Tired of Google Maps when they don't update the road on your area ? I've tried zooming in on Kuala Lumpur and sometimes the maps aren't that updated and its fuzzy looking. So you might want to try the new Microsoft Research’s MapCruncher - a prototype technology from Microsoft Research that makes it easy for users to create their own, personalized mash-ups or online maps. Download MapCruncher-2.00.zip at 1.4 MB that was launched on 16 May 2006.
The MapCruncher application requires Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP. It also requires the .Net 2.0 runtime, which it will install if necessary. MapCruncher accepts both drawing formats (PDF, WMF, EMF) and image formats (JPG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, BMP).
There’s nothing else quite like it. MapCruncher enables a user to take existing road maps and aerial imagery and overlay particular, specialized maps to create unique mash-ups tailored to the user’s specific interests.
“MapCruncher empowers anybody in the world to take whatever data is important to them,” explains Elson, the project lead, “and share it with everybody else in a format that makes all of these types of data interoperable.”
Adds John Douceur, who manages Elson and Howell and who, along with fellow researcher Danyel Fisher, made key contributions to the project: “We’re allowing people to take map data and overlay it to create a new interactive Web map.”
Sharing your Own interactive Maps with Microsoft Research’s MapCruncher site
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