Google Streetview still amazes me everytime I sit down to play with it. Geoguessr takes playing to a new level by making it a game to guess at which random location you’re being dropped. Drop the marker on the spot you think is closest. The closer you guess, the higher the score. Easy but very addictive if you’re into this type of games. And it has some educational value, too. Check it out here.

Speaking of Streetview, if you’ve been following the news around the Oculus Rift VR headset, you’ll have seen Oculus Google Street View, otherwise take a look for sure. (Github repo). For actual headtracking support using the Rift, you need a websocket server.

Objective-C

• Helios is an open-source framework that provides essential backend services for iOS apps. Features data synchronization, push notifications, in-app purchases and passbook integration. Based on Rails.

• Try Objective-C is an online course for learning that language and iOS programming.

Python

• Dataset is a Python library for working with databases more easily/lazily. It’s built on top of SQLAlchemy. Features include Automatic Schemas, Upserts, Query helpers, Scripted exports and more.

Javascript

• Verlet.js is a simple Verlet integration physics engine.

• AngularJS directives and the computer science of JavaScript

• Getting started with AngularJS

• Angular UI (is being broken into subprojects)

• Superhero.js is a collection of the best articles, videos and presentations on the topic of maintaining a large Javascript codebase.

Geo

• Soft Cities prints OpenStreetMap maps on your blankets! Awesome gift idea for geo nerds.

• Leaflet Data Visualization Framework is an extension to the Leaflet JavaScript mapping library with the primary goal to simplify data visualization and thematic mapping.

• Finder using D3.Geo

• Geoscript in action part 1

• GeoAlchemy 2 aims to be simpler than its predecessor, in terms of both usage, and maintainance.

• postgis.net - not sure how I missed this, but our beloved PostgreSQL GIS extension has a new website.

• ST_FromGDALRaster does exactly that: Returns a raster from a supported GDAL raster file. But I didn’t know it existed.

• Infrared Band Analysis with Tilemill makes use of Mapbox.js to create this sliding difference effect

• Design Weather Maps, Live Weather Data and MapBox.js and Expanding TileMill’s Building Symbolizer to Visualize Complex 3d Structures are more interesting reads from Mapbox.

• OpenLayers 3 Animation Example shows off the next generation of this famous web mapping library.

• Displaying WebGL data on Google Maps

• D3 + Leaflet

• WebGL GeoJSON tile rendering

• Maps Shortcuts is a Google Maps demonstration by Chris Broadfoot demonstrating an animated visualization of over 1 million GPS points from 25k cab rides in San Francisco.

• MapD is a to-be-released GPU accelerated GIS database. Looking forward to that.

• Streaming data via OPeNDAP

• Pointillist allows geospatial painting on a Leaflet canvas.

• Learn OSM learns you OpenStreetMap step-by-step.

• HeyWhatsThat

• Dark Sky Forecast API Raw data

• Using GDAL with Python: a basic introduction

• Fulcrum App is a generic but powerful mobile field data collection app.

UI/UX

• Marinexplore has a fantastic interface. More on that later.

• The Digital Public Library of America has a very nice user interface, integrating tabular, spatial and temporal data:

Datavisualization

• Giant D3.js gallery

• Threegraphs is a Three.js-powered charting library. Should be powerful stuff, considering the use of Typed Arrays and WebWorkers.

• Venn Diagrams with D3.js takes the Venn diagram to the extreme. Code on Github

• Christchurch 2010 Timeline

• How Selections Work is another well executed and thus essential piece of D3.js documentation by Mike Bostock himself. Must read if using D3. Also read Nested Selections.

• Infro is a Javascript visualisation tool for anomalies and patterns in tabular data. Repo.

• Vega is a visualization grammar, a declarative format for creating, saving and sharing visualization designs.

• Reusable Charting Patterns

• Creating a data visualization tool using D3.js, Crossfilter and Leaflet

• Pathfinding.js is a pathfinding library intended for games. See the demo here. It implements the A*, Bidirectional, Breadth-first, Jump-point, Best-first and the infamous Dijkstra pathfinding algorithms. It’s nice to play with them interactively, so I know what I’m doing when using them in PGRouting.

Miscellaneous

• Soundpauli has a nice collection of vintage speakers.

• TLDRzr is a page summarizer. Take a look at Xtractor as well.

• Bitcraze is a programmable nanocopter.

Some more work from Stamen again. They focused on the waterside instead of the land this time. I like how it combines storytelling with maps and scientific facts along a timescale, and the best thing is that they managed to keep this simple and elegant. Impressive!

Check it out here.

Stamen, the company most tech-Dutchies know from Nederland van Boven, has been using data from Here in a tech mash-up using WebGL, Three.js, custom TMS.

It indeed looks like scenes from Game of Thrones… very nice!

Read all about it at Stamen.

A colleague was showing off his Basho sticker the other day. I decided to send Basho an e-mail asking for one more.

Instead, they shipped a party package with over one hundred stickers and four really nice mugs to my place. I gave one to Fritz, so nobody needs to be jealous anymore!

Thanks, Stuart and others at Basho!