SimpleGeo – Gabriel Catalano®

Polymaps

Polymaps is a free, open-source JavaScript library for making dynamic, interactive maps. It is the result of a collaboration between Stamen Design and SimpleGeo. Founded by Erik Rodenbeck, Stamen is one of the most respected data visualization studios out there. SimpleGeo is a service that provides location infrastructure that makes it easy to add geo-aware features to applications.

Description

Polymaps provides speedy display of multi-zoom datasets over maps, and supports a variety of visual presentations for tiled vector data, in addition to the usual cartography from OpenStreetMap, CloudMade, Bing, and other providers of image-based web maps.

Because Polymaps can load data at a full range of scales, it’s ideal for showing information from country level on down to states, cities, neighborhoods, and individual streets. Because Polymaps uses SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) to display information, you can use familiar, comfortable CSS rules to define the design of your data. And because Polymaps uses the well known spherical mercator tile format for its imagery and its data, publishing information is a snap.

Benjamin Wiederkehr
http://datavisualization.ch/tools/polymaps

Description

Polymaps provides speedy display of multi-zoom datasets over maps, and supports a variety of visual presentations for tiled vector data, in addition to the usual cartography from OpenStreetMap, CloudMade, Bing, and other providers of image-based web maps.

Because Polymaps can load data at a full range of scales, it’s ideal for showing information from country level on down to states, cities, neighborhoods, and individual streets. Because Polymaps uses SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) to display information, you can use familiar, comfortable CSS rules to define the design of your data. And because Polymaps uses the well known spherical mercator tile format for its imagery and its data, publishing information is a snap. Continuar leyendo «Polymaps»

What Is It You Do? The Need For Simplicity

Go ahead and click on that link, read a few things and then come back here and tell me if you know what SimpleGeo does. Here’s what that other developer said to us in the email:

they’re an impressive team and i’m sure it’ll be interesting to see what they do. while i didn’t ask this question i’ve often wondered WTF simplegeo offers. i took a look at their initial APIs and while i’m very comfortable with geo i couldn’t figure out how they were useful. these new ones are def more interesting.

in any event, you’d think a co-founder could rattle off a few simple use cases vs pointing someone at developer docs. it often feels like there’s too much of this highfalutin talk in the valley.

Michael Arrington

Warren Buffet is famous for telling people they should only invest in businesses they understand. A corollary to that is that a company should be able to describe in simple terms what they do. Even if what they do is really technical and complicated.

Why? First so employees and investors can get on board and help the company get where it wants to go. But it’s just as important that your potential customers know what you can do for them. And just because you offer a product to businesses or developers instead of everyday consumers doesn’t mean you don’t have to keep things simple.

We see startups all the time that we don’t understand. I used to think I was just in over my head. But over the years I’ve met CEOs who can explain the most complicated technology in relatively simple terms via analogies or use cases. Those that can’t aren’t doing their job.

Not to pick on SimpleGeo, but I will. A developer I know emailed me this Quora conversation this evening where another developer was asking what the heck SimpleGEO does: Continuar leyendo «What Is It You Do? The Need For Simplicity»

Run A Marathon… In Your Web Browser… No Moving Required

Running a marathon is hard. I should know, I’ve never even considered running one. But a lot of people do. And a lot of people like the idea of going to watch others run marathons. I have no idea why, but they do — I’ve seen it on TV. Anyway, if you have any interest in tracking a marathon, Skyhook Wireless has a pretty cool way of doing it.

The San Francisco Marathon is this coming Sunday. To coincide with it, Skyhook Wireless has set up a new “Skyhook Experience” to track the event. On their page, you’ll be able to see geotagged tweets, Flickr photos, and Foursquare check-ins all around the event in realtime. You’ll also be able to go back in time (with a slider) to watch all of the aforementioned data evolve.

The idea is similar to the Vicarious.ly site SimpleGeo set up for SXSW. Like SimpleGeo, Skyhook is doing this to showcase their data. On the map you can not only see (and click on) individual data points, but you can see heat maps of particularly hot areas of geo data.