what3words is a really simple way to talk about location. We have divided the world into a grid of 3m x 3m squares and assigned each one a unique 3 word address. It means anyone can accurately find any location and share it more quickly, easily and with less ambiguity than any other system. The […]
Tag Archives: mapping
GeoPuzzle
Oh I have a weak for this kind of puzzles, especially since it exposes the problem our maps have due to the Mercator Projection. Could spend all day with this. In the Puzzle you need to drag the shape of the territory to the right place. Just like in childhood we collected pictures piece by […]
MySQL ST_Distance_Sphere Polyfill
One of the cool things about MySQL 5.7 is the fact that it sports a few spatial convenience functions (since 5.7.6), allowing one to do operations on geometric values. One of those convenience functions is ST_Distance_Sphere, which allows one to calculate the (spherical) distance between two points. Recently I was working an project where I […]
Spy Viewer – View Historic Mapping within a Spyglass Circle
Ooh I like this: The National Library of Scotland has released Spy Viewer, a tool showcasing a set of historic which maps have been georeferenced so that they line up perfectly on top of the current maps. Using a circular spyglass interface you can watch the old maps peek through. Pictured below is a historic […]
SEDAC Population Estimator
The Population Estimation Service is a Web-based service for estimating population totals and related statistics within a user-defined region. It enables users of a wide variety of map clients and tools to quickly obtain estimates of the number of people residing in specific areas without having to download and analyze large amounts of spatial data. […]
How far ahead of Apple Maps is Google Maps?
In succession to Google Maps’s Quiet Transformation, a new – and very extensive and highly interesting – comparison by the same author. He start off by taking a look at the level of detail when it comes to buildings. But these buildings are more than just a pretty detail—they appear to be the foundation for […]
Getting started with Mapbox GL JS
Good intro by Arden de Raaij on setting up a basic Mapbox GL JS map with clickable markers that zoom upon getting clicked. Mapbox GL JS is a JavaScript library that uses WebGL to render interactive maps from vector tiles and Mapbox styles. It’s my favorite alternative to Google’s service and in this article I’ll […]
Strava Global Heatmap
Strava has released a Global Heatmap powered by Mapbox GL, plotting all locations where their users go run / go cycle / do water activities / do winter activities. The raw input activity streams data comes from a Spark/S3/Parquet data warehouse. This data includes every one of the 3 trillion GPS points ever uploaded to […]
react-native-maps-directions – Directions/Routing component for react-native-maps
One of the things I found missing in the aforementioned react-native-maps was the ability to route between to coordinates. Combining the feedback from the related issues on GitHub (#52, #778, and #929) I’ve created a standalone component that does exactly that. The MapViewDirections component can route between an origin and destination coordinate. As routing is […]
react-native-maps – React Native Mapview component for iOS + Android
On a React Native project I’m currently working on, I’m implementing native (vector) mapviews. Gladly there’s react-native-maps by AirBnB to handle it all. import React, { Component } from ‘react’; import MapView from ‘react-native-maps’; class MapViewExample extends Component { constructor(props) { super(props); this.state = { region: { latitude: 37.78825, longitude: -122.4324, latitudeDelta: 0.0922, longitudeDelta: 0.0421, […]