IDEA No 48
WEB MAPPING
Where maps were static, now they are dynamic. Where before we turned the page of an atlas, now we pan and zoom our way around a screen.
The first interactive map was developed in 1993 by Steve Putz at Xerox PARC. The Interactive Map Viewer automatically generated GIF images based on parameters encoded in the URL. It was an early demonstration of interactive information retrieval on the Web.
In 1994, at the University of Minnesota, the researcher Stephen Lime created UMN MapServer, a Web-based tool for exploring a million acres of wilderness on the Canadian border. The area was under the administration of the US Forestry Service, which saw the potential of Lime’s tool to plot global forestry information. After securing funding from NASA and the European Union, UMN MapServer became the first platform for the remote accessing of satellite imagery. Job done, Lime and the University of Minnesota made MapServer open source. The mapgeneration engine is used to this day to track hurricanes, plot shipping routes and plan bicycle trips.
The first commercial Web map was developed by the Chicago-based company R. R. Donnelley & Sons, who had been making roadmaps since the 1960s. Its online route-finding software, MapQuest, launched on 5 February 1996. Direction finding would never be the same again. The same data used to power MapQuest now powers Google Maps.
Perhaps one of the biggest success stories in the world of Web mapping is OpenStreetMap. It was developed in 2004 by Steve Coast, whose aim was to create Wikipedia for maps. He was convinced that a crowdsourced geographic database would be a useful way to keep maps up to date. He was right. Since its inception, OpenStreetMap has benefited from over 300,000 contributors and has been adopted by Apple, Craigslist, Flickr and Foursquare.
The Web map of choice for millions of users is Google Maps. It began life as an offline program designed by two Danish brothers, Lars and Jens Rasmussen, and the Web-based version launched in October 2004. The impact of Google Maps goes far beyond online mapping. Its use of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) created a seamless experience that inspired the next generation of websites. Without Google Maps, we would not have Web 2.0.
Thanks to pioneers like the UMN MapServer, MapQuest and OpenStreetMap, maps are no longer about geographical landscapes, they are about data. Every day, they become more comprehensive, more accurate and more useful. And this process of adding detail will never stop. Maps will become increasingly realistic, but perhaps more intriguingly, reality will become more like a map.■
‘Without Google Maps we would not have Web 2.0.’
A Google Map of Paris, centred on Le Stade Roland Garros, where the Pegman has been replaced by a tennis player.