MapCruncher, Make your own maps.
Have you guys seen Microsoft research’s Mapcruncher? There are multiple versions of this software that can do multiple things, but the one that caught my eye was this version here that can basically make maps out of the images that you may have. The idea is, you have a map to scale. But that is all you have! You can then crunch this map on to the existing satellite imagery that MS has and then using Mapcruncher.
Load up your map image, then mark a few points on this map with the help of global map that you know. Now, lock them both up and ask Mapcruncher to render the tiles for you. Map crucher then provides you an HTML web kit, that you can just copy over to your web server and then, yes, you are done. As simple as that. Your map is now pannable, zoomable etc. I would have also loved if they managed to go some kinda OCR so that the contents on your map are serachable too.. Too much to ask for, I guess.
Here is a small mashup of the map of India from Yahoo India maps mashed up with Live earth’s satellite maps.
As usual, something needs to suck ass with microsoft, so you need “.Net 3.0″ before you can get mapcruncher working. Download it from here.
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