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Modern Web Mapping Technologies
Friday, October 2nd, 2009Web-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:
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.
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| 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
HOWTO optimize your blog on WordPress?
Monday, September 28th, 2009WordPress is a blog publishing application and content management system. Many Internet surfers have their own blogs and some of you have the WordPress blog, because it is easy to manage, add content and edit its appearance by setting up the themes from the network or create the own one. So we all know what WordPress is, but how to make a blog more search engine-friendly? This is what my today’s blogpost about.
First thing you might need to do is to change the permlinks through your blog to the one where the post name is present in blogpost URL, e.g /postname/ or /category/postname/. In this case you will get more visitors because post’s keywords are present in the link.
Also, change the titles to match the previous thought – to have keywords in Title. To do this, adjust the titles to the one where the post name or category name or even tag is displayed, e.g post title – blog title, tag – archives page – blog title, blog archives page – blog title.
Description meta tag as for any other html page should be added to every post page, it is suitable when a description is not the automatic words list, but human-written phrase understandable for Internet surfers.
All these above can be made using such WordPress plug in as All in One SEO Pack. Another important role in SEO is image optimization – adding title and alt tags, ensured by SEO Friendly Images plug in.
All the plugins above can improve your WordPress blog visibility in search engines; should you strive for more, please visit the page with other SEO plugins – WordPress SEO plugins. But if you are waiting for incredible results right upon optimization, you shouldn’t. You will need to engage with some other blogs, micro-blogs and social networks to get important visitors on your blog. So, good luck)
Got questions about WordPress optimization? Contact me – Yuliya Leonova
Main Google search operators, what do you think?
Monday, September 21st, 2009Google as the world’s popular search engine has many featured search options. For example, you may find weather forecast (using phrase weather: before mentioning your location) or calculate the mathematical phrase by writing it in Google search field.
But for sites owners the interest is in featured search, to get more information about the site position, site backlinks or when and what version of site Google has cached. So lets go)
First option is info:yoursite.com – it offers you a general information on the website (e.g. info:cogniance.com). It will present information about entered web page. On the opened page you also see several other link:
- cache:yoursite.com (e.g. cache:cogniance.com) displays cached web page, instead of the current page version. On the cached version of a page, Google will highlight terms in your query that appear after the cache: search operator (e.g. cache:cogniance.com software)
- related:yoursite.com (e.g. related:cogniance.com) lists web pages that are similar to the web page you entered.
- link:yoursite.com (e.g. link:cogniance.com) shows pages that are linked to that questioned site. Also you will find backlinks on your site. To exclude a certain website from search query type -site:site.com (e.g. link:cogniance.com -site:cogniance.com)
- site:yoursite.com (e.g. site:cogniance.com) restricts your search results to the site or domain you specify.The same option as to the previous one – you can include or remove the site from where the link would go to your site (e.g. - site:google.com).
allintext:, allintitle:, allinurl: show the search results with specified phrase in text/title/URL/subject. For example,
Tag define, another operator, is also very useful for definitions search; you can specify any word or phrase and the definition for it will be found in Google. For example, define:software
The main and mostly used search operators are mentioned above. What other do you know which you think would be useful for site owners?
Written by Yuliya Leonova
We have released a portal for space offer!
Friday, September 11th, 2009Cogniance as a full service software consultancy has created a site for Silicon Valley Pad, which provides offices and meeting rooms for the ones who have ideas but do not have own space, all the places from SVP have everything you need to start your business, like Cogniance have everything you need to start your web portal.
So what is your opinion of the site? Please, leave your comment below.
Follow Cogniance and Silicon Valley Pad on Twitter.
Site visibility depends on HTML validation
Friday, August 21st, 2009There are many sites on the web; one can find almost everything he or she needs. The main issues people are concerned in this instance are adequate site appearance in different browsers and the information itself we were looking for narrated in up-to-date facts and viewer-catching manner. At first glance, there is nothing about search engine optimization or validation. But these both are important, if you wish your portal to be visible for search engines and appear in Google or Yahoo! search results.
HTML Validation is the process of checking the document for compliance with web standards and bug search in html code, so the document is considered to pass the validation when it has been checked for errors, and a validator has no remarks to the code.
At the end of html validation process you will have a page without visible errors and your website will appear nice in any browser. This should be done at SEO stage doe to several reasons:
- this will add to site visibility for search engines; search engine will never quote your site in top10 if there are many errors there
- this will allow your portal be properly laid out in almost any browser
- validation optimizez the cod,e so the pages are loaded faster
There are many advantages for doing page validation – pages get the structure becoming a web-standardized document; for large sites this will simplify editing and creating new pages. But please remember that users are mostly interested in the content rather than the code changes.
So pay attention to the content making it popular and interesting, but do not forget about the code validation & optimization and marketing features that your website more popularity.
Written by Yuliya Leonova