where on earth would we find such a thing? Googled the map place in Seattle - but they no longer have them. Any suggestions? We live in Sweden. For our sins.

Frameable topo/geo map of France?

sandettie light vessel automatic — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 08:45:32 -0800

I want to purchase a frameable map of France, done in a similar manner to this one of Oregon. My Google powers are letting me down, even in French. All I'm able to find so far are 3D, molded-plastic relief maps, and then regional, folding topo maps. Any clues welcome.

What is the street in Michigan with the longest name?

kc8nod — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 11:22:36 -0800

What is the street in Michigan with the longest name? Or, how would you find this out? Assume I'm too cheap to spend any money on a commercial map database or the like.

StreetView Glitch In The Matrix

zackola — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 20:00:42 -0800

Ahhh. My wife was trouncing around Google Street View in Brooklyn and noticed this totally weird building that has 'Google' inscribed over the doorway in a very post-production sort of way. What is it?

Help me find this site with Colorado map prints

deludingmyself — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 21:07:09 -0800

I got lost on the internet and found a small business selling great-looking US map prints for under $30. I think they were CO-based, but I've lost the website! Other clues:
* I thought I got there from one of the DIY home/interior design blogs in this recent thread, but searching the contents of the sites in my history doesn't turn up anything.
* I also read Apartment Therapy, and it's not from there.
* The blogger who linked to them had gotten a Colorado map (I think topgraphical?) and did a cheap and unusual DIY frame job (I think she actually glued the map to a backing instead of putting it in a frame?)
* The company offered more than just Colorado maps, but not a full set of U.S. states - they seemed smaller than Raven Maps, for instance, but with 6+ different types of maps in Colorado. I'm not 100% sure they were based in CO, but I think so.
* It wasn't an Etsy site or a CafePress site or anything like that. I think the site had a white background, but I was viewing it on my phone.

Interactive web map that shows user's location and destination

signal — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 06:03:28 -0800

I need to publish a map for a website that shows the user's location and a pre-defined destination. This is for a residential project. The idea is that the client goes to the 'how to get there' page, and gets a map showing her current location, using the html5 geolocation api, and the position of the project.

This should work both in the desktop and mobile platforms, and not require any downloads, apps, etc., just be HTML, CSS and Javascript.

It should also be simple, fast and free, ideally.

3 stars if it could also show the route between the user and the destination.

Dense topographic data for a lot.

cmoj — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 12:41:12 -0800

I've got Home Designer Architectural 2014 and a desire to buil a house on a steep hillside. I need topographic data for this. In this program, I can import data about the topography of a lot in the form of a .gpx file. Google Earth can export a map of pins (but not a shape) to a data file that can be converted to .gpx, but placing those pins manually at a useful density would take forever and I'm not sure that Earth has sufficient elevation resolution.

So where can I get this data? Are there USGS maps with high enough resolution? An app that can plot X, Y, and Z coordinates while I walk around the lot?

Ideally I'd like everything to be accurate to within a foot, but I'll take the best I can get.

Send me down the right path!

BlueMartini7 — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 06:50:41 -0800

Online Maps for Running/Biking routes? Please share with me the best websites for creating running routes using an online map. Also looking for websites that lay out the mileage markers on some of the paths around DC area. I'm hosting a weekly meetup run and want to be able to send the course out to my group before the run so everyone has a good sense of where the turnaround point is or what the loop/course will be. Is there a webiste that I can use to create this and send out to the group? I know when I did a training program, my running coach used this but I cannot for the life of me remember what website/program she used was. I'd like to be able to identify the course we'll run and where the turnaroudn point will be without having to go out and run it myself before each week's run.
If there's any websites on the trails/ paths in the DC area (i.e. GW parkway, Four mile Run, W O&D) where I could easily see the mile markers that would be most helpful.

thanks in advance!

Iphone Offline Maps

raphael19 — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 09:01:49 -0800

Iphone Application with Offline Maps I am seeking an Iphone application that has world maps already present in its cache. That way I can use the Iphone without Internet connectivity but only with GPS function. This app *has* to work with specifying places with their coordinates (lat, lon).

Free is better but I may be inclined to pay for this app if it is way better than its competitors.

What the hell is The Bucket?

sportbucket — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 11:49:09 -0800

Some online mapping services (Apple, Bing, etc.) refer to an area of Northwest Portland as "The Bucket", but as far as I know, The Bucket doesn't exist. Is this an example of a copyright trap? I first noticed this on Apple's new maps in iOS 6. Bing does it, too: an area of Northwest Portland is referred to as "The Bucket". Searches for "portland 'the bucket'" suggest that in some mapping/real-estate database somewhere, "The Bucket" is a neighborhood in Portland.

I'm a third-generation Portlander, my wife's family has been here even longer, and no one in our family had ever heard this area referred to as "The Bucket". I've asked friends, co-workers, reference librarians, and no one has ever heard of it.

My current theory is that "The Bucket" is a copyright trap. If so, whose trap is it? Does The Bucket exist on any paper maps?

Does anyone know anything about this? Is it a neighborhood name I don't know about? Is it a cartographer's trick?

But surely Canada is already mapped?

the dief — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 17:28:22 -0800

The greatest paper map of Canada you'll ever see? This map looks awesome, but is US only. Is there a map of Canada or Ontario for sale that is equally (or mostly) as great?

Help Me Keep Our Store Maps Up-to-date!!

redsparkler — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 16:13:56 -0800

THE PROBLEM: Let's say you have a large store spread across several floors of a building, with many many aisles and sections. There are information kiosks located at various rooms in the store, oriented different directions. Each information kiosk has a map of the store on it, with the aisles and sections numbered and labeled, and the map rearranged and the text rotated to the viewpoint of the customer standing at the information desk. What is the most efficient way to create and update that map as sections change? DETAILS: Right now, we have 8+ different files, one for each of the maps at each of the individual kiosks. We update them every year or so, so right now I'm taking the 100+ aisle/section changes in all the rooms and individually changing each one in one map's Adobe Illustrator file. I plan on using that map as a master, and it looks like I'll probably have to go from room to room in the different files, comparing every aisle with the corrected master map, and changing all those by hand. Le sigh.

COMPLICATION: Along with the rooms rearranging to the orientation of each map, on a few maps the entire layout is rotated, so the text is upside down (compared to the other maps).

THE ONLY IDEA I'VE HAD SO FAR: Making the map of each room an InDesign file, and then creating custom image boxes in the shape of each room on each map's master file, linking them to the individual room's file. Then, I can update the text in one room, and know that the image boxes in the other files will automatically update when I open the new file. I don't know that there will be any way to automatically rotate the text for the files that need that. I think I'd have to rotate each text box individually to keep it orientated to the shelf, yes?

BONUS POINTS: It would be AMAZING if there was a way to map individual aisle locations to a master list, so a person could change something in the master list (Shoes are now on Aisle 25) and have the text inside the map update accordingly. Or maybe the opposite would be possible; you change the master map and have a corrected list that exports with the aisle number.

FOR EXAMPLE: Here's an example room that shows the complexity of the map.

Caching iphone maps?

pombe — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 14:23:15 -0800

Recommended iPhone map applications that will cache local maps? My wife and I are spending three weeks in Argentina starting next week, and I'd like to be able to use the maps on my iPhone without having a data plan there. Ideally, I'd like a map app that I could load maps for the local area using the hotel wifi and that I could then pull up without data or wifi access to see where we are using the GPS. This is for an iPhone4 running iOS5.

Bus Maps MTA

edbles — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 17:26:07 -0800

MTA Bus Maps: Looking for cached images or scans of hard copy NYC MTA bus maps. MTA website is not loading maps on it's temporary website. Would prefer recent 2012 maps. Have found some on mappery.com am unsure of accuracy.

Help me find out more about photographic route atlases

carbide — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 06:33:36 -0800

I'd like to know more about a type of photographic route guide used in the early 20th century, definitely in the US if not elsewhere. They're a series of photographs of junctions with an arrow drawn over them. Librarians, map lovers, can you help me? I came across these photographic route atlases in this blog post about BERG's horizonless projection map. They link to the University of Southern Maine's Osher Map Library, which has an image (but talks about Route 66 instead!), and to the Owls Head Transportation Museum, which doesn't appear to have information online on the subject.

I'm writing a research proposal that uses this form of navigating the built environment as a reference, and though it's not vital, I'd love to have more than just two photos behind my understanding of them. (I've been in love with them for years and even made one, so it would be very satisfying personally too.) I am in Ireland, with institutional database access.

Any idea what exactly they're called? Can you point me to any further references, online or off? Thank you!

Bowled a Googley

micklaw — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 17:55:08 -0800

Help me prepare for "Geo for Good Down Under" at Google HQ Australia. Details on my spatial tech knowledge inside. I've been accepted to Geo for Good Down Under in two weeks. The workshop will introduce Google Maps API and Engine and Google Earth API and Engine as well as fusion tables for agencies working for public benefit.

I am a teacher and have moved from the classroom to working with schools who want to use spatial tech in the classroom. I have some background at uni in GIS and have experience with Google Maps and Earth as well as ArcGIS 3,9 and 10.

What resources are there out there that I might play with (and share with other teachers) as a simple way to get started with these tools before the workshop? Classroom-specific would be great, but any resources that effectively show the user how to create and publish great maps with these tools would be very appreciated.

Is there any software that will dynamically re-project a map as you click-and-drag it?

Sleeper — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 07:45:44 -0800

Is there any software that will dynamically re-project a map as you click-and-drag it? Is there any existing software that will let you click and drag the map and show you a new projection as you change the focus (what falls in the center) of the map? (The map would use wraparound--whatever goes "offscreen" on one side immediately appears on the other side, north-south and east-west). It would be cool to do this with projections other than the Mercator, too.

I'd like to see a map where e.g. Mexico is distorted the way Greenland usually is. Something that could distort the globe dynamically.

A dynamically distorted map would make it easier for students to understand how maps show you the world as if through a fisheye lens. Is there such a thing? If not, what would it take to write a program that could do this?

I was on a long plane ride earlier this year staring at the flight path map and I got to thinking about globe projections and how distorted they are.

The most popular globe projection, the Mercator map, distorts Greenland into a huge landmass comparable to Africa. Everything is distorted. It's like looking through a lens that warps the size and shape of everything, especially around the edges. All map projections do this to some extent.

(I was also going to ask what it would take to photograph a person's head from all sides and project it to a flat surface, to use it as another tool to emphasize how badly flattening distorts a round object, but then I realized that Eric Testroete (the big-head Halloween costume guy) beat me to it.)

iPhone, why do you hate public transportation?

2bucksplus — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 12:14:18 -0800

I did something stupid today and 'updated' my iPhone 4 to iOS 6.0. The new Maps app doesn't include public transportation options (as Google Maps did previously) which I use extensively here in San Francisco. What are my options? Will anything be as seamless as the Google Maps app was?

Will my beloved Google maps go away on my iPhone tomorrow?

desjardins — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 11:00:47 -0800

I have an iPhone 4S with iOS 5. If I download iOS 6 tomorrow, will Google maps be replaced with Apple maps? Meaning, will the upgrade REMOVE Google maps from my phone? If so, will I be able to download a Google maps app? I already have other 3rd party map apps; I want the one that's actually from Google. I have searched and all I can find is that Apple is withdrawing their support for Google... it's not clear whether that means that the Google maps app that already exists on my phone will vanish after I update, or if it's just that the new iPhones that won't have it pre-installed.