Mapbox product updates
Product Updates is our monthly newsletter highlighting recent product improvements and use cases so you can easily stay up to date on what’s new. For a recent changelog, see bottom of this post. Sign up to receive a monthly email here.
Private Tilesets for all, “Storytelling Template,” Expanded Boundaries coverage, Alteryx modules for Search, Isochrones, and Spatial Lookup, and launches by Yahoo! JAPAN, Strava, Porsche
🌱 What’s New
Unlimited private tilesets for all users
Tilesets are how we keep maps fast. They are cacheable, load quickly, and we rely heavily on tilesets to keep our maps performant. We know many of our users upload proprietary data to create their tilesets and need them to be private. Now any developer, paid or free, has the option to create private tilesets. Learn more.
New release of Mapbox Boundaries, featuring expanded coverage
Mapbox Boundaries are cartographically-matched, georeferenced, and processed as Mapbox tilesets with multiple layers. Coverage is now expanded for all customers using Mapbox Boundaries online or offline via Atlas. We continually improve our boundary data each quarter. This release includes 228,000 new boundaries including complete, global admin-1 coverage, recency updates to the Caribbean, South Pacific, and other regions; improved US postal code accuracy; additional metadata attributes like ISO3 country code, and more. Read all about it.
📦 New Solutions
Interactive Storytelling Solution
Maps make data understandable, powerful and memorable. The storytelling format — sometimes called “scrollytelling” — lets you include as much context as you want, and define the locations your users look at. With this “Storytelling Template,” you can simply input copy, select the elements of the map you want to feature for each “chapter,” and publish.
Mapbox modules for Alteryx: Search, Isochrones, Boundaries, and Spatial Lookup
Location data and geospatial analysis have always been front and center for Alteryx, and we are excited to be part of the Alter Everything movement. Now in public beta, these three new Alteryx Modules leverage our world-scale APIs, so once they are in your workflow, you have global, accurate datasets at your fingertips.
TabAtlas — Configure Tableau for on-premise, offline location analysis
There are common security and compliance scenarios (particularly in the government, financial, utilities, telecommunications, and healthcare verticals) that limit internet access. In these scenarios, Tableau Desktop users will often experience additional latency when rendering maps or may be unable to render maps at all. The TabAtlas solution solves these issues with a completely offline, on-premises solution for mapping in Tableau.
✨ New Demos
- Data Explorer — A new way to quickly visualize data in the browser
- Picture Book — A vector remake of a beloved raster map style, with Expressions
📸 Customer Spotlights
Yahoo! JAPAN new maps — Live on iOS and Android
For decades, Yahoo! JAPAN’s data engineers, cartographers, and cloud infrastructure team managed complex map production software, location APIs, and rendering technology capable of meeting the demands of the Japanese market. With the move to Mapbox.jp, the talented engineers behind Yahoo! JAPAN’s historic success are shifting their focus to accelerating the development of new, innovative services. Read about their switch.
Gorgeous new outdoor maps launched in Strava app
Strava, the social network for athletes, just launched incredible new maps in their app. Strava users can now visualize their runs and bike rides more realistically with elevation contours, peak elevations, and an updated color scheme. The updated map style was created entirely within Mapbox Studio — leveraging vector hillshading to provide vivid terrain context and a minimalist design to let the athletes’ activity shine through. Athletes, download Strava today on iOS or Android or open your app and record a new activity today.
ROADS by Porsche app now on CarPlay
The world’s most passionate drivers can now record and share their epic drives using the ROADS app with CarPlay integration enabled. With CarPlay, users can enjoy a safe and seamless hands-free experience for turn-by-turn navigation guidance across connected mobile devices and the infotainment screen in their vehicle. The ROADS team leveraged CarPlay support using the Mapbox Navigation SDK.
🛠 Product Updates + Improvements
Mapbox GL JS v1.5.0 — Read more
- Reduce memory usage for vector tiles with long strings in feature properties
- Fix memory leaks occurring during tile loading and map removal
- Allow hash Map option to be a string (for custom url parameters) (h/t SebCorbin)
- Fix icon-text-fit not properly respecting vertical labels
Style Spec v13.9.1 — Read more
- Rename Image type to ResolvedImage, to better represent expression evaluation
- Add image expression operator to determine image availability
- Add style-spec function to validate style is compatible w/Mapbox API
Unity SDK v2.1.1 — Read more
- Fix a bug which double counted users on mobile platforms
- Fix a bug which sent incomplete telemetry events
Navigation SDK for Android v0.43.0 — Read more
- Fix Javadoc Kotlin issues #2103
- Fix intermittent memory issues in CI #2096
- Fix methods for recalculating waypoints properties #2066
Vision SDK (iOS) v0.10.1 — Read more
- Increase allowed performance of ML models on iPhone 11 family
- Lane detection now allows detection of boundaries of home lane & adjacent lane(s)
- Add a new segmentation model with more granularity in understanding the road surface, which has the following classes: Crosswalk, Hood, MarkupDashed, MarkupDouble, MarkupOther, MarkupSolid, Other, Road, RoadEdge, and Sidewalk. Nighttime and low light performance has been improved.
- Fix AR navigation route rendering to initialize faster in conditions w/poor GPS accuracy
📄 New Docs
📹 New Videos
📆 Events
- Webinar: Maps for product design with Mapsicle and Figma — 11/14
- Webinar: Make amazing dashboards in Tableau — 12/5
- On Location Episode 3: I make maps. I secure apps. I make your maps secure. — 12/10
- Webinar: Solve big business challenges with satellite imagery — 12/12
- GIS Day Happy Hour + Robosat Workshop at Mapbox SF — 11/12
🚀 Jobs
- Engineering Manager, Search — Washington, D.C.
- Senior Software Engineer, Security — San Francisco or Washington, D.C.
- Senior Product Manager, Atlas — Washington, D.C.
- iOS Mobile Engineers, Navigation — San Francisco
- Android Mobile Engineers, Navigation — San Francisco
What’s new | November 2019 was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.