Sunday, January 6, 2008

Smart and Intuitive Cartography

Have you heard about GeoClip, a web-based GIS app. I just played with one of the samples Continental USA map listed on the Gallery page on this site.

For example, I have selected "pop. 25 years and older completed college, 2000" under Education as the theme for "Background analysis" and "personal income, 2002" under Income as the theme for "Foreground analysis" and zoomed to the "Portland - Seattle" area as shown below:

Tool bar provides such features as select an area to get more information, zoom by circle, zoom by rectangle, toggle city names on/off, toggle state boundaries on/off, overlay external data etc.

Other thing I like about this app is the wide array of display modes that it offers, check out this list on the Multiple themes page.

Even though it has many cool and intuitive features with very rich interface, the price of the products seems a little steep. For the Géoclip Solo version it costs €4,800 (€2,800 + €2,000) and for the Géoclip Server version it costs €12,500 (€3,000 + €9,500).

I wonder if there are any open source or cheaper applications that provide similar functionality. I have looked at some of the apps done using Open MapServer and none of them look as slick as GeoClip.
By the way, I am not associated with their website or product in anyway.

I would love to hear what you guys think about this app and/or any other similar app that you might know of.

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