The exhibit floor at the GIS in the Rockies conference. Photo courtesy of Annette Ginocchetti.

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking about the MapQuest Directions API as a part of the Emerging Technologies track at the GIS in the Rockies conference. The conference, which was held at The Cable Center here in Denver, Colorado, is a large regional conference that focuses on many topics relevant to geospatial technologies, including geospatial web development, analysis, surveying, photogrammetry, and remote sensing.

My session, An in-depth look at the MapQuest Directions API, touched upon many of the features included in the Directions API that go beyond simple point-to-point routes and driving directions, such as:

• Multipoint routing
• Optimized routing
• Route control points
• Route matrix
• Corridor searching (with the MapQuest Search API)

We took a look at sample code, requests, responses, and talked about how to get started, since all of this great functionality is available to both Community Edition and Enterprise Edition developers today (yes, today!).

The conference was well done and certainly did not disappoint; in fact, it was inspiring to see the work being done by others in the industry and many of the sessions were informative and fun. I’m already looking forward to next year’s conference. Only 360 more days to go!

If you need help with getting started or have questions about the Directions API, feel free to check out the forums on the Developer Network or tweet @MapQuestTech!

MapQuest first began offering products and services based on data from OpenStreetMap back in July 2010, and today we’re extremely proud to be announcing a slew of updates to our Open APIs – all of which are still available for free and without any limit on transactions!

Open JavaScript Maps API v7.0

Multipoint routing using the Open JavaScript API v7.0

Open Aerial Tiles
For those of you looking to add aerial imagery to your application, you’ll be happy to learn the MapQuest Open Aerial Tiles have been fully integrated into the API. The tiles are composed only of imagery in the public domain (or released under similar licenses) and can be used for any purpose without any restrictions.

Geolocation Control
As the name indicates, this new control can be used to detect the user’s location and automatically re-center the map. A custom handler can also be added to perform a task, such as getting directions to the nearest ice cream shop after the user has been geolocated.

Increased Mobile Support
A major focus for the v7.0 release was to significantly improve performance and functionality on mobile devices. Key bug fixes were made in order to better handle touch events and increase support for pop-up InfoWindows and other popular features.

Many, many more upgrades are still to come, but we think you’ll love all the enhancements we’ve already made! We strongly encourage you to switch to the new Open JavaScript API v7.0 and check out the much improved Developer’s Guide.

Open Geocoding API

One obstacle with using OpenStreetMap has always been geocoding, but the new Open Geocoding API (our first stab at releasing a first-rate open geocoder) allows users to geocode, reverse geocode and batch geocode addresses. Powered by Nominatim, the Open Geocoding API makes it possible for users to specify which country to search, which city to search, and use other advanced specifications to further refine their request.

Basic Geocode Request:
http://open.mapquestapi.com/geocoding/v1/address?location=Lancaster,PA

Advanced Geocode Request:
http://open.mapquestapi.com/geocoding/v1/address?json={location:{city:”Portland”,state:”OR”}}

To learn more about the API, including information about returning the geocode quality and static map thumbnails in the response, be sure to read the Open Geocoding Developer’s Guide. If you also have suggestions on how we can improve the service, please let us know!

Open Directions API, Open Guidance API & Open Static Map API

Continuing with the geocoding theme, both the Open Directions API and Open Guidance API now support addresses as their input.

Example:
http://open.mapquestapi.com/directions/v1/route?from=Lancaster,PA&to=York,PA&ambiguities=ignore

The Open Static Map API has also been updated to support address locations when making a getplacemap request.

Example:
http://open.mapquestapi.com/staticmap/v4/getplacemap?location=1090 N Charlotte St, Lancaster, PA&size=500,300&type=map&zoom=17&showicon=red_1

(Note to current Open Static Map users: please switch to v4 as v3 has been deprecated).

All the above geocoding capabilities, as well as the Open JavaScript API v7.0 we announced today, help add an incredible new level of depth to our APIs. It’s a truly significant step towards advancing the MapQuest Open APIs into becoming not only the most unique and disruptive mapping API available, but also a legitimate competitor against other paid solutions.

We owe many thanks to the OpenStreetMap community for contributing their time and efforts to the project, and we hope you share with us all the creative ways in which you use our APIs!

Have questions or comments? Please post them on our forums or on Twitter @MapQuestTech and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. Thank you and enjoy!

Check out our Developer Network today to sign up for a Community Edition license, get access to technical information, blog posts, forums and more.

We also offer our MapQuest Enterprise Edition for businesses that are looking for technical support, a service level agreement, geocoding only licenses and a whole bunch of other benefits. Call us (888-627-7837) or fill out our online form and one of our mapping gurus will reach out to discuss what might work best for you and your business. If you’re not sure whether Community or Enterprise is the best option for you, you can check out our Ts&Cs or just reach out to us and we can help you work thru that too.

p.s. Seriously, if you don’t love free, tweet hashtag #MapQuestTech – we’ll send the first 50 of you a free t-shirt to convince you.

In addition to our new transactional limits (or lack thereof!) we wanted to clarify where and how you can use our APIs with a Community Edition license.  You CAN develop paid mobile applications for app stores using our Community Edition licenses.  You can also use SSL.

For all the details, check out the following Map API Licensing and Terms Overview.  Also check out the Terms of Use for all the legal specifics.  I’ve included the handy chart available from the overview below.  Head over to the MapQuest Developer Network to sign up for a free map API key and start developing!

	ENTERPRISE	COMMUNITY
	Licensed Data	Licensed Data	Open Data
Maps	(No preset limit)*	(No preset limit)*	(No preset limit)*
Directions	(No preset limit)*	(5000 calls/day)	(No preset limit)*
Geocoding	(No preset limit)*	(5000 calls/day)	(No preset limit)*
Search	(No preset limit)*	(5000 calls/day)	(No preset limit)*
Route Matrix	(No preset limit)*	(5000 route pairs/day)
Traffic **
Non-Commercial or Public Web Apps
Non-Commercial or Public Mobile Apps
Private and/or Paid Commercial Web Apps
Paid Mobile Apps
SSL
Forum Support
Premium Support(24/7 Phone & Email Support)
System Performance Levels
Account Management

* MapQuest operates a shared service and reserves the right to limit access to prevent service degradation.  Please contact MapQuest to discuss applications with heavy traffic volume expectations.

** The Traffic API Web Service cannot be used for real-time navigation, in conjunction with in-car or stand alone portable navigation devices, or be used as the primary purpose of your website or application.

The SplitViewNavigator in Flash Builder 4.6

Hello from cloudy and cool Los Angeles! Adobe MAX has been humming along so far and there’s a lot of excitement about the types of mobile applications possible with Adobe Flash Builder 4.5, as well as the improvements coming with Flash Builder 4.6.  Naturally with mobile apps come mapping, directions, traffic and more, and so far we’ve seen a warm welcome to our new Mobile Flash Maps API.

I set out at MAX to determine sentiment around the overall Flash Builder foray into mobile applications. The folks I spoke with were generally pleased and excited by the possibilities of coding once and deploying everywhere, not the least of which, significant cost savings. I had forgotten how much people love Flash Builder as a tool to design, build and debug applications – when compared with developing in other web languages, Flash really spoils you.

As far as actual mobile applications built with Flash Builder 4.5 in the market, the most notable is Politico. However, several folks I spoke with were in active development on some new apps, so the next 3-6 months should be interesting to watch.

The pre-release of Flash Builder 4.6 has generated a stir, most notably with the performance enhancements, native extensions, new mobile components and an improved deployment for Android so that users don’t have to separately install AIR. These first two features should really close the gap between what a Flash-built native app can do versus a natively coded app.

From my perspective, it’s exciting to be on the forefront of a technology that has such great potential. I’m pleased to see the features Adobe has in 4.6, as they match up well with MapQuest’s roadmap. (We’re trying to keep up with several great features of our own planned in the next several months.)

On a related note, we have a cool demo to share from WebMapSolutions. While we’ve built our own demo application (which Android users can install directly from Android Market), the good folks at WebMapSolutions have been working on several of their own. Check out the following video they put together of one of their apps.

Just a reminder, tomorrow (Wednesday, Oct. 5) at 10 a.m. we’ll do a deeper dive into the capabilities of the API and what’s next in our Unconference panel.

I’ve been involved with many a mobile project over the years, and, frankly, they are a huge pain.  To build an app available to most users means building the same code several times over, once for each major platform.  Today, we’re excited to announce a new API combined with an Adobe technology that should alleviate that pain.

For those who have been following Adobe lately, you’ve seen some very exciting developments within their Flash Builder (Flex SDK) development tools.  With the release of Flash Builder 4.5, you can deploy native mobile applications to Apple iOS, Google Android and Blackberry Tablet from a single code base.  Yes, code ONE time and deploy native applications everywhere.  For those used to Adobe Flex, Flash Builder is the new name of the development tool to deploy applications using Adobe Flex SDK or ActionScript.

Our Mobile Flash Maps API provides interactive mapping features to use within Flash Builder 4.5 native mobile applications.  This includes support for touch gestures, as well as making our controls and POIs mobile friendly. So now you can easily combine the great features of our web services, such as searching for traffic or optimizing your route, with an easy way to deploy to a mobile device.  Check out the video below to see just a small sample of what you can do.

To me, there’s nothing better than finding the perfect piece of sample code when I’m looking to develop an application.  The mobile application featured in that video is available to jumpstart your next mobile project.  If you’re on an Android device, you can run this app directly on your phone by checking out the MapQuest Mobile Flash Maps API Showcase in the Android Market.  You can also download the source code for our mobile mapping app here.

We couldn’t squeeze all the features of our web services in a single app – here are some other features you might be interested in.

• Searching for traffic incidents along a route
• Search by drive time or drive distance, either around a point or along a route
• Alternate routing
• Optimized routing (re-order stops to make the overall trip more efficient)
• Reverse geocoding
• Bicycle routing and elevation charts using open data

Along with those features, you have your choice of using either our licensed data (what we use on MapQuest.com) or our open data (such as OpenStreetMap).  While the Mobile Flash Maps API is different from our web/desktop Flash Maps API, you’ll still find many of the samples we provide on our desktop/web API will be useful to see the possibilities of what can be built.  Here is a full list of differences between the mobile and web/desktop versions of our Flash Maps API.

This is just the beginning – we’re excited to meet Flash Builder and Flex developers here at Adobe MAX and hear what features they’re looking for from us going forward.  We have an Unconference discussion at 10 am on Wednesday if you would like to see the Mobile Flash Maps API in action.

If you’re not at the show, head over to our Flash Maps API Forums at let us know what you think.  We already have some additional improvements on the way.

Catch up with us at MAX (@MapQuestRoman)!

Oh So Witty: It assigns a latitude and longitude coordinate to a street address, zip code, intersection, or geographic boundary.

Exciting: Because without geocoding, you can’t show a map, driving directions or start a proximity search!  If I was desperate for a Sonic burger I wouldn’t’ be able to find a Sonic without using a geocode.

Good ol’ fashion fun: Geocoding also allows businesses to do analytics such as understand where their customers are and where their customers are coming from.

And just when you couldn’t get enough of geocoding, here’s what makes MapQuest geocoding unique:

-       The ability to return a 5-character result code to verify the accuracy of locations in greater detail than a simple yes/no or percentage match.

-       Support for geocoding up to 100 locations at once in a single batch function call.

-       Address point geocoding – this means we return a geocode that represents the middle of the land parcel and one where the address connects to the road network.

-       Thumbnail ambiguity maps – if the MapQuest service finds multiple options for the geocode you can return a thumbnail image of the ambiguous location to give end-users some context when disambiguating.

-    Reverse geocoding – take a latitude and longitude and find what address it is

-       And more. . . .

All of this can be easily accessed through our Geocoding API, which you will also access when using our JavaScript API or our Flash Maps API.

MapQuest Community Edition allows up to 5,000 geocodes per day. The licensed solution, as part of the Enterprise Edition, has unlimited access.  We license geocodes to be used in conjunction with maps and directions as well as provide geocoding only licenses.

If you’re looking for more geocodes but aren’t interested in an Enterprise license, do not fear.  Our Nominatim search API built on top of Open Street Map data can also geocode and reverse geocode.  No key is required and MapQuest sets no transactional limits!  Plus, since its on top of crowdsourced Open Street Map data, you can fix any data problems you might find.

Now get geocoding!

Using this service is really no different than directly calling for our driving, walking, or biking directions. Simply changing the routeType to ‘multimodal‘ will prompt MapQuest to begin searching for an optimal route combining pedestrian routes with transit routes.

Because transit data is also time-sensitive, some key parameters outlined on Date/Time Routing Options have been added and are required for the service to return a response. Seen below is an example of a transit route request using the Metro from the oft forgotten about and climbable (!!) Albert Einstein Memorial to the Verizon Center in Washington, DC.

http://open.mapquestapi.com/directions/v0/route?routeType=multimodal&timeType=1&outFormat=xml&from=38.892551,-77.048244&to=38.898137,-77.020928

As documented on the Date/Time Routing Options page, when the value of timeType is set to 1, the current time is sent to generate a transit route. Other options include choosing a certain day of the week and time, or selecting a specific date and time — all of which can have a major impact on the transit route returned.

Don’t forget to also check out the updated Advanced Routing Sample and give our API a test-drive!

Partial screenshot of the Advanced Routing Sample using the Open Directions API

Currently, transit directions are available for six major metropolitan areas: New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco in both our Directions API and the Open Directions API. Please feel free to provide feedback on our forums or @MapQuestTech while we look to increase the amount of transit data available and improve the service itself.

Happy Transit Commuting!

I’ve already talked a bit about the Elevation Service in the past (here and here) and below is another example of an elevation chart and a short summary of the service in case you’ve forgotten or (gasp!) missed my previous posts:

Elevation chart from Vancouver, CN to Seattle, WA

• Generates an elevation chart in a customizable size
• Provides elevation profile information (elevation and distance) in JSON or XML formats
• Distance values returned in miles or kilometers
• Shape format represented as float pairs or compressed path string with 5 and 6 digits of precision

So where is the data coming from? The Open Elevation Service is powered by the SRTM V2 data (“finished” version). SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) is the international project headed by NASA that helped capture high-resolution topographic data of the Earth. In the U.S., data resolution is approximately 30 meters and 90 meters for the rest of the world.

If you need more information, you know where to go – the Developer’s Guide! We hope you enjoy the new Open Elevation Service as we continue to roll out new features. As always, go ahead and combine Elevation with the Open Directions Service or Nominatim for the truly Open Experience! Just remember they are all still in Beta and providing feedback can only help improve these services.

email: open@mapquest.com

If you’re already familiar with the Open Directions Service, then you’ll know that this service is based entirely on OpenStreetMap data. You’ll also find that adding bike routes to your directions search is extremely easy to implement. For example, if you were searching for directions from Thoreau Middle School in Vienna, VA, to Idylwood Park in Falls Church, VA, you would say:

http://open.mapquestapi.com/directions/v0/route?from=38.88866,-77.241899&to=38.89162,-77.211376&routeType=shortest

Simply change routeType=shortest to routeType=bicycle.

http://open.mapquestapi.com/directions/v0/route?from=38.88866,-77.241899&to=38.89162,-77.211376&routeType=bicycle

Here’s a comparison of the results for the same route. Note the difference as the bike route option attempts to provide a more bike friendly route by avoiding major roads and even jumps on the W&OD Trail, a popular paved multi-use trail in Northern Virginia!

Directions using routeType=shortest.

Directions using routeType=bicycle.

If you’re asking yourself, “what does MapQuest mean when they claim a more bike friendly route?” Well, we will route you on paths that are not vehicle accessible and also try to not let you do anything illegal, like riding on an interstate : ) On a more serious note, the following list provides some specific rules that are applied to bike routes:

• Avoids roads where bicycle access in OpenStreetMap is set to false
• Avoids all limited access highways
• Favors bike specific paths (road segments that have bicycle access only – no auto or pedestrian)
• Favors walkways with no auto access
• Applies various weights to roads based on the maxspeed tag (ex. favors routes where maxspeed <= 30 mph)

Elevation chart combining the Bike Routes with the Open Elevation Service.

Continuing with the Open theme, bike routes can also be combined with the Open Elevation Service. Remember, it’s still in Beta and we’d appreciate it if you can limit the routes to less than 200 miles. (I know, we apologize – you were looking forward to biking over 200 miles tomorrow, weren’t you?)

Similar to all our other Open Services, no AppKey is necessary! What you will need, however, is a collection of lat/longs along its route to produce the elevation chart. Fortunately the above Open Directions request can provide the coordinates for us. With this info in hand, we can request Elevation with the following:

http://bit.ly/bmtuBS

The elevation chart is heavily dependent on the generalize parameter for the Open Directions Service. As you might expect, the higher the generalization, the more simplified the elevation chart becomes. Check out the Developer’s Guide to read more about the generalize parameter and shape simplifications under Advanced Routing Options and Parameters. And definitely stay tuned for more details regarding the Open Elevation Service!