Thematic Mapping Timeout

The summer and everlasting days are here. I need to prioritize my free time in the upcoming months. All the work reflected on this site has been unpaid - and it won't be continued unless I'm able to earn a salary... 

I wish my readers a great summer (or winter if you're down under)!  

KML projections

I'm waiting for a geobrowser capable of showing KML maps in different projections. The projections commonly used by geobrowsers are not the best choice for thematic world maps. Many cartographers dislike thematic maps rendered on virtual globes, and the Mercator projection is not suited for large area maps. Greenland looks like the same size of South America, while it is actually 8 times smaller.

The coordinate system of KML is geographic (latitude/longitude) coordinates on the World Geodetic System of 1984 (WGS84) datum. Geobrowsers use different projection techniques to render a KML document. Google Earth uses a General Perspective projection, which is similar to the Orthographic projection (see Larry Moores informed speculation of the Google Earth projection). Google Maps and Microsoft's Live Maps both use Mercator projection, which is a good choice for a map that can be panned and zoomed seamlessly. 

My favorite projection for world maps is Winkel Triple, which is the standard projection for maps made by National Geographic. How can I display my KML based thematic maps in a Winkel Triple projection?

Axis maps recently announced indieprojector. This is a web service (based on Adobe Flash) that allows you to (re)project KML files and export the result as SVG. I tried the service with one of my choropleth maps from the Thematic Mapping Engine. 

The above image shows my KML file in Google Maps using the Mercator projection. 

Indieprojector nicely and quickly projects my KML file, but the service is not preserving colour styles.  When will we see a Flash based KML viewer capable of showing KML documents (with styles!) in various projections?  

And what about raster data - is Flash capable of converting image tiles into a seemless Winkel Triple projection?

Introducing Thematic Mapping API

The brand new Thematic Mapping API enables you to create KML based thematic maps from your own data source. This JavaScript library is the missing link between Google Visualization API and Google Earth API (or other geobrowser APIs supporting the KML standard).

A few examples:

• Choropleth map
• Prism map
• Proportional symbol map
• Pie chart map
  

The API is still in beta. Please email me if you would like to try the new API: bjorn[at]thematicmapping.org

Thematic Mapping API will be free to use on non-commercial sites.