Even more on maps

My last two posts were about a map website that allows users to publish their data on thematic
maps. The website was www.up2maps.net. I would like to throw in a few more details on this
interesting web tool. This site was created by Mapgenia, a company headquartered in Barcelona, Spain. Mapgenia believes that software products like this map website will become the main trend in the software industry. They refer to what they call SaaS or "Software as a Service", which basically means that all software in the future will be subscribed to in by the users and accessed through their web browsers, thereby eliminating the physical production and distribution of the software. You can already see this trend in action through a variety of software companies but Mapgenia believes it is only a matter of time before all physical software disappears.

The map website version currently available is a beta version so the company is still adding features and capabilities to it. There are a couple of different ways to add your data to the your map. First, you can simply fill in the values for the various Continents/States/Provinces. Second, if you already have your data in an excel sheet with the proper labels you can simply upload it and the map will be filled out for you. If you need specific directions on doing that there is a tutorial on the website with step-by-step instructions. The other way of filling out your map is through colors. By selecting and labeling the various colors you can paint your map to represent your data. For instance, countries with population growth rates above 1.00 are red, below 1.00 yellow, and those with a negative growth rate green, the combinations are endless depending on your data and how you decide to categorize it.

Another interesting feature is that you are able to combine maps and the various reports to create a super map. If you have created a map, you just need to find another map on the same scale (such as global, continental, by state etc...) you can then choose the option of merging a report from another map onto your map. This is a great way to quickly and easily add a lot of information onto your map. Just be sure to check the sources of the other map to make sure your data is accurate. I should also mention that you can create an unlimited number of reports for each map you create. The different reports will be included on the sidebar and to swithch back and forth between them all you have to do is click. The only thing stopping you from only ever making one map is the fact that once you choose the scale of the map to make a report for, you cannot make other reports on different scales. For example, if you start making a global scale map, all the reports on this map must be on the global scale, you cannot switch to continental or state level scales to add reports at those levels.

Other interesting features include being able to format the font and style of the various labels on the map. It also gives you the option to choose different symbols for your territory weight values such as $,%, €, depending on the type of value you want to add to the areas. There is also a treemap which allows you to view your data in another visual configuration once your done filling it out. You can switch back and forth between the treemap and the normal map easily and quickly.

There seems to be quite a few maps already created although I am not sure exaclty how popular the site is. But new maps are appearing quite frequently so I think that there has to be a moderately large number of people using it. The last upgrade added by Mapgenia was in March 2009 and before that it was about 4-5 times a month, so they seem to be pretty active in developing content for it. For students and others needing to create or find reports on global, state, and provincial statitics this is a pretty handy tool to have. I would highly reccomend using it at least once, if only to explore the interesting and informative maps other users have already created.