Outdoor Discoveries

Mapyx Quo becomes more international

There was a time when the only way of acquiring digital mapping for Éire was to purchase a Trail Master DVD from the OSi. Earlier this year, that changed with its inclusion in Geolives along with France, Switzerland, Belgium and Holland but it seems that things recently moved on from there again. An email from Mapyx yesterday announced the forthcoming addition of Irish 1:50000 Discovery series data to the current Quo portfolio of U.K. and Slovenian mapping. For me, it would be a very good thing to have British and Irish mapping in the same place and accessible using the same software so it has to be a step forward. After all, it makes Irish mapping data available to British walkers along with its British counterpart so there should be less of an excuse for not planning an excursion over there and I would be very surprised if the Irish tourism industry didn't appreciate the custom.

Saying all of that, Geolives still has one advantage over Mapyx: having a web based platform for carrying out the same tasks that would be done using desktop software means that it isn't tied to Windows like Mapyx and its ilk. This is its Web Editor and it has to be a boon for Mac and Linux users but there's the PC Editor too for those wanting to work offline on a Windows machine. As if all that weren't enough, the former has its place on smartphones (iPhone, anyone?) too.

If I didn't have some mapping information from Geolives already, I'd be waiting patiently for Mapyx to do the promised deed. However, having Geolives data not only means that I am in no hurry but also that, while I'd be seeing how things work in reality, I have no attention of re-purchasing data that I already have in my possession. One part of the world that seems to be missing from all of this is Northern Ireland and, with walking areas like the Mourne Mountains, that has to be an omission that needs addressing but nothing appears to be happening right now.