Free Geography Tools

Curing Garmin Blue Flag Waypoint Disease

Leszek Pawlowicz — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:49:59 +0000

I’ve been asked this question twice already, which is good enough for me to write a post about it. If you use any of the color Garmin eTrex or GPSMap series, you’ll quickly discover that the default waypoint symbol, a blue flag, is pretty useless. It takes up a huge amount of screen space, and [...]

Convert From AutoCad Format To KML And Vice Versa With KML Tools Pro

Leszek Pawlowicz — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:55:43 +0000

I don’t have AutoCad, so I can’t try this out, but KML Tools Pro has AutoCad DVB macros that let you select features in AutoCad and convert them to Google Earth’s KML format; similarly, another macro will let you import a KML file into AutoCAD. From the website: From AutoCad to Google Earth: select objects and create [...]

Limited Posting For The Next Few Weeks?

Leszek Pawlowicz — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:20:35 +0000

I’ve been trying to maintain a posting frequency of 3-4 times a week, but work demands and the upcoming holiday weekend may make that difficult over the next four weeks or so. I have some posts already written and scheduled for this week and next, but after that is a question mark. Posting should resume [...]

Map Maker Gratis: Free Map Editor

Leszek Pawlowicz — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:58:04 +0000

Map Maker Gratis is the free version of the professional $400 GIS and map editor Map Maker Pro. I’ve been meaning to try it out for a while, since even the free version has a very strong feature set. From the website: Unlimited number of layers, raster and vector. Colour, mono, and grey-scale bitmap backgrounds. Large range of [...]

Disaster Response Map Symbols

Leszek Pawlowicz — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:25:47 +0000

The Portuguese chapter of the Association Of Volunteer Emergency Response Teams, in collaboration with Peter Guth and Donald Springer, is working to create a general-purpose set of symbols useful in mapping the position and condition of infrastructure, resources and incidents during emergency situations. You can download these Disaster Response Map Symbols as a True Type [...]

Automating Your Garmin Oregon Photo Geotagging Flow Using GeoHarvest

Leszek Pawlowicz — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:18:04 +0000

There are a number of stand-alone Windows apps and web apps that led you geotag photos by matching the time they were taken with points on a GPS track (see the geotagging category of this blog for examples). But all of them require you to start up the program, load in the photos, load in [...]

New Book (And Poster) On GIS Cartographic Design

Leszek Pawlowicz — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:41:53 +0000

Directions Magazine has a highly positive review of the new book GIS Cartography: A Guide to Effective Map Design by Gretchen Peterson. A bit expensive at around $80, but the review also links to a free printable poster that summarizes the “Five Layers Of Effective Map Design”, which is worth a look in any case. [...]

LandSerf – Google Earth And GPS Functions

Leszek Pawlowicz — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:42:25 +0000

In previous posts, I reviewed LandSerf’s raster terrain analysis functions and vector functions. Today I’ll wrap up with a short review of LandSerf’s Google Earth and GPS functions. Google Earth: The most notable Google Earth functionality is the ability to export vector data, either imported or generated by the program, into KML vector files. So I [...]

Online Google Earth Path Length Measurement

Leszek Pawlowicz — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:31:44 +0000

One oddity of Google Earth is that while you can measure distances, and also draw paths, there’s no direct way to determine the length of a path you’ve drawn. I’ve previously covered several applications that will take a KML path file and determine its total length; all of the require that the path file be [...]

A Look At The New USGS Quad Format

Leszek Pawlowicz — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:13:42 +0000

Via the All Directions Blog comes word that the first “beta” versions of the new digital USGS 7.5-minute quad maps are now available at the USGS Map Store; click on the yellow button that says “Show DigMaps-Beta” to display their positions in the Google Maps interface. Before you get too excited, you should note: Only maps [...]