Hot news this last week came from Apple’s launch of the iOS 6 and the iPhone 5. Not so great for Apple, however, is the many complaints coming from its home-grown (sort of) replacement for Google Maps. Complaints from incomplete data, the glaring lack of StreetView, the removal of public transport data, and low-res, sometime corrupt imagery.
Ignoring the issues, I think the whole situation really highlights what an important function that smartphone maps now play in the life of the consumer.
An overview of the faults can be found at CNET. With a discussion of people’s thoughts on the faults at Ars Technica.
Another analysis of the Apple Maps debacle has come from TechCrunch, where Devin Coldewey talks of what Apple can take from the failure.
And, finally, there is also an interesting discussion at Australian website, The Conversation, which talks of the problems of combining so many different data sources, as well as difficulties in currency.
Hot on the heels of Apple’s foray in to the map game, comes the announcement from Amazon of its Maps API – mainly targeted toward app developers on its Kindle Fire platform. The mapping data comes from Nokia.
Spatially Adjusted talks of the new TileMill v0.10.0, which adds cartographic features, such as compositing layers and features, achieving photoshop-like clipping, masking, blurring, or highlighting across vector and raster layers using CartoCSS.
A really very powerful method for creating beautiful cartography.
SlashGeo talks of an unexpected twist to releasing data to the public; the UK Ordnance Survey has corrected some of its Parish shapefiles after members of the public found some digitisation errors by running the data through Socium’s Online Validation tool. These errors would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
Finally, for all the xkcd fans in the audience (which, really, should be all of you), Google Maps Mania highlights one of their recent comics that contains a click-and-dragable final panel. It offers a whole world to explore, however, it only shows a very small window onto that world, and doesn’t allow you to zoom out. Enterprising coders have, however, moved the final image into a Google Maps interface, so that you can explore the world much faster. Well played.
