A Brief List of Mapping Tools

There are many mapping technologies, tools and organizations out there, and it is not always apparent how they compete with each other or complement each other. This list will hopefully aim for breadth over depth -- emphasizing how things work together or not, instead of details about what they do.

things to define

• Geographic coordinate system - for example, WGS 1984
• Projected coordinate system - for example, UTM, Mercator, Dymaxion

• GEOS
• PROJ.4
• GDAL - processes satellite imagery through a band format

• ogr2ogr -  http://www.gdal.org/ogr2ogr.html - allows a shapefile to be added to PostGIS

• Shapefile - corresponds to the "geometry" column in PostGIS

• KML - kind of a lite version of a Shapefile

• Google Maps
• Google Earth
• OSGeo - and essentially all the projects listed on their website
• Open Layers
• Open Street Maps
• WMS
• GeoDjango?
• ESRI
• CloudMade?'s Leaflet
• SimpleGeo?
• Hypercities
•  Tile Mill