ESRI, the developer of geographic information system (GIS) software, and The Associated Press (AP), the world’s oldest and largest newsgathering organization, have released MapShop version 1.8. MapShop is an online tool for creating news maps customized to a newspaper’s style. The system provides access to timely and accurate geographic map data from global to street-level detail.
With the latest release, MapShop now offers U.S. weather data, U.S. demographic data, and urban aerial imagery.
- U.S. clouds updated hourly
- One-hour rain estimates
- 24-hour rain estimates
- Current precipitation intensity (rain, snow, and mix) updated every 15 minutes
- Average temperature for the last hour and last 24 hours
- ACORN lifestyle segmentation data
- Average annual expenditures for many products and services
- Projected growth areas
MapShop is an easy-to-use mapmaking tool creating simple GIF maps or Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) files, which can be edited in Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia FreeHand. Users can download shapefiles and, using ArcView software, integrate MapShop data with locally acquired data such as crime statistics. MapShop subscribers have access to U.S. and Canadian street maps, census data, U.S. shaded relief imagery, and a detailed world basemap. They can locate U.S. addresses and define cartographic style preferences.
Built using ESRI’s Geography Network infrastructure, MapShop is an affordable way for media outlets of all sizes to create quality maps and to make geographic information much more readily available to the public. The MapShop 1.8 subscription fee, based on the circulation size of a newspaper, includes one-year access to the service, which can be used by anyone at the newspaper for creating as many maps as they like during the year; ESRI’s ArcView software; software training; and access to several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of commercial and government data.
