New geocoding engine delivers results up to 24 times faster
While no one was watching, we deployed the latest version of our geocoding engine. The key objective for this release has been performance and stability, and I am sure it is immediately noticeable. Benchmarking based on actual user queries have shown that it is up to 24 times faster than the previous implementation for certain classes of requests. Even for simple, one-word queries, it is up to three times faster.
Along with the new engine, we are introducing new Geocoding API V2. In an effort to simplify usage, we have reduced the number of methods from eleven to only one, without sacrificing a single bit of its flexibility. Take a look here to read about the new (easy) query syntax. The old API? It, too, uses the new engine to deliver faster results, but we do encourage everyone to switch to the new API as soon as you have a chance to.
In the meantime, we are already working on the next release. The main focus will be relevancy and better parsing of freeform queries. Stay tuned!
October 8th, 2009 - Posted by in api, cloudmade, iPhone, tools | | 2 Comments
Your Future is Customized – State of the Map Presentation from CloudMade
In July this year, 250 of the leading lights in community mapping and geo application development gathered in Amsterdam for the annual OpenStreetMap Foundation conference The State of the Map. Video and audio recordings form the three day conference are being processed one by one by a dedicated team of volunteers who recently published the video of Nick Black’s talk: “Your Future is Customized”.
The talk asks why most current users of geodata experience maps through one of two ways: in car sat navs, or online mapping portals and looks towards a future of app stores, specialized map data and geo applications that match the exact needs of consumers.
Enable your applications with CloudMade – Nick Black (CloudMade) from State of the Map 2009 on Vimeo.
Follow along with the slides from the presentation:
August 28th, 2009 - Posted by in api, cloudmade, developers, geodata, openstreetmap, products, tools | | 1 Comments
CloudMade partners release new mobile libraries
Great news!
Our trusted partners CartoType and Nutiteq have created new mobile & desktop libraries, which you can check out here. These new libraries support the latest CloudMade mapping services including raster and vector maps:
Raster Libraries
- Java Micro Edition J2ME (updated)
- Blackberry (new)
- Android (new)
Vector Libraries
- Windows Mobile (new)
- Symbian (new)
- Windows Desktop (new)
Nutiteq have long been a trusted CloudMade partner providing mobile libraries. They have now added CloudMade support for two leading mobile platforms - Blackberry and Android. Blackberry commands a high worldwide market share for smart phones and is the leading platform for email and enterprise. Google’s Android has set a new bar for open source mobile OSes, and we expect a number of new handsets to come to market during the remainder of this year. Both libraries give access to a full range of CloudMade services including custom image tiles, geosearch and routing.
CartoType have been experimenting with CloudMade’s alpha Vector Server which can stream map data to any connected device where it can be rendered on the fly. Per Nick’s previous post, there are a lot of new features planned for CloudMade’s vector server – including multiple outputs formats (XML, JSON, OSM) and a fully featured API that will let you select which parts of the map data are returned to the client. CartoType have been gracious in releasing their libraries to our developer community at an early stage.
We’re excited to hear feedback from our developer community on these new libraries. We’d like to thank CartoType and Nutiteq for their support!
July 29th, 2009 - Posted by Cragg Nilson in clients, cloudmade, developers, tools | | 1 Comments
Mapzen: An easy to use editor for OpenStreetMap
At the recent State of the Map conference we unveiled our plans for an OpenStreetMap editor: Mapzen. Mapzen is a web based map editing tool that will make it far easier for new-commers to OpenStreetMap to get started editing and creating maps. Lets take a look at some of Mapzen’s features:
In Application Tutorials
No one likes searching wikis and web pages to learn how to use a tool. With Mapzen, you learn as you map. In application tutorials teach you to map, step by step.
Graphical Menus
Many new mappers are confused by the large number of different road, track and point of interest types. Mapzen has an intuitive graphical menu, letting you pick out different features to add to the map.
Context Sensitive Menus
After choosing which object you want to add to the map, the next hurdle is knowing which attributes to add. Mapzen’s context sensitive menu prompts you to add only the attributes that are needed for a particular object.
Specialized Junction Editing
Modeling complex junctions, with one-ways and turn restrictions can be difficult, with so many tags and relations to keep track of. Mapzen gives mappers a graphical interface that makes modeling junctions quick and fun.
Find Out More
Mapzen is currently under active development. We’re going to be carrying out user testing over the summer – if you’d like to take part, please mail mapzen@cloudmade.com.
Mapzen is open source (GPLv2) – if you are a developer, you can get hold of the source from here (right click in the window).
If you have any feature requests, or would like any more information, please send us a mail.
July 22nd, 2009 - Posted by Nick Black in openstreetmap, products, tools | | 15 Comments
CloudMade releases Style Editor 1.1
Great news for Style Editor users: we’ve launched an updated version of Style Editor (v1.1) that makes discovering, sharing and creating new map styles even easier!
Style Editor is CloudMade’s online cartography tool for creating customized map styles. Application developers can use Style Editor to quickly create their own map styles that give applications a unique look & feel. Style Editor gives you complete control over which objects are displayed on the map, and how they will appear on your map at each zoom level. Developers use CloudMade’s Style Editor to design customized maps built for a particular use. For example, if you were building a cycling application that helps users get from point A to point B by bicycle, you’d want to highlight the cycle paths and roads better suited for cyclists while de-emphasising main roads and motorways.
Style Editor now has a style gallery for discovering new map styles
The most important improvements in Style Editor 1.1 is the addition of the style gallery. Style gallery will allow you to quickly discover public map styles created by CloudMade and our community. Style Editor also allows for private styles available only to the author, which you can view by pressing the My Styles tab on the Style Editor toolbar. By default the map styles are sorted by popularity. You may also chose to look for CloudMade styles which were created by professional cartographers including some by Stamen Design by clicking on the CloudMade tab. Or you can browse the featured styles (Featured tab) which showcase a mix of CloudMade and community styles that our cartographers deem fantanstic!
The Style Editor tool bar allows for quick discovery of public maps styles for editing or direct use
Another cool new feature in style gallery is the ability to sort map styles based on color. To the top of the Style Editor toolbar is a Color Filter control. This control will filter map styles in the gallery based on where you drag the Color Filter bar. The default setting on the far left shows all colors. By dragging the Color Bar towards the right, you can select only the map styles with a particular shade of yellow, for example. In this way you can find map styles that suit the look and feel of your website or application. Don’t forget to reset the Color Bar back to the far left when your done so that you can see all the styles again.
Each map style in the style gallery shows the style name, author and style ID. The style ID comes in handy when coding with CloudMade’s API libraries. You can quickly change the Style ID and see a completely different map in your app! The search bar in the far right of the tool bar allows for style searches based on style name, author or style ID.
The last new feature we wanted to talk about is the Style RSS feed. You can now subscribe to all new style updates via RSS. This is a super easy way to get all the latest updates to Style Gallery via RSS. You can subscribe here.
- Style Editor is open to the public and available to use as a free service here. So go ahead and start creating your own new map styles and publish them to Style Gallery so the world can see and use them!
Style Editor Team @CloudMade
Creating new map styles is simple with CloudMade's Style Editor
July 16th, 2009 - Posted by Cragg Nilson in cartography, cloudmade, developers, maps, openstreetmap, style editor, tips, tools | | 1 Comments
iPhone Developer VIP Party – June 10th 9.30pm San Francisco
Tonight CloudMade is excited to sponsor the iPhone Developer VIP Party at Swig bar in San Francisco. Doors open at 9.30 and we expect a full house!
CloudMade has been active at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference this week, engaging with iPhone developers who are creating the next great mapping and location-aware applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Tonight we’re looking forward to talking with many of you one-on-one to discuss your vision on the future of location-aware apps. We also want to find out what features you’d like to see on the iPhone, web and other mobile platforms. Over a Maptini, of course!
Starting with our rich, crowd-sourced maps, CloudMade gives iPhone developers an easier way to build more immersive mapping applications than Apple’s MapKit. Developers will find our suite of iPhone supported Libraries gives you easy access to CloudMade services while supporting a number of unique features like vector data and MapSafe location management service. CloudMade’s non-restrictive licensing even allows for advanced services such as routing, geocoding or tracking functionality – without having to call a lawyer or break the bank.
So if you’re a developer looking for better ways to incorporate maps and location into your app, sign up for a API key at CloudMade’s Developer Zone and get started today. Adding customized CloudMade maps will delight your users and make your app stand-out from the crowd!
For mapping success on the iPhone and iPod Touch, just add:
- Crowd-Sourced Maps
- CloudMade Geo APIs
- Your Cool Application
June 10th, 2009 - Posted by Cragg Nilson in Uncategorized, api, cloudmade, developers, events, maps, openstreetmap, tools | | 1 Comments
Three New Style Editor Basemaps
Nick blogged previously regarding three of our signature map styles – “Pale Dawn“, “Midnight Commander” and “Fresh” – that we launched along with our Developer Programme last month. Today we’re pleased to announce that all three styles are now available for customization in our Style Editor.
Our Style Editor lets you tweak, change and configure the cartography of our maps to suit your needs. Perhaps you, as I do, love the Pale Dawn style as originally created by Stamen Design, but want to see if it looks better with a bit more emphasis on parks and public transport? So I fired up the Style Editor, and a few clicks later had this attempt – “Fair Sunrise”:
We’re always interested in what creative things you can make with our tools, so if you’ve made a style that you’re proud of please share a link in our comments. I’ll let you decide for yourself whether you think “Fair Sunrise” is an improvement!
March 26th, 2009 - Posted by Andy Allan in api, cloudmade, developers, products, tools | | 2 Comments
Where’s interesting?
Visualising geographic statistics usually means drawing a coloured map (called a choropleth), but this can be confusing as the human brain tends to associate importance with the area covered. For example, first impressions of the choropleth for the U.S. presidential elections would give the misleading impression that the Republicans won, as 56% of the map pixels are red. However, there is a different style of maps (called cartograms) in which the map is warped such that the area is proportional to the data being visualised.
We can use cartograms of OpenStreetMap data to present a more visually striking and interesting view of the world. For example, here is a cartogram of the distribution of Points of Interest (POIs). It is immediately obvious that most of the POIs in the world are either in the United Kingdom or Germany, but there are other interesting POI-rich pockets; the Philippines, Brasil, South Africa and Eastern Australia. Many thanks to all the contributors in these areas for their fantastic work!
November 7th, 2008 - Posted by Matt Amos in openstreetmap, tips, tools | | 4 Comments
Developer Watch – CloudMade Maps in your API
There are a lot of mapping APIs out there giving developers a lot of choice. Some are simple and lightweight, like our Web Maps Lite and some are incredibly fully featured, like the awesome OpenLayers. The image below is a screenshot from John McKerrell’s maps page, which uses MultiMap’s Open API to display several different layers, including our standard web, mobile and no-names layers. Click on the image below to take a look for yourself.
Its great to see developers like John mixing and matching layers like this – its exactly what we had in mind when we started to put together our tile server. We want to help OpenStreetMap’s goal of letting people do interesting and unexpected things with map data. So long as you respect the terms of OpenStreetMap’s CC-by-SA license and attribute CloudMade when you use our maps, you can use our tiles in any web, mobile or desktop client.
If you do something cool with CloudMade maps, let us know.
August 5th, 2008 - Posted by Nick Black in api, cloudmade, openstreetmap, tools | | 0 Comments
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 by Nick Black in api, cloudmade, geodata, news, products, tools | | 0 Comments
