Web-Based Mapping Services

Modern Internet users have access to the wide range of mapping web services (web maps). If to take a serious view of the entire set of such services, several obvious leaders may be indicated:

• Google Maps
• Yahoo! Maps
• Microsoft Live Search Maps
• Yandex Maps

The abovementioned services stand out of the line of their rivals thanks to the rich functionality, perfect geographical coverage and user friendliness. Among their functional features is a full-blown map navigation, zooming, and specialized information resources (big cities maps, traffic flow in real-time mode, etc.).

All the mapping web services above support latest versions of popular browsers (IE, Mozilla FireFox, Safari, Opera). At the same time, Google Maps provides the best cross-browser compatibility.

Such services pull geospatial data from specialized commercial data providers.

Of course, services make out their unique functionality. For example, Microsoft mapping web-service offers an opportunity to navigate 3d street maps of the biggest US cities as well as other countries streets, while Google presents unique instrument for developers interested in any applied information on maps Google Maps API.

Microsoft Live Search Maps		Yandex maps		Yahoo! Maps		Google Maps

Moreover, these services differ in coverage of different regions of a globe as well as relevance of mapping (geospatial) data. For example, Yandex maps provide the most up-to-date information for the territory of CIS (former Soviet Union) countries. Relevance of maps in Google Maps and MS Live Search Maps for different regions is 13 years. Yahoo! Maps falls behind as its data went out 4-5 years ago (incidentally, Yahoo! Ukrainian service has several grave shortcomings, for example it presents sufficient qualitative and true information about Kyiv streets not to say much for other big cities such as Donetsk.

There may be a lot of reasons to prefer a particular Web mapping service. Every user may have his or her own point of view about it. Your particular purpose is the major predominant as for what service to use to meet your current needs.

Collaborative web maps

No doubt, modern mapping web services provide a number of appealing opportunities for both experts and unsophisticated Internet users. However, they have a lot of limitations related to use of commercial data (lack of coverage in certain globe zones, outdated mapping information, etc.).

This fact was an incitement to develop alternative web mapping solutions, i.e. collaborative web maps. They rely on users to create and renew data on the map individually. As a result (ideally) reliable enough and quite free map of a region and the world entirely may be obtained.

The project Open Street Maps (OSM) is one of the brilliant solutions in this range. It was created in 2004 by Steve Cost, a young university graduate, after he increasingly disillusioned in quality and accessibility of electronic maps of Great Britain. Since then the project turned into a mass movement of GPS-mapping (now its user base is 50 thousand of registered users, with 5 thousand of active contributors).

At the end of 2007, in Ukraine, OSM Associations units appeared in large cities (Kyiv, Donetsk, Kharkiv). Consolidation of OSM Association in Ukraine was targeted in October 2008 as Kyiv mapping show was organized under support of Cogniance and Cloudmade.

One of the main features of OSM is development of key methods for automatic data input into a centralized storage using GPS-based mapping. It allows distributed editing of different parts of a globe (for example, the map of Kyiv is as follows now: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=50.453&lon=30.542&zoom=11&layers=B00FTF).

In 2008, many leading commercial products selected OSM as a source for mapping data. For example, some VodaFone subdivisions in Europe supplied GSM-browsers to their mobile subscribers to overview maps of their regions from OSM archive (storage).

To increase popularity of OSM data, OSM founders started Cloudmade Company. It develops the family of commercial products on top of OSM data (namely, mapping Web API and Mobile API http://www.cloudmade.com/products). One of the recent customers of Cloudmade is White House (see http://www.whitehouse.gov/change/).

Another example of successful cooperative web-map is WikiMapia project, created by Russians Aleksandr Koryakin and Yevegeniy Savelyev in 2006. Inherently, it is a superstructure over Google Maps, where wiki-like interface for users data input is used.

Conclusion

Astounding growth and diversity of modern mapping web-systems is an indicator of wider use of electronic mapping data in different applied fields. Most probably just this fact will contribute to further development of geographical information system which we may witness.

Annex. Brief chronology of web-mapping

Data	Event
1993-1994	Publication of first mapping web-applications of previous generations. (Xerox PARC Map Viewer, Canada National atlas)
1996-1999	Origination and rapid development of interactive mapping web-systems (Mapquest, MultiMap, Geomedia WebMap 1.0, UMN MapServer 1.0, Terraserver USA). Entering wild scale world IT industry the web-cartography market the project US Online National Atlas Initiative was created and introduced under the extension work of Microsoft and HP)
2000-2003	Commencement of the epoch of distributed mapping web-platforms. (UMN MapServer 3.0-3.5-4.0, ESRI ArcIMS 3.0-4.0) (ESRI Geography Network, NASA World Wind)
2004	In April Steve Cost launched the Open Street Maps project. Google and Yandex initiated development of their distributed mapping web-services
2005	First Google Maps mapping web-service was started providing access to scalable maps all over the world through interactive navigation interface. The first release of Microsoft Virtual Earth mapping platform and its web-interface was started
2006	In May Andrey Koryakin and Yevgeniy Savelyev launched the project WikiMapia. In November for the first time Microsoft added in web-mapping sphere the opportunity of interactive browsing of 3D images in its own web-service
2007	Yahoo! Map web-service was initiated in May
2008	At the beginning of the year Microsoft renamed its mapping web-service into Live Search Maps, and integrated it simultaneously into its Live Search web-service global system. In April 2008 founders of the Association Open Street Maps have got investments for development of Cloudmade company. Cloudmades mission is to create a wide range of map applications for desktop and mobile devices using data and infrastructure of the Open Street Maps Association. In August Cloudmade in cooperation with Cogniance company released their own Web API, which provides the third developers with access to mapping data of the Open Street Maps Association as well as integration of dynamic mapping images into their web-decisions. In September Yandex declared of its worldwide Yandex Map

Note: See further details of mapping web-technologies chronology here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_mapping.

Written by Cogniance Team

Tags: mapping technologies, web technologies

This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Web 2.0 business, Web 2.0 technologies.
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