Open Maps? 278
Chilltowner asks: "I'm trying to get local (US) maps together for a community project. I want to able to modify and annotate the maps and provide them free to the public, creating a derivative open work. They also need to be accurate down to the street level and no more than 10 years out of date. I've been searching around for maps available in the public domain or under open licenses, like the Creative Commons licenses allowing derivative works. I've looked at the National Atlas, but the maps, though interesting, aren't detailed enough with street information. The topographical and aerial image maps available through that site are from Terraserver, which are copyrighted to Microsoft. Plus, I really just need simple vector road maps, not USGS rasters. I tried looking at the Census Bureau's TIGER line data, but I can't make heads or tails of it. Are there maps available through other agencies (national or international)? Are there Free/Open-Source Software projects that are making use of public data to build street-level maps for free (as in speech) use?"
Freegis? (Score:5, Informative)
The FreeGIS Project provides * software overview on free Geographic Information Systems (this web site)
* communication on developments, plans, infos on free GIS software and free Geo-Data (mailing list)
* software and data prepared for direct use (CD)
http://freegis.org/
Re:Freegis? (Score:5, Informative)
Best place i have found maps is:
1) Tiger data (If you read the infosets long enough you can begin to undersdtand them)
2) Shapefiles from ESRI [esri.com](These shapefiles were generated from Tiger data)
The software i prefer to use is Tiger Map Server [toonarchive.com] The author of this software has also figured out a way to convert tiger data into his own shapefiles due to ESRI's license.
Best of luck!
Re:Freegis? (Score:2, Funny)
Oh, no you don't. The last time I fell for that line, those "Magic Eye" scams almost drove me blind!
Re:Freegis? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Freegis? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Freegis? (Mod Parent Up!) (Score:3)
Wow! That's the coolest thing I've seen in a while. Looks to me like it's exactly what the guy is looking for--yes, works produced by government employees are in the public domain, and this appears to allow you to download vector data for roads and so forth.
Re:Freegis? (Score:3, Informative)
No need to re-invent the wheel (Score:5, Informative)
No, he is not re-inventing the wheel (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No need to re-invent the wheel (Score:5, Informative)
- They get their data from three companies, TeleAtlas, NAVTEQ and AND. For quite some money you can get their databases consisting of GBs of maps, and use it the way you want. This is true at least for the EU version, different conditions might exist for the US maps (see map24.com bottom).
- The Map24 applet connects to their map server directly (just over a proxy), using their own Map Transport Protocol (MapTP). So in theory you are able to connect like the applet, and query the whole country at the highest zoom - getting GBs of vector information to use. But they'll probably notice, so don't try it.
Anyway, the conclusion is: Like most mapping websites, Map24 (Mapsolute) use commercial maps of mapping companies, they didn't start from scratch. But using it without shelling out a lot of money won't work.
Maybe it's time (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Maybe it's time (Score:2)
It seems to me that it would take much, much less effort to use satellite pictures with some software that can recognize roads ans streets (and maybe someone manually labeling the streets). Maybe it has been done already.
Tor
Re:Maybe it's time (Score:5, Interesting)
Our white paper on the architecture may be seen at SVG Open [svgopen.org] from the 2003 proceedings. A small amount of information (including a live demo -- it does however require that someone accepts the data submitted, so don't expect to see anything in the gateway at once) is available here [onemap.org].
The idea is however a good one and is absolutely doable. The problem is that you'll probably get rather large datasets for the most used paths, while the roads noone travels frequently will remain unmapped (and those are really the roads that you _do_ need a map for)..
I'd suggest really old maps (Score:2, Interesting)
Wrong. (Score:2, Insightful)
Find one of those "old" maps. They're always engineering the roads. You'll find things are quite different now than then. They even change the names of the roads. Your Local "MLK drive" was called something different 30 years ago.
Re:Wrong. (Score:4, Funny)
Typically, the "wrong side of the tracks".
Copyrights (Score:3, Informative)
Anything after Steamboat Willie and the creation of one "Michael Mouse" by Uncle Walt will retain perpetual copyright.
However streets are, mainly, publicly owned/maintained/created. Surveys by municipalities are in the public domain (tax payer and all that) - just like most NASA images.
Being able to USE that data, however, requires the use of some standard markup - which probably exists, but I'm no cartographer - with information about direction, intersections and angles of inter
Re:Digital Map Databases (Score:3, Insightful)
To develop Word, Microsoft has ... well the same (plus people to take ALL the F'ing suggestions for features and make sure everything gets added).
Sendmail took one guy, mainly, a semester or so and then a core of MAYBE 20 people to develop it.
Postfix was, in large part, a 1 person project.
Except for what Linus took from Minix (kidding!), a kernel was developed, without networking
Re:I'd suggest really old maps (Score:4, Interesting)
The key to a copy-free solution would be maintenance. Just copy how the major map companies update their data. And the public would do a better job of it since as a whole the general public has more itches they want to scratch than the few paid workers who update maps. (e.g. "that road doesn't exist!!") As mentioned on
Re:I'd suggest really old maps (Score:3, Interesting)
They now collect all geometry with differential GPS in car - driving all the roads.
Trust me, you aren't going to get anything usable from aerial photographs that were not created with this applicati
Making maps is not an esoteric science (Score:3, Interesting)
Hell a Japanese guy [midco.net] with no formal mathematical training was able to figure out how to make very accurate maps (especially considering the poor accuracy of the maps of Europe) using no more than 300 men, several teams of horses, and large sextants and compasses.
Why don't you start up a mapping project on your own and put a subproject idea under the main banner encouraging people to implement whatever harebrained scheme you are talking about. The community will enjoy your work and you will gain notoriety as the guy who opened maps to the world.
USGS (Score:5, Informative)
For a more direct link: http://nmviewogc.cr.usgs.gov/viewer.htm
HOLY CRAP (Score:2, Informative)
Yeah, there's definitely no point to Chilltowner's project--which is now nothing more than a hyperlink to the National Map.
As hyperlinks for the copy-and-paste impaired:
National Map [usgs.gov]
Direct link to viewer [usgs.gov]
Re:HOLY CRAP (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:HOLY CRAP (Score:2)
Re:USGS (Score:4, Interesting)
On the TOPO side the war is between Delorme, and Natiional Geographic. Delorme sells a vector based topo map which is nice. National Geographic sells Rastor Maps of the USGS maps. The state series is a little spendy, but detailed. It's a clear winner if it is out for your state if you do off road and back road stuff. However having a picture of the streets is it's weak spot if you are trying to use it for street navigation. In a nutshell, if you use the TOPO maps by National Geographic, you will want another map for street use.
Just out from National Geographic is an answer the vector street problem. The Back Roads Explorer map combined the Raster Maps with a real time overlay of the street vector maps. The 17 CD set can be bought for under $40. It contains the entire USA TOPO and vector street maps. It's detail in the TOPO isn't as good as the state series, but you can load the state series into the package for the best of both.
Now the issue of marking them up and such. National Geographic permits printing of maps provided the copyright remains on the map (in the boarder, not imbeded like Mapquest). I'm not sure of the quanity or uses of the maps so more research will need done especialy for commercial use, but home printing and sending maps to your friends in your hunting party all marked up to the hunting camp is a permitted use. The tools to mark up the map are included and work well. Added to the ability to export to my PDA or handheld computer and connect to my GPS and upload, and download waypoints, routes and active track are all features that make this commercial map a winner.
Disclaimer, I don't work for National Geographic. I like to Geocache and finding a road in close to the cache is half the fun.
PostGIS (Score:4, Interesting)
Then look for "TIGER PostGIS" to find tools which support both formats, and find something to read TIGER into PostGIS. Then look at editing and display tools to find one which supports PostGIS.
Re:PostGIS (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, this is the kind of /. question that drives me nuts. "I want some map data, with a whole bunch of constraints on what kind it is, and I want it to be free. Oh, by the way, I found exactly that from the USGS. However, in spite of the fact that there are tens or maybe hundreds of open source projects that use it just fine, I can't figure out how. So that's no good."
The first page of freshmeat.net after searching for "tiger" contains a link to this open source TIGER map server [freshmeat.net]. Maybe that would be a good starting point. Further down the page are getmap [freshmeat.net] and geotools [freshmeat.net], which also support TIGER.
I wish submitters and especially editors would realize that when they don't do their homework, they're wasting the time of literally hundreds of thousands of people. Sometimes a lot of time, like when the idiots actually waste extra time writing a long-winded reply.
*scratches head* (Score:5, Informative)
Re:*scratches head* (Score:5, Interesting)
Copyright and the Government (Score:3, Informative)
There's been a lot of questions about what the government can and cannot copyright. Here's some relevant information:
Another good resource is the Copyright FAQ here [eff.org], which elaborates on both of those points.
Disclaimer: These resources are for the U.S. YMMV. IANAL.
Re:*scratches head* (Score:2)
Now on the other hand, if all they did was take government information that was freely avai
Re:*scratches head* (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:*scratches head* (Score:3, Funny)
be maps *of*?
Re:*scratches head* (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:*scratches head* (Score:2)
But I think another poster is correct in saying that some copyright their presentation of the data. See TopoZone [topozone.com] for example.
Re:*scratches head* (Score:3, Informative)
Maps and accessories baby... (Score:5, Interesting)
The maps are where the GPS device companies make their profit. That and accessories ($35USD for an AC car adapter!).
If I were to ever start my own Open/Free project, it would most likely be a call to all us GPS hobbyist out there to create our own Open/Free maps and GPS coordinates of useful landmarks.
Excellent Ask Slashdot question...
Re:Maps and accessories baby... (Score:2)
Re:Maps and accessories baby... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's sort of like the strategy ant colonies use to establish paths. It's interesting, but such a brute force method would duplicate much effort, and miss many routes. The data is out there, we just need to convert it into a usable format.
Userbase (Score:2, Funny)
Lots of trips to the electronics store, comparatively few to buy condoms, or whatever.
Re:Maps and accessories baby... (Score:4, Insightful)
Then there's the type of street, directionality, names and aliases, speed limits, on-street parking, sidewalks left and right, bike-routes left and right, congestion levels (by time of day), max axle weight capability, max height clearance, lane counts (left and right), and other attribution (car-pools only, etc) that'd be relevent.
Positional accuracy of the segments is pretty much worthless by itself. Cool to look at in real time, but only useful in real time... which is stupid ("Look, ma! The map say's we're right HERE! And look, we ARE!")
Good attribution with crap positional accuracy is 1000000 times more useful than perfect position without such attributes, because it enables you to use the map BEFORE you go somewhere.
Re:Maps and accessories baby... (Score:2)
Re:Maps and accessories baby... (Score:2)
TIGER -- look again (Score:5, Informative)
Note that they don't have labels rendered on the streets yet, but plan to add this. However, all the code is there, and the data is available, so there's no need to reinvent the wheel here.
Re:TIGER -- look again (Score:4, Informative)
Jaysyn
Re:TIGER -- look again (Score:3, Informative)
All of the street level labels are there too, which makes it a very good source of free dat
Tiger Files (Score:5, Informative)
Not only do the files include streets, but it also covers bodies of water, railways, etc.. You can even retrieve additional information such as school districts and voting districts, which you can overlay on your maps.
Along with the files, you can download a 300 page PDF document fully detailing all the table structures and how to interpret the data.
Don't discount them just because it will take a bit of work to figure them out.
Re:Tiger Files (Score:3, Informative)
That said, here are a few shortcomings in the TIGER/Line database:
Maporama (Score:4, Interesting)
You can choose a number of color styles, and you can save the generated map as a gif file, which is can then edit with common software. Very configurable, and an account is not needed.
They also provide street numbers when you are zoomed in close enough.
Overall, worth a bookmark.
Re:Maporama (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Maporama (Score:4, Informative)
Property Appraisal Maps (Score:3, Interesting)
Try the County Assessor yet? (Score:3, Informative)
If your project is focused on one local area, they're probably adaptable. If you're trying to put together a national database, it will be difficult. Each municipality will have very different maps in terms of scale, style and detail (is the utility map the same as the county assessor map? Or does each department keep its own maps?).
Unifying all of this data is what keeps map companies in business. It's a lot of work.
Re:Try the County Assessor yet? (Score:2, Informative)
I work writing and installig public safety software (dispatching, police/fire/ems records, etc). Mapping is a big thing these days, especially for rural communities that are sprawled out over a huge area, yet have finite resources.
911 call from lot 12, rural route 15 - whos closest, Jeb or Clem? Or a fire engine pulls up to a fire, there's a hydrant next door, and one 6 houses up. Which one to use? Look a
Re:Try the County Assessor yet? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm looking too. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'm looking too. (Score:2)
You yourself, wouldn't mind if there was sidewalk data. I can see how others would be interested in it showing the location of buildings and parking lots (residences could be shown, too, I don't think that would be such a privacy loss).
If we ever got a decent, relatively current national map done like that, think what we could do with it. Strange that the things government should be paying for don't happen.
Remember Mr Perens (Score:5, Informative)
http://perens.com/FreeSoftware/
Though I didn't get into the ftp server, I'm sure the files are still out there.
Very nice and forthlooking of him.
Re:Remember Mr Perens (Score:3, Informative)
Basically Bruce seems to have bought a copy of the dataset which was under a less-restrictive license (i.e. no license - public domain). He then re-issued it under the GPL, apparently with no changes/additions, other than making it available in a different media (CD-ROM).
Tiger, county assessor, postgis, and map server (Score:2, Informative)
Tiger works quite well for me. I read the docs and wrote a simple perl script that took a sorted list of the road segments and intermediate points file, and inserted polylines into postgis. Tiger is off in a few places, which can be seen by overlaying it with more accurate data.
Another good source of data is the county assesors office.
NTAD (Score:2)
You won't find free, alleyway-level data for the US. It's simply too much of a burden to keep such data updated, without doing so as a commercial enterprise.
Find the offsping of Tiger (Score:5, Informative)
There are plenty of resources on the net about how to parse Tiger line data and most of the main mapping programs that do street level views where based on that data with many corrections. For example its common that older streets will be on a state map datum and improperly adjusted to NAD27 and/or WGS85 or something else. You can find roads that aren't parallel even though they all are directly north or you can get some interesting results when one township was on one datum and the next township over was in a different one which results in the streets appearing to be in the order of 1st, 3rd, 2nd. You also have things like auto placement where one road is just so out of place, auto placement aginst sat photos puts the wrong name on it and somehow it bounces the correctly named road someplace else. The plan was to clean that up for the 2000 census data but I think the task was just too large.
There is a programm called "Grass" that will read in these files. It might be a place to start.
You might want to do a google groups search in the newsgroup sci.geo.cartography as well.
Terraserver copyright (Score:4, Informative)
You can obtain more information about DOQs on the USGS web site. Start by searching google...
Mod Parent Up (Score:2)
See the FAQ [microsoft.com].
(I mistakenly believed you couldn't use the Terraserver images either when I wrote my blog [boonedocks.net] in January)
Maps with mousover links and pop up data (Score:2)
http://216.239.53.104/search?q=cache:umBU4Yg0iL
Keyhole -not free, but the BEST GLOBAL mapping/3d. (Score:2)
It streams the data, 3d and 2d, while you moved around the globe.
FlightGear (Score:2)
I'd *love* to make an easy to use way to create scenic flythrus based on FG's graphics engine. The work is pretty much done, it's just that their program integrates it with a flight simulator.
TerraServer-USA is not copyright! (Score:2, Insightful)
TerraServer-USA data is not copyright by Microsoft or anyone else, as is very clearly stated on their FAQ [microsoft.com] page:
Be prepared to modify, a lot (Score:2)
Even commercial map software is, in my experience, quite inaccurate. I was looking at a certain area lately, and I picked out many errors in my county and some of the surrounding counties (blatent errors, too...). Trying to use mapping software for giving driving directions to other people is frustrating.
Watch out who you ask for information ... (Score:3, Insightful)
GPS calibration (Score:3, Interesting)
topozone.com has USGS maps (Score:2)
WiGLE (Score:3, Informative)
I'm using it just for the maps, but it has GPS and wifi capabilities (People use it for wardriving). I'm pretty suprised at how accurate the maps are, even for the middle of nowhere Nebraska.
Others have mentioned but... (Score:3, Informative)
I too, was looking for a public domain mapping system to assist in a site we are doing about the Big Island of Hawai'i (www.instanthawaii.com). After scouring for sources the National Map Viewer was the best bet. All their data is in the public domain and can be used in a variety of ways.
Once you go to the site you will receive a very nice GUI interface with selections on the left and right and in the middle a map of the US including Hawai'i.
Using your cursor, click and drag a rectangle around the area you are interested in and it will zoom in on your screen. You can continue to zoom in using the same technique (or just clicking in the center of where you want to zoom) but don't zoom past the SCALE=1 graph on the upper right corner (scales below 1 pixelate). At a scale of one the map shows very detailed information - roads are visible, etc.
Now the real fun begins... using the options on the RIGHT SIDE, click each one and look at what they offer. The offerings will change depending on the scale (at a scale of 1, all offerings that are available will be allowed) - some offerings disappear at higher resolutions). THese options act like overlays - you can get street maps, water usage, historical maps, topographical maps, etc. Some of the layers will overwrite other layers so if you want a more complex map you might have to take a number of snapshots.
The selections on the left side are rarely used - except to rezoom the map and scroll the map side to side.
Using this system I was able to generate at a scale of 1, the entire Big Island as a series of over 80 screen shots that I remerged in photoshop to create on HUGE (over 200 megabytes) map that includes all topographical information, roads and rivers and streams. Since this is a volcanic island the map shows most of the craters (anything deeper than about 250 to 300 feet) and quite a few craters I didn't know existed.
This is one of the best tools out there - is a bit tedious to use but once you get the hang of it - it is invaluable.
MARPLOT (Score:3, Interesting)
It was initially meant to be used by emergency responders as part of the "Computer Aided-Management of Emergency Operations" or CAMEO. It was so popular that the US Census Bureau made it part of the Landview software program.
It's not as nice as a professional program, but there are lots of basic features and the price is right.
County records (Score:3, Interesting)
You can find individual properties (complete with tax appraisal information, square footage, room count, etc. -- did you know this is all public information?), property lines, estimates acreage, building outlines, etc. You can map water pipes, power lines, fire hydrants -- even many trees are included. Fire stations, parks, museums, streams, neighborhoods (plats), cities, etc. It's all there.
Very impressive! Check and see if your county does the same! I can't tell you how valuable this tool was as we were shopping for a house (we closed yesterday!)
SourceForge Project and US Government Map Products (Score:5, Informative)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/roadmap/
http:
http://w
http://opensourcegis.org/
http://fsffrance.
http://www.map-collections.
http://www.mapimage.com/grass_latitude_maps_m
GI - http://maps.langenberg.com/
A navigation system that displays US street maps (from the US Census Bureau) and tracks a vehicule using GPS. Specific areas can be displayed by selecting a street address (street number & name, city, and state). RoadMap can run on iPAQ and Zaurus.
Developer Info
Project Admins:
pascmartin
Personal Information
User ID: 11734
Login Name: pascmartin
Publicly Displayed Name: Pascal F Martin
Email Address: pascmartin at users.sourceforge.net
Site Member Since: 2000-02-06 13:19
* Development Status: 5 - Production/Stable
* Environment: Handhelds/PDA's, X11 Applications
* Intended Audience: End Users/Desktop
* License: GNU General Public License (GPL)
* Natural Language: English
* Operating System: POSIX
* Programming Language: C
* Topic: Viewers, GIS
I hope this helps - OldHawk777
Maps are not copyrighted (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a the pleasure of once working for a map company, for example, that at a time (before I worked there of course) traced a competitor's maps when drafting their products. An ensuing lawsuit, during which the judge actually acknowledged this practice, resulted in a verdict [uscourts.gov] in favor of allowing such infringements.
Re:Maps are not copyrighted (Score:2)
US government data is _usually_ released under a license that is effectively public domain, so it's a good source to start from or copy from.
Re:Maps are not copyrighted (Score:3, Interesting)
Here in England we have "Ordnance Survey" maps which are very high quality -- and are all covered by Crown Copyright (the government/queen's copyright -- I dunno how it's any different to any other copyright though).
Also, if you take a map to a copy shop here in the UK -- let's say, because you need to give your dad (who lives some way away) directions how to find your s
GIS information (Score:3, Informative)
The major industry effort towards interop seems to be OpenGIS [opengis.org].
Some open source GIS stuff that looks promising to me are Mapserver [umn.edu] and OpenMap [bbn.com].
I found the learning curve too much at this point, and many of the OSS solutions didn't work straight out of the box. Proprietary solutions are so expensive that they made playing around impossible.
What's more, getting data was difficult. Your city should be able to share its digitized maps. Here in Canada, my city was reluctant to share them, as some are copyright to ESRI (imagine your city co-owning its information with a foreign company!!!). What I found out however is that there isn't any copyright if you take the paper maps they publish and digitize it yourself. Time consuming, I know
There are a lot of useful hacks that I wanted to do with geographic data, but I shelved those plans for now. Hopefully in a year or so we will have better tools and cheaper data. If you manage to help us get there, thanks in advance
Good free streetlevel data not likely anytime soon (Score:2, Informative)
The lack of free, accurate, detailed and comprehensive GIS data is *the* canonical problem obstructing development of free GIS software. We are talking about current street-level data, points of interest, geographic features, topographic data etc., pr
Tiger plus Roadmap (Score:2)
It parses Tiger data and uses either GTK (1 or 2) or Qt.
Roadmap includes street and address lookup.
The graphics aren't quite there (it doesn't handle polygons well though you get the outlines, nor cities), but it works well, and fast enough to do a moving map on a Zaurus.
It was easy for me to link it to Kismet so I can see APs by signal and channel popup on the moving map.
Tiger does have a 300 page document that explains the format, but there are problems. I've been try
To put it shortly: Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
For once I think this is something better left to a government office that can put the maps in the public domain. Even metadata will have big trouble as "open data". Try tracking all the fly-by-night establishments in e.g. the restaurant or nightclub industry... good luck.
Kjella
Since you're in the US.. (Score:4, Informative)
The other question asked is however much more important, what about completly open maps in a free for all use setting? As i mentioned, this is the case for the US, but quite far from the truth for some other countries in the world
Making data available as WMS or WFS allows other people to seamlessly integrate them into their own applications. Seeing an application just importing more and more information thats available by WMS is simply amazing. The norwegian rescue service uses an internal WMS-server for all their mapping data, which provides information about currents, weather, available ships in some parts of the world that supports the system and loads of other information. This comes from several different sources and are integrated into the application on the last step. All the seperate units are responsible for their own mapping data and can upgrade and improve their data at any time without any interaction from the end user.
We export information by WFS, although probably not very interesting for your use, it demonstrates the possibilities. You may browse our repository at OneMap [onemap.org] by using our SVG client [onemap.org].
Yes indeed! (Score:3, Informative)
VTP needs a mention here.... (Score:3, Informative)
from their site:
<b>The goal of VTP is to foster the creation of tools for easily constructing any part of the real world in interactive, 3D digital form.
This goal will require a synergetic convergence of the fields of CAD, GIS, visual simulation, surveying and remote sensing. VTP gathers information and tracks progress in areas such as procedural scene construction, feature extraction, and rendering algorithms. VTP writes and supports a set of software tools, including an interactive runtime environment (VTP Enviro). The tools and their source code are freely shared to help accelerate the adoption and development of the necessary technologies.
</b>
Mapserver (Score:3, Interesting)
Lots of tutorials there to, but it's a bit of a learning curve. Try it! I knew nothing about mapping, and in two months I had built a web application that could zoom down to the street level with selectable layers for all sorts of data.
Freedom of Information Act Request (Score:3, Informative)
The Defense Mapping Agency, which now appears to be called the National Geospacial-Intelligence Agency [nima.mil], has been making detailed maps of the Earth for about half a century now. You might be able to put in a FOIA request for satellite images and maps in the possession of the agency. Technically, these maps and images made with public money should be free for any citizen of the US to obtain.
UMN Mapserver is free, can use nationalatlas.gov (Score:3, Informative)
In my experience... (Score:3, Informative)
TIGER is made from USGS DLG [usgs.gov] or DRG [usgs.gov] files, combined with some updating done by the US Census Bureau [census.gov]. Since the census is only done periodically, the TIGER data gets out of date.
Some organizations take TIGER data and update it and resell it in various forms. One of these is NAVTEQ [navteq.com], who has people out on the road constantly driving around and updating their maps. As a result, this information tends to be rather expensive, but pretty high quality. Other companies in the same business are DeLorme [delorme.com] and UnderTow [undertowsoftware.com] (formerly Chicago Mapping, I believe). I think UnderTow's Precision Mapping product has pretty decent licensing terms, last I looked at it (several years ago). Much better than DeLorme.
If you want to get your own imagery and work from that, there are several good free sources:
University of Maryland's GLCF site [umd.edu] serves up 30m color imagery and 15m monochrome imagery for most of the world. To make the color imagery useful, you'll want to take a look at Scott Cherba's Tutorial [cherba.com] using Photoshop or Terrainmap's tutorial [terrainmap.com] using PaintShop Pro. One of the software companies I've founded makes an inexpensive utility called PixelSense [alphapixel.com] (Windows, $49) to do this process automatically.
The United States Department of Agriculture Lighthouse Server [usda.gov] serves up a variety of data including free 1m monochrome mosaics of virtually every county in the US. These are large files, and come in MrSID format, for which you'll need to download a Viewer (time-limited trial version) [landsystems.com] that can save out the portions you want. The nice thing about this is that they are mosaiced and brightness-balanced, whereas if you just go buy/download a bunch of DOQQs elsewhere, they may not match well at the edges of each file.
Finally, in urban areas, you may be able to take advantage of the USGS Urban Areas High-Resolution Orthoimagery [usgs.net] available for some cities [usgs.gov] from the USGS Seamless Server [usgs.gov]. This data is fantastic, 1ft resolution color airphotos. You can see cars and individual people. It's very recent, having been aquired after 2001 for national disaster planning and response purposes.
Good luck. I'd be happy to answer questions you might have privately, as a lot of my customers do cartography.
Opensource maps (Score:3, Informative)
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/
UMN's pages are also a very good source of information about Open Source and GIS in general.
Above is troll.Re:NO WAY! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:maps on ontario (Score:2)
Umm, Canada, unlike the United States, claims "government copyright" on many items and thus items that are owned by the government are NOT necessarily in the public domain.
For example, have a look at some of the small print on Transport-Canada published aviation maps.
Re:Avoid Tiger (Score:2, Informative)
Apparently, GDT Inc. is the provider of street network for all major GIS Software corporations (including MapInfo, ESRI, Intergraph and others) and government entities. Perhaps the most important information on this company is the Department of Commerce publication CB96-194 of 1996, which announces that the US Census Bureau would acquire data from GDT Inc. in a long term cooperatio
Re:Avoid Tiger (Score:2, Informative)
USGS DLG format ! ^^^ ! (Score:2)
Re:Sounds dangerous (Score:2)