Cartographica 1.2 offers a new user interface for creating choropleth maps, which includes more advanced color palette options and a new Jenks classification for displaying categories of data on your map. This post highlights the new process for creating choropleth maps and talks about some of the advantages of the new user interface. In order to create a choropleth map follow the steps listed below... In the example, we are using data collected from the Washington D.C. GIS Data Catalogue, which includes city block groups with 2000 census data on demographic characteristics. In the example we are going …

A new feature of Cartographica 1.2 is the new color and palette management system. The system was complex and effective before, and now it has even more functionality! In previous versions users had to manually select color schemes from several color palate options in order to create choropleth maps, but now users have access to both pre-defined and user created color palettes. The new Color Palette Window (previously the Color Map Window) is great because it not only allows new color schemes to be created, but users can now simply drag and drop the colors directly on any layer …

Since Cartographica originally shipped, it has been easy to add labels to features. However, the labels haven't always been powerful. With 1.2, we're changing that. Labels can now contain more information with better controls of font and style. Here we give you a rundown on what you can look forward to in the beta and release of 1.2. Cartographica 1.2 contains quite a few changes to the style editor, and one of the largest is the new label editor. In previous versions, you could choose a label field by selecting it from a pop-up menu and the …

ClueTrust is readying the next major version of Cartographica—the Macintosh GIS would like to invite everyone to participate in the beta process. We have reached the point where all the features are in and we believe the product to be stable and within a few weeks of final release. In commemoration of this, we are inviting anyone who has previously tried Cartographica to give the beta a try, extending the trial period for an additional 30 days. If you have a current key (either because you are a paid user, or you are within your original 30-day trial period …

Today at AAG 2010, ClueTrust is pleased to announce the next evolution in our GIS for Mac OS X, Cartographica. We've on target for a release in May, about a year after our 1.0 release. There's a lot of new features we can talk about and some surprises that we'll wait until release day to discuss. If you like Cartographica now, we're certain that you're going to find the improvements amazing. We've been working diligently to improve every aspect of the program, using the latest technologies in Apple's Mac OS X ("Snow Leopard") to make the program smarter, faster …

At AAG 2010, ClueTrust today announced the first mobile member of the Cartographica family of products. Get your GIS data out on the road with you! Cartographica Mobile is a revolutionary app for a two revolutionary devices. In the past, most geospatial data input, access, and maintenance was done with dedicated GIS terminals or not done at all. However, until now there's been no way to get access to all that data held captive by your GIS servers without spending a fortune on a dedicated device or dragging around a laptop. Today, ClueTrust makes access to your geospatial data as …

A new map feature put out by the census bureau allows users to track how well Americans are doing at returning their 2010 census forms The map is designed to track the percent of households that have returned their census forms through the mail. Users can search the map by typing the zip code, name, or state of their community and then see how well their community is doing. It seems that one idea behind the map is to create a bit of national competition that will hopefully drive up the response rate of the national survey. At the time …

Thanks to all who provided feedback, bug reports, and testing, we now have version 1.1.4 available. Mostly it contains bug fixes, with a few polishes and one additional feature, the incorporation of the page orientation into the print window for quick printing from Map documents.

I am a frequent driver between Bloomington, Indiana and Lexington, Kentucky. In the past I have taken a route that was suggested by both logic and my GPS unit. However, recently a friend suggested that I try a different route to get home because it was faster, and a more relaxing drive. In order to determine which trip was more efficient I used my GPS unit to track my trip to see which one was better. In order to determine which trip was better I used Cartographica's GPS import ability to map my two trips and to conduct some basic …

Certainly has been quite a bit longer than I expected to take between reports about Cartographica 1.2's ongoing development. However,we've been continuing to move forward rapidly on some infrastructure changes and new features for 1.2. Check out our latest moves after the link. Here are some more highlights of what you'll see in version 1.2: Significantly improved Adobe Illustrator output We know a lot of customers on the Mac are looking for more control over the output and especially ways to integrate maps from Cartographica into their production workflows. We're going to be delivering a lot …

The 2010 Winter Olympics are underway in Vancouver, British Columbia!!! In honor of the games, this post is dedicated to mapping the city of Vancouver and several important Olympic sites. For this post data were obtained from the City of Vancouver's Data Catalogue, which has a lot of really interesting data about the city. Included within this data are several files that show important Olympic sites, as well as data about rapid transit systems and road closures. Vancouver is a coastal city that is a very popular tourist destination. Known for both its natural and man-made beauty it is home …

As of the release of 1.1.3 last week, we're running full speed to version 1.2, and now I can tell you a bit of what's going on with it. The target release timeframe for 1.2 is mid-April of 2010. We have been planning 1.2 for quite some time and are working towards that plan even as we speak. Key areas of concentration are: File Formats We know there's always need to bring in files from many different places, and we've been spending the last few weeks beefing up our file format handling (and the testing …

As a software development company, there are few things more frustrating than knowing that your software is crashing and having too little information to do anything about it. That's where you come in, and this time Pep and Jerry deserve a round of applause from the community for helping to track down a pernicious little bug in sending data to some Garmin devices. Find out how you can help in the future. One of the big features of 1.4 is something that isn't visible to the user usually, but is designed to help ClueTrust monitor the quality of the …

Google announced in a blog posting last night that they have a new imagery of Haiti taken within the last 24 hours by GeoEye showing some of the extensive damage that country has seen after the massive earthquake there on Tuesday. Relief efforts underway by the Red Cross, International Rescue Committee, and Habitat for Humanity (among many others, I'm certain).

We are happy to announce that version 1.1.2 of Cartographica is now shipping. It can be downloaded from the Cartographica Download page, and release notes are available as well. Most of the changes are stability and performance fixes, with some additional UI changes to make the Map Layout system easier to use. Thank you to those who participated in the testing for this version. Enjoy!

This morning, I had a request from a user to be able to send Point features from a layer in a Cartographica map document to a GPS. Although Cartographica is able to import data directly from GPS devices, we don't currently have a built-in method to export layer data to GPS devices. However, as with the complex label question, we can solve this one reasonably well using AppleScript. This article describes how we did this and give the AppleScript for doing it. For those unfamiliar with AppleScript, we had some more in-depth commentary on it in our Advanced label techniques …

Cartographica contains some powerful features, but there are times when you need to combine things that aren't obviously available in current versions. One such situation came up with a customer who was interested in combining two or more fields to create a label. Although future versions will likely have ways to do simple label combinations, we wanted to show how you can use AppleScript and Cartographica today to make labels that not only combine the contents of more than one field, but that do so in ways that provide extra flexibility. Because some of the techniques used in this post …

We're adding a new feature to the Cartographica blog starting today. Previously, all articles have contained only text. Now, some of them will also contain video entries. We hope that you find them enjoyable and entertaining. Today, we've added a screencast showing how Rick created his Al`Qaida map

The 2010 U.S. census began this morning in a nearly $300 million dollar attempt to count the nation's population. The census bureau is sending out forms to nearly 120 million households in hopes that they will top the year 2000 response rate of 67%. The census is relevant to mappers because much of the information that is collected in done so through geographic units of analysis. We often hear about Block Groups and Census Tracts, well, the census is where we get these terms. The census divides the nation into incrementally smaller units and data are collected from each …

We've just implemented some new features to the UI in Cartographica's Map Layout intended to make it easier to work with it, especially for first-time users. The features include placing a toolbar on the top of the window (user-configurable, of course) and introducing the ability to "draw" a new item onto the Map Layout by clicking and dragging. More details in this article, including the beta link. We've just implemented some new features to the UI in Cartographica's Map Layout intended to make it easier to work with it, especially for first-time users. The features include placing a toolbar on …