One of our server providers, Slicehost, is currently experiencing network problems which has taken parts of Koordinates offline.

Update: Back up at 12:25am.

Most of the data underlying the LINZ topographic maps of New Zealand is now available for free download as a public service provided by Koordinates Ltd:

Land Information New Zealand topographic data version 14

Certain LINZ topographic layers are only available after paying a small fee, generally because they’re very dense types of data. Two examples are the New Zealand 20m Contours and the New Zealand Spot Heights.

Many topographic layers covering the Chatham Islands are available from Ollivier & Co.

Koordinates has added some new file formats to our download file format list:

• MapInfo TAB. The default file format for Pitney Bowes MapInfo.
• CSV (Comma Separated Values). A text format commonly used by spreadsheet software.
• TIFF/GeoTIFF – a very common high-quality image format, commonly used for aerial and satellite imagery.

They join our existing formats:

• Shapefile. The most common GIS file format, originally designed by ESRI.
• DWG. A common CAD format, which supports linked imagery.
• JPEG/GeoJPEG. A common imagery format.
• KML. The Google Earth format, commonly supported by other software.
• KMZ. The compressed Google Earth format, not commonly supported by other software.

You can read an explanation of the Koordinates download system here.

Koordinates now supports large quantities of high-density vector data priced “Per Feature”. For those unfamiliar with GIS, a ‘feature’ is a line, point or polygon.

So a portion of a Koordinates layer with millions of points, polygons or polylines can now be purchased via simple pricing such as ‘1 feature for 0.1c’.

The initial type of data we aimed to support with this feature was cadastral or property data, which in New Zealand alone adds up to 2.5 million property parcels.

GIS consultancy Ollivier & Co is the first company to sell cadastral data on Koordinates. You can browse it here, or visit some of the layers directly:

• Cadastral Parcel Boundaries (Feb 09)
• Cadastral Address (Feb 09)
• Cadastral Titles (points) (Feb 09)

Ollivier & Co. have made their topographic image tiles available for purchase via Koordinates.

Topographic image (or raster) tiles are images designed to closely resemble the LINZ topographic map series, but continuous across New Zealand. There are no borders or other artifacts present at the boundaries of the map sheets.

Sam Giffney, of Zenbu and the NZ Open GPS Maps Project, has created two new organisations on Koordinates:

http://koordinates.com/org/zenbu/

http://koordinates.com/org/nzogps/

The Zenbu data includes some interesting points-of-interest under a Creative Commons license, such as petrol stations NZ-wide. The one layer from NZOpenGPS so far is an improved road centrelines, based originally on the LINZ road centrelines.

Layers on Koordinates now have some basic popularity statistics listed beneath the price:

A ‘view’ is someone visiting a layer detail page; an ‘add’ is counted when someone adds a layer to a cart or project.

To accompany these basic statistics, we’ve introduced some simple sorts you can apply to lists of layers:

Recently Added: newly uploaded layers will appear first.

Most Viewed: layers with high view counts will appear first.

Most Projects: layers added most often to a cart or project.

Updates to this blog have been intentionally limited until some legal matters were dealt with: happily our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy are now complete. You’ll be required to ‘accept’ our Terms of Use the next time you login or register for a user account. Any significant changes we make to the Terms of Use in the future will be noted here on the blog. We’re still getting to grips with some other legal issues around online user-driven sales of geodata.

In other news, the Land Information New Zealand topographic data (V14/2007) is now downloadable for free under a Creative Commons license:

• koordinates.com/org/linz/

Contact us if the LINZ topo layer you want hasn’t been created yet.

Some features recently added to Koordinates:

• Anyone can upload geodata under their own user account. Geodata can be in shapefiles, JPEG or TIFF formats, of any map projection. You can can include as many different tiles/files as you want in the ZIPs you upload; Koordinates will let you create individual layers from combinations of them. You’ll need to know the SRID for JPEG’s, certain TIFF’s or if the shapefiles don’t have a .PRJ.
• A public profile page for every user, kind of like a Flickr photostream.
• US geotags. Geotags on Koordinates are area based, e.g. a layer that is ‘mostly’ in California should be tagged with California. We’ve now got the US down to at least the county level, and also some city/town areas.
• Colours of your layers in Koordinates are preserved in KML and DWG downloads
• Comments threads. Based on early feedback, we’ll probably modify the comments system to work more like Get Satisfaction.

We’re now working on:

• Much better scalability
• A site tour and features overview
• Off-the-shelf commercial geodata licenses, which will allow anyone to sell their geodata via Koordinates
• Updating the FAQ with explanations of new features
• More fixes to DWG and KML downloads

You can read older Koordinates-related posts on my personal blog:

• Layer colours in KML/Google Earth
• Comments thread per layer
• Largest export from Koordinates to date
• DWG’s with layer colours
• US geotag polygons
• Koordinates on Twitter via Get Satisfaction

And you can read some suggested ideas for Koordinates on Get Satisfaction: getsatisfaction.com/koordinates. Feel free to post your own suggestions, or ask some questions.

And lastly, what is surely the most productive use of ArcGIS ever: Suze Mavoa’s mapstream.

It’s been a long, hard six months since we started our Private Beta on 6th November 2007. But we’re finally at the point where most of the core functionality of Koordinates is stable and our target users have a good chance of understanding how the site works.

So we launched our Public Beta on Friday 4th April, at about 9:20pm NZST.

That milestone was soon followed by our first (unexpected) sale. We priced a layer to test our credit card transaction system and Peter Davis promptly came along and purchased it. Thanks, Peter!

We have a lot planned for the future, so stay tuned as we gradually roll out new features.

Why are most layers “Online only”?

Most such layers are LINZ topographic data, and we’re still working on the license. If all goes to plan, most of the topo data should be downloadable from Koordinates within the next week. Users on our mailing list will be notified of this by email.