Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
cartography. Although the responsibilities of these two areas are different, the
experts of these areas have similar experience in this area and the law has not
prevented the co-operation of cartographers between these two sectors.
The law was re-issued in 2012 aligned to the rapid development of the informa-
tion technology.
Cartography 2.0: Global Cartographic Services
The user demands for digital cartographic databases completely changed when
global and national map services started. The very first global map service was the
Xerox MapViewer in 1994, but only very limited and relatively small-scale data
were available (continent and country borders and hydrography). In 1996,
MapQuest offered street maps and route finding (but the most detailed maps were
available only in US areas).
Google Maps, introduced in 2005, transformed the online map into an extension
of a search engine thereby making it possible to search for features on the map. This
service has the largest effect: since then, most of the similar services are using the
same tile-based map data, and the user interface of the global cartographic services
resemble to Google Maps/Earth. Image tiling has been used since the early days of
the World Wide Web to speed the delivery of graphics. It was a little bit unusual to
insist on this technology at that time, but taking into consideration all factors this
was the most effective solution (Peterson
2011
).
Google Maps is regularly mentioned as one of the first and most prominent
appearances of web 2.0 (although the term itself has already been mentioned some
years before) together with Wikipedia and social networking sites. An even more
characteristic example of web 2.0 and cartography 2.0 is the Open Street Map
(OSM) project, which was inspired by the success of Wikipedia. The crowdsourced
data of OSM fits very well to the web 2.0 concept.
Web 2.0 is a platform; this is the most common short definition. Web 2.0 is the
second phase of development of the web, including its architecture and its appli-
cations. The companies that succeed in the Web 2.0 era are those that understand
the rules of this platform, rather than trying to go back to the rules of the desktop PC
era. Every significant Web 2.0 application to date has been backed by a specialized
database.
Web 2.0 is first of all a business and the service providers are looking for more
income, and they are not afraid of using new, easily marketable terms, but the term
is really short, unusual and understandable for everybody (Zentai
2007
).
Most of the national mapping authorities established their on-line map services
at the end of the 1990s. Unfortunately, none of the two state cartographic institutes
started a nationwide service in Hungary; only partial information was provided
(orthophotos), but not free.
The military cartography tested a web service of the DTA-200, called Hunet-200
in 2002. This required a special application (based on GeoMedia) at that time,
