Six Reasons Why the Public Hates your Web Mapping Application and what you can do to fix it by Eric Edmonds, Director of Marketing and Sales at GEO-Jobe GIS Consulting.  This article provides a few important conditions for successful, public-facing, web mapping applications.

I spent a recent weekend researching property search applications across several states.  As a marketing and sales person I was enthused by the amount of opportunity I saw for my consulting firm but as a geographer I was disheartened by what I found.  I have outlined six of the most popular issues that haunted my research.

1. It is slow to load – You created or purchased a web mapping application ten years ago that has not been updated.  Back in the day, you thought you broke the sound barrier when your base map loaded in under a minute.  It’s 2013 and no one is interesting in technology that makes them wait, look at updating your server or finding an inexpensive cloud hosting solution that offers the competitive speed the public desires.  It also wouldn’t hurt rewriting your code for simplicity and efficiency.
    
2. It is ugly – Your app’s got no alibi, it’s ugly. People have an emotional response to what they see. A web mapping application that breaks all the rules of graphic design looks cheap and thrown together.  Reminds me of some local business commercials (and a lot of lawyers and used car sales people I would never use).  Many developers don’t consider design and color in their application.  Remember, we are dealing with public perception here so a more attractive and simple looking application with less functionality is more likely to be successful.  If you can’t find a graphic designer, try grabbing some design ideas from more popular applications.  Also research some standard color schemes(this website is awesome).
    
3. You can’t print from it – Adding printing functionality is much easier than it used to be.  Contact us if you can’t figure it out.  People enjoy printing.  It makes them “feel secure” about their document management. As a developer, be ready for your clients to request it.
    
4. Your data is incomplete and outdated – This really grinds my gears! Your web mapping application is only as good as your data. Don’t publish a solution to the public that lacks bad data.  Also don’t be surprised your clients aren’t keeping up with manual updates. Get something like AutoExchange to push updates to the server and make it easier for the public to get the latest GIS data.  Be a trusted source for the public by making sure your data is precise and punctual.
    
5. It can’t be figured out in five seconds – Is your application trying to do too much? The public should understand what your application’s purpose is in five seconds.  If there is too much functionality, try scaling down and producing multiple, single purpose applications.  Remember to use the MU Test to keep them simplified during any rewrites.
    
6. It is not mobile friendly – You have to optimize your web mapping applications so that they work on tablets and smart phones.  Make sure you test it across several mobile operating systems and networks.

Your to-do-list grows every day so make it a priority to update the applications you made 5-10 years ago.  It will help foster the use of public facing web mapping applications and might even get you more business and/or traffic.

You can tweet about this:

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I would love to hear from you too!  What are your thoughts, personnel experiences, or comments about this article?  Discuss it with me here or on twitter @eric_edmonds and don’t forget to use #MapThis.

Courtesy of Directions Magazine

If you attend an upcoming Esri conference and have the opportunity to attend a keynote presentation by Jack Dangermond, you will hear about three concepts.

Courtesy of IT Web

New research by World Wide Worx (WWW) showsdigital mapping services are a key “secret weapon” in South African business and a key emergent trend in local IT.

The Digital Mapping in SA 2013 survey was conducted by WWW with the backing of digital mapping provider mapIT, and included telephonic interviews with 400 small and medium enterprise (SME) decision-makers and 111 corporate IT decision-makers.

According to the survey, 76% of local corporations and 38% of SMEs are spending more than 2% of their IT budgets on mapping services.

“The same proportion of SMEs spend more than R50 000 a year on digital mapping, while 79% of corporates have higher budgets – 22% of corporates spend more than R500 000 on digital mapping every year,” says WWW MD Arthur Goldstuck.

Goldstuck says that while for consumers digital mapping is essentially about getting directions, for businesses that is only the beginning.

The most common uses of digital mapping services among businesses include asset tracking (such as fleet management), vehicle tracking and recovery and navigation. The standout reasons for adoptions among both SMEs and corporates are security, efficiency and productivity.

The survey also found location-based marketing is growing significantly. Forty-one percent of corporations are using location-based marketing, with a further 15% intending to do so in 2013. A third of SMEs are also already making use of such services, while another 19% also plan to do so in 2013.

“We will see the saturation of the use of location-based marketing among local businesses in the coming years,” notes Goldstuck.

“SMEs usually lag behind corporations by several years when it comes to the adoption of new technologies. For SMEs to invest in new technologies, the business case has to be very clear.

“For example, when ADSL prices first started coming down, between 2003-2009 we saw a perfect ‘X’ of the fall of dial-up and the rise of ADSL. For almost any other form of technology, SMEs lag behind in terms of adoption. But here we see they are taking up location-based marketing at the same pace as corporate – it’s just one of those rare technologies.”

According to Goldstuck, another key finding was the extent to which budgets are growing for digital mapping services. “Two-thirds of large corporations and SMEs alike – 69% and 66%, respectively – intend to increase their spending on digital mapping services in 2013.”

According to the survey, the biggest barrier to adoption of these services among SMEs is a lack of knowledge about the tools, while for corporations there were no significant obstacles.

MapIT MD Etienne Louw says: “Digital mapping is proving to be the hidden secret weapon of South African business. The research underlines the extent to which large and small businesses alike depend on digital maps, not only for navigation and tracking, but also for efficiency, productivity and security.”

MAPCITE and Complexus Announce Partnership.

Complexus to grow customer base for MAPCITE’s leading Enterprise GIS / Location Intelligence Solution in South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa.

MAPCITE is a location intelligence software company committed to helping organizations gain more insight from data, by repeatedly solving key problems for customers in the commercial, government and third sectors. MAPCITE and its products have earned a reputation for innovation, ease of use, speed, and the highest quality user experience.  As a result of their innovation with the Microsoft stack, MAPCITE are now members of the prestigious Microsoft Biz Spark One community.

With a growing list of clients on the African Continent and demand growing for location intelligence solutions, the partnership with Complexus is part of MAPCITEs’ strategy to expand into Africa and help client’s extract maximum value from geographical tagged data.   The MAPCITE product range takes the completely inexperienced "mapper" through simple to use and FREE applications, MAPCITE for Excel, through to the extremely powerful Web and On-Premises applications such as Microsoft SharePoint. For the more experienced Data and GIS user there are options for CRM BI Integration, Animated and Floor Plan Mapping, Specialist Mobile Phone Reporting Apps, Geo-Marketing and Massive Spatial Scalability plotting hundreds of millions of transactions in real time.

Nick Bradshaw, Director of Complexus, said: “We are really pleased to be representing MAPCITE in South Africa and wider Sub-Saharan Africa.  It’s a perfect fit for our portfolio of tools that integrate with the Microsoft SharePoint platform.  We see many applications for the MAPCITE product and when integrated with the customers’ existing SharePoint deployment it can add value on many levels such as collaboration and sharing of location based data in the retail sector for example, right through to visualising exploration and survey data in the oil & gas sector.  Many clients in a diverse set of markets can benefit from using MAPCITE and we will be officially launching the product at SHARE 2013 conference, The Sandton Sun, Johannesburg, 11-13 March 2013”

MAPCITE commented, “Our partnership with Complexus reflects the growing demand we see in Africa for GIS / Location Intelligence applications.  We already have a growing customer base in Africa and Complexus will help us service existing and new clients locally.  We are delighted to be working with Nick Bradshaw, benefiting from his considerable expertise in building markets for world-class business applications, as well as his knowledge of the African market.”

A little more than three years ago, I wrote a column about geospatial technology frontiers. While acknowledging the expansion of GIS technology across more and more disciplines, the column aimed to summarize some of the main areas of research and development, where the vision has been clear for some time, but where technology limitations have hampered progress. The areas I outlined then all still seem to frame today's challenges, so what kind of progress have we made?

A little more than three years ago, I penned a column about geospatial technology frontiers. While acknowledging the expansion of GIS technology across more and more disciplines, the column aimed to summarize some of the main areas of research and development, where the vision has been clear for some time, but where technology limitations have hampered progress. The areas I outlined then all still seem to frame today's challenges, so what kind of progress have we made?

Online mapping continues to be a driving force behind the industry, and if anything, its influence on R&D spending has accelerated. Online mapping isn't a challenge as much as it is an enabler to realize meaningful advances more quickly. Online geospatial ecosystems have continued to evolve to support more integration, and the competition for winning online experiences has led to a great deal of improved data availability in a rather short time. Below are quoted main points from the original piece, along with an update through the lens of what's happening and possible today.

3D Integration

"What’s still missing in geovisualization is the seamless movement between broad geography into realistic detail to include the interiors of buildings." On this front, recent efforts are taking interior mapping very seriously, collecting data with 3D spherical cameras as in Google StreetView, and modeling social collection points with precision. Aiding these efforts are new handheld chipsets that promise precise positioning both indoor and out. While aimed at consumer interior navigation, the interest in creating augmented realities will spur greater investment in modeling and navigation tools, making the seamless visualization of our world at all scales an accelerated probability.

"The interoperability of data formats and models is the first step toward creating seamless models at all scales that also combine the intelligence of both BIM and CAD for the exciting concept of intelligent 3D models." On this front, we haven't seen much progress on the interoperability front between vendors, but we have seen great leaps in the integration capabilities within product lines. Major vendors are more seamlessly fusing their own environments as in Autodesk's Infrastructure Modeler, Esri's City Engine, and Bentley's 3D Cities efforts. There are real end-user frustrations with workflow among and between tools that still need to be addressed, and standards efforts continue to make progress on many fronts, although no real breakthrough has occurred.

Temporal and Real-Time GIS

In the previous assessment there were separate line items for temporal, real-time GIS, and automated change detection. I'm combining all three of these areas in this column, because increasingly we're talking about "dynamic" or "intelligent" maps that constantly evolve with new inputs, and that vision incorporates each of these areas. These aren't just new names to frame a vision, they're quickly becoming reality.

"Inroads are being made to incorporate live video and environmental sensors within a GIS framework, and to connect these ground inputs with space-based instruments for a deeper and broader understanding of events as they unfold."  High-profile advancements have occurred to integrate greater input during events, with citizen feedback through social media gaining great ground. The term social media wasn't around three years ago, and its integration has proved the value of citizens as sensors. By incorporating these inputs with mapping, a great deal of clarity has been added to situations as they unfold.

The goal of "gaining insight by slowing or speeding up time to reveal earth processes, and more directly modeling the movement of Earth’s inhabitants" is still there and increasingly enabled by quicker access to data, and greater integration of data feeds. Deep temporal explorations are a ways off, but there's certainly progress.

The Semantic Web

The idea of the semantic web where it "evolves as a medium for knowledge exchange to the point where it will understand the requests of both people and machines" is well on the way as the Internet of Things becomes reality. As in the previous assessment, location continues to be a key component of speeding interactions and trusting information, which are critical issues for the semantic web to become reality.

The previous column didn't make much mention of sensors in the context of the semantic web, but they are an integral component. In sensing we're seeing a great deal of activity in the development of low-cost sensing pods that can be added to existing environments seamlessly and wirelessly, making the proliferation of sensors so much easier than before. As in Twine, more sensors come with a programmable interface to freely customize to the the needed environment. In addition to this tool, there have been recent air monitoring tools as well as add-ons to smart phones that automate reporting. With greater access to sensors, and with increasing in means to process event-driven inputs (see Safe Software's FME 2012), the semantic web is much closer today.

Spatial Analysis

"Spatial reasoning and analysis are an important aspect of geospatial technology, yet most practitioners just scratch the surface of spatial statistics and the map algebra that can reward the analyst with great insight." While we're making maps more easily accessible, and even compartmentalizing map analysis in apps that automate some of the processing, deep map-based insights continue to be the exception rather than the norm.

"A need for much more research into the simplification and automation of spatial analysis in order for the geospatial toolset to reveal greater insights," is an ongoing goal. Inroads are being made with the burgeoning area of location intelligence, and again the Web is a great enabler. The harnessing of the cloud for rigorous and compute-intensive analysis is certainly helping by reducing the cost and aiding access to capacity. What perhaps is missing most is evangelism of the types of questions that can be answered when addressing problems through the spatio-temporal lens.

It is instructive look back from time to time in order to realize the pace of advancement. Whole new types of functionality have been realized in a short time, and many more are around the corner. It holds true that while, "the current state of geospatial practice has come a long way since the tools were conceived, we’re still not scratching the surface of the amount of insight that can be unleashed" when the full potential of geospatial technology is realized.

Last week on Google Maps Developers Live Paul Saxman talked about how he designs a few of his favorite map styles, and shared a few of his tools and techniques for designing maps for visualisations. The video of the talk is a good introduction of how and when you should use theGoogle Maps Styled Map feature.

The video includes a number of examples of interesting map styles with some particularly good examples of how to style a map to emphasise colours in heat maps. These ideas were used recently in this excellent visualisation of ship movements during WWI. 

 
The Navy of WWI animates 12 years of location data, starting before the outbreak of war and ending when trade routes resume after the war's end. As the animation plays the ships' tracks are displayed on the map and stand out because of the choice of colours in the map style and the tracking polylines.

 
Diehl Group Architects also created a neat style for their contact page. Being architects DAG used a map style that really emphasises the buildings on the map.

 
But styled maps don't always have to be in black and white. Designer Peter Smart travelled 2517 miles to try and use design to Solve 50 Problems in 50 Days. Peter used Google Maps to document his journey and the work he completed along the way. As you might expect from a designer his map looks fantastic.  

 
The Global Transition to a New Economy is a Google Map designed to showcase projects around the world that are part of a new developing economy. The map is a nice example of how map styles can be used to create a map that complements the colour scheme used on a website.

If you want to play around with Google Map Styles yourself then the Google Maps API Styled Map Wizard is a great place to start.