When I read Torsten's blog the other day about Open Street Map (OSM) integration, I just had to check this out for myself. Verdict: it works. Look, there's even the pub across the street from my house:
Even though this is new code that is still being worked on, the zooming and panning are already pretty smooth. It will be fun to see just how good it gets, really. I've heard rumour of integrating the OSM search as well.
So now Marble not only handles multiple projections (globe, flat and mercator thus far), provides multiple overlay options (countries, geographical features, temperatures, nighttime, ...), shows the stars in "space" when you zoom out, supports the KML format (as made popular by Google Earth), can load GPS traces, lets you measure distances, print maps, etc, etc, etc ... it also lets you browse right down to the street level.
I'm a huge fan of OSM because maps are, IMHO, a very important set of data and they've found a sustainable way to make that information Freely (as in Freedom) available to all. Best of all, if the maps in your area aren't great you can help them fix that by contributing GPS routes and annotating existing data.
Now OSM has a kick ass and highly portable rich client user interface thanks to Marble. Marble works very well on Linux, BSD, OpenSolaris, Microsoft Windows and MacOS X operating systems and on a variety of hardware form factors (desktop, laptop, UMPC, tablet). It also ships by default with the KDE desktop environment; what other mainstream desktop ships with a 3D globe? =)
Massive props to the people who have breathed life into both the Marble and OSM projects.
(Awesome side note: Marble is the first hit on Google when querying "mac os desktop globe". It's "only" third when searching for "macos desktop globe" though.)
10 comments:
I hope the OSM will promote Marble on their page upon its next release. The lack of a good interface for OSM has been the reason why I haven't bothered with it in the past. Marble could really make it take off.
new stuff is fun..
how about some old stuff that needs some lovin' ??
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=113630
another anonymous coward @ anonymouse:
then fix it
@anonymous: i don't work on khtml, neither do the marble or OSM teams. it's like asking us to fix microsoft's software: we don't work on it =)
t's 4th now on "macos desktop globe", since your blog post rocketed to #1 XD
Marble starts rock totally, first I saw marble itself, then marble integration to digiKam and now open street maps on it.
Now we need just a good idea how to allow marble to be run on desktop easily so user can search places, place tags and find photos (trought digiKam) from it.
We have change to have even greater desktop for gnu/linux & *BSD & Opensolaris etc.
Wow! This was on my wishlist!
Now a bit of sexiness even to
plasma with a 2 layer background
(tiled below and scaled above,
for carbonium themes and such)
theme option and I'm done!
To Aaron, or any current KDE4 user:
I read that KDE4 will be more task-centric, focusing on the tasks at hand not the files.
I'm going to be very concrete for once. I have the following 'use case':
1. receive a mail with attachement; the attachment contains files to upload to a web server through FTP
2. save the file somewhere to your desktop
3. navigate to the folder with Zipped file
4. unzip the file
5. Open/switch to the FTP program, select the unzipped files and upload them to the server
What tools does KDE 4 offer to do this faster or more efficiëntly? How would you do this with the current state of KDE technology (say ,KDE 4.1b1)?
This is an honest question, meant in a positive way.
Darkelve
i don't work on khtml, neither do the marble or OSM teams. it's like asking us to fix microsoft's software: we don't work on it =)
Hmmmm. OK Aaron. We get it ;-).
Marble is starting to look like real gem to me :). I wonder what would happen to (auto)navigation markets if someone adds path finding into OSM/Marple.
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