Google maps w/ satellite imagery

[Kralidis,Tom [Burlington]]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: UMN MapServer Users List 
> [mailto:MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU] On Behalf Of Arnulf Christl
> Sent: Monday, 11 April, 2005 12:10
> To: MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU
> Subject: Re: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] Google maps w/ satellite imagery
> 
> 
> Daniel Morissette wrote:
> > Arnulf Christl wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> Googlemaps is a nice experiment but we KNOW that it is no 
> good in the 
> >> long run. Have a look at the scales and resolution satellite image 
> >> they offer, this is a minuscule fraction of all satellite 
> and ortho 
> >> images available world wide - as WMS. And googlemaps will 
> never ever 
> >> be able to be integrated with any of those datasets. What 
> a waste of 
> >> energy.
> >>
> >
> > I disagree. WMS services all over the internet and interoperability 
> > are nice for some types of applications, but when all you 
> need is to 
> > plot the location of your house or business on a map, then 
> what Google 
> > offers is *exactly* what you need, no more, no less.
> >
> >
> >> Hey - we are falling back into medieval raster tile viewers - i 
> >> thought that we had overcome those times long ago. Somebody should 
> >> really point this out to Google, else they might make a 
> big mess of 
> >> the standardized infrastructures that are slowly emerging all over 
> >> the place. We should not let this happen.
> >>
> >
> > For very high traffic sites serving millions of maps per 
> day and where 
> > there is no need for being able to add/remove layers 
> dynamically, then 
> > I think that using tiles or caching pre-generated maps is a 
> great way 
> > to optimize your use of resources. It's not because the idea is old 
> > that it was not good, serving tiles or pregenerated map images will 
> > always be faster than generating the maps on the fly from 
> vector data.
> >
> > My 0.02$
> >
> > Daniel
> 
> Hi,
> yes, this makes a lot of sense and i agree with you. I felt 
> like having to blurt out my ideas because of two issues:
> 
> 1. we (that is the several hundred people on this and many 
> more lists) are experts for geodata software, both 
> implementing and using it. We are not any less serious 
> thinkers and the summed budget of the Open Source community 
> should also not be underestimated. Its all bits and pieces 
> but its lots of bits an pieces. Find out how many developers 
> are behind google maps? That would really be interesting, i 
> bet its less peopel than those furthering MapServer, 
> GeoServer, PROJ4, GDAL, OGR, deegree, GEOS and all those 
> other goodies we use every day without much thinking.
> 
> So my message should have been: We do not have to hide 
> ourselves behind "...well funded companies employing serious 
> brain power." Maybe i should just stop preaching and thats it.
> :-)
> 
> 2. We had a hard time trying to get people to stick to 
> standards and i'd hate to see a reverssl of that process - 
> although i strongly believe that this will not happen any more.
> 

There's certainly much more awareness and adoption given the Internet
and past lessons learned.  We are getting there!!

But still, maps.google.com is all the rage.  Since it's release, I would
estimate 5 emails a week related to maps.google.com.  It's easy.  People
can use it (for the most part).

The point (to steal a quote from JF) is that we have done a fantastic
job at pulling things apart; now if we can just do just as good a job at
pulling things together.  Like Google has, but using interoperability.

> Both points stated i fully agree that:
> 
> We should definitely not ignore significant developments by 
> large, well funded companies employing serious brain power.
> :-)
> 
> Serving several million maps a day will be faster using 
> predefined tiles. Conceded. Those maps have to be put 
> together with some piece of software all the same. Why not 
> get the Google map developers to join Open Source GIS dev 
> instead of having them reinvent the wheel in a way we cant 
> use. Google already has opened itself a little to the OS 
> community (maybe because they are not that large at all).
> 

Agreed.  In their map API, you'll see that they accept an XML document
(i.e.:
http://maps.google.com/?loc=http://rockburger.com/geocoder/points.xml)
or a lat/long point.  This could certainly have been (or be):

http://maps.google.com/?feature=http://host/myplace.gml&style=http://hos
t/bluedot.sld&


> If those maps are created without following any open 
> standards but some Google standards and become an integral 
> part of our geo websphere then we will not get rid of them any more.
> 

Sounds like a trip to Silicon Valley is in order by some higher level
inteoperability folks.

..Tom

=========================
Tom Kralidis
Senior Systems Scientist
Environment Canada
Tel: +01-905-336-4409
http://www.ec.gc.ca/

> Sorry, i wanted to stop preaching...
> 
> Best, Arnulf.
> 
> --
> --------------------------
> Arnulf B. Christl
> --------------------------
> Mapbender User Conference:
> http://wms1.ccgis.de/ewiki
> --------------------------
> http://www.ccgis.org
> http://www.mapbender.org
> --------------------------
>