CartoDB Certified Partner
Today, Sparkgeo became a CartoDB certified partner. As a celebration we built an awesome cartodb powered trail map! Yay!
mapping
Scale in a Time of Web Maps
Scale has taken on a completely new meaning for me. In my training and early career, scale referred to a conversion measurement indicating a comparison between a measurement on a paper map and a measurement in the real world. The big ‘thing’ about GIS was that it was scale-less; you could zoom in as much […]
More to Maps than Markers
Google Maps have been with us since February 2005, virtually a decade ago as I write this (expect a party on Feb 8th 2015). From their acquisitions of Where 2 Technologies and Keyhole, Google ignited a cartographic web revolution. Yes, of course there were maps on the internet pre-Google Maps, but Google brought the web […]
Better Web Maps with Map Analytics
Analytics are a great tool for monitoring and reporting on website traffic and user interactions. It is reasonablely expected that, as a web developer I will use analytics to better understand my users and deliver them with incrementally improving services and experiences. At Sparkgeo we build web maps. We have been doing this for half a […]
Build a Better Map with Analytics [Video]
Dustin Sampson (@gridcell), one of our geospatial developers presented the core ideas behind tracking slippy map analytics at FOSS4G in September (2014, Portland). Check out his presentation here >>> Presentation Description Google Analytics is a great tool for monitoring and reporting on website traffic and user interactions but what it doesnt tell you is that […]
Mapping Exif Files
This is a quick note on how to map images in a directory purely from their exif files. An exif file is one which contains the meta data of the image. If the image was taken by a phone of GPS enabled camera, then a location will also be contained within that file. To read […]
Data Driven Pages: Making Multi-paged Map Books Since 10.0
Data driven pages allow you to easily create multi-paged map books from one map file that are consistent in appearance. It will definitely make your life easier if you have to break up an area into multiple maps for better viewing of data. For instance, 1:20k maps along a 500km corridor feature, such as a river or pipeline, or 1:10k maps covering a whole municipality.
Step Up Your Raster Handling Skills
It is not uncommon for raster data to be large and unruly. Creating tiles is one way to deal with these large datasets and speed up rendering. This post introduces a few handy tools for dealing with raster data while walking through the process of combining multiple raster files to create tiles for a super-overlay […]
Making the US Census Database Show Up On a Google Map
I wrote up how to build a US Census Tract database earlier. However, we all know that data without a way of showing it on a map, is a little sad. So I wrote up the process I used to make it all available on a Google Map. The process involves the use of PostGIS, Mapnik, […]
Dissecting a Web Mapping Application
When talking with clients there is always a turning point in my mind where their request turns from being a “Google Map” to being a “web mapping application”. It is usually where data is being filtered, updataed, or when ‘users’ are mentioned. This a pivotal point where the project both gets more interesting, a lot […]