Friday, April 11, 2008

RIP Topozone

For several years I have been using Topozone as a research tool, motoring around through their topographic maps, looking at features, scoping out the countryside. Also I would get the map fragments I use for blog posts from Topozone. So now they were purchased by Trails.com and are under a subscription only basis. Imagine my chagrin to see it costs $14 per month to use it. Drat!

OK, I am not willing to give up so easily. It is harder to navigate but historic topo maps are also online like this one:
Update: When I said it was harder to navigate, that was an understatement. But I got something that can help. The state of Massachusetts puts out a map viewer. Phew! I was getting nervous my access to topos was going to get be blocked.
http://maps.massgis.state.ma.us/MassGISTopos/viewer.htm

Update 2: Thank you http://www.mytopo.com/mapslatlon.cfm
This is a close match to the topozone experience.

Update 3: My all-time favorite http://mapper.acme.com/
at

12 comments :

  1. Larry Harrop5:37 PM

    I've been using USAPhotoMaps for a few years and can't live without it.
    It's donationware and works in conjunction with Microsoft's TerraServer.

    You can download it here
    http://jdmcox.com/

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  2. pwax5:42 PM

    ...off to give it a try. Thanks.

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  3. JimP5:51 PM

    Were these the historic topos you were referring to Peter? These are from UNH and are very helpful at times.

    http://docs.unh.edu/nhtopos/nhtopos.htm

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  4. Geophile6:05 PM

    I'll miss Topozone! Used it a lot.

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  5. Anonymous7:03 PM

    posted this in reply to a similar topic, but I thought you all might find this useful. I don't intend to Forum-spam.

    The company I work for, MyTopo.com, has decided to step in and provide free browsable topo maps similar to what TopoZone had. We have Canada as well. They're all here, free, no ads:

    http://www.mytopo.com/maps.cfm

    I know there are a number of sites with topo maps using Terraserver as a source. One advantage to our system is that we have all of the newer U.S. Forest Service maps that show inholdings, forest routes, etc.

    Our main link above doesn't have a lat/lon search, which I'm sure many of you use. I just added this page so you can search by DD.DDD or DDMMSS:

    http://www.mytopo.com/mapslatlon.cfm

    I've enjoyed TopoZone for many years, and it's too bad that it's going away. We want to make topo maps easily accessible again. Let me know if you have any suggestions. Thanks!

    - Doug

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  6. pwax7:09 PM

    How the heck did you get here so quickly Doug?

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  7. pwax7:18 PM

    Thanks Doug. It is actually better than topozone.

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  8. JimP3:41 AM

    That's a little spooky.

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  9. pwax7:11 AM

    It is not too spooky. I figure he has a RSS feed or something similar set up at [whatever the heck that blog aggregator website is called - argh! getting too senior over here], filtering on the word "topozone" and would have gotten a hit within an hour of my posting.

    For example see "Feed filtering" here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregator

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  10. Anonymous5:30 AM

    Thanks for the link! We just added map printing and some other features, and hopefully this will be a pretty decent replacement for Topozone now.

    - Doug, MyTopo.com

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  11. pwax2:49 PM

    "Pretty good" but still not great. What I most like about mapper.acme.com is
    (a) full screen (no frigging wasted margin space)
    (b) simultaneous alternative views include: topo, street map, satellite. [It is incredibly helpful to click satellite to qualify a place located on a topo]

    Only thing missing for me is Google's "Street View", which helps me find parking places and access points to the woods. When they get more streets "viewed" it will be even better.

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  12. pwax2:49 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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