Mapping Hacks : Tips & Tools for Electronic Cartography
| 2005-06-09 00:00:00 | | 0 | Computer Application
Since the dawn of creation, man has designed maps to help identify the space that we occupy. From Lewis and Clark's pencil-sketched maps of mountain trails to Jacques Cousteau's sophisticated charts of the ocean floor, creating maps of the utmost precision has been a constant pursuit. So why should things change now?
Well, they shouldn't. The reality is that map creation, or `cartography,` has only improved in its ease-of-use over time. In fact, with the recent explosion of inexpensive computing and the growing availability of public mapping data, mapmaking today extends all the way to the ordinary PC user.
`Mapping Hacks,` the latest page-turner from O'Reilly Press, tackles this notion head on. It's a collection of one hundred simple--and mostly free--techniques available to developers and power users who want draw digital maps or otherwise visualize geographic data. Authors Schuyler Erle, Rich Gibson, and Jo Walsh do more than just illuminate the basic concepts of location and cartography, they walk you through the process one step at a time.
`Mapping Hacks` shows you where to find the best sources of geographic data, and then how to integrate that data into your own map. But that's just an appetizer. This comprehensive resource also shows you how to interpret and manipulate unwieldy cartography data, as well as how to incorporate personal photo galleries into your maps. It even provides practical uses for GPS (Global Positioning System) devices--those touch-of-a-button street maps integrated into cars and mobile phones. Just imagine: If Captain Kidd had this technology, we'd all know where to find his buried treasure!
With all of these industrial-strength tips andtools, `Mapping Hacks` effectively takes the sting out of the digital mapmaking and navigational process. Now you can create your own maps for business, pleasure, or entertainment--without ever having to sharpen a single pencil.
User review
It was OK
It is definitely about a bunch of hacks. There were a few hacks that I was able to use. Hacks wasn't what I was expecting, but for those that need those hacks, it is definitely the book that contains a lot of important hacks in one place. You could probably google most of the information and save a little bit of reading time.
User review
Interesting read, but obsolete at time of publication
I should begin by noting that while I am a competent programmer and geocacher, prior to reading this book I knew only as much about mapping and cartography as I could glean from episodes of NOVA and my childhood orienteering training. It is my suspicion that those more familiar with mapping technologies could make better use of some of the hacks in this book, so my review will be necessarily incomplete as I am not in a position to evaluate or even comprehend the more sophisticated hacks.
Perhaps the greatest virtue of this book is the introductory material toward the beginning that discusses some of the theory of mapping, geocoding, and computer navigation. Arguably I learned more from this material than from any of the more specific technical hacks.
For a great many of the hacks, however, the book is a victim of bad timing. While today (and even at time of publication) the Google Maps API is the de facto standard mapping system on the web, and Google Earth is certainly the best designed and most thorough free end-user GIS program, O'Reilly's Mapping Hacks makes no mention of either. This was a supreme disappointment for me and, I would think, anyone who was hoping this book could provide guidance for developing the latest and greatest Google Maps-enabled web application. If O'Reilly follows this with a new edition (which I very much hope they do) this major deficiency will obviously be rectified.
Some of the neatest hacks, however, are ideas that many of us have thought about in the backs of our minds but have never seriously tried to implement. These generally also do not depend on any particular mapping API, mitigating the foregoing concerns. I am particularly fond of Hack 16, which supplies the reader with information on a variety of useful geopolitical statistics websites, and Hack 62, which introduces Perl functionality I didn't even know existed and is instructive on mapping GSM cell sites. (After all, everyone has wanted a nice map of cell coverage just like in the TV series `24,` right?)
Overall, I would recommend this book to those interested in learning what is possible to do with computer mapping, but who are also willing to go research more modern innovations to supplement the book's material. For those seeking more shake-and-bake recipes (as are frequently found in the excellent `Hacks` series), lobby O'Reilly for a new edition!
User review
Too bad I already knew most of this stuff
I didn't really get a lot out of this book. I took the title to mean that it had code for online mapping. Not so much. It was kind of fun to browse through, but not what I was looking for at the time. It's one of the reasons I buy most of my books at a bookstore instead of online.
User review
Great projects for exploring cartography
This book is a combination of tips and tricks that allow users to better use mapping tools that are already available and to understand how these various tools work. For example, there are explanations of why MapQuest got it wrong and how Fundrace was built. Most of the book takes advantage of free or open source offerings for the desktop and the Web.
The hacks range from those for beginners to those for with advanced cartographic skills. Some hacks are just introductions to websites. These include David Rumsey's website, Census' TIGER server and NASA's World Wind. Other chapters introduce online tools for changing decimal degrees to degrees/minutes/seconds, and for the experienced programmer, there are the tools to build a desktop application using open source PROJ.4. There are quite a few hacks that involve programming - PERL in particular - so to get the most out of this book you should already be familiar with PERL. The following is the table of contents with some comments on each chapter.
Chapter 1. Mapping Your Life - Helps you find the important places in your life on online road maps and aerial imagery, consider the spatial aspects of your personal digital media collection, and examine geographic data with nongeographic tools.
Hack 1. Put a Map on It: Mapping Arbitrary Locations with Online Services
Hack 2. Route Planning Online
Hack 3. Map the Places You've Visited
Hack 4. Find Your House on an Aerial Photograph
Hack 5. The Road Less Traveled by in MapQuest
Hack 6. Make Route Maps Easier to Read
Hack 7. Will the Kids Get Sick?
Hack 8. Publish Maps of Your Photos on the Web
Hack 9. Track the Friendly Skies with Sherlock
Hack 10. Georeference Digital Photos
Hack 11. How Far? How Fast? Geo-Enabling Your Spreadsheet
Hack 12. Create a Distance Grid in Excel
Hack 13. Add Maps to Excel Spreadsheets with MapPoint
Chapter 2. Mapping Your Neighborhood - Shows how to map your immediate surroundings: politically, demographically, electromagnetically, and in full-color 3-D.
Hack 14. Make Free Maps of the United States Online
Hack 15. Zoom Right In on Your Neighborhood
Hack 16. Who Are the Neighbors Voting For?
Hack 17. Map Nearby Wi-Fi Hotspots
Hack 18. Why You Can't Watch Broadcast TV
Hack 19. Analyze Elevation Profiles for Wireless Community Networks
Hack 20. Make 3-D Raytraced Terrain Models
Hack 21. Map Health Code Violations with RDFMapper
Chapter 3. Mapping Your World - From maps of the historical past to maps of other planets, learn why getting a round world to look right on a flat surface is hard, and what to do about it. Fun for the mathematically inclined.
Hack 22. Digging to China
Hack 23. Explore David Rumsey's Historical Maps
Hack 24. Explore a 3-D Model of the Entire World
Hack 25. Work with Multiple Lat/Long Formats
Hack 26. Work with Different Coordinate Systems
Hack 27. Calculate the Distance Between Points on the Earth's Surface
Hack 28. Experiment with Different Cartographic Projections
Hack 29. Plot Arbitrary Points on a World Map
Hack 30. Plot a Great Circle on a Flat Map
Hack 31. Plot Dymaxion Maps in Perl
Hack 32. Hack on Base Maps in Your Favorite Image Editor
Hack 33. Georeference an Arbitrary Tourist Map
Hack 34. Map Other Planets
Chapter 4. Mapping (on) the Web - The World Wide Web offers a fertile environment for dynamic and interactive cartography. Plot your weblog, your photo galleries, major earthquakes, the weather, demographic statistics, and more.
Hack 35. Search Local, Find Global
Hack 36. Shorten Online Map URLs
Hack 37. Tweak the Look and Feel of Web Maps
Hack 38. Add Location to Weblogs and RSS Feeds
Hack 39. View Your Photo Thumbnails on a Flash Map
Hack 40. Plot Points on a Spinning Globe Applet
Hack 41. Plot Points on an Interactive Map Using DHTML
Hack 42. Map Your Tracklogs on the Web
Hack 43. Map Earthquakes in (Nearly) Real Time
Hack 44. Plot Statistics Against Shapes
Hack 45. Extract a Spatial Model from Wikipedia
Hack 46. Map Global Weather Conditions
Chapter 5. Mapping with Gadgets - Everything you wanted to know about making maps with GPS, building your own car navigation system, getting maps on your cell phone, and other locative fun with various electronic devices.
Hack 47. Get Maps on Your Mobile Phone
Hack 48. Accessorize Your GPS
Hack 49. Get Your Tracklogs in Windows or Linux
Hack 50. The Serial Port to USB Conundrum
Hack 51. Speak in Geotongues: GPSBabel to the Rescue
Hack 52. Show Your Waypoints on Aerial Photos with Terrabrowser
Hack 53. Visualize Your Tracks in Three Dimensions
Hack 54. Create Your Own Maps for a Garmin GPS
Hack 55. Use Your Track Memory as a GPS Base Map
Hack 56. Animate Your Tracklogs
Hack 57. Connect to Your GPS from Multiple Applications
Hack 58. Don't Lose Your Tracklogs!
Hack 59. Geocode Your Voice Recordings and Other Media
Hack 60. Improve the Accuracy of Your GPS with Differential GPS
Hack 61. Build a Map of Local GSM Cells
Hack 62. Build a Car Computer
Hack 63. Build Your Own Car Navigation System with GpsDrive
Chapter 6. Mapping on Your Desktop - How and why `Geographic Information Systems` is far, far more than just a fancy term for making maps on a computer.
Hack 64. Mapping Local Areas of Interest with Quantum GIS
Hack 65. Extract Data from Maps with Manifold
Hack 66. Java-Based Desktop Mapping with Openmap
Hack 67. Seamless Data Download from the USGS
Hack 68. Convert Geospatial Data Between Different Formats
Hack 69. Find Your Way Around GRASS
Hack 70. Import Your GPS Waypoints and Tracklogs into GRASS
Hack 71. Turn Your Tracklogs into ESRI Shapefiles
Hack 72. Add Relief to Your Topographic Maps
Hack 73. Make Your Own Contour Maps
Hack 74. Plot Wireless Network Viewsheds with GRASS
Hack 75. Share Your GRASS Maps with the World
Hack 76. Explore the Effects of Global Warming
Hack 77. Become a GRASS Warrior
Chapter 7. Names and Places - Shows you how to find the coordinates of things and the things near coordinates.
Hack 78. What to Do if Your Government Is Hoarding Geographic Data
Hack 79. Geocode a U.S. Street Address
Hack 80. Automatically Geocode U.S. Addresses
Hack 81. Clean Up U.S. Addresses
Hack 82. Find Nearby Things Using U.S. ZIP Codes
Hack 83. Map Numerical Data the Easy Way
Hack 84. Build a Free World Gazetteer
Hack 85. Geocode U.S. Locations with the GNIS
Hack 86. Track a Package Across the U.S.
Chapter 8. Building the Geospatial Web - Learn the fundamental concepts of the emerging geospatial web and how to start building and publishing spatial data repositories.
Hack 87. Build a Spatially Indexed Data Store
Hack 88. Load Your Waypoints into a Spatial Database
Hack 89. Publish Your Geodata to the Web with GeoServer
Hack 90. Crawl the Geospatial Web with RedSpider
Hack 91. Build Interactive Web-Based Map Applications
Hack 92. Map Wardriving (and other!) Data with MapServer
Chapter 9. Mapping with Other People - Modeling the real, the subjective, and the wholly imaginary, and including other people in your hobby.
Hack 93. Node Runner
Hack 94. Geo-Warchalking with 2-D Barcodes
Hack 95. Model Interactive Spaces
Hack 96. Share Geo-Photos on the Web
Hack 97. Set Up an OpenGuide for Your Hometown
Hack 98. Give Your Great-Great-Grandfather a GPS
Hack 99. Map Your Friend-of-a-Friend Network
Hack 100. Map Imaginary Places
User review
Mapping Hacks: Tips & Tools for Electronic Cartography
It has hundreds of well explained options to handle cartography issues