Some of these maps fit perfectly overlaying their modern location while others, generally the earlier period maps, reveal interesting tidbits of geographical misconceptions of the time they were created. David Rumsey’s site describes the process as follows.

The original historical maps are first made into digital images by scanning them with high resolution digital cameras. Then these digital images are transformed in a process called georeferencing, which makes them display in their correct geographical spaces in Google Maps and Earth. Georeferencing is done using a GIS program, which takes points on the old maps (cities, coast lines, rivers, streets) and connects them to the same points on a modern satellite map image or a modern street map or a modern map showing boundaries of countries and states. The GIS program then takes all these points (as many as 200 are made for very large maps) and uses them to recreate the digital image so it will fit into its modern geographical space. Often the image has to be curved a bit for this to be accomplished.

You can view a nice interactive world map that allows you to choose from one of these over a hundred locations. By clicking on any location you are provided with a summary of what the map is, and then you can view it to see the map overlaid with modern satellite photography. The maps range from 1680 to 1930 and show scales and cartographic art. The georeferencing provides an extremely accurate overlay.  Really cool stuff!

David Rumsey Historical Map Collection

Hawaii Oahu 1899 Map Overlay

This is a fascinating example of showing the history of mapping from its earliest roots into its much more modern digital age. Mapping techniques have come a long way. We hope you enjoy playing around with the interactive map as much as we did.

Optimized Map Tile Images

We researched multiple tools and algorithms related to image compression and came away with pngslim as the best option to compress map tile images. When you publish a new map illustration for the first time all tiles go through a compression process before they are uploaded to the content delivery network. This means that your first republish after this release will take a little while as every tile of every zoom level of the map is being optimized. This will only effect your first publish of a map illustration.

Mobile Stops Load on Demand

In the mobile world load speeds are especially crucial. To this end we have optimized our mobile maps to use AJAX and only load individual stop data on demand. Combining this with the optimized map tiles we are seeing mobile maps initially load two or three times faster.

Other Stories

We picked up three other smaller stories in this release all related to the user experience. Two of those stories were related to the backend platform experience and the third was a customer request.

We improved the backend user experience by simplifying the publishing process to only ask you to confirm publishing one time. Previously there were a number of steps you had to confirm to keep the process moving along. Now you are prompted once and it will go all the way through the publishing process.

We also improved the preview feature in the backend. Previously the only way to preview your interactive map with custom CSS applied was to publish the map and view it live on your website. We have changed the “View Published Map” option in the backend to create a “Preview Map” button that allows you to preview your map with CSS changes applied before publishing.

A common complaint from customers was they didn’t like the way we auto-detected for a mobile device and redirected users to our 508 Accessible version of the map. We listened to you and as of this release that detection code has been removed.

What’s Next?

These last two rounds we have made major speed improvements to our platform. Going forward we are looking very hard into implementing GPS functionality deeper into our platform and improving upon our template and theme options. If you have any requests or ideas, be sure to submit them over at our UserVoice page. We’d love to know what you would like to see us build!

This year nuCloud is excited to send CEO Kyle James and CFO Todd James to the conference. If you are attending the conference we’d love a chance to meet you or see you again. We are not going to be presenting at this conference, but our mutual customer April Taulbee from D’Youville College will be doing a short Customer Showcase sharing their Interactive Campus Map on Tuesday morning before lunch. If you are going to be at the conference we hope to see you there!

Mobile Mapping

You can’t really have a discussion in 2013 about online mapping without talking about mobile mapping. I remember fifteen years ago when I first started driving, and if I was going somewhere I wasn’t familiar with, I’d call the person and ask for step by step directions. Today we simply ask for an address and punch it into our car before we pull out of the driveway. Mobile mapping is HUGE! In fact it was just in the past few months that Facebook overtook Google Maps as the #1 Mobile App.

Anyone who looks at the chart will probably instantly be able to pick out the drop off date, which had a lot to do with the launch of the iPhone 5 and Apple’s split from Google Maps being the default mapping app. I think this data obviously shows us that most everyone who has a smart phone is very comfortable with using maps on it. I don’t see this changing anytime soon and in fact only becoming more and more central to our mapping use. The adoption and increase in mobile mapping leads nicely right into our next point.

Geolocation Map Integration

One of the reasons mobile mapping has become so darn useful is the adoption of GPS in mobile phones. It wasn’t that long ago that a mobile phone attempted to guess where you were by signal triangulation. In the last decade we saw GPS devices creep into our cars, and just as fast they have been displaced with smart phones that perform the same service as a side benefit. There are tons of excellent mobile phone apps, like Foursquare and Yelp, which leverage GPS data to provide relevant information to you. I think we are going to see some of the best innovation over the next few years take advantage of GSP in the mobile space. It also isn’t defined to just mobile apps anymore as HTML5 has support for Geolocation. This last point is something we have gotten really excited about as we plan out or product roadmap.

More and Better Structured Data (APIs)

The latest data I have seen from comScore says that Google Maps accounts for 71% of all online map usage. I wish I had some better updated data. I also wish I had some recent data showing the breakdown in mobile vs. normal map usage. I say that because I wouldn’t be surprised if mobile map usage was actually greater than normal web usage. When you think about the way people use maps that aren’t direction based it is usually as a point of reference on a data map. Besides Google’s obvious dominance in the map direction space I think their powerful ability to mash up data and their robust API also directly relate to their dominance in the data map space. Maps are so powerful because it is much easier to see the correlation between different pieces of data when you can see them on a map. People regularly say that they want “something like a Google map but [they] don’t want it by Google,” but the reality is Google still offers the most powerful integrations for the best price, frequently free. We see this as an opportunity to meet a need.

I think a perfect example for a college is when you think about a virtual tour. We have all seen virtual tours that are a collection of pictures, 360’s or videos that are stitched together. If they aren’t tied to a map then it can be very hard for us to relate to this soccer field being next to this picture of a dorm or not. The map provides a powerful reference point and the ability to overlay any sort of structured data on top of it provides infinite possibilities. The more flexible we can be in allowing structured data and eventually full API access the wider range of problems you can solve.

Conclusion

I think with all three of these elements it isn’t that they are brand new ideas. It is that they aren’t fully fleshed out yet. The better mobile, GPS and APIs get the more creative and flexible innovators will be. It isn’t so much that we are trying to identify the next Facebook per say, but we are saying with these tools and infrastructure in place that the next revolutionary wave of innovation will feast. All of these are more backbone ideas but with them in place the sky is the limit.

When Henry Ford started mass producing vehicles he had no idea the trucking, racing or construction industries that would be built of the idea much less the modern assembly line. The same inventor’s ignorance can be said for Konrad Zuse when he invented the first programmable computer or Berners-Lee and the Internet. These three backbone elements will be fundamental to the next innovation of mapping.

We are looking for a Sales/Account Director. You can learn more about this position on our new Careers page. What could be more exciting than working full time with us? We think it is a pretty sweet job that we have put a lot of thought into. We believe there are excellent income growth opportunities in this role because of our strategic partnership with mapformation. This person will be able to sell both nuCloud and mapformation products/services! We have also put a lot of thought into the culture that we want to build. These are the specific characteristics that make up our core beliefs. We are definitely not the first company to publically share our culture, but we are hopeful that the transparency helps us find people who share the same passions.

Visit our Careers Page

nuCloud Culture

In an attempt to share what will be the defining characteristics of nuCloud’s employees going forward I wanted to spend a few minutes listing the core characteristics that we look for in an employee.

1. Personal Accountability – We hate micromanaging but equally hate when someone says they will do something and don’t. We want to empower our employees to make decisions on their own. We believe personal accountability is the single most important element to “get shit done” and create successful employees. We believe this single characteristic goes at the top of our list because it sprinkles its way into the rest. At nuCloud you are responsible for your decisions/actions and we encourage that!
2. Customer Service – We believe in the Golden Rule, one should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself. The biggest driver of success is more than pleasing a customer, it is making them successful and sharing in that joyful experience! We do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do, no questions asked. Because we are based on a recurring revenue model we also financially benefit from happy and successful customers who want to stay with us forever.
3. Transparency – We could easily substitute communication into this slot but we feel that transparency is a stronger form of the same concept. This doesn’t mean that we go out of our way to show our dirty laundry, but we will openly share what we feel is appropriate. You see, not only do we want to solve your problem but we want to be open and honest with you if there is a better way to do it.
4. Humble – Stay grounded. Everyone is responsible and available. Nobody is too good to do anything.
5. Marketer – We believe in inbound marketing. We believe that everyone is a public face of the company in all their interactions. Since you represent the company, you are marketing the company. As a policy of interacting publically, don’t do anything stupid!
6. Financially Conservative – We don’t like wasting money. The more we waste the less that goes into our own pockets. This doesn’t mean that we don’t believe in extra spending to celebrate our shared successes though.
7. Scale – How can we do more with less? Does this effort scale? Relationships and customer service never scale, so this is something that we will constantly battle with other values. We should be open and admit our struggle between the two.
8. Long-Term View – It doesn’t matter if it’s the harder thing to do, if something is the right thing to do over the long term then we do that. We think about how our actions don’t just have impacts today but over the long run.
9. Change – We acknowledge that there is always a better way to do anything and are always looking for that better way. This might include changing the way we do things but hopefully not changing our core values. We realize this can conflict with our long-term view from time to time.
10. Have Fun – We believe that work should be fun! We realize that every second of every day isn’t going to be the greatest, but overall we want to be happy and enjoy what we do. We believe a large part of this is actively enjoying ourselves and our time at work.

The other day I was going through the folder to see what I have added over the years, and I noticed how designs and features have changed over the 3-4 years since I began building this collection. This got me thinking about the history of tours and maps online.

The History of Web Mapping By Steven Feldman

According to the notes from Steven Feldman on this slideshare presentation these slides were from a lecture he gave on March 17^th, 2010. Wow, I really wish I was in attendance because this would have been a fascinating talk to me. As you go through the slides a couple of points really stand out to me that are worth sharing.

Mapping didn’t change for hundreds of years. If you want to talk about an industry that stayed pretty stagnant while technology progressed then look no further than mapping. From the 1500’s until modern time (the 1980’s to be more exact) mapping was essentially the same. I’m sure printing, folding and design changed, but it was never really disrupted with any technological innovations. Then a few technology companies, GPS and the internet flipped everything on its head.

“Why would anyone want a map on the internet?”  It’s so hard to wrap our mind around that today, but in the beginning people just couldn’t understand why you would want a map online. What a difference online maps and smart phones make today. Just look at the big uproar recently about Apple Maps if you want a reminder of how much people care about online mapping!

February 8^th 2005 – G Day. The day Google Maps launched changed everything. Sure, others like MapQuest, Yahoo Maps and others were already around, but Google revolutionized the way EVERYONE used online maps. This soon led to mashups and Google releasing a maps API.

Other Historical Resources

As I kept digging there were a couple of additional resources that I found fascinating.

The first of these was Wikipedia’s History of Web Mapping timeline. There aren’t a lot of differences between this information and Steven Feldman’s slides, but it does go into more detail listing some of the major services and atlases that existed online over time.

In looking for information on the history of virtual tours I was able to learn that the first use of a virtual tour and the name was coined in 1994 as a museum visitor interpretation of Dudley Castle in England. Specifically related to the use of campus virtual tours the grandfather of virtual tours for higher education, CampusTours, has a historical timeline on their website. This timeline does weave in and out of their specific service offerings, but it also lets you read about the progression from photos to panoramas to videos into and out of Flash and much more. As you look at just those innovations you have to wonder what’s next.

Future Innovations

As you can see there has been major innovation in mapping in the last decade or two. With all of the support and excitement around mobile technology leveraging GPS you also have to feel like the innovation will continue to evolve rapidly. Mobile applications like Yelp and Foursquare continue to push mapping boundaries with lots of related content.

Mapping is going through a renaissance, and it will be interesting to watch and see where things take us. Next week I hope to post a follow-up article talking about some of those places that we see mapping going.

FlightRadar24.com Live Air Traffic Map

We know that there is always a plane in the sky, but nobody realizes just how many planes are flying around at any given time. This live streaming data map from FlightRader24 does exactly what it says it does. It is a live air traffic map. That’s right, you can view thousands of planes in the air at any given time. The filter, settings and search functionalities are all really clean and fun to play with.

Besides being a mind blowing experience to realize there are that many people in the air right now, we felt like the additional functionalities of the filter and search were really well put together. Not only are they useful but they also have a very strong design.

Census Dotmap

I think we have all seen those views of space at night that show the coasts of North America all lit up. The center of the country always looks black and void in comparison. This Census Dotmap doesn’t look all that different, but instead of using lights at night it has a dot for every single person counted in the 2010 U.S. and 2011 Canadian censuses. That is 341,817,095 dots to be exact. There are no filters, search or settings on this map besides the ability to toggle on city, states, roads and boundaries. The smooth transitions and the ability to zoom into the level where you can almost find your little black dot is a fun discovery process.

This map, like the previous one, is built on top of Google Maps. One thing that we are always impressed with on their platform is the fluidity and speed when moving around the map. It is easy to forget just how much data must be manipulated to display these interactive maps. Google has always done a great job with their smooth transitions and their powerful tile serving capabilities.

Happy holidays and we hope that you are looking forward to 2013 as much as we are!  Assuming the Mayans are wrong of course…

Speed Enhancements through Global CDN and Compression

In order to speed up the experience for viewers of the map we tackled two major initiatives in this release. First of all, we have made changes to fully leverage Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloudfront service. Through Amazon’s network of Edge Locations we are able to distribute our customer’s content over five continents for better response times to end users around the world.

AWS Global Infrastructurea

Reducing file size improves performance, as well, and we targeted several parts of the platform to address that. By better targeting file compression of our JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheet files we can now offer users an experience that reduces map load times by over 60% – including both desktop and mobile users. This all leads to a much improved user experience, as entry time to the map is reduced, and the overall responsiveness of the platform is much better, leading to happier customers and visitors.

In our testing, through these combined efforts, we have seen a decrease in map load times of approximately 66%.

The Other Stories

Although speed was the main focus of this release we also tossed in a handful of other smaller stories. The following three stories are specific ones brought to our attention by customers that we are excited to roll out.

In 2.1 we initially released our 508 Compliant Maps and it was time to come back and make a few tweaks. Nothing major in these changes – we primarily targeted the markup so it would be more semantic and offer better compatibility for screen readers – but we hope that they make our 508 Compliant Maps more usable for users.

The search functionality on the standard map displayed results in a confusion fashion. We improved upon this by removing extra clicks required to get to stops. If there is only one stop that matches your search result then we open that location immediately. We also brought the search results front and center so that they are easy to see.

Finally, icons have been a secondary option to point out interesting information on a map as an alternative to Markers, and they can be a powerful feature for those that use them. We standardized the backend experience to use the Marker section of the Library instead of defaulting to images where it was confusing. This won’t affect most of our customers but those that use icons will hopefully find that this is a nice improvement.

What’s Next?

We have already picked a handful of stories for a minor 2.4.1 release. When you are changing a lot of moving parts to optimize performance it is best to not touch all those parts at the same time. Now that the dust has settled on some of these bigger speed efforts we want to keep pushing for more performance increases. We have knocked out the low hanging fruit related to speed but there are incremental items that we can tweak. Most notably map tile image optimization and better mobile loading through AJAX. If you have any requests or ideas, be sure to submit them over at our UserVoice page. We’d love to know what you think will make our platform better for you and your visitors!

Alumni

We talk about building a case for ROI for this project and usually start it with the prospective student, but alumni can also provide revenue through donations. Simply put, campus changes and if an alumni hasn’t visited a campus in years or decades an interactive map is a very powerful way to keep them updated. Specifically to the donations point, nostalgia is a very powerful string to pull on when asking for donations.

If you have a building that you have a capital campaign to build or renovate then an interactive map can visually display and explain what you are trying to accomplish. Showing this building on an interactive map also gives a point of reference to how it impacts the surrounding campus.

Current Students

Just because a student is on campus doesn’t mean that they completely know all the buildings on your campus. You can also tell history and other detail about buildings or locations that aren’t picked up by someone who might attend class or sleep in a building every day. Also for a new student trying to find where that first class is located an interactive map can be instrumental in that process. Read more about how new students benefit from an interactive map.

Athletic Fans

Sporting events are big draws for colleges and universities. No matter the opponent there is always a group of fans of the opposing team that will be visiting your campus. Some of these fans will be visiting for the first time. An interactive campus map can not only help them easily find the athletic venue on campus but learn about the surroundings.

A packed house at a University of Missouri Tigers football game

Community & Special Events

What school doesn’t have special events open to the public? Public speakers, community events and even events like commencement pull lots of visitors to campus. We just finished a full election swing where three lucky schools held presidential debates. Do you think Lynn University in Boca Raton, who hosted the final debate, could have benefited from an interactive map of campus?

The debate at Lynn University

Campers

Many schools hold camps of various shapes and sizes. From a recruitment angle it’s actually quite smart to start this process at an early age and what better way than to have camps on campus where children can go ahead and get familiar with your school. The children and their parents both benefit from an interactive map to explore your campus and learn about the locations.

Guard Campers at WKU

Conferences

Not every school hosts conferences but many do. Colleges and universities are great locations for a conference because they tend to have venues that can accommodate the group, and if held during the right time of year the dorms can be used to house the conference attendees.

HighEdWeb Arkansas 2012 was just at the University of Arkansas Little Rock a few months ago – Photo by ShelleyKeith

Closing

As you can see an interactive map of campus has value to many of your school’s audiences. You could argue that an interactive map is the single most important feature of a college or university’s website because it impacts so many audiences! We’ve been known to argue that a time or two.

What audience did we leave out that could also benefit from this feature?