

I had no idea how to make custom maps, so I learnt by doing. You should too. - untog
http://blog.untogether.co.uk/post/17554554409/i-had-no-idea-how-to-make-custom-maps-so-i-learnt-by

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untog
I hope that no-one considers it too spammy if I say that the app I am
discussing in the post is entered into a competition that has a public voting
segment. It's doing pretty badly, so if you found the post interesting I'd
appreciate a vote:

<http://2011.nycbigapps.com/submissions/5832-taxonomy>

It's one of 95 entries, and there's a great panel of judges (Fred Wilson,
Naveen@Foursquare, VC investors and more), so anything I can do to get
attention is good.

Even if you don't like it, the competition in general could do with some more
"organic" voting, so if you've got a few spare minutes, take a look through
and vote for some that stand out. You can vote once daily for each app.

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jarrettcoggin
I really liked the blog post. I really like the styling. It has a very strong
brand. However, one thing on using your maps. I have an astigmatism, which
makes tall narrow characters hard to read, especially at an angle. Here's my
observations:

\- Look at WEST 8TH ST. Zoom in as far as possible, then zoom out one click.
That was the easiest for me to read because it was higher contrast and the
letters naturally had more space in and around the letters.

\- WASHINGTON SQ N is almost impossible for me to distinguish. All I could
make out was WA...TON SO N at first. I couldn't tell that there was a Q in SQ
and kept thinking it was an O.

\- I really, really like the map styling.

Hopefully that helps you.

~~~
untog
Thanks for the feedback.

This is something I'd thought about actually, but not really covered in the
post: Google has, I'm sure, done hours upon hours of research into map
clarity. Sizes, colours, fonts, etc. By switching away from Google I'm losing
all that- and any updates they publish.

So it's a double edged sword. The good news is that I can keep iterating- I'm
not happy with a number of the zoom levels as they are right now (labels not
repeating often enough, too small text, etc) and in time I intend to go back
and fix those issues. So thanks for the detail- I'll definitely keep it in
mind.

In shorter term good news: If you're on an iPhone >=4, the retina tiles are
considerably more readable.

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untog
A brief introduction to the world of map making from a total amateur. I intend
to write some follow up posts going into more detail on making iPhone retina
tiles, tweaking leaflet.js and so on.

~~~
srik
You sell yourself short. The app and typography look amazing and it's pretty
responsive, pity I'm not in NY, I would've enjoyed using it. You're selling
your app for free, hope you find a way to make some money out of that; it's
evident you worked a lot on this.

Question: Do you send the driver feedback to taxi company or is it just
locally stored.

~~~
untog
Thanks, that's great to hear. At the moment the app is an entry in an NYC-
based competition called NYC BigApps (hence the NYC-and-nowhere-else
coverage). Some of the judges are investors (inc. Fred Wilson), and there are
cash prizes, so I'm treating it as a sort of litmus test of whether it's an
idea worth pursuing, expanding, etc.

Right now, the feedback is just local. But I've spoken briefly with city
officials (who regulate the yellow cabs) about passing the information back to
them. I'm keen to highlight good and bad behaviour so it would be awesome to
have a "taxi driver of the year" sort of thing, alongside handling complaints.

As for the monetisation side of it- that's tricky as the app currently stands.
But if it became a going concern I would probably pivot somewhat and make
bookings through private car services (right now, the one thing it doesn't do
is find you a taxi), then take a commission from that. All pipe dreams right
now, of course...

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epoxyhockey
As someone who spent the better part of the weekend hacking up all of the
Mapnik style XML files, it is great to see how someone gets things done more
easily in TileMill.

I decided to go the mod_tile / Mapnik route so that I could generate tiles on
the fly, world-wide. I have to agree that map styling is a huge time drain!
Not only is it difficult for a map novice, such as myself, to figure out what
all of the different Rules mean, but then the OCD takes over getting
everything perfect. :)

Great write-up and really cool map style! I haven't even looked into
customizing fonts yet. ;)

~~~
kkaefer
TileMill has an export feature: You can design your map in TileMill, then
export the style as Mapnik XML.

~~~
epoxyhockey
Thanks - yes, I initially tried this, but I believe the exported format is for
mapnik2, whereas the mod_tile package I am using seems to be for mapnik 0.7. I
didn't really know what I was doing at the time and figured that I would edit
the XML files that already seemed to be working.

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simon_kun
Hey Alastair, great post! Understanding OSM labels and so on can be pretty
time consuming. You might like the mapdig library for CartoDB that lets you
drill down into your spatial data to get a handle on what's what:
<http://vizzuality.github.com/mapdig/examples/osm_line.html> (OSM london lines
demo). Maybe next time :)

~~~
untog
That's pretty awesome. I'll definitely play around with this.

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digitalclubb
Is it just me or does that map functionality throw a wobbly in Chrome on Mac?

By using a magic mouse and a single swipe backwards/forwards - which is to
zoom in/out respectively (similar to a mouse wheel), causes the page to freeze
and for Chrome to kill it due to it being unresponsive.

This functionality works fine on the generic MapBox demos.

It's a shame because custom maps are a good idea, especially when you have so
much flexibility over the styling, I just like using gestures to make zooming
that little bit easier.

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jrockway
Interesting. What's odd, though, is the road layout. If you look at the
interactive map, you'll see that it deletes major roads before deleting minor
roads. If you go over by 23rd/11th and zoom in to the point where the
transition between no-buildings and buildings occurs, you'll see the west side
highway. Then, zoom out. The access roads to the indoor Chelsea Piers parking
lots show up, but the the 6-lane highway disappears.

Odd. This happened the last time there was an article about make-your-own
maps, too.

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TheFuture
Cool stuff. A lot of value can be added by designing your own map, vs the
typical dump in a Google map and drop some pins.

This inspires me to try out TileMill on one of my own projects.

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follower
Looks very cool.

You might want to look at tile caching projects which might make the initial
tile-generation take less time in exchange for only pre-rendering some tiles.
(Perhaps less important in your situation but would be beneficial when you
want to cover a larger area.)

I had a quick look at some options, this might work with your set up:
<http://tilestache.org/>

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justinph
Thanks for the introduction to TileMill: <http://mapbox.com/tilemill/>. It
looks really handy.

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mattmanser
/ot rant

Sorry, breaking point with this particular UX anti-pattern reached.

What is with this new fad of useless and distracting menus appearing at some
random interval when you scroll down? It's bloody annoying. I'm no longer
bothering to finish articles it's so distracting.

I will never and 99% of your readers will never, ever search your site. So why
shove the search box in my face at some random point when I'm scrolling down?

Pointless animations distract you when you're trying to read.

Stop doing it people, stop installing themes that do it and even sticky menus
are bloody annoying a-la bootcamp. Remember frames? Ever stopped to wonder why
no-one ever uses them any more? Cause it sucks. UX for blogs should be for
reading. The only good reason for using a sticky menu is for an application
where the menu is actually pretty important.

Sticky stuff on the side, absolutely fine, even useful. Sticky stuff getting
in the way of the article? Bloody annoying!

/rant

~~~
untog
The behaviour you're describing wasn't my creation- it's part of the Tumblr
theme I use. It doesn't bother me as much as it does you so I never looked
into the options to see what I can do- now that I have, I see there is a
checkbox that allows me to disable that behaviour.

So I have. Ta-da!

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emeltzer
Your map styling looks really great, nice job!

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melc
very nice, i like the dark colour scheme however i would prefer to see a
difference between the colours of the streets and the sea.

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jorisw
leart -> learned

