MapFish is an open source framework for producing online mapping applications. MapFish has two components: Server and Client. The main components of the MapFish Client consists of OpenLayers, the ExtJS framework, and the GeoExt framework. MapFish Server is "map server agnostic" and supports a range of mapping servers and web server languages.

The combination of these tools and frameworks can produce a powerful web application with much of the look and feel of an offline application.

This article was previously published on GeoChalkboard, and has been reproduced here with permission.

In the GIS world, heat maps are a graphical representation of point data on a map through the use of colors that indicate the density of some variable such as crime incidents or traffic accidents. Heat maps let users quickly visualize the density of locations. Being able to understand the density of point locations makes it much easier to see patterns in your data, especially when using colors. In this article we are going to examine the HeatMapAPI, a JavaScript API for creating heat maps in Google Maps.

This article was previously published on GeoChalkboard, and has been reproduced here with permission.

In this article we take a look at the Spreadsheet Mapper 2.0 tool created by the Outreach team for creating Google Earth and Google Maps placemark layers using Google Docs. Google Docs is a great way to create, share and collaborate on documents, spreadsheets and presentations online. Spreadsheet Mapper takes advantage of this online, collaborative environment by allowing you to create placemark layers for display in Google Earth and Google Maps through a spreadsheet created in Google Docs. Because Google Docs is a collaborative tool, members of your team can simultaneously enter data and instantly publish updates to GE and GMaps. So, let’s take a look at how this is done through a basic example.