The Qld Government recently released the Qld ‘Globe’.  It’s a way that the Queensland public can access their mapping data.

When this was released we wanted to quickly add some functionality to the planXchange service.  Surveyors have been using Google Earth for a long time and this would enhance their experience.  Unfortunately, what should have been a few minutes work to extend the KML has proven to be impossible (currently).  KML is an open standard that has some Google extensions. Unfortunately the current implementations extend KML in an undocumented way. I reached out to…

Last week I was fortunate to present at the SSSI Qld Northern Surveyors Group conference. The dinner speaker was Andy Froggatt  who is not from the Surveying industry but from the Health industry. He gave a fantastic presentation on depression in the workplace. It was really challenging to listen to as there wasn’t a single person in the room who didn’t resonate with one of his many statistics or stories.

My first small step towards change is getting involved for the first time in Movember. Raising money and more importantly awareness of Men’s health issues. For more information…

I love seeing new ways of displaying location. Yesterday I visited a local menswear shop, Apartment in Brisbane. They had recently moved and had a “we’ve moved” card. Here is the map they provided showing their new address. Great design from Zero Hour & Co

The proliferation of websites using Google Maps on their “contact us” page means we don’t get more innovation on location display like this from Graphic Designers.

With the release of Version 5 of Google Maps on Android the processing has moved away from web servers and onto mobile devices by becoming a vector application. Up until this release, all versions of Google Maps, on phones or desktops, were based on the client requesting raster tiles from the server whenever you zoomed or panned across the map. This article takes a detailed look at these features from a Digital Cartography perspective. It is also interesting for people who are looking at the benefits of getting devices to do more of the heavy lifting.

Map Tiles are created…