I am helping a media company to add geo-location to its articles, and thought
it might help speed the process of matching the requirements to a technology
provider (or set of technologies) by presenting it to the OSM community. I'm
hoping to stick to as many open technologies here as possible while satisfying
the requirements. This will be justifiable both in terms of preference for
open-technologies, lack of vendor-lockin, as well as hopefully through lower
license fees. Ideally this would be taking pieces "off the shelf" and gluing
them together, rather than doing lots of bespoke development.
At the very least I thought sharing the requirement with the OSM community
might help shape future changes.
One area I'm not sure about is postcode searches, since these need to be
accurate/complete. Could we license this separately for now, and use OSM? Or
could geocoding be done through a separate API to another provider, but the
maps themselves be from OSM?
Anyway, here is the full brief:
Overview
The proposed mapping system (sub-CMS) is a form-based tool to enable
journalists to quickly and easily generate both static and dynamic maps that
can be embedded in articles and summary pages. It should require no IT skills
whatsoever. The only skills it should require are the ability to complete a
short form, accurately spell a place name or post code, enter it and associated
content or article information in fields on a form and preview the resulting
map prior to publishing.
In essence it is a software wrapper that sits on top of and communicates with
the feature-rich mapping APIs now available (Google, Yahoo, Bing,
Openstreetmap) to allow site users to automatically generate from these APIs
bespoke AJAX and Flash maps appropriate to varying editorial requirements.
Requirements
* must perform well and have high (99+%) availability. Most accessed from
English-speaking countries, so ideally with points of presence in UK/US, or
easily cached using typical content delivery network (CDN) - such as Akamai
* must handle large numbers of requests and traffic spikes
* ideally vendor-neutral, so that the content writer can view several
potential maps from different providers and select that which offers the best
coverage/features/illustration for the content (abstraction layer?)
* store geo-metadata with the article/content
* allow multiple geo-data metadata "tags" to be stored with each, for content
that relates to several locations, regions etc
* handle encapsulating concepts, e.g.
areas/countries/states/provinces/regions, and their relationship to other
features (towns, streets etc)
* fast, convenient search and lookup of places, including disambiguation
(preferably with details and maps to show options)
* store all these relationships with the content in a flexible, (if possible)
open format
It should be capable of allowing content writers/producers to:
*Select the size of the map from a dropdown set of sizes (default sizes
provided)
*Select the map view type - (Map, Satellite, Terrain, Hybrid) - (default is Map)
*Select the map format - html/Ajax or Flash-based
*Select the centre of the map by entering a place name - (default based on map
content)
*Select the initial zoom level - (default based on map content)
*Select map annotation type (either marker, or shape, or marker + shape)
*Enter a headline/caption and select its placement (either as an overlay or
above or below map)
*Generate SEO metadata from headline, place names and map marker content
automatically
*Add additional SEO metadata to the map from the form
*Save the map, for future use and revision.
*Save JPEG images of map in preset sizes as snapshots
Map Generation Tools Required
*Generate maps with markers displaying content fields entered from a standard
form.
*Generate markers based on place names, street addresses or postcodes.
*Select marker style from a dropdown
*Revise markers by dragging and re-setting markers
*Revise marker content by clicking on Edit button to relink to location
search/entry Form
*Draw any shape (line, circle, square, polygon) on a map, and select line
colour and fill
*Link the map content to a Google spreadsheet, if appropriate so the content
can be dynamically updated - (either by direct entry or fed by user-generated
entries)
*Revise any shape by dragging and resetting
*Revise shape content by clicking on Edit button to relink to entry Form
*Overlay imported vector and bitmap shapes from file
*Overlay imported ESRI shape files from file
*Be able to dynamically associate rich content with any shape
*Bulk upload marker content from a csv or tabbed text file
*Allow user generated entries via pre-set Filter fields
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