Mapzen Updates and Sneak Preview of the Next Release
Mapzen Updates and Sneak Preview of the Next Release
There’s been a lot of work going on behind the scenes to make Mapzen, CloudMade’s family of easy to use OpenStreetMap editing tools, even easier, even more useful and even more fun to use. So what’s new?
Mapzen POI Collector 1.1 – Now in the App Store
Mapzen POI Collector is CloudMade’s smash hit iPhone mapping app that lets you easily and quickly add a huge range of places of interest to OpenStreetMap. The latest version includes numerous updates and improvements – all based on feedback we received from Mapzen users.
Mapzen POI Collector 1.1 lets you map faster and smarter:
- Choose from over 45 new POI types based on user requests, including ‘Grit Bins’ for winter mapping, ‘Traffic Cams’ and many more
- All POI icons are full color for a more vibrant mapping experience
- Quickly find the POI type you are looking for with a slick new search feature
- Add even more detail to the map with new attributes including disability access, seating capacity and religious denomination
Other bug fixes and enhancements:
- GPS location functionality is faster and more reliable
- Faster map loading with an enhanced map engine
You can get the latest version for free from the App Store. Existing users can give feedback and help make Mapzen POI Collector even better.
Share your mapping adventures with the world
With the latest release of Mapzen, mappers can share their mapping adventures with friends and family or publish them for the whole world to see. An exciting cross between mapping and blogging, mappers can publish their mapping activity feed – which includes details of recently mapped areas as well as posts made by the user. Posts can range from short, Twitter style updates to longer, blog style entries that let mappers share their experiences. Mappers’ activity feeds are tagged with the location of their posts which means they can be used by other applications – like this demo shows.
Stay up to date with your friends’ mapping activities
Mapzen now makes it easier than ever before to keep up to date with updates from your mapping network. Your Dashboard now includes a mapping activity feed from all of your mapping friends – so you know who’s been mapping what, where.
Map faster, worry less with the new Undo/Redo history panel
Mapzen’s undo and redo feature lets you map without having to worry about messing up anyone else’s work. Mistakes can be undone with the click of a button and now you can view a full history of your edits – making it easy to jump back to the exact point before it all went wrong.
Go to Mapzen to try out all the new features for yourself!
Coming Soon – What’s Next for Mapzen?
The next release of Mapzen Beta is just a few weeks away. We’ve been listening to your feedback to make it a better, faster, more fun tool to use. Mapzen Beta Belz includes these top requested features:
- Natural features like lakes, forests or landuse zones and other areas can be tricky to map, with lots of overlapping layers getting in the way of each other. The next release of Mapzen gives mappers control over the appearance of natural features and other landuse areas, making it easier to map in places where lots of different types of landuse areas are required
- Faster loading of Mapzen will let you quickly start mapping sessions and swap between the “View” and “Edit” modes
- Ending line or shape features can be tricky in Mapzen – especially when you want to end a line that you’ve just added a point to. Keyboard controls in the next version of Mapzen will make it easy to end line and shape drawing.
- Some Mac users have experienced problems with the scroll to zoom functions in Mapzen, especially when using an Apple Magic Mouse or MacBook or MacBook Pro touchpad. These problems will be fixed in the next release of Mapzen
If you can’t wait to try out Mapzen Beta Belz you can join the Mapzen Community Panel to have the chance to try out the latest features before they hit the web. Community Panel members get access to unreleased features and give feedback that makes Mapzen better for everyone.
Waiting for a feature that we haven’t talked about?
If you didn’t see the feature you want in the list for Mapzen Beta Belz, don’t worry. The features listed below are planned for the April release of Mapzen. We’d love to hear what you think about them. To provide feedback, comment on this post or send a mail to mapzen@cloudmade.com or check out the Mapzen forums.
- Merging lines is a top requested feature that will appear in the April release of Mapzen
- The presets panel is starting to get a bit crowded with all of the line, point and shape types that can be added. A handy search feature will make finding the right object easy
- Hint strings will help new Mapzen users get started quickly and help existing users get more out of Mapzen
- Mapzen can be slow sometimes – but don’t worry – we’ve got a few tricks up our sleeves that will make mapping a lot faster
Tell us what you think
The Mapzen team want to know what you like and what you don’t like about Mapzen. There are loads of ways to get in touch with us:
- Leave a post in the Mapzen forums
- Report a bug on the Mapzen issue tracker
- Send us a mail to mapzen@cloudmade.com
- Get in touch with Nick, Yuliya or Anton through Mapzen
February 20th, 2010 - Posted by Nick Black in cartography, cloudmade, mapzen, news, openstreetmap | | 1 Comments
on February 24th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
Any plans for an Android-version? PLEASE!