Following on from our search upgrade of three weeks ago, we’ve added better support for region-based searches.

Searches for “San Francisco geology” will now return layers which cover California and are relevant to the San Francisco region. And a search for “California transport” will return layers for the San Francisco region which are relevant to the all-of-California level.

You can now embed layer maps within your own webpages. Just copy-and-paste the ‘embed’ code visible on a layer page into your blog post.

The example embedded below is a Californian hillshade layer, otherwise known as a “terrain” layer.

California Hillshade (30m) on Koordinates

Wordpress.com update: Blogs hosted on Wordpress.com unfortunately filter out all iFrames, therefore the embed code won’t work for any blog with an address like ‘myblog.wordpress.com’. We’ve filed a support request for Wordpress to add support for embedding Koordinates maps, like they recently added for Google Maps.

A workaround for Wordpress MU is discussed here (h/t Dave Moskovitz).

A big problem with downloading and purchasing GIS data over the Internet is the size of the files to be downloaded.

Koordinates tackles this problem by:

• giving you a “set area” ability, so you only download or purchase what you’re interested in
• archiving all your data into one ZIP file for easy download
• generating size estimates for your selected layers and area, so you can modify or abort your intended download or purchase, before you commit any time or money

The size estimates are generated ‘on the fly’ based on the layers you’ve added to your Cart and the area you’ve defined. In the example below, the Cadastral Road Network for half of New Zealand is estimated at 37Mb (Zipped).

The size estimate offered in the cart is based on assumptions of Shapefile and GeoJPEG as the download file-type. The Download and Checkout dialogs allow for more precise estimates of download sizes, based on file-type choice. The example below shows Transit Routes and USGS fault-lines for the Bay Area of California.

The default size estimate in the Cart: 22MB of Shapefiles

File-type set to MapInfo TAB: 14MB

File-type set to KMZ: 15MB

File-type set to DWG w/ GIS attributes: 110MB

Koordinates currently has a 1.5Gb-per-Zip download and purchase limit based on the estimated size. The DWG file-type has a lower download limit of 100Mb worth of vectors.