Software/Service creates tilesets for Google style maps.
Press Release Summary:
Offering fast computing grid with graphics and render management software, Rendermap(TM) creates application-specific tilesets for Google style maps. Users have complete control of colors, cartography, and map data that define their maps, and web programmers can manipulate complex, application-specific layers. Applications can be hosted by Pushpin(TM) LE service or by users with access to appropriate map server. Rendermap(TM) can also pre-render overlays and create underlays.
Original Press Release:
Placebase(TM) Announces Custom Tilesets for Google(TM) Style Maps
Rendermap(TM) Is First Service to Create Map Layers Tailored to User Specifications
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 14 // -- Placebase, Inc. today announced availability of Rendermap, the first service that creates application-specific tilesets for Google style maps. These tilesets give customers complete control of base maps and allow web programmers to manipulate complex application-specific layers as well. Applications can be hosted by Placebase via its Pushpin(TM) LE service or by customers with access to an appropriate map server.
Rendermap helps break the one-size-fits-all mold of Google style mapping services by giving customers complete control over the colors, cartography, and map data that define their maps. Rendermap can also pre-render overlays with significantly greater complexity than the pins, popups and lines possible with current services. And, uniquely, Rendermap can create underlays. These are required by advanced mapping applications where legibility and map integrity would be destroyed by overlays.
For example, the maps of Fannie Mae Foundation's DataPlace(TM) ( www.dataplace.org/map ) portray over 1,300 demographic and housing-related variables on demand. Rendermap created the multilayered base map that allows DataPlace to draw these variables directly onto the map before the roads and labels are merged on top. The result is perfect legibility and cartographic beauty, otherwise impossible for a Google style map.
"We want to push Google style maps as far as they can go, and we know they can go a lot farther than most people think," said Jaron Waldman, CEO of Placebase. "With Rendermap, we can offer users unprecedented application breadth and -- paired with Dynamic Layers for Pushpin LE -- we can offer web developers unprecedented power to develop mapping applications."
Fully custom Google style tilesets can be designed to order by Placebase cartographers, or by anyone with ESRI(TM) ArcMap(TM) skills. As a result, customers with their own mapping data, for example aviation maps or real estate parcel maps, can have their own Google style maps pre-rendered, cached and ready to serve to any standard browser.
Any map server that operates with graphical tiles can use Rendermap base maps. However, to take advantage of Rendermap's overlay and underlay capability, customers must use Placebase's recently announced Dynamic Layers for Pushpin LE.
Rendermap consists of a fast computing grid with powerful graphics and render management software. The Rendermap grid is much like the render farms of theatrical computer animation, which crank away during filmmaking to achieve the widely appreciated computer graphics look. Rendermap similarly builds tilesets off line before deployment of their associated application. These tilesets are cached and ready for access when applications are brought up for the first time.
About Pushpin LE
Pushpin LE ( www.pushpin.com ) is a turnkey hosted mapping solution that allows web developers to create high-quality, browser-based map applications quickly and easily with the familiar look and feel pioneered by Google Maps(TM). Pushpin LE also embraces and extends the Google Maps application programming interface (API), which has become a de facto standard among developers. To satisfy the needs of commercial customers Pushpin LE provides services and features such as help desk support, a service-level agreement, and non-branded or customer-branded maps.
About Placebase
Since its founding in 2001, Placebase, Inc. has been creating hosted platforms that display highly sophisticated interactive maps in ordinary web browsers. The company's customers represent both small and large organizations, including UCLA and the Brookings Institution. Placebase is an ongoing developer of Fannie Mae Foundation's DataPlace(TM), the most feature-rich mapping application currently available on the Web ( www.dataplace.org ). More information about Placebase can be found at www.placebase.com.
Source: Placebase, Inc.
Web site: www.placebase.com/
http://www.dataplace.org/
http://www.pushpin.com/
