I've been continuing my experimentation with loading google static maps into the canvas powering GeoTiddlyWiki (see GeoTiddlyWiki meets google maps static image server. It's been a good 24 hours and I've got to a point where I have managed to get the scaling and translating functions in geotiddlywiki matching that of google maps (alot of trial and error and making use of proj4js).

Here is an example of this in action:


The interesting thing about this is it highlights the difference in quality between the geojson data file I've been using and the actual shape of the world (as google sees it). It would be quite feasible that the google maps static image layer could be used to manually improve the quality of the associated geojson file - after all it's just a case of adding additional coordinates to make the shape more detailed and thus geotiddlywiki could become a tool for constructing geojsons for other mashups.

Currently the static images are pulled off googles server each time the map is redrawn, but I love the idea of these downloading locally in the background, thus making the map available for offline usage.

Make sure you see this in action here http://svn.tiddlywiki.org/Trunk/contributors/JonRobson/plugins/WorldMaps/examples/staticmap.html checking out it's various dependencies.

On another subject I've been refining the geotagging aspect of GeoTiddlyWiki. Before there was lots of overlapping of geotags (see this post however now I've begun treating geotags differently to polygons. I've got a great example of this you can view in Travel and explore.