Scribble Maps Review: Part 2

There seems to be a lot of excitement about the possibilities of Scribble Maps for golf course management, so I decided to contact Jonathan Wagner, Co-founder of Scribble Maps, to help answer some of your q's and provide a bit of guidance.

Turfhugger: I think Scribble Maps has a lot of potential for golf courses because of the ease of sharing mapped information with contractors. Are there restrictions related to selling or generating money through Scribble Maps like there is with Google Maps?

Jonathan Wagner: For Scribble Maps directly we don’t have any restrictions on how can be used to make money, however if you are using Google Maps imagery their TOS applies, you can still make money using Google Maps, there are just certain things you can’t do without an enterprise license. However, this does not apply to OpenStreetMaps, the Google TOS can be found at http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/help/terms_maps.html

Turfhugger: When I use the polygram tool on an aerial view map, how accurate is the "area" calculation? I know a lot of it has to do with how accurate my points in my shape are, but if I drew it perfectly could Scribble Maps give me exact acreage or length of any landform?

Jonathan Wagner: Accuracy of your measurement depends on a couple of things, first the points of your shape, secondly the size of your shape, and thirdly your position. When working with area measurements depending on the size you could expect a deviation of up to +/- 5%. However, golf courses are relatively small, so a significantly smaller error of deviation can be expected. For validation, one could test an area they are sure of size wise before measuring other areas. Finally, when doing measurements it is very important to make sure that the shape is solid and that there are no intersecting lines.

Turfhugger: Can you export the maps for layering with other info?

Jonathan Wagner: The GPX format that maps can be exported could support layering. With GPX, polygons are converted to lines, and markers are converted to points. The best way to make a GPX file is to just use the line or scribble, when exported this will create a series of different tracks. One important note, to minimize file size we actually do line optimization, this reduces the amount of points in a line, and this might not be preferable when creating GPX files. The easiest way around it is to minimize drawing your lines zoomed far out.

Turfhugger: What file formats can you import to Scribble Maps?

Jonathan Wagner: KML, and SHP, but with SHP it has to be in the correct projection. We are working on better alerts for SHP file importing.

Turfhugger: Can/will Scribble Maps be available on mobile devices? 

Jonathan Wagner: Yes, in fact it is already partially available at m.scribblemaps.com. However the mobile version currently only supports viewing of maps and not map creation. It also has some rudimentary GPS location tracking. Further, we have recently improved our widgets to work with non-flash compatible formats such as iPad.

Turfhugger: Future features in the works?

Jonathan Wagner: We kind of developed Scribble Maps using a pseudo SCRUM methodology so the features that end up getting implemented can change – so timelines are difficult, but some planned things are (in no particular order): Better controls for measurements, a widget for creating map lists to quickly switch through a variety of maps, improved mobile support (including editing), wizzard implementation to make pro easier, Google account integration for Pro, improved collaborative mapping, improved social sharing and integration, map backups and previous version restoration, elevation mapping, pdf map booklet creation, and larger image generation – to name a few.