The Map Room

Eddie Jabbour’s KickMap — an imaginative redesign of the New York subway map that tries to address the confusing and complex network of express and local lines — first came to my attention in 2007. Since then, the KickMap has migrated to the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad platform, and is available in free and paid ($2.99) versions, the latter coming in separate iPhone and iPad variants. All told, more than a quarter million people, Jabbour says, have downloaded a KickMap app.

In a must-read post on O’Reilly Radar, Jabbour describes what went into the design of the KickMap — the inspirations, the constraints, the trade offs, the multiple iterations that got him to his final version.

Because KickMap comes in an iPad version, I downloaded it to have a look for myself. There is no question that this is a map originally designed for print — static and not interactive — that has been adapted for mobile devices, rather than an interactive map application that has been designed from the ground up. But the app, at least the paid version, is a lot more than an image viewer with multitouch gestures.

1. The main differentiation between the free and paid KickMaps is that the paid version includes a map of the limited late-night/early-morning service. This can be toggled with a button or can be set to automatically show the appropriate map based on the time.
2. Another button reveals service alerts.
3. A third button provides a close-up of the map legend explaining the different classes of station stops. Incredibly handy: how many times when zooming in to a scanned map have I had to pan like mad over to the legend to figure out what I was seeing, then try to find what I was looking for?
4. There is a locate button that pops open a Google Maps interface showing you the distance from your location to a given subway stop (on the iPad this map is resizeable). Since I’m about 350 miles from the New York subway my ability to test this feature is somewhat limited.

In other words, there is considerable effort here to use the iOS interface to create a useful navigation tool that goes beyond the original static map. How effective it is I will have to leave to New Yorkers to determine, but a quarter million downloads suggests that quite a few of them have already voted. From my standpoint (for what that’s worth), the map’s innovative design and the additional features make it worth the $2.99 purchase price.

Previously: Eddie Jabbour’s New York Subway Map; Mark Ovenden: The French (Re-)Connection.

AllSubway HD is an iPad app that collects more than 100 subway and mass transit maps from cities around the world. That’s about all that can be said about it: it’s essentially an image viewer, with no other features, and the maps are the official ones from the various transit agencies, which are available elsewhere. No information is provided about transit services. There isn’t even a full-screen mode in landscape. Calling it Spartan would be an understatement. There is not much here, in other words, to appeal either to mass transit enthusiasts or to world travellers; at 85.7 megabytes and 99 cents, it’s not worth the storage space or the dollar.

GeoMaps is a free mapping application for the iPad that differentiates itself from the included Google Maps application by providing maps from both OpenStreetMap and Microsoft Bing Maps (including several OSM layers and Bing’s satellite imagery). It also allows downloading maps for offline usage (though I was unable to test this). In addition, it also has the features you would expect from a basic mapping app for the iOS, including bookmarks, search, and a location button.

Having said that, this app is hampered by its user interface, which needs more refinement. Map tiles — both OSM and Bing — load far more slowly than the default Maps app’s default layer (which, by the way, is crazy-fast). Tile loads can’t keep up with me as I drag the map around with my finger. Pinch zooming is far too sensitive, bringing you all the way in or out in a single gesture, and there are plus and minus buttons for zooming on the right and left sides of the screen, which strikes me as a kludge. All of this results in an unresponsive, sluggish map that can’t be used quickly.

The toolbar needs work as well: the bookmark button is too close to the button for adding a bookmark, and an icon used in other apps for sending something outside the app (opening in a browser, sending to a service) is used both for switching maps and downloading maps for offline use:

As someone who edits OpenStreetMap a lot, I’d also like to see a way to refresh map tiles; at the moment I can’t see a straightforward way of doing so. I’m also looking forward to seeing the app’s support page forward to something other than the home page of the developer, Dirk Stichling, which makes no reference to GeoMaps.

I’m calling this one a work in progress, and look forward to an updated version.

In my review of National Geographic’s World Atlas app for the iPhone and iPod touch, I said: “It’s also rather limiting to look at a large map on an iPhone’s rather small screen; these maps beg for a larger screen. As such, I’d have no hesitation grabbing the iPad version of this app, which also costs $1.99.” Now that I have an iPad and have grabbed the iPad version of that app, I’m happy to report that yes, National Geographic’s maps do benefit from the extra screen real estate.

We are, after all, dealing with digital versions of wall maps: other things being equal (like pixel density), a larger screen will always be better. On the iPad, you have a far better balance between detail and context: that is to say, you can see the map’s detail without having to sacrifice a view of the surrounding areas. For example, if I look at Ethiopia on the lowest zoom for the regional maps, on the iPod touch I see very little else: Eritrea and Djibouti, and bits of Somalia/Somaliland, Yemen and northern Kenya. On the iPad, I see most of eastern Africa and the southern Arabian peninsula, from Darfur to Oman, and from Cairo to the Seychelles.

The included Bing Maps viewer also benefits from the extra screen real estate. (It’s safe to say that every iPad map viewer will look better than its iPhone/iPod touch counterpart.) Like the iPhone app, it’s GPS-enabled, and it works. (Most iPad map apps I’ve run across have a GPS location button, and they all work: if they don’t, then there’s something seriously wrong with the app’s georeferencing or it’s a system-wide problem.)

The Nations feature, providing data on every country and territory on the planet, is now a pull-down menu; choosing a country highlights it on the map. It’s a nice iPad-specific touch, but the map doesn’t change its zoom, which is problematic if you’re zoomed too far in and look up a large country or vice versa.

Previously: Review: National Geographic World Atlas.

National Geographic World Atlas is a $1.99 application for the iPhone and iPod touch (iTunes link) that provides high-resolution scans of National Geographic’s wall maps. Included are standard, executive and satellite versions of National Geographic’s world map in the Winkel Tripel projection. This makes for a rather large download (49.7 MB) for an iPhone app. Zooming in changes the view to the appropriate continental map. Map tiles for the continental maps are downloaded over the network, but the entire maps can be downloaded for offline use.

At higher zooms, the app switches over to Bing Maps, which makes this app a Bing Maps viewer as well. (See the announcement on the Big Maps Blog.) The Bing Maps feature works well, and is an interesting combination that plays to each kind of map’s strengths: online maps do not necessarily do large scales very well, and there’s only so much you can zoom in on a print map. (Of course, it requires a network connection.)

The app is also GPS-aware, but I was unable to test that on my first-generation iPod touch. Rounding out the app is a database that provides flags and other basic geographic details for every country and territory on the planet.

Early versions of this app were not as stable as I would have liked, and I still get a crash now and then. The initial version I downloaded in January had an interesting tile bug (right) that has not reappeared after subsequent upgrades.

Its price point is kind of awkward: an app dedicated to presenting more, or even all, of National Geographic’s maps would almost certainly cost more but would be awesome — I’m big a fan of their cartography. At $1.99, though, it has to offer more than a free app. I think the price is reasonable for what you get, but I’m not jumping-up-and-down excited — it’s fair value.

It’s also rather limiting to look at a large map on an iPhone’s rather small screen; these maps beg for a larger screen. As such, I’d have no hesitation grabbing the iPad version of this app, which also costs $1.99. If I had an iPad, that is (in Canada: have to wait).

Introduction For several years, I’ve been keeping half an eye on the GPS logger category — these are GPS receivers that record geographical coordinates that can later be applied to digital photos. But I never got around to trying one,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Maperture is a free geotagging plugin for Aperture, Apple’s pro-level photo management application. It allows you to click on a map (Maperture uses Google Maps) to assign geographical coordinates to your photos. Maperture worked as advertised on two batches of…  •  Continue reading this entry.