While, I don't have anything against FortiusOne or the "neogeography" work that they create.  I do have something against shoddy examples.  Here is a shining example from a recent feature they have added to their GeoCommons project.  First, though, I'm not entirely sure what a proportional shapes map is supposed to be.  I don't know if the values are changed.  In their description of map types, it sounds appropriate but the image they show is just a "color map."  So I'll let that go.  The problem I see is the example they are using.  The map the total number of children under 16.  The TOTAL number of children under 16.  Look at what states are the darkest and have the highest number of children under 16.  Wow, you just created a map of the most populous states.  They should have mapped the proportion of 16 and under.  I realize this is just an example.  When you are demonstrating something to novices, you should in the least create correct examples so you are not at fault for showing them incorrect information.  Or, at least, qualify that you are a novice.  Google Visualization API does this same thing in their examples.

Now...Don't read any other entries in this blog or else I will probably be found at fault for this too.  I hope that I qualify that I'm not a programmer at least on my programming tutorials. 

A recent Cartotalk post caught my attention about a new Infographic at the NYTimes.  If you don't want to follow the link, the basic gist of it is they have set up a series of interactive 3D maps of the Vancouver Olympic area.  As per usual, they are well made and fast.  The poster's original question was how they were made.  I responded with my thoughts, but I really don't know how it was made.  It got me thinking, and wondering, if I could do something similar.  Well, not one to let silly things such as inexperience or lack of knowledge get in my way, I decided to go for it.  The area I chose to work with was the Huangshan Mountains (Yellow Mountains) in China.  The tools I used, and had at hand were:  FlashDevelop (Flex 3.3 SDK), Papervision (most recent swc), Global Mapper (version 9), and Google Sketchup version 7.  I had a leg up in that I've worked with Papervision when experimenting with Augmented Reality (FLAR).  I don't have much Google Sketchup experience so it was a bit of a crash course.

 To obtain the data, I used Global Mapper.  I highly recommend this program whether you have an expensive GIS or not.  This program will save you loads of time converting between files, downloading files, and clipping them.  It's also really fast.  I just downloaded SRTM and Landsat data for my project area. I ended up picking an area that was quite hilly and exagerated.  This actually became a problem later. 

In order to use the terrain with Flash and Papervision I needed it in the open Collada format.  The only program I had to create collada files was Google Sketchup, and just the free versio.  Luckily there were a couple of formats available for the import: dem, dxf, and 3DS.  Global maper exports to both dem and dxf.  I initially tried a DEM but that created a really ugly model.  Then I played around with DXF mesh and DXF Face.  Both seemed to work better.  Because I had picked this SRTM data in an area with great elevation variability I needed to reduce the elevation height to create a reasonable mesh.  This was done through Global Mapper's control panel and the layer's properties.  I set mine to .05 scale factor.  When exporting to the DXF 3D face file, I also changed it so that it had a 250 metre by 250 metre grid.  The key here is that you export files that are manageable.  I dxf file will probably need to be less than a mb, and the image I used was around 3mb (which seemed ok).

I'm no Sketchup expert, but was able to figure things out by following this tutorial.  The key steps to follow are the smoothing step and edit group before adding the texture.  When you import your dxf file it will not be grouped, so you need to do that step yourself.  While I was in sketchup I used those tools to add a square block underneath.  I used the Intersect with Selection tool to erase the parts of the block I didn't need, and added a different texture.  Once I was happy with the model, I exported it to a Google Earth KMZ file.  For those that don't know, KMZ is just a zip file, so change the kmz to zip and then open this.  Your model should be stored in a models folder with a .dae extension.  Textures are stored in the images folder. From there I just parsed them using papervision.

There are some really good papervision tutorials available here and here.  That's where the PaperBase.as file originated.  Because of some earlier experimenation, I actually found DAE worked better than the Collada parser.  The code is available here.  A demo version is available here.  Click and drag the mouse to cause the camera to move.

I make no claims that this is a replica of the NYTimes piece, but hopefully would get you started.  The model needs to be placed properly and the interaction needs to be worked on.  I was primarily concerned with getting terrain data into flash, from there it is up to the real designers :).  Also, considering I got this up and running in a few hours speaks to the quality.  But the ease of which it was done is a testament to the power of papervision and Google Sketchup rather than any particular skills of mine.

Feel free to take the code and use it for whatever, there isn't a licence, but I claim no responsibility and there is no warranty available.  Use at your own risk.

James Fee brought the Google Visualization API and Google Fusion API to my attention, so I went and checked them out.  The video on the Google Fusion intro page is interesting.  It is all about putting the power to display information in anybody's hand.  Which I guess is a noble aim...  Then I looked the Visualization API and immediately looked at the mapping examples, here and here.  There area acouple of things wrong with these maps.  One, for a visualization of this kind, shouldn't they have used a better projection.  We are stuck, yet again, with Mercator.  In this context it is completely inappropriate, yada yada yada.  Second, they aren't really different kinds of mapping, but are just a choropleth map.  I'm not even sure what the maps are supposed to be mapping.  I presume generic information..."popularity???"  Choropleths are meant to map derived data.  So it shouldn't be popularity, but maybe popularity per 1000.  The intensity map just shows population.  It is the same problem, like if they were to map deaths.  The population and death map would theoretically look exactly the same.  Anyway, this is sort of a cost-benefit analysis.  Does the cost of putting the simplicity of creating the visualizations in the hands of everyday internet users (the ensuing creation of bad and ineffective maps) outweight the benefits of giving the power to create and visualize information?  I think that google could have provided a few fixes that do not impact the user in anyway to make their visualizations more appropriate.

You might say that the designers and journalists and whoever creates infographics for print will still (hopefully) create approrpiate visualizations.  But, a lot of people are getting their info from crap blogs like mine rather than reliable sources.  Anyway, this is just the same debate over and over again about the "cult of the amateur" and whether it is good or bad.

 There was another thing that I found interesting in Fee's post.  He described the google maps api's introduction of queries, comparing them to other GIS related queries - "Now of course this isn’t paleo-type spatial queries, just simple stuff that solve 80% of all queries you’d need to complete."  To me paleo refers to very old, or even primitive.  I find it confusing to refer to GIS techniques as paleo, when the mapping and spatial parts of the Web 2.0 (neogeography) are much simpler, and less advanced than the older stuff.  Anyway, I'm not going to debate the appropriateness of the terms paleogeography and neogeography because that would just get me stuck in the mud.  Plus I like the term Neogeography, but maybe my head is just in the cloud.  Ooops, should have put a pun warning in front of that.