About 30 people crowded around University senior Zack Ham’s laptop Thursday afternoon. His screen showed off a Web site in the works that he and Oregon State University student Cullen King have been working on that blends information from various Web sites into one.
The University geography community celebrated International Geographic Information Systems Day on Wednesday in the Knight Library, and part of the event celebrated Web sites such as Ham’s, called “map mash-ups.”
Internet users can write HTML codes to combine information into a single mapping Web site.
Ham and King’s Web site (www.ridewithgps.com) is a mapping service for recreational enthusiasts. The site uses information from Google Maps and provides elevation data from the U.S. Geological Survey. That means bicyclists, for example, would be able to know the exact terrain of their ride, shown in a 3-D graph that includes height change and direction.
“You can basically ask yourself, ‘Where am I going to go on my Saturday ride?’” Ham said. He added the Web site took a couple thousand lines of HTML code to create the site.
Ham said the Web site should be fully operational in January.
The name “map mash-up” comes from DJs who take two different sources of music and mix them together, said GIS librarian Jon Jablonski, who helped organize the event.
“You can use any of the common Web mapping applications out there, like Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Microsoft Live and MapQuest,” Jablonski said. He said popular map mash-ups on the Internet include www.housingmaps.com, which shows housing listings from www.craigslist.com on a Google Map.
The Knight Library provided workshops on map mash-ups in preparation for the annual GIS Day, which was started by National Geographic in 1987. The day coincided with Geography Awareness Week, which continues through tomorrow.
“If I get people turned on to using maps, it could inspire them to make their own maps,” Jablonski said, adding that he wanted to show people what kind of mapping services were possible.
Jablonski said creating map mash-ups requires Internet users to be comfortable using HTML and JavaScript.
He said different University departments could work together to present mapping information.
Jim Meacham, a University senior research associate, said map mash-ups allow anyone to publish geographic information.
“It’s really revolutionary for mapping,” Meacham said. “It really makes those kinds of capabilities so much more accessible to a broader audience.”
The University also celebrated GIS Day with Pecha Kucha (pronounced peh-CHAK-cha) in the Browsing Room of the Knight Library. But part of the event resembled what Jablonski called the seventh inning stretch of a baseball game – organizers handed out prizes and threw them into the audience. By the end of the day, several attendees held the blue shirts that read “I love geography” across the front.
Pecha Kucha, started in Japan in 2003, is a presentation format in which presenters only have a short amount of time to talk. Five presenters, including Meacham, spoke about the geography of Asia on Wednesday. Ham also demonstrated a run-through of his Web site.
Each professor was allowed to speak for 6 minutes and 40 seconds under the Pecha Kucha format – showing 20 slides for 20 seconds each.
Jablonski gave an introduction presentation under the same format, complete with a digital clock ticking on the screen during the slideshow. He said he was pleased with the success of the short, precise shows.
“I think it works great for something like this,” Jablonski said. “We could have squeezed two or three more (presentations) in if we wanted to, and I don’t think people’s interest lagged at all.”
Meacham presented an InfoGraphics Lab project on the mapping of archaeological features in northwestern Mongolia.
He said there’s an inverse relationship to how short the presentation is to the amount of work put into it.
“It seems like the shorter the presentation, the longer it takes to prepare it,” Meacham said. He added that each slide had to be well thought out and had to have a similar amount of text and graphics.
Meacham said the format allows more ideas to be communicated in a short amount of time.
“The purpose is to be able to share your ideas to an audience in a form that allows for several people to get up and do a presentation,” Meacham said.
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