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Better Know a GeoCommons Feature – Atom Feeds

admin — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 20:53:55 +0000

One of the great parts of working GeoCommons is seeing all the interesting datasets people upload. We have everything from Afghanistan Polling Stations to Collegiate Quidditch Teams in Texas. Daily I look through for interesting information to post on either our Facebook Group or on the GeoCommons Twitter account.

One feature that makes it easier for me to track what new maps and datasets are uploaded is the Atom Feeds feature. When you perform a search there is a link on the right hand side to link to the Atom feed. Since I want to see every dataset and every map that is made I search on ‘%’. You might have a specific interest though such as “water” or a country such as “Haiti“. Once you performed a search you like copy the Atom Feed link. You can now past this into your favorite RSS reader.

You can for example add this to Google Reader.

You can also add the link directly to your browser for example in Firefox as a Live Bookmark.

Atom feeds makes it easy to monitor new data you are interested in as it is upload into GeoCommons.

Toolbars for GeoCommons and GeoIQ

admin — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 21:58:38 +0000

I first talked about the ArcGIS version of our toolbars back at the DC Dev Meetup in September. Since then we’ve launched our developer site where you can download the toolbars, but you probably haven’t heard very much else about them. Designed to make sharing your analysis easier as well as find additional data we’ve added toolbars for both Excel and ArcGIS. Based on our .Net library wrapper they both allow direct upload into GeoCommons or your own GeoIQ instance, as well as searching and download of data.

With the addition of GeoJoin earlier this year we made it easier to turn your spreadsheet into a map. Still many of you spend a lot of your time in Excel preparing that spreadsheet. Now we’ve streamlined the process even further with the addition of our Excel toolbar. You can download the toolbar from here and once you’ve installed it there is a “GeoCommons” dropdown available from the menu. Currently the toolbar has been tested on version 2003-2007 of Excel and versions of Windows XP & 7.

Now with the addition of the ArcGIS Toolbar you can both search GeoCommons/GeoIQ directly from ArcMap and pull additional datasets into your analysis. One the analysis is finished publish back to GeoCommons or your own GeoIQ instance. This eliminates the step of saving your files from ArcGIS into a Shapefile, then uploading now you can publish directly. You can download the toolbar here and it works on version 9.2-9.3.1 of ArcGIS.

This is our first release of our toolbars and we’d love to hear what you think. Look for additional features as well as increased version support in the future!

Introducing Polymaps to GeoCommons

Chris Helm — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 19:03:40 +0000

A core component of GeoCommons is visualizing data through maps – allowing anyone to be a cartographer. We’ve worked with a number of amazing organizations to help us make GeoCommons a leading map visualization platform – such as AxisMaps and Stamen Design. In particular, a core piece of this visualization is built on Stamen’s work with the ModestMaps flash library. While Flash has recently received a lot of difficult criticism, we have sought to harness its power by integrating it as part of a larger web-based architecture and interface. In testing there has not, to date, been a nearly ubiquitously available technology across all of the Web that also provides the capability for high-end client side processing.

But that’s changing. Over the past few weeks the engineering team at FortiusOne has been hammering out some great new capabilities. One of those new capabilities has been the integration of Polymaps into our mapping platform.

We’re really excited to announce the integration of Polymaps into our geospatial visualization platform. Polymaps is a fast and light-weight javascript mapping framework specifically for rendering tiled imagery and vector data quickly and efficiently (using SVG for vectors).

The goal of this work has been to provide GeoCommons users with new ways of making maps, and to make those maps easily accessible on a larger number of platforms and devices. The integration of Polymaps creates a lot of new possibilities for our users that didn’t exist before, and will ensure that GeoCommons remains an industry leader and one of the most cutting edge tools available. Over the coming weeks and months users can expect to see a lot of additional capabilities being added to our Polymaps platform. We hope to deliver a complete and fully functional alternative to our Flash based maps in open and accessible formats.

We’re releasing our integration with Polymaps as a “beta” version and primarily for developers at this point. Many components that users are used to in regular GeoCommons maps aren’t quite ready yet, but will be soon. And of course we’d love to get feedback, so please let us know what you think!

Ground Water Withdrawal in millions of gallons vs. Generation of Energy from Hydroelectric Power in thousands of megawatthours

How to use Polymaps inside GeoCommons:

Using Polymaps within GeoCommons is simple. Any map, new or old, can be viewed as a Polymaps map. Below are a few examples of how to create/access a map with Polymaps from within the GeoCommons platform.

Geocommons: To access polymaps from any geocommons map simply append “?view=javascript” to the end of the map URL.

regular map url: http://geocommons.com/maps/29087
polymaps map url: http://geocommons.com/maps/29087?view=javascript

Embeds: GeoCommons maps can be viewed in “embed mode”, useful for embedding maps in other websites. Embedded maps can also take advantage of our Polymaps integration by also simply adding “?view=javascript” to the end of your map embed URL:

an embeddable polymaps url: http://geocommons.com/maps/33191/embed?view=javascript

API: Accessing Geocommons maps can also be done via our new API. Here again we’ve added the “view” parameter to the embeddable maps API.

see: http://geocommons.com/help/Javascript_API#Embed-map

Its important to note that this is still the beginning of our work with Polymaps. We wanted to release this to the public early to get your feedback and demonstrate to developers how to use the new GeoCommons API’s. We’re committed to regularly releasing updates to this new capability.

GeoIQ Developer Site

Andrew Turner — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 14:35:11 +0000

A few weeks ago we updated GeoCommons with the new major version of our platform. Amongst a number of user interface improvements we also completely re-architected our application programming interface (API) – providing a full suite of capabilities for developers to use in building applications on top of the GeoCommons and underlying GeoIQ platform.

This API integrates with all aspects of the data management, creation, visualization and analysis components both at the server level via REST and open-standards, as well as an interactive JavaScript interface for building web and mobile applications with our advanced mapping and charting capabilities. You can use it as just a place to put data – create some amazing interactive, embeddable visualizations, or as a fully integrated stack combined with your existing infrastructure of databases and collaboration tools.

To support developers and integrators that want to use our platform, we’re launching GeoIQ Developer – available at http://developer.geoiq.com. This landing site will provide a number of tools, documentation, and examples of applications that utilize the GeoIQ API in order to provide you with quick and easy suggestions for getting up and running.

We’re excited about the current applications that people have built using GeoIQ – which you can see in the gallery. Organizations such as the World Bank, Transnational Crisis Project, and the Vancouver Sun are just a few examples that you can currently check out for ideas, inspiration and code examples. We’ll be rolling out new examples over the next few weeks as more of our partners and users launch their applications. And if you would like us to highlight your GeoIQ integration – just let us know!

Federated GeoData powering the future of GIS

Andrew Turner — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 15:34:20 +0000

We’ve come a long way in the development and usage of data standards. I’ve personally been working over the last few years to push the adoption of formats like GeoRSS and OpenSearch-Geo. These have been baked deeply into any project or product that we’ve developed. Mapufacture’s original purpose was to promote GeoRSS by providing a catalog and tools to use the format that was meaningful to users. GeoPress adds GeoRSS and OpenSearch to WordPress, and Mapstraction added GeoRSS to the various mapping API’s before they supported it.

Our GeoIQ platform has these built in from the ground-up. Every dataset uploaded into GeoCommons is available as GeoRSS, KML, CSV, Shapefile, Atom, SQLite and more. Users are able to easily publish data in a variety of formats that make it consumable and shareable across all types of applications and integrations. In addition, you can search any GeoIQ server using OpenSearch-Geo and OpenSearch-Time and get results as KML, Atom, JSON, or HTML. Again, putting power into the user without them having to worry about the complexities of the format.

Kate featured how users can use OpenSearch in their web browser for quick searching. You can even use OpenSearch in Windows 7. We’ll be releasing some tools soon to connect GeoCommons and GeoIQ into even more of your tools.

GeoIQ uses OpenSearch to federate data between any server. All of our clients can easily perform a single search to get results back from any of their GeoIQ nodes or from GeoCommons. In the next few weeks we’ll be highlighting a few of our clients that will be sharing out some amazing data with their communities and everyone using this capability.

Just recently, Esri built in the ability to search GeoCommons from their GeoPortal tools. You can try it out. Many of the Esri portals can now leverage the tens of thousansds of datasets the GeoCommons community has helped find and share with the world. Similarly, like GeoIQ federates data between each other, they can search and pull in data from OpenSearch servers such as Esri, GeoNetwork and others.

It’s great to see the world of GIS leveraging these formats to connect specialized users into global communities. Spatial analysts can leverage business data and individuals and organizations can similarly use powerful and easy to use tools such as GeoIQ to pull in GIS data for their intelligence. In GIS, this is often referred to as an SDI (Spatial Data Infrastructure) – which like many acronyms and titles has brought to mean many different things to people. But really what it means is the ability to connect data and leverage distributed data and capabilities across many platforms.

Ping us if you have OpenSearch enabled services you would like to connect into GeoCommons or use GeoCommons in your search services. We’re excited to be a major connector on the growing GeoWeb.

GeoCommons Now with 100% Less "!" and 100% More Awesome!

admin — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 18:33:38 +0000

If you’ve traveled to GeoCommons in the past day you may have noticed two old friends strangely missing. I’m referring to Finder! and Maker! specifically. This superficial change is indicative of more substantial changes that happened under the hood. For starters we have refactored our Ruby on Rails codebase, previously there were three Rails applications and now there is only one. We’ve also made significant improvements to the map as well, starting by adding better temporal animation (or Fourth Dimension Animation as I insist on calling it). You’ll notice you can render far more information without issue than before. Now animating across 10,000 points with a time attribute is easily possible. The most visible change to a regular GeoCommons user is our new homepage and navigation. You can now easily search, create maps and access your profile quickly from every page.

For developers there are the most new goodies. We have added to our JavaScript API, created a visualization API and improved upon our data storage and retrieval API as well. Let is not be said the Web still lacks thematic mapping API’s. Everything is documented in the Developer API portion of our documentation. Rather than sending you straight to the documentation here are a few highlights.

The JavaScript API allows full control over the features of a map. Want to create your own map builder on your own site? This is enabled through our built in authentication system. Need to animate a specific section of a dataset over time? You can do this through our JavaScript API as well. You can also add layers, remove, style and filter them to your specific application needs. If this doesn’t suit your needs the same features are available through REST as well. Create maps, datasets, update information and style all your map data to your exacting needs. These new API features are mostly demonstrated through our documentation at the moment but look for new projects and examples on our GitHub Account soon.

The most exciting thing about this release is it enables some additional features we’ll be adding in the coming weeks as well. If you have any questions or suggestions head on over to our GetSatisfaction Page and let us know. We hope your find our new features are useful as we do. Excuse me now I have to go build a new mashup with all the new goodness.

Map

FortiusOne at Google I/O

admin — Tue, 18 May 2010 20:40:33 +0000

This week some of the other engineers are off to Google I/O, look for plenty of GeoIQ and Geocommons goodness in the Developer Sandbox there. FortiusOne is a Google Enterprise Partner and we’ve performed integration with Google applications on both the Geocommons and GeoIQ side. On Geocommons we’ve integrated with both the Google Earth Plugin and the Google Maps API. Geocommons and GeoIQ both support KML for upload and download of Finder overlays as well as download of maps as KML. Specifically On the enterprise side GeoIQ allows you to hook into your organization’s Google Earth Fusion Server. This enables you to use tiles from the Fusion Server as well as globes with the Google Earth Plugin.

Also in the Sandbox we’ll be demonstrating our REST API and JavaScript API. Our documentation and some sample code is available on Github. For questions about either API join our API Google Group. As a company that believes in eating our own dog food Map of the News is built utilizing these APIs. To see the most current dashboard in action checkout maps of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill.

If you stop by look for Matt Dew or Andrew Semprebon, tell them “wonderchook” sent you!

Better Know a GeoCommons Feature – OpenSearch

admin — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:21:01 +0000

OpenSearch specifies rules for sending and receiving data from websites. GeoCommons supports OpenSearch for querying of both maps and overlays. For non-programmers the most common use of OpenSearch is adding search providers to your browser. Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox all support OpenSearch.

Here is the dropdown of my search providers in Firefox. In order to add an Finder! As an OpenSearch provider you navigate to http://finder.geocommons.com and open the Search Engine dropdown. Select Add “GeoCommons Finder Data” to add overlay search support to Firefox.

Now when you select Finder! as your active Search Engine in Firefox you can search overlays. To add the ability to search Maker! maps go to http://maker.geocommons.com and perform the same steps. Now you can search Maker! as well. To search overlays and maps at the same time you can go to http://www.geocommons.com and add GeoCommons as a search provider.

To add GeoCommons as a Search Provider in Google Chrome navigate your browser to both Finder! and Maker! respectively and it will be added.

Chrome additionally allows you to create keywords to various search providers to edit the keyword go to your preferences in Chrome and click the “Manage” button. Double click on the provider you want to edit and you can then edit the keyword. I made my keyword for Finder “F!” so I can quickly search for datasets in Finder by typing “F!” and then my search terms.

Adding OpenSearch to Internet Explorer 8 is straight forward as well. When you navigate to Maker or Finder click arrow in the IE search box and select “Add Search Providers” and select to add Finder Data or Maker Maps as a Search Provider.

Windows 7 supports OpenSearch from within Windows Explorer. To add Finder download the Finder OpenSearch Specification File and rename the “.xml” file extension to “.osdx.” Next right click on the file and select “Create Search Connector.” To search Finder now open “Searches” and select Finder as your Search Connector.

OpenSearch is not only awesome for end users of applications though, it is also great for developers. FortiusOne’s own Map of the News is built using the GeoCommons OpenSearch API and JavaScript API. For example in the Afghanistan Election Dashboard the menu where which map to display is chosen a tag is added for each group of maps. ”2009 Afghanistan Election Results” is all of the maps tagged “afghanresults” on the http://news.geocommons.com GeoIQ server. The results are returned in json and then displayed in the menu.

For more information on Geocommons Search API please see our documentation and our OpenSearch description document. More information on OpenSearch is available at OpenSearch.org.

Better Know a GeoCommons Feature – SpatiaLite

admin — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:03:09 +0000

For Colbert fans the “Better Know a District” series is a familiar part of the Colbert Report. Today I’m kicking off my own series “Better Know a GeoCommons Feature.” I’d like you to meet one of our lesser known export formats Spatialite.

For those not familiar with SpatiaLite it is SQLite with spatial function goodness added. GeoCommons exports the geometries from your overlay into Well-known text. To download your Finder overlay as SpatiaLite you can go to a you overlay details page and click the Spatialite Download link or you the URI to access it from the API is http://finder.geocommons.com/overlays/#your_overlay_id#.sqlite. Once downloaded you have functions such as Overlaps(), Touches(), Union() and Buffer().

Is SpatiaLite a GeoCommons’ feature you’d like to get to know better? Download SpatiaLite from here.

For those not familiar with the “Better Know a District” series here is my favorite episode with Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Add Your Foursquare Check-ins to Geocommons

admin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:18:38 +0000

At the GeoCommons Office some of us are into Foursquare. Foursquare is a location based game with social networking aspects. Essentially when you go somewhere you “check-in” and you can get points for that. Whoever has the most check-ins at a location becomes the “Mayor” of that location. Here is the page for FortiusOne/GeoCommons, as you can see I’m currently the Mayor.

You can get your check-in feed as RSS, KML and ICS from the feeds page.

From the Finder! API you can register URLs. Below is a sample curl command to register a KML feed of your Foursquare check-ins.

curl -i -X POST -u “yourusername:yourpassword” -d “overlay[wild_url]=http://feeds.foursquare.com/history/yourkmlfeed.kml” http://finder.geocommons.com/overlays.xml

Replace “yourusername:yourpassword” with your GeoCommons username and password and “http://feeds.foursquare.com/history/yourkmlfeed.kml” with your Foursquare KML feed.

By default your layer is not shared in Finder!, if you want to make a map though you have to share it. In order to share it go to Finder and login. Once logged in press “My Layers” and share your layer there. If you ever decide you no longer want to share your check-in feed you can mark it “not shared” here as well.

Once your layer is uploaded and shared you can create a map.

I embedded the map I made in my personal blog’s about page. To embed your map click on the “Details” button while viewing the map and then click on “Do you want to embed this map in your website?” Copy the code that appears and paste it into the HTML of your blog or other website.

If you enjoy playing Foursquare and want to share your feed try this out. For more information on the Finder! API checkout it out here. Also if you ever happen to visit us in the GeoCommons’ office, check-in it is an order from the Mayor.