Clinched Highway Mapping

[treichard]

The Clinched Highway Mapping Project now supports the ~8000-mile Trans-Canada Highway and pieces of various Future Interstate highways.  Travelers can now track their travels on these highways as well as the full Interstate and US Highway systems of the United States and the provincial freeway systems of Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia in Canada.

Clinched Highway Mapping Site
http://cmap.m-plex.com/

Tracking your travels is easy.  We present a long list of mappable highways with over 90000 waypoints in the Highway Browser.  You make a text list of the segments of highways you've traveled, using our route and waypoint labels, and submit it.  We then convert your text file into a web site of maps and tables summarizing your travels, at no cost.

Here is an example map, now showing FI-99 and FI-376 in Pennsylvania for one traveler. His travels are highlighted in deep blue and red. Click on the map to see the stats table summarizing the mileage clinched for each highway.


We have a project forum that you may join:
http://clinched.s2.bizhat.com/
As clinching a highway or highway system means to travel the entire length of it, we have striven to include every highway in the systems we support, including well over 1000 auxiliary routes of the US' Interstate and US Highway systems.  Our collaboration of road enthusiasts-turned-geodata miners tackles the difficult task of keeping current with the various additions/deletions/changes to the highways.  We encourage road enthusiasts to help us with this task by joining our forum.

[deathtopumpkins]

So you mean I've been tracking this in a kmz file all this time for nothing? 

[WillWeaverRVA]

I didn't notice y'all had US business routes now. Time to update my map!

[Jim]

There goes the rest of my afternoon and probably evening.

Thanks for the continued excellent work on this!

[rickmastfan67]

You guys are all welcome.  hehehe.  I've spent many sleepless nights getting routes finished for the states I did in the project.

[Bickendan]

Clinching or collecting the data?

[rickmastfan67]

Clinching or collecting the data?

Hahaha.  Getting the data.

[treichard]

Trying to make me feel a bit guilty, James? Sometimes I have been surprised at 9am to see 3-4am replies from my fellow collaborators in my same time zone.

Our collaboration is comprised of these wonderful individuals, many of whom are contributors also to this forum:

Eric Bryant (yakra)
Dave Filpus (dfilpus)
Ryan Fox (boy_asunder)
Adam Froehlig (froggie)
Michael Maggio (mcmagi)
James Mast (rickmastfan67)
Jeff Morrison (jeffm)
Dan Schwarting
Christopher Steig (bickendan)
Andrew Tompkins (andytom)


In a few months, I'll be opening the door for new highway systems to be added to the project.  These would include state or provincial highways in the US and Canada as well as the freeway systems of other countries (Utah state routes, German Autobahns, etc.).  We'll need new collaborators to help us complete any new systems.  Join our project forum (in my signature) if you think you'd be interested in helping out.

[rickmastfan67]

Trying to make me feel a bit guilty, James? Sometimes I have been surprised at 9am to see 3-4am replies from my fellow collaborators in my same time zone.

HAHAHA.  Nope.   I'm just more of a night owl when I feel like it.

[rickmastfan67]

Just an FYI to the people that have an account on the site, we're running a poll on what browsers people use to visit the site.  The reason it's being done is because we're trying to figure out if we should start making the graphics for the shields in PNG format (which look 10x better than the GIF format) or in GIF format from now on and we need to know what browsers to the site the majority of you use to prevent any major problems.

Thanks.

http://clinched.s2.bizhat.com/viewtopic.php?t=368&mforum=clinched

[agentsteel53]

are you planning on using the alpha channel in the PNGs?  That is, if I recall correctly, the one problem IE6 has with them.

[rickmastfan67]

are you planning on using the alpha channel in the PNGs?  That is, if I recall correctly, the one problem IE6 has with them.

Yep. That would be it.  Tim thinks people still be using IE6 to view the site, but I honestly don't think they would be because they wouldn't be able to load up the Google Maps anyways since all those images are PNG as well.

EDIT: Tim says his web-logs say that 1 out of every 5 people use IE5/6 to visit the site...

EDIT #2: Tim just finally gave the go ahead to PNG shields, so that poll is meaningless now.   So, if you guys want to see the first batch of PNG shields on the site, target date is this weekend with Ontario.

[florida]

My computer is still on IE 6 and absolutely refuses to download IE 8. :screwed: 

[rickmastfan67]

My computer is still on IE 6 and absolutely refuses to download IE 8. :screwed: 

Ever think of downloading the IE-8 installer manually then?

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/worldwide-sites.aspx

That just might work.   There is always a backdoor way to get things to work.

[Jim]

My computer is still on IE 6 and absolutely refuses to download IE 8. :screwed: 

As a Mac and Unix user who has successfully and very happily avoided Windows for over 10 years now, maybe I'm missing something.  But why not just install Firefox?

[mightyace]

My computer is still on IE 6 and absolutely refuses to download IE 8. :screwed: 

As a Mac and Unix user who has successfully and very happily avoided Windows for over 10 years now, maybe I'm missing something.  But why not just install Firefox?

I'm pretty sure that Firefox 2 displays PNG files just fine.

[SSOWorld]

maybe he's afraid it might void the warranty (or its a company computer and the company only allows IE6 - some still do )

[treichard]

Moderator: Could the off-topic IE and PNG discussion be split into its own thread elsewhere? I'd like to return this thread to its original purpose in the near future: updates to the Clinched Highway Mapping site.  Thanks!

[agentsteel53]

Moderator: Could the off-topic IE and PNG discussion be split into its own thread elsewhere? I'd like to return this thread to its original purpose in the near future: updates to the Clinched Highway Mapping site.  Thanks!

done. 

[treichard]

Nothing changed...

[Bickendan]

Tim, the forum's down atm.

[Jim]

Tim, the forum's down atm.

whois says that the domain (bizhat.com) is suspended.  That can't be good.

[Bickendan]

Two (interim) solutions: We get a forum here or I can put up a relevant section on my own board.

Tim, PM me if that idea works if Bizhat doesn't come back up.

[rickmastfan67]

It's back up now.

[Bickendan]

Still down on my end. Must not have propagated through.