ProjectX Technology

Here at ProjectX Technology we are quite excited to see that Google are working on a new version of their Mapping API.

Version 3 is still in it’s early days in Google Labs, however it is already showing exciting features and improvements, as well as a much better code structure.

I recently built a quick demo of the capabilities of it’s new Geocoding system, to show the improvements on the data being returned. It’s exciting to point out that Google has now listed this as an official demo for Version 3 of their API.

Although there is still a wee way before this API is ready for serious use, it should be a good step forward when it’s ready.

Here is our entry to the GeoSpatial Mash-up competition.The purpose of the competition was to demostratewhat different visualisations could be achieved using maps and data from the Stats dept. like census data.

The theme for our mashup is that we chosen to show  the number of recorded offences for every 10,000 residents across New Zealand.The mashup show the number of crimes highlight by colour over the different Police regions across New Zealand.

The Mashup is built on top of Google Maps API and KML. Unfortunately it highlights some of the problems in visualising data using KML. Anytime we wanted to change the shading of the polygon we had to load another entire KMZ file. This is not the best approach in building a lean mapping application.

This highlights one of the problems with KML and provide an opportunity for us to introduce Tardis – our mapping visualiation tool. We’ve built Crime 10k Tardis version using flash, to highlight how much faster and interactive visualisation can be.

We like to think that our technology is being used solely for good rather than evil, but there are some applications where it’s hard to tell. Stalking would be a no-no, but celebrity stalking doesn’t seem so bad. That’s the purpose of the Wellingtonista Celeb Vista group on ZoomIn, which is fully explained in this post on the Wellingtonista.

Simply put, it’s a group for tracking celebrity sightings, but Wellington being Wellington, the celebs being stalked are somewhat more highbrow than on other celebrity-stalking mashups, hence the inclusion of Peter McLeavey along with Bret McKenzie and Shortland Streeters. At least there are no politicians … yet.

Tom Beard’s has been cooking some Mash – My first mashup – <a href=
“http://wellurban.org.nz/maps/flickr_mashup_v0.5.html”>Tom’s Flickr mashup

For all you developers thinking about cooking some mash, here’s some ideas:

What about:

• Show region news articles
• Show all the school fairs / garage sales
• Show sports cancellations by sports field / parks
• Show historical journeys or trails
• Build a treasure hunt or obstacle course