Compared to earlier publications, this version provides the following features:
world coverage : possibility to add "locations" (areas corresponding to a city on which you want to view network) in every country in the world. If a country is not in the combo box "Add a new location", thank you for the request and we will add it.
new design : map adapted to the screen size, quick access buttons to a transportation theme in the upper left, new look (pop-up, color, combo box, icons, etc..)
OpenStreetMaprelations management used to define lines. Thus we can determine all the lines belongs to a bus, tram or subway stop and display it in the pop-up consultation.
Take advantage of this tool to complete your city public transport network.
The very active OSGeo Japanese local chapter has organised FOSS4G Tokyo 2009 and FOSS4G Osaka 2009 this week in Japan. The Tokyo conference is now over (november 1st and 2nd), where interesting talks were given such as :
ZOO project : An Open WPS Platform by Gérald Fenoy
The conference is now moving to Osaka for a second round of presentations and discussions around the wonderful world of free and open source software for geospatial !
Just after the EuMozCamp09HTML5 Roundtable, I've proposed to Vladimir Vukićević the idea to add the possibility to say "Where I Am" in Firefox. He said that this functionnality it's more suitable as an add-on.
During this conversation, I've thought that the Firefox user should be able to choose his geolocation directly in the notification. It's what I've done.
Yesterday, Gervase Markham proposed to add "Where I Am" in Firefox with a feature in the geolocation info bar "Find Myself On A Map", and when I read it, I said to myself: "It's What I Done With My Add-On: Geolocater, Isn't it ?"
Besides, Gervaseasks this question : Would you like to see "Where I Am" directly implemented in Firefox 3.7 ?
The Geolocation API is fairly well implemented by the different browsers on the market. The problem is that it's perceived as only useful on mobile. This perception is due to the fact that the Geolocation API is presented as a means to indicate to a web application where we are, but this information is provided by the browser, it is therefore possible to allow a user to decide where he wants to be geolocated when he is on the Internet. Geolocater offers users to choose the way to be geolocated when a Web application requests it.
The interest you can save locations to choose which geolocation use when an application requests it and facilitate the use of location-based information.
To highlight the importance of being able to choose your position on earth when you're on the Web, I made a video demonstration with Flickr. The Flickr mapping application is equipped with a 'Find my location' button. This button launches a geolocation request to the browser. As mentioned in the specification of the Geolocation API, the browser must notify the request, unless you have specified that you no longer wanted notification. If you have installed Geolocater and you have not disabled notification for Flickr, you can select the geolocation you want to send to Flickr to find photos nearby. You can easily navigate through the world and discover images from around the world.
One of the major improvements Firefox 3.5 is support for W3C Geolocation API. This API allows web applications to request the browser geolocation which offers the possibility of geographically contextualize the content.
By default the geolocation is provided by a Google service. The results vary depending on the OS you are using and where you are. But especially since the geolocation becomes a navigation context why not be able to choose it easily? But Firefox is hackable, Geolocater is born.
Geolocater gives you the possibility to edit your default geolocation. You don't have to know the latitude and longitude, Geolocater give you the possibility to find a place or drag the geolocation over a map. Geolocater gives you the possibility to define more than one geolocation and to jump from one geolocation from another easily.
With Geolocater, you can define a geolocation more accurate than that provided by the Google Service, or a place where you were or where you go.
We will distribute through this channel short but interesting informations on OsmTransport changes. We will continue on this blog to keep you informed of significant developments or thinkings.
In some countries like Germany, the networks are fairly well defined, but generally without colors. It's a pity because without color, all lines are similar and blend together without distinction. For exemple :
Three days ago we had a post from Doug Turner describing how Geolocation works in Firefox 3.5. I have taken the geolocation functionality in Firefox 3.5 and blended it together with data from OpenStreetMap and a few other sources of free data. You can try the demo below. Don’t forget to click the Share Location button in the drop down when it appears on the site.
Assuming that it was able to find your location, you should see where you are with a red marker. A blue circle surrounds the red marker indicating the accuracy of your location information. Note that since this information is based on a combination of your IP address and possibly local WiFi access points, its accuracy can vary.
This demo also tries to pull in information from other sources about your local area. Each set of information is shown as a layer. These layers are:
The base layer is the map itself, provided by OpenStreetMap. OpenStreetMap is a project to create and provide free geographic data, such as street maps, to anyone who wants them. Much like Wikipedia, it’s possible for anyone to edit the maps and add their own information.
The next layer is based on articles in Wikipedia. In some articles, like Mountain View or Montpellier, you can find coordinates. GeoNames provides a web service to query Wikipedia’s articles by location. With this demo you can discover Wikipedia articles about things and places around you.
The last layer is based on GeoNames. GeoNames is a geographical database covering all countries and contains over eight million placenames. In this demo you can see things from the GeoNames database like cities, villages, lakes, parks, or even hotels.
The map and layers are built using OpenLayers, a free JavaScript library that you can use to put a dynamic map on any web page.
