Details | Mapsys.info

Michelangelo on The Details

“Trifles make perfection,
and perfection is no trifle.”

– Michelangelo (1475–1564)

Italian painter and sculptor

The story, 1820, slightly edited to modernize it.)…

A friend called on Michelangelo, who was finishing a statue. Sometime afterwards he called again. The sculptor was still at his work.

His friend looking at the figure exclaimed, “You have been idle since I saw you last.”

“By no means,” replied the sculptor, “I have retouched this part, and polished that. I have softened this feature, and brought out this muscle. I have given more expression to this lip, and more energy to this limb.”

“Well, well,” said his friend, “but all these are trifles.”

“It may be so,” replied Michelangelo, “but recollect that trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.”

Share|

Apple Shows New Map Tiles in iPhoto for iOS

So you may have heard, Apple released something today. Well in addition to hardware, Apple released iPhoto for iOS. Looking around at it you can see Apple has included maps. But whose maps are they? Take a look…

Apple Maps 1

The new map tiles from Apple. This is the deepest zoom.

Apple Maps 2

Eastern seaboard of the USA in the new Apple map style

I’ve looked around the app and I don’t see any credits page where Apple lets us know where the maps came from. As with everything, I’m sure we’ll learn the details soon.

Looks like Apple has a nice tile API:

@mpanzarino This is where the connections are going to: gsp2.apple.com/tile?api=1&sty…twitpic.com/8tb9cb

— Holger Eilhard (@holgr) March 7, 2012

Share|

Google Maps – The Game

In about a month, Google is going to release a game on Google+ based on Google Maps and built using WebGL (Sorry IE users).

…there’s a video preview of a new Google Maps for Google+ app – shown below – which uses WebGL and apparently user-location to collect points as you travel around floorplan maps. Full details haven’t been shared, but the game will apparently arrive in February.

Now the video doesn’t show much about the details for the game but navigating a 3d mapping world (using the Google Maps API) in a WebGL application in a browser is pretty awesome. Plus going inside and outside the buildng? Sign me up!

Looks like fun to me, but we’ll have to wait a month.

It is a shame about WebGL support not being exactly cross-platform, but with a little work you can get it enabled on any browser. Cools stuff is on the horizon with 3D web mapping applications.

Share|

Updates to Bing Map Road Style

http://mapsys.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/2171b6b7cedafter.jpg.jpg

If you have looked at a Bing map in the last 24 hours you might have noticed a few new things about our road map style. So what did we change? Simply put, we made things easier to see.

Based on many phases of usability testing we’ve made dozens of changes to improve our base road map style. The result is a new style designed to communicate more important information at a glance. We have just finished rolling out our English version of this new style, and you will see French, Flemish, German, Italian, and Spanish rolling out over the next week or so.

Key changes include:

Primary roadways are denoted in a more distinct color
One way streets are more clearly marked
Road shields are more visible
Text labels are easier to read
Traffic overlays are clearer and more defined
Lots of other details to improve map readability

As the saying goes, pictures are worth thousands of word so we’ve put together a 9 page guide to what’s new to go deep on all the changes.

Share|

Google Earth: Mount Rushmore looks great!

Peter Olson, who has previously shown us such excellent models such as Machu Picchu, the Disney Monorail and the Tenerife disaster, is at it once again.

This time, Peter has created a very detailed model of Mount Rushmore, which looks far better than the default (terrain-based) model. Check it out:

In addition to the famous faces on the mountain, Peter also built the “Hall of Records” behind them. The Hall was never completed, but you can learn more about it on the National Parks Traveler site, as it’s quite interesting.