New MapCortex product - UK Crime Map for Chrome

If you live in the UK and you are worried about crime this is your app. We have just completed the first release of the UK Crime Map tool that runs in any desktop computer where Google Chrome is installed.

What can you do with this app? Well, you can see criminal activities on a street level! From now on you don't need to worry about getting mugged, your car getting stolen or damaged - as we can show you exactly where not to go!

Our data stream is originated from various local Police organisations.

UK Crime Map Chrome App Logo

To start our application please follow this link to the Chrome Store.

MapCortex Free Edition - live and running

Today we reached the twenty user benchmark. So far, so good, some of the users have already published their very first maps on our website!

During the beta test we experienced certain bugs and issues - thankfully nothing major and these were all rectified by now.

Logging in to the application still might take a bit long at first, but this is owing to the shared hosting resource that is provided by Microsoft; apparently the authorisation service goes to sleep mode unless it is under constant use.

In short - generally speaking we are happy, the application seems flawless now, all we need is a large number of users to test it out properly!

Reliable street map with English street names of Chinese cities

If you happen to be an English speaker and travelling to China you will quickly realise that you cannot really rely on the usual online mapping system that you used back home. You may see streets not aligned well, probably many streets and landmarks will be missing and if you try to use some of the app of some local online map providers - well it will be accurate but the street names will be written in Chinese.

However, with MapCortex Free Edition you can get access to a very reliable and accurate street map covering the whole of People's Republic of China - with English street names!!! Don't you believe us? Just install MapCortex Free Edition, move to any Chinese city, zoom in to the street level and select Street Map - Standard layer. All street names and landmarks will be in English - no exceptions.

MapCortex Free Edition is in Windows Store!

This is it. The product is out! It is a rather great milestone for us all here, the final product is ready to roll into the world of online mapping and design.

You can get it via clicking on this link:
MapCortex Free Edition

There might be a bug here and there, but generally speaking it is in good working order. So let's do it! :D

The MapCortex Team

MapCortex.com is live now!

The web interface of MapCortex application now is alive, which means it is fully catered for both search engine and real visitors. How is this done? Well, so far you were only able to reach this website using mapcortex.azurewebsites.net website. However, this is changed and now you can also reach it using mapcortex.com.

The content is not changed plus there are a few pages within the site where the "Under construction" sign is still there but that should change fairly shortly!

MapCortex Windows Store Application - Certification status

It is rather unbelievable but it is actually done. The MapCortex Windows Store Application is currently under review by the Microsoft team, which means we actually managed to complete the first release! It is said that every start is difficult, from here it will be a piece of cake...well let us see that :D.

Apparently Windows Store Application reviews takes 16 hours to complete - well this is what Microsoft says. Plus in case of disapproval of the application we need to address all highlighted issues, whihc can take longer than we expect to be.

All in all - the ball is at Microsoft's court, and if everything goes well you can all start drawing, measuring, sharing and working with all sort of maps using MapCortex Free Editions.

MapCortex Version 1.0 - nearly there

After several weeks of lengthy struggle we finally arrived to a very important stage - we are nearly done. The MapCortex Windows store application is good to go - along with some extra features we added in to the users.

So what you will be able to do with it? Plenty of things, such as:

• Drawing on maps.
• Sharing your drawing with your friends and they can continue editing and manipulating the drawing - and send it back to you too!
• Create a screenshot of the map and drawing and post it for free on our website!
• Add a hyper-link to each screenshot, which would help you relate the map screen shots.
• Add over 100's of icons to the map.
• Select from over 10 basemaps, including 3 streetmaps.

Yes, we need to emphasis on one thing - it is for free! :D

MapCortex free web map redesign announcement

Dear folks

After conducting a series of tests we have come to the conclusion that the current configuration of the MapCortex Free Webmap is unlikely will be able to stay future proof in terms of mobile browser compliance.

Owing to this reason we decided to utilize a slightly different approach on this implementation of this system. This doesn't mean that the current features will be missed out, every implemented features will stay as it is but the layout will probably change.

The selection of basemap layers will stay along with the already implemented drawing and measuring tools. However, it is likely that map drawings screenshot images can be posted to out archives though without being able to specifying the poster person name.

As soon the implementation is completed we will let you know on our blog.

MapCortex Team

How can I run MapCortex Free Edition application?

MapCortex Free Edition (which is essentially the same as MapCortex BETA) is a forthcoming Windows Store application, which means one is required to have a Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows Server 2012 R2 or  Windows Server 2016 to run it. The application will soon be available from the Windows Store, free of charge.

MapCortex Free Edition can also be run on Microsoft Surface in fact, owing to the touch-screen components of that hardware the user may be able to create any type of drawings on the map by using the Surface touch-screen interface.

However, owing to the screen size requirements and the composition of the icons MapCortex Free Edition is not designed to be used as an UWP application - though it runs fine with Windows 10.

If you don't have Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 based computer then I am afraid you will not be able to use the MapCortex Free Edition client. However, it is planned to create a similar, yet less sophisticated application for web browsers, built upon either on Google Maps or Nokia HERE Maps - but that is nowhere near at the implementation horizon.

MapCortex backend service migrations - completed schedule

Last weekend we migrated the development and test environment from the Japanese infrastructure to California - and we did that for one reason. It is expected that majority of the free release users will be coming from English speaking environment, which would make sense then to deploy the supporting service at this location. However, we also carried out a series of tests and we concluded the followings.

• The global access speed of the web map gallery interface is the best for US-based servers.
• European users will have no issues to reach these US-based servers with high efficiency.
• Hosting and infrastructure costs are lower than in Japan.
• Web access speed for Japan-hosted web applications (without CDN) seems slightly slow for European consumers - though this is not true on the other way around, when Japanese consumers are accessing European or US servers.
• It has been noted that users from the People's Republic of China might have issues accessing the web interface based in US owing to various, globally meaningful technical and commercial reasons, but our tests revealed that users have no issues accessing our service from Shanghai or Beijing.
• It has also been noted that in case of network and access issues between the US and Asian servers MapCortex might be released as a separate application for Asian-based consumers, hosted in a Hong-Kong based platform.
• Our current development effort has been focused on the web-map gallery application development, which is the last phase of this release.

Stay tuned for more...

Welcome MapCortex!

This is it. Looks like after a lengthy struggle the MapCortex public beta is coming out shortly. The Windows 8.1-based Map client is stable, few basic features are to be added, but essentially it is good to go. The design is still a bit tacky, but that will be ironed out in the forthcoming releases.

The map project sharing option is functioning fine, this seemed to be a rather excessive task at the end, but it is now up and running too - users can share their map drawings amongst each other and continue and edit their work accordingly.

We are in the process of completing the map image sharing feature, this is still lagging behind a bit, but at least we can see the first real milestone coming up on that as well.

Well, this is it now folks, the rest is up to our dev team now. Will keep you all informed here on Blogspot.