ResearchBuzz

“NOT FOR NAVIGATIONAL USE” the site says in very large red letters. Also in red: “Facsimile prints and reprints of these historical maps and charts are NOT available.” Um, okay. If you can get past that, you can search a database of over 21,000 digitized maps and charts from 1747 to 2001. It’s available at http://historicalcharts.noaa.gov/historicals/historical_zoom.asp.

You can search by keyword, by state or region (these maps are international), type (from aeronautical chart to topographic index), year, or chart number. I did a search for maps in Maryland and got 813 results. Results come in a table and I can’t tell how they’re sorted. It does appear that all the results show on a single page, which is handy when you’re trying to find the oldest map, but it does mean you might have to wait a few minutes for it to load.

I finally settled on a State of Maryland nautical chart from 1840. The search results show the region that the map covers (in this case, MD-VA-DC-DE) and offer a preview link for the map. Click that and you’ll get a Flash-based Zoomify map that lets you zoom in and out, drag it around, etc. If you want to download the map you can get a SID version or a JPG. The downloads were free and didn’t require any registration.

If you’d like to explore these maps but can’t think of any queries, I suggest browsing the map types. There are 29 Civil War maps (including several troop movement maps), one “sketch” map, a couple of pocket maps, etc. Alas, there are not yet any City Plans marked as such in the database, and a couple of the other map types are empty too.

Google recently announced a new version of its Google Maps API, called the Static Maps API. Its Web site is at http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/staticmaps/index.html . Unlike the regular Google Maps API, the Static Maps API doesn’t require JavaScript, and its parameters are passed through a URL. You WILL need an API key for it to work.

There are several parameters you specify with the URL, including basic stuff like the size of the map, where it should be centered (longitude and latitude), and how close it should be zoomed. You can also add little markers to it. I’m including a sample map below of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

The URL looks like this:

http://maps.google.com/staticmap?center=41.637497,-70.923529&zoom=12&size=512×256
&maptype=roadmap&markers=41.637497,-70.923529,bluem&key={my key goes here)

From left to right, the parameters are where the maps centers, how close it’s zoomed, the size, what kind of map it is, where the one marker is placed, along with what color and what letter, and the API key.

Then all you have to do is take that URL and put it into an img src:

This API makes it really, really, really simple to create maps for your Web site for just off the cuff. Of course, it doesn’t have the flexibility or the functionality of a map created by the JavaScript API, but it’s very quick. I am morosely remembering little projects I did that took ages with the regular API that I would have knocked off very quickly with this one….

Confessions of a Digital Packrat had a brief note about a new resource launched called EveryBlock. I went and took a look at it, and it IS pretty impressive — though I’m very jealous that it’s currently only available in three areas. EveryBlock ( http://www.everyblock.com/ ) currently only covers New York City, San Francisco, and Chicago.

Basically what EveryBlock does is take public records and other notations of what’s going on in an area and aggregate them. This is brilliant. It’s like information trapping for an address. For example take a look at the New York City version.

You can browse the information types or the various areas of a city, or you can do an address search. I did a search for 55 East 74th Street , because you know the Eleanor Roosevelt Mansion is up for sale, and I might have $20 million in my sofa cushions. Not.

Anyway, when I ran a search for that address I got I long list of things going on in the area, including Geocoded Flickr photos, restaurant inspections, building violations, and more. The news for the area is listed by date, not by type, but you can get a full list of categories on the left nav including lost and found, crime reports, and business reviews. An impressive amount of information here! (For which there are e-mail and RSS feed updates available.) Clicking on an item usually takes you to a brief description of the item, and a link to a more extensive offsite entry.

The photos were an exception — Flickr photos were reproduced on the site. Unfortunately, there’s no context for the photos. For the address I checked, there were several photos of artwork, but very little additional information. There are GPS coordinates but it would be nice to have a way to convert them on the fly — maybe the handy converter at http://boulter.com/gps/?

I had only two big concerns about the site. The first is the map of incident data. I had a hard time telling where things were in relation to “home base” - that is, the address for which I was searching. The second is that NYC is a very, very busy place. I would love to see the ability for coverage to be constrained in some specified way — for example, everything within a two block radius, or a five block radius.

I’m looking forward to seeing this for other cities!