NI Spatial

Cloudmade announces Leaflet, a new JavaScript mapping library

Nate — Fri, 13 May 2011 14:46:04 +0000

And we have another JavaScript mapping library to add to our toolset. Leaflet joins an already-crowded field of JavaScript mapping libraries, but I, for one, am not complaining! As far as I’m concerned, the more the merrier, and I’m happy to have another open source project to play around with.

It will be interesting to see how these libraries evolve and differentiate themselves from each other. By my count, we now have three open source JavaScript mapping libraries that seem to occupy the same space: Open Layers, Modest Maps JS, and Leaflet (am I missing any others?). It does seem that Modest Maps JS and Leaflet are more focused on staying as lightweight as possible, and this is a good thing. I like libraries that make it easier for me to do things without doing everything for me.

I’ll be keeping an eye on Leaflet, and may adding support for it to NPMap.

TileMill Tutorial: Plotting Point Data Using TileMill

Nate — Sun, 08 May 2011 16:18:51 +0000

An excellent walkthrough from the MapBox team on using TileMill to style point data. The walkthrough contains some good tips on styling and labeling map data in general, along with some specifics about getting good results using TileMill.

I’m currently working in TileMill to create a park boundary dataset for the National Park Service, and will definitely be testing out some of these tricks to see what kind of results I get.

Bye bye, wolves

Nate — Fri, 06 May 2011 23:42:46 +0000

Probably a bit dramatic to say, “Another one bites the dust,” but that is certainly a possibility.

I’m very surprised the Obama administration is giving up on the gray wolf so easily.

Why not release the photos?

Nate — Fri, 06 May 2011 23:40:38 +0000

“At Abu Ghraib, and in far too many theatres of our post-9/11 wars, we compounded the wound that bin Laden and Al Qaeda inflicted on us ten-years ago, with self-inflicted wounds, time and again abandoning our own best principles in the name of defending them. We stooped to fighting terror with terror, and confronting barbarism with barbarism. The assassination of bin Laden allows us to begin turning the page—but surely not if that page is printed with an official trophy photograph of his blasted head.” – Philip Gourevitch in the New Yorker

The Plantation

Nate — Fri, 06 May 2011 23:34:47 +0000

Unfortunately named? Maybe. Looks delicious, though.

American Drink gives us another drink recipe to try out.

Google Maps APIs over SSL now available to all

Nate — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 23:02:35 +0000

Definitely an important feature for enterprise users. Kind of surprised this wasn’t available before.

I’m pretty sure Bing Maps has supported this for some time.