You can now download all our very popular South African maps from Amazon.com’s S3 service and - better yet - use BitTorrent to get them. These files are highly compressed, but they’re still quite big, which makes downloading them the conventional way error prone and frustrating if you don’t have a very fast and reliable Internet connection. You have the option of downloading them the non-geeky (boring!) way by using these links:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/SA-maps/SA-administrative.exe (5.5MB)
https://s3.amazonaws.com/SA-maps/SA-places.exe (27.2MB)
https://s3.amazonaws.com/SA-maps/SA-roads.exe (4.3MB)
https://s3.amazonaws.com/SA-maps/SA-cadastral.exe (173MB)
https://s3.amazonaws.com/SA-maps/SA-topo50.exe (166MB)
https://s3.amazonaws.com/SA-maps/SA-topo50-water.exe (48.2MB)
https://s3.amazonaws.com/SA-maps/SA-topo50-water2.exe (157MB)

OR… use BitTorrent (www.bittorrent.com) - and use these .torrent files to get the maps:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/SA-maps/SA-administrative.exe?torrent
https://s3.amazonaws.com/SA-maps/SA-places.exe?torrent
https://s3.amazonaws.com/SA-maps/SA-roads.exe?torrent
https://s3.amazonaws.com/SA-maps/SA-cadastral.exe?torrent
https://s3.amazonaws.com/SA-maps/SA-topo50.exe?torrent
https://s3.amazonaws.com/SA-maps/SA-topo50-water.exe?torrent
https://s3.amazonaws.com/SA-maps/SA-topo50-water2.exe?torrent

BitTorrent will make sure that the files you download are exactly the same as the files on our server, and will probably get the files much quicker. It is also no problem if your Internet connection gets interrupted because it will keep trying to download the files chunk-by-chunk, and it will verify the integrity of each chunk.

The files listed above are self-extracting 7-zip files. Once they are uncompressed, PlanetGIS will uncompress them a lot more, so make sure you have about 9GB of disk space available before you start. You will need PlanetGIS 3.0 to open these maps. Please let me know if you have any problems downloading the maps.

I am very happy to finally announce the launch of version 3.0 of PlanetGIS. The changes to the internal storage format have been pushed out to a future version, so version 3.0 will be 100% compatible with your existing 2.x maps.

Version 3.0 introduces a new user interface which looks much better if you are using themes on Windows XP or Vista, complete Vista compatibility and integration with Oracle Spatial, to name but a few improvements. You will also notice that version 3.0 is a little faster!

If you have purchased 2.x licenses in the past 6 months, you should already have your license keys on your user page on www.planetgis.co.za. (If not please let me know). If you have purchased licenses in the past 18 months, we kindly invite you to enroll in our software maintenance programme. Under this programme you will receive all future updates and revisions for about 25% of the list price of your software per year. So, you can upgrade to PlanetGIS Professional 3.0 now, for example, for only R650. As for you old-timers… we’ll give you 33% off for an upgrade. Please reply if you need more information. You can place your orders here.

I am happy to announce the release of version 2.70 of PlanetGIS. This release introduces call-outs & sticky coordinates, searching for labels, improvements to floating objects and addresses a number of minor bugs and feature requests. Version 2.70 (or later) will be required to prepare maps for PlanetGIS 3.0 (due out soon!). You will find the updates here.

Call-outs are similar to floating objects except that they have a geographic anchor point. Call-outs can contain the same content as floating objects, e.g. images, tables, etc. and are created exactly like floating objects. They can look like speech bubbles, or like floating objects with a tether line or arrow linking it to a geographic position.

Sticky coordinates is an option that can be activated for editing features that share vertices or boundaries. Whenever a vertex is moved, vertices of neighbouring features that are at the same location will also be moved. Also, when you create a new vertex on a boundary (for instance to introduce a bend) other features with the same boundary will also get a new vertex.

Finally, version 2.70 has an additional compression format that squeezes out another 10%, but does not accept alphanumeric keys. Non-numeric keys will be changed to a label and a numeric GID assigned. If you have features with non-numeric keys, their keys need to be written to a table. (More about this later: this is only an issue when upgrading to 3.0). The new compression format (.fcz) is compatible with PlanetGIS 3.0, which stores additional information like 3-D coordinates, feature orientation, text alignment, history, user checkouts and modification tracking, etc. .Fcz files will be the medium of (two-way) data exchange between PlanetGIS 2.x and PlanetGIS 3.x.

I have created a group on Facebook where we can share information about PlanetGIS. Please pop in to discuss issues or ideas, or to tell us about your accomplishments with PlanetGIS. The group’s page is here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6331520339

PlanetGIS Web Server is now available for download from the website. The trial version of PlanetGIS Web Server is fully functional, not time restricted and free for an unlimited number of web servers… on condition only that the link to the PlanetGIS web site is not obscured. The PlanetGIS Web Server runs on Windows with IIS5/6, Apache 1.3, Apache 2.0 and Apache 2.2.

As so often happens with brand new features, a few users have quickly uncovered some problems. I have made a number of improvements and all issues have now been resolved. If you have already used the new compression function, please update to 2.61 and re-create your .FC2 files. Many thanks to Gert Botha from TGIS, who repeatedly tested the compression on some large and complex maps and provided me with rapid feedback.

I am very happy to announce the release of version 2.60 of PlanetGIS. This is the fifth update since my last general announcement in July. I spend most of my time working on PlanetGIS 3.0, but every now and then a new function developed for PlanetGIS 3.0 sneaks into an update of 2.x. Version 2.60 is special because it contains a new feature compression technology which was developed for PlanetGIS 3.0. You can now backup or distribute your maps in a compressed format which is between 10 and 25% of the original size. The maps on www.planetgis.co.za have all been updated to this new format and you will notice that where, for example, the Places of South Africa map used to be 105MB (zipped), it is now 21MB (zipped)! You can view the full changelog here.

I am pleased to announce the release of version 2.53 of PlanetGIS. This is primarily a bugfix release but includes some useful features requested by our users. Please download the latest release from here, and you can view the full change history here.

I have also imported the latest topographic 1:50000 data from the Chief Directorate: Surveys & Mapping into PlanetGIS.

It is a huge task to import all this data into a seamless Planet map, so please order the DVD from us and save yourself a lot of hassle. Order it online and we’ll have it sent to your PO Box or nearest post office in three business days.

I would like to take this opportunity to explain that these maps are popular public domain maps which I provide practically for free in order to save Planet GIS users time, and to showcase the power of Planet GIS. If you are serious about data, I highly recommend the Datamap from TGIS as a good starting point for SA data in Planet format.

If you have recently downloaded PlanetGIS version 2.50, please update to 2.51 to avoid compatibility problems with older maps. A bug in version 2.50 caused older maps to be marked as version 2.50 upon saving, even though the Tools->Maintenance->Compact process has not been followed. This will result in a “Stream read error” the next time you open a non-upgraded map with version 2.50. To recover from this you can open and save the map with an older version of PlanetGIS (<2.45) or send me your .map files so that I can fix them. I apologize for the inconvenience this little bug may have caused.

I am happy to announce the release of version 2.50 of PlanetGIS. This is an important update because it introduces a change in PlanetGIS’ storage format, in line with development being done on PlanetGIS 3.0. From version 2.50 onward, PlanetGIS can store labels along with the geometry of features. While you still have the ability to label features with values from a database, storing labels with the geometry allows for extremely fast rendering of labels for large maps. If you have downloaded the SA-Roads or SA-Places maps, you have probably noticed a significant wait when Planet loads the labels from the Access database. This is no longer the case with these maps, and version 2.50! You can download this latest release from here.

PlanetGIS 2.50 also introduces two major improvements in automatic map labeling:

• Symbols (point features) can now optionally be drawn only if their labels can be displayed - no more unlabeled points if you don’t want them.
• Label prioritization gives you the ability to determine which labels should be dropped in favour of labels of other layers when conflicts occur.

To see the new and improved map labeling in action, be sure to download all the updated maps of South Africa or order them all on DVD.

Other improvements since version 2.43 include:

• Google Earth (KML/KMZ) export.
• Improved hatching & the ability to create custom hatches.

I am pleased to announce the opening of our Map Shop. I am getting so many requests for maps and data that I decided to start making data available on DVD for online ordering from our website. The first maps will be the most commonly requested data that is in the public domain but hard to obtain or in a format that is not easy to use or import into PlanetGIS. I have decided to make the first map a big one… really big!

No one working in the field of GIS should be without the 15 meter resolution images from NASA’s Landsat 7 satellite. Landsat 7 images are useful to add detail and colour to maps where aerial photography is not available. The resolution is good enough to discern unmapped roads, but is not really useful for viewing at scales of under 1:50,000. The satellite images are in PlanetGIS’ own .IJP format which is very fast, but you will only be able to view them with PlanetGIS. Order this map here and we will promptly send you a DVD to your PO Box or nearest Post Office (ETA 2 business days). Postage is included in the price of R175 plus VAT (total R199.50). You can view a Flash demo of the Landsat 7 map here (8.6MB / 38 slides) or a shortened version here (3.3MB / 15 slides). You can also order a CD containing all of the other maps featured on our Maps page.