Product Blog - Two New pre-Alpha APIs from CloudMade

Last week we took the covers off our new CloudMade website - if you haven’t had a look already, head over to CloudMade.com and see for yourself.

We also released two new APIs as pre-Alpha services: theWeb Maps API and the Mobile Maps API. Right now these services are targeted at developers who want to get their hands on the very latest things we have to offer. Both APIs are accessed by directly calling our tile server, though the observant amongst you will probably have noticed slippy maps present on lots of our pages. We’ll be releasing documentation for the slippy map API shortly, so watch this space.

We’re particularly excited about the Mobile Maps API, which gives developers access to a set of tiles which we’ve started to optimize for mobile use. By reducing the tile size to 64×64 pixels (rather than the usual 256×256) and simplifying the cartography we’re keeping tile sizes down to around 2-3kB. This is a first pass and we hope to get the sizes down even more to help mobile applications save on costly bandwidth and enhance user experience.

Because both these services are built on top of OpenStreetMap data you can use them in almost any way you like. Most other online map providers don’t let you use their maps in mobile devices or for real time routing or tracking or outside of their own APIs, for example. We want you to use CloudMade maps for the coolest things you can think of.

If you are itching to play with either the Web or Mobile Maps API, you can request an API key here - I can’t promise that you’ll get access straight away, but we will get back to you as soon as the API is ready. We’ve also got a developers mailing list which you can sign up to here.

Both images based on map data created by OpenStreetMap.org contributors and licensed CCBYSA.

June 4th, 2008 - Posted in api, cloudmade, geodata, news, products, tools | | 0 Comments

Update From CloudMade

Its been busy times here at CloudMade. Since I last posted two months ago we’ve been hiring, finding new offices and of course we’ve all found time to go mapping. Here’s a quick update.

New Offices

We’re leaving the leafy Putney suburbs in search of bigger offices. We move into our new offices at the beginning of June - we’ll be having a moving in party at a local pub. Stay posted for details.

We also now have offices in Menlo Park (CA) and in Kyiv.

New to Team

We’ve had a lot of new people join us over the last two months. First to join our London engineering team was Andy Allan, followed by Shaun McDonald, and most recently Matt Amos. Our Kyiv engineering team is bursting from the seams (click through for names):

Engineering is being headed up by Jim Brown. Our Menlo Park office is home to our new Chairman Juha Christensen and our interim VP Products, Christian Petersen, with more to come soon.

CloudMade Mapping Parties

Through our OSM Grants scheme we’ve been sponsoring a few mapping parties. There’s the London Mapping Marathon - a series of mapping events held throughout London over the summer, being run by Shaun with the aim of finishing off the various bits and pieces that still need to be mapped in London. We’ve also been involved with mapping parties in Sutton and San Francisco. There are definitely more mapping parties to come over the summer.

Hiring

Update We’ve filled all of our internship positions for this year. Keep an eye on this blog for more info about future positions.

We’re still looking for more people to join us in London, including full time and intern positions in the Product Management team, intern positions in Engineering and a full time office manager. Take a look at the careers page for more details.

May 27th, 2008 - Posted in Jobs, cloudmade, news, openstreetmap | | 0 Comments

We’re funded!

We’re super excited to welcome Sunstone Capital as our first round €2.4 million investors in to Cloud Made. Sunstone join Nikolaj Nyholm and Morton Lund as private seed investors:

CloudMade, a key pioneer in the emerging collaborative mapping space, announced today that the company has secured a €2.4 million first round of financing from Copenhagen-based venture fund Sunstone Capital, who joins the founders as well as existing private stakeholders and serial entrepreneurs, open source evangelist Nikolaj Nyholm and early Skype investor Morten Lund. CloudMade is a mapping company created to professionalise and package geo data from OpenStreetMap (www.openstreetmap.org), a global initiative to create a free, editable map of the world from user-generated input. Read the full press release

March 17th, 2008 - Posted in cloudmade, news | | 8 Comments