NOTE: This blog is a series of thoughts I have on various projects, and should not be considered any sort of commitment to product features unless otherwise stated.
One of the most common feature requests I've received for 93 Photo Street is the ability to use basemaps other than those from the US Census. Example scenarios include placing large scale maps like floorplans on top of the census road maps, using small scale maps like a map of european countries, and using maps which have layers such as geological features.
I've been pondering how to allow this sort of flexibility without making 93 Photo Street the kind of program which has a 10 pound instruction manual. There are already massive, awesome apps for people willing to spend time and money to get a powerful solution to these problems.
So far my favorite plan (which has not been run through user testing so don't hold me to it) is to make an "import basemap" option which will then create an image layer on top of the road map data. That layer could then be scaled, positioned, and rubbersheeted into rough correlation. After that has been done, the location positioning and template building system need know nothing about the new layer, as it would just be included in the automatically generated map rasters during the build process.
The upside of this is that we can then mix and match the free road data with our own map layers. For example, I could use photoshop to whip up a trail map of Sibley (where there is no road data) and lay it on the road map so that when zoomed out it would appear in the proper place.
The downside is that most people don't have map images, so people would have to either license (or "borrow") them from someone or know how to create them in a graphics editor. Also, because the road data is still the final basemap and 93 Photo Street uses only US road data, this doesn't serve people who want to photo map in the rest of the world.
One possibility would be to create maps in which there is no road data and the coordinate system is arbitrary, but in that case the template language would have to handle both cases and it's already complex enough.
pointMapper has an interesting approach, mixing lat/lon and x/y coordinate system capabilities in their RDFMap format.
Part of what I worry about with losing the lat/lon system and road maps is that there are already applications which allow you to easily create web image maps using arbitrary base images, for example Boutell's Mapedit and Web Hotspots. I worry about diluting the functionality of 93 Photo Street's mapping applications when there are already image map editors, though of course they don't have a template system and location editor so they're not exact substitutes.
Another possibility would be to add graphical editing capabilities to 93 Photo Street, including the ability to add road data and to draw boxes, lines, and labels onto a layer above the roads. While this represents a considerable amount of design and programming to get "right", it does allow people a large degree of flexibility in terms of adding things like route lines and roads that were built since the road data was compiled. It does not help people who want maps of entire continents or areas outside the US.
Many people, including parts of myself, may be thinking of just throwing it all into the pot to see what boils over. But that way leads to this sort of thing and my interaction designer friends would kill me and then nobody would get what they want from 93 Photo Street.
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