[Techtalk] Intro and a question

Miriam English mim at miriam-english.org
Wed Jun 6 07:14:10 UTC 2007


Billie Erin Walsh wrote:
>>My one question seems pretty simple on the surface. I'm also a ham radio
>>operator and we are building up a van to go storm chasing in. I need a
>>mapping software... has to have street level mapping for at
>>least Oklahoma and Kansas. It would be nice to have national at that
>>level, but not really necessary....

Andrea Landaker replied:
> Well, you could try using Googleearth (http://earth.google.com/).

Or GoogleMaps (as opposed to GoogleEarth) works in any ordinary web 
browser regardless of operating system.
http://maps.google.com/maps
I usually choose "Hybrid" of the 3 buttons in the top right of the view 
so that I see map data overlaid on satellite images. Some low level 
images aren't always available, at least here in Australia.

I just had a look at the Wikipedia topic "map" and found a good list of 
online maps and atlases near the bottom of the article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maps

If you can get maps in vector format (like SVG - Scalable Vector 
Graphics) then you won't need as much storage room and the same map can 
be enlarged without becoming blurry or pixelated. I've always wanted an 
atlas of those, but don't know where you'd get it. Most vector maps seem 
to be in proprietary formats. Google's maps (without the satellite 
images) are in a vector format. I don't know much about how they could 
be used offline though.

Planiglobe's maps can be downloaded as postscript, or Illustrator file, 
both of which are vector formats.

OpenStreetMap appears to be vector-based too.
http://www.openstreetmap.org/
Not much detail here in Australia... might be better in USA though.

Many GPS devices display local maps with street-level info, but I think 
you generally have to buy the data. :(  The great advantage of those 
devices is that they're portable enough to fit in your pocket and 
continually update the map according to your position and direction. I 
think many GPS devices connect to laptops these days too. I have an 
ancient Garmin GPS device which has a fairly useless map display, but 
does contantly give your heading, coordinates, and altitude, which is 
nice. It also leaves a zoomable snail-trail of your journey. And it 
plugs into the cigarette lighter to save battery power.

In the past, when I've had to go travelling I tend to go online, save a 
heap of map images to my hard drive at the resolution I know I'll need 
them, then assemble them together in GIMP as a number of much larger, 
overlapping images and view them on my little Palm computer. It is a bit 
unweildy though.

If you have a mobile phone with a reasonable display you could use it to 
dial onto the net and view google maps or some other online mapping 
service like mapquest.

Hope this helps,

	- Miriam
-- 
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A life! Cool! Where can I download one of those from?
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Website: http://miriam-english.org
Blog: http://miriam-e.livejournal.com


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