For the past 6 months, the OpenAerialMap project has been in a state of … well, stagnation would be a nice way to put it. I’ve just sent an email to the mailing list Outlining the status as I see it, and I would love to see feedback and opinions on the list. The biggest […]
One of the things that users often want to do within MapServer or other tools is to hook up to existing caches of high resolution aerial imagery, like VirtualEarth, Google, etc. to get an aerial basemap that is as high resolution as possible, preferably for free. This applies to cases other than serving web maps […]
One of the things I forgot about in my previous post: TileCache now has “superoverlay” support for some limited cases, and OAM is the first real test case of that. You can check it out by downloading OAM KML and offer any feedback to me. I’ve actually found myself very disappointed with this support: It […]
One of the cool things about building a map on top of quality Open Source products is the ease with which one can extend the possible uses of your software. GDAL 1.5 has gained the ability to read a WMS-C style remote tile cache directly: this means that any tool which uses GDAL as an […]
Prototype of a worldwide seamless multi-resolution baselayer powered by open data: OpenAerialMap
My previous attempts to make GDAL work in the cloud were sort of silly; compiling directly on the instance is sort of counter to the design of DotCloud, which lets you scale primarily by assuming that a ‘push’ to the server establishes all of the configuration you’ll need. (sshing into the machine is certainly possible, […]
One of the key components of the OpenAerialMap design that I have been working on since around FOSS4G of last year is to use distributed services rather than a single service — the goal being to identify a way to avoid a single point of failure, and instead allow the data and infrastructure to be […]
One of the most difficult thigns to do in time of disaster is to quickly organize, marshal, and present resources. This applies across all aspects of disaster response — whether it be managing and distributing food, organizing volunteers, or setting up technical resources to assist with the relief effort. The last is the field I […]
For a long time, I avoided MrSID like the plague. After trying to do *anything* useful with it, I finally gave up; the requirement for old versions of gcc, non-working on 64bit, etc. really gave me a negative impression of the SDK for MrSID reading. This was especially painful when working with OpenAerialMap, since MrSID […]
Google’s imagery vs. the imagery in OpenAerialMap: Which one is which? The answer is probably obvious from the OAM Main Map, once you know where to look… This is a case where I actually like OAM’s imagery better than GE’s. I’m pretty sure both are sourced from MassGIS, but GE’s is from 2003, and OAM’s […]