Archive for February, 2009

Now we’re cooking! MgCooker for MapGuide Tile Seeding

Posted by Jason Birch in MapGuide, OSGeo, Open Source, Utilities on February 19, 2009

The latest preview release of MapGuide Maestro (r3620 currently) comes with a nice little surprise:  a tool for pre-seeding tile caches.  MgCooker can be run from the command line (more on this later), or through the Maestro GUI.  It couldn’t be simpler.  Open up a Map Definition that has a Base Layer Group, highlight the group that you want to cook, and click on the MgCooker icon:

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In the following dialog, either leave the default of all checked, or choose to only pre-render certain zoom levels of your data, the choice is yours (probably best to start with the smallest scale – in this case 100,000):

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Then click "Build tiles now" and sit back and watch the tiles cook:

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Of course, this isn’t practical for a production environment where you would want to batch this operation.  That’s where the second option comes in; clicking on "Save as script" generates a Windows batch file similar to the following that you can script to your heart’s desire:

"C:Program FilesOSGeoMapGuide MaestroMgCookerCommandline.exe" batch
   --mapdefinitions="Library://Samples/Sheboygan/MapsTiled/Sheboygan.MapDefinition"
   --basegroups="Base Layer Group"
   --scaleindex=7
   --mapagent="http://localhost:8008/mapguide/mapagent/mapagent.fcgi"

I have no idea if the MgCookerCommandLine.exe works under Mono, but given that the rest of Maestro seems to work fairly well there I would not be surprised.

Great job Kenneth; this is something we have been sorely missing since MapGuide 1.2, and it’s great to see it as part of Maestro!

-J

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1 Comment

Dear Google Maps,

Posted by Jason Birch in Google, KML on February 19, 2009

I love you.  You have disrupted me for the last four years, changing my life forever.

I feel that you must return my feelings.  After all, you indexed the entire KML collection of my city’s RESTful property database.

Google Maps search for maps.nanaimo.ca

You seem shy to admit your love.  No matter how hard people look, you won’t reveal our secret.  Instead, you show a cold public face of centreline geocoding and pretty pictures.

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Please Google Maps, won’t you shout our love from the rooftops, exposing our deep data relationship to the world?

Yours Unrequited…

-J

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4 Comments

Google Latitude is cool, but…

Posted by Jason Birch in Google on February 4, 2009

Like any good fanboi, I have to post about this, but a few questions immediately come to mind:

  • How long until I start getting micro-targeted advertising? When I do, will these be phone-only, or will my location be used to target advertising on all Google services when I’m logged in?
  • Where’s the API or the ability to update external services? Having more than one app fight over my GPS makes it go nuts. I want to be able to update my Twitter location, Fire Eagle, and more, from a single app.
  • It’s missing history and export functions. Can’t even get my location as a KML? For added bonus, allow me to expose a network link of my current location
  • Um, I can haz blog gadgit?

-J

2 Comments