Skip to main content

New Year 2014 wishes




May every day of the new year glow with good cheer and happiness for you and your family.

Spatial Unlimited wishes all its readers a a very
" Happy New Year "

Enjoy the Holiday Season...

Comments

Recommended for You

Where does Google get it's live traffic data from?

Referring to a post that I wrote earlier, Google’s - Live traffic Layer , ever wondered how Google collected this data? I was wondering the other day, how Google received live data to display it on their maps as a layer! I looked up the web and found something very interesting and am sharing the same with you all. As we all know, the traffic layer is available most accurately in several states in USA. Most major metro areas in the US have sensors embedded in their highways. These sensors track real time traffic data. Easy to miss at high speeds (hopefully anyway, traffic permitting), more commonly noticed may be the similar sensors that often exist at many busy intersections that help the traffic lights most efficiently let the most amount of people through. The information from these tracking sensors is reported back to the Department of Transportation (DOT). The DOT uses this data to update some of the digital signs that report traffic conditions in many metro areas. They als...

Two maps on the same page - Side-by-side

    How good I am feeling to post a code example after such a long time! It's been all "news" over the past so many posts! Well now that I am finally doing a code example, I am posting a very highly requested code sample. Placing two Google Maps on the same page (Now that's simple you would say!), but side by side. Now this is the thing that most people struggle with. Well, implementing the second part is also very simple, as you will see in today's code.     Let's see the code. Here it is!     The output of the above code will be as seen in the result section above.     As most of you will realize, there are two maps, one centered at "Pune" and other at "Noida". Why I chose these two locations? Well, just like that!...The main issue of concern is how the maps appeared side-by-side and not one below the other as would be normal behavior of two "div" elements used in the same page. Now here is the trick! Check out the...

My first blog!

          " W hy is it that there are no Goolge Maps API examples which show India specific data?"...This question kept bothering me all through my learning phase. I always thought why aren't there any examples that use a map which shows Indian locations. Anybody who is new to Google Maps API application development would love to see a location that he knows of on the map! This is what I longed for all the way through and now have decided to put up simple examples and other supporting data for building customised simple Google Maps and all will show locations in India! When starting something new, if one finds something familiar out there, then it gives a feeling of comfort! And this is what I will try to provide to all those out there who are facing a similar problem that I faced! I am not an expert at Google Maps API, I am learning too...But, I will like to help out people along the way! So, all comments from the novice to the profession...

Ground Truth - How Google Builds Maps

    Todays's article is cross posted from The Atlantic 's Tech section. The article was posted by Alexis Madrigal who is a senior editor at The Atlantic , where he oversees the Technology channel. So, thanks to The Atlantic and Alexis Madrigal, we will have an exclusive look inside Ground Truth , the secretive program to build the world's best accurate maps.     Behind every Google Map, there is a much more complex map that's the key to your queries but hidden from your view. The deep map contains the logic of places: their no-left-turns and freeway on-ramps, speed limits and traffic conditions. This is the data that you're drawing from when you ask Google to navigate you from point A to point B -- and last week, Google showed me the internal map and demonstrated how it was built. It's the first time the company has let anyone watch how the project it calls GT, or "Ground Truth," actually works.     Google opened up at a key moment in its evo...

A Giant called Google...

    Wondering what you will be reading in this post today and what is "Google Giant"! Well, I was working on a simple project a couple of months back and that is the time when I was amazed and by the size of data that Google Maps servers might be having! As most of the readers (developers and enthusiast included) would know or might have noticed, Google maps are rendered by stitching small images together. You must have observed this on quite a number of occasions, when you see grey tiles when you have a slow internet connection in particular. It takes time for the images or tiles as we call them to be displayed.     Let us try and estimate what could be the size of the Google Maps data! Before proceeding, let's make a few assumptions and considerations. 1. Let's consider the Google Street View maps only. 2. The zoom level that is considered for the calculations is 21 - the max zoom level allowed on Google Maps API. 3. All the numbers are just an esti...