Gigapan and Global Connection

Gigapan is an interesting project to say the least and it looks like the Global Connection Project is making full use of the technology. Commercial Gigapan is a robotic camera mount that creates these panoramas that (starting in August) can be uploaded and compiled for free! They also mention that this will be released as an open source project which is cool too...
Check out the impressive list of folks contributing to the Global Connection Project. I always end up coming back to FlashEarth.com which was developed by Paul Neave who is also noted as a team member for the Global Connection Project. The Gigapan viewer is a flash app that I suspect Paul had a lot to do with. Because this is a Flash viewer, we can take it to the web as well as to the desk top through applications like Acrobat 9.0 and Google Earth.

Pretty soon, we will not have to leave the house for vacation!!! We will be able to visit anywhere on earth via a Google application.

Quick Interactive Flash Map!

I have been experimenting with FLEX and MXML and have come up with a pretty quick way to compile an Actionscript or other javascript to be placed in any website or blog.

1. Download the FLEX SDK
2. Create your MXML File. I copied some code from the Yahoo Maps! website and pasted it in to the CDATA tags in my MXML file. Don't forget to download the swc file from Yahoo to link against in your build!
3. Compile your SWF and plug it in to a website or PDF (Now available with Acrobat 9.0). To learn more about compiling the code, check out this link.

Now that I have my swf file, I can plug this in to a website or blog, I can embed it in to a document to use as a quick reference, or convert it to an AIR app and deploy it to run on my desktop. All of this was done in less than 10 minutes!

Geocode with Flash

A good mapping application was sent to me this morning and I had to post it! Click here to read the full article entitled "Learn how to geocode with Papervision3D and Adobe Flash". This is a really good and apparently easy way to create a quick and useable mashup that can be deployed on any platform. I look forward to seeing many more quick mapping solutions like this one!

Like Finding Nemo? Check out the Papervision3D website to see what they have done with their ocean scene...VERY cool! Could we view VRML in this environment?

Integration through GeoJavascript

There is a little known piece of technology that TerraGo created a few years ago called GeoJavascript. This javascript API extends the functionality of Adobe's client-side scripting API to work with the GeoPDF. There are several methods that are currently supported which will allow the end user to get coordinate information, zoom to a specific location, draw routes, connect to a database through ODBC, etc...I will include the full list at the end of this post.

I took the opportunity to post an example GeoPDF with GeoJavascript to my account at acrobat.com. This has proven to be an excellent way to disseminate this map of the Atlanta area. Please download the map from this Flash plug-in and open the bookmark section to gain access to all the pre-defined functionality.

Select the "Menu" option in at the top of the embedded viewer and download the full GeoPDF. The full user guide for GeoJavascript can be found by clicking here!