[DUG] Advice on the TUMONZ SDK please

[John Bird]

I have had a quick look at Google Maps, Zoomin, Tumonz Live, Google Earth,
and Wises

Some potted observations:

-you don't do photos?

-I think the best visual interfaces in order are Google Earth, Tumonz,
Google Maps, Zoomin (all pretty good).  In the past I have crashed the Wises
map search many times, even emailed them about it.  I think it was a .net
error message (stifles a chuckle)

-The different way you do panning is no problem if the screen says it
somewhere - for instance a label "zoom modes" next to the 3 buttons, and/or
hints on them saying eg "zoom mode"  "pan mode"  "ultra-zoom mode".  Maybe
some users like to set a default pan mode...

-How about you move the 2 not so important status bars (above and below the
maps - "Home - Show your location...." and "terms of use.."  to a group of
links to the right of the TUMONZ logo (empty space).  You could move the
tool bar buttons above the search options, and hey presto you have a much
bigger on screen map, and that's without hiding anything in unexpected
places like IE7 does.  You could bury some of the terms of use and privacy
stuff in a disapearing panel like the help and other layers...they are not
needed in front of you all the time.

-The upper right thumbnail window could have an option for whole country (as
is) and an larger area view (like the others), eg a button to select
either....would be cool - you could even have a zoomer for the thumbnail if
you wanted to get fancy.

-A zoom in/out ruler/slider would be useful, everyone else has it, would
allow finer control over zoom out for instance.

-Right Click does unexpected things.....I zoomed out, then on the right
click menu I chose "Back" because I had zoomed too far and I went to Tumonz
home page.....maybe a menu relevant to zooming and panning.  The right click
menu tended to not disappear too...(that may be a Firefox issue as I
realised afterwards it was a Firefox standard right click menu...)

-Google Earth and Google maps are not as integrated as I would have
thought.....cannot search for NZ places in my version, (got latest to make
sure) I guess in time they are the ones to watch out for...Could find
Scotsman Valley in Google maps, but not in Google Earth, which only had
latitude and longitude to go by.  But these (lat/long) are not shown in any
of the map programs....


Anyone know what the technology behind Zoomin is?

Hint - off the top of my head - a shrewd move might be to make a partial
data sharing arrangement with Google Maps, might avoid them overtaking you
in time, as they are bound to end up eventually getting agreements to source
data with all the local authorities and relevant government departments in
time.  I imagine such departments are likely to have no resistence to
sharing their publicly available information with Google, as it is the
logical way to publish it, similarly as they would give copies of records to
libraries in the past.  You guys could be the provider of such.  Its not my
field, so I am just totally guessing here....

John