Monday, July 21, 2008

Municipal Mapper

I sometimes visit the local city web page here in Salt Lake. I live in Cottonwood Heights and their web site http://cottonwoodheights.utah.gov/
is nicely designed. They even have some simple interactive mapping functionality added. But the site is filled with location references from events, to library locations, to proposed areas for rezoning. All beg for maps. Similarly no feedback mechanism is in place to allow residents to provide feedback on location specific areas of concern or interest. I put this interactive map together quickly using Flex 3 and Mapserver. It allows users to zoom and pan the map. It also includes a checkbox options to show, on the map, the location of schools etc. Finally, it also allows users to enter their own information such as races, festivals etc. These are dynamically added to the map with a description provided by the user. I used the geocoder provided by Google to convert the entered address to lat/long. Here is a video of the application:


Flex Map using Mapserver from matt sheehan on Vimeo

Geodocumentary

I was watching the superb videos by Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame) on the Crusades recently. It struck me that what would make these videos even better would be a map which tracked the places mentioned. Maybe even an interactive map. I messed with this idea and created a prototype of geodocumentary. The video was chosen randomy (it is actually one of the funniest scenes from Only Fools and Horses). Cue points are used to add a georeferenced point to the map showing the mentioned location. Here is a video of the application:


Flex and Video from matt sheehan on Vimeo

Flash and Flex mapping fun

The two applications below are more mapping past work. In 2002 I built a Flash mapping application which was built using Flash, Flash remoting, Java, ArcIMS and ArcSDE/Oracle. I built the tool from the ground up. It was fun and my first taste of Flash (with its challenges for application development without animation). The map tool provided the usaul zoom, pan etc. Also extraction. Here is a video of the application:


Flash Map with Java from matt sheehan on Vimeo

One more from the archives. Built using Flex 2 and using SVG data. Its a ski map application which allows users to pan and zoom. I blended in georeferenced imagery. For me the coolest part of the application is the video. I took a video skiing down a run and manipulated the resulting file to add cue points and converted to FLV. So as the video plays georeferenced points appears on the map tracking the skiers progress. Here is a video of the application:


Ski Utah Map using Flex and SVG from matt sheehan on Vimeo

Flex Map tool building

Here is an early experiment done with Flex 2. Mostly it is a simple image display tool. But PDf generation and historic data is included. Doing this work made me realise the power of Flex. Here is a video of the application.


Flex Design 3 from matt sheehan on Vimeo

As an add on to this work I was asked to create a dynamic map application. In the end I built the tool from scratch; using a combination of Flex 2, PHP and Mapserver. The cool piece for me was having PostGIS ad Postgres feed the data to the application. There was historic data which made things a little tricky, since I had to separate the spatial and attribute data into separate tables.


Flex Map with PHP and Postgres/PostGIS from matt sheehan on Vimeo

Data Centre Visualisation

I noticed recently the use of Vimeo on a number of web sites. Rather cool being able to embed video into you web page. I've uploaded some of screen capture videos of some of my work. Text comes out poorly but it is still rather nice. Here is a none mapping application I put together for a data centre visualisation. Here is a video of the application:


Flex Data Centre Visualisation from matt sheehan on Vimeo