Posts

Showing posts from 2017

Military Grade Map Data Encryption

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Your map data is important and that is why we are excited to roll out a new feature that lets you encrypt your map data with a military grade encryption. You can use this encryption with maps you save with us as well as maps you save offline. Technical We use the military standard AES-256 with a PBKDF2 key. When executing encryption we do it all on your machine. The password you use to encrypt your map data never comes to our servers. When encrypted data is saved to our servers we have no way to access the map data. When retrieving the map data the encrypted data is returned to your machine and decrypted on your machine. You will need to enter your encryption password every time you want to access the data. Double Authentication In order to access the encrypted map data you will either need to know the map password or have an account with viewing rights for the map. Once the encrypted map data is loaded, the second authentication is providing the encryption password.

Map Crop, TMS, and WMS!

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We have a rolled out a large feature for our VIP users and think it is worth writing a post about! Introducing Base Layers Module Looking in the bottom window you can see we have added a new panel (you can collapse/expand it with the arrow). This new area allows you to not only crop the map but also add both TMS and WMS layer types. We are planning to add more as well! Map Cropping Map cropping allows you to take any polygon or multiple polygons and crop out the rest of the map. In the above image we have made a map crop of the state of Nebraska. In this example we have the crop out color set to  black with a slight transparency but you can set the color to anything you want and also make the cropped out areas not visible at all. To get this effect with the state we used the "Region Highlight" tool to create a polygon for Nebraska and then applied the crop using it. How to add a map crop There is two ways to add a crop. The first is to click the + butto

Offline Save/Load

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There is a lot of value saving to the cloud. When you save to scribble maps you cannot only access your map from anywhere but we also keep a save history so changes can be recovered. We are one of the only mapping services that offer save history logs of maps. That said, there are times when you don't want your data to touch the web. Though Scribble Maps has been through security audits there are times you may want to be overly cautious with your geo data. This is why we rolled out the ability to save and load offline map files. How Does it Work? When you hit "Offline Save" a .smjson file will be downloaded to your system. SMJSON is just a text file that contains all your geodata. Clicking "Offline Load" will allow you to load this downloaded file back into Scribble Maps. While the file will download it should be noted that this leverages HTML5 tech so you are not actually downloading the file from us you are downloading it from your browser. At no po

Pen Tool Arrives!

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We rolled out a large update today and the biggest feature is the addition of the pen tool for drawing smooth curves on a map.  We have created the UX in such a way that it can be easily done without much technical experience. This post will focus on how to use the tool. Drawing To draw a curve all you have to do is select the pen tool an then start clicking or touching the map. When you click you will see something like this. Point nodes are the points that the line segments curve between. The control nodes controls how much of a curve there is. The easiest way to understand how these work is to just place some points and move them around to get a feel for it. Locking Points If you want to work on the line without accidentally adding additional points to the end of the line, you can click the "Lock Point Add" in the top left corner. Finishing Once you are done you can click "complete curve" in the top left in the same panel as the lock

GIS & Advanced Operations

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We have rolled out our first version of our GIS and advanced operations panel. This panel lets you do some really cool things like bulk editing, creating travel time polygons, grids, and more. You can even create your own scripts for later usage. To access this panel click "Scripts & GIS" under menu. GIS Operations Overview This screen allows you to do sophisticate operations such as creating exact circles, measuring distances along lines, changing marker styles in bulk and more!    To get started simply navigate the folders on the left to find the operation you are looking for.  Create Line By Points:    Draw a line between two latitude / longitude points. Input Title (optional) Input Start Lat,Lng Input End Lat,Lng Select a color for the line. Click Create Line.  Create Circle at Point:    Draw a Circle around point with radius. Input Title (optional) Input middle Lat,Lng Input Radius Click Create Circle   If the mar