Entries by Ben Lantow

Real Time Updates: Aircraft and Weather

New ADS-B based aircraft tracking overlay, and hundreds of additional weather stations and statistics are now live in CalTopo alongside some cleanup of the layer list. More details about both these overlays can be found below. Access to some overlays will change slightly as part of this improvement as highlighted below. Above: Aircraft layer over […]

Dude, Where’s my UI?

We’ve just released a major UI overhaul for the desktop and mobile websites.  We had two major goals with this project: first, reduce the variation between the desktop web, mobile web, and app UIs.  And second, address some recurring issues around discoverability and ease of use.     The UI is now better grouped by […]

Subscription Improvements

Individual Accounts We are revamping our individual subscription tiers beginning January 1st, 2021.  Don’t panic – all existing users will be grandfathered in their existing tier unless they want to switch. We want to give the community a heads up and explain the reasoning behind for our decision making. Team accounts will be unaffected by […]

Hiring Remote Developer(s)!

CalTopo is looking to fill two remote developer positions: A UI / UX developer. We are are looking for someone with a mix of design and web development skills, who can assist with design across the entire platform (mobile + web), and also put that design into practice on the web stack. A full stack […]

Additional Fire Focused Layers

We’ve just launched two more fire related layers. The first is a false-color visualization based on the Sentinel weekly high-resolution layer. By using Sentinel’s upper infrared bands, we discovered that we were able to provide a clear picture of burned areas and active hot spots, even when the visual imagery is entirely obscured by smoke. […]

Ending Layer Licensing

CalTopo has always made its map layers available to other apps and websites, but we’ve decided it’s time to phase that out.  Our slope angle shading layer will no longer be available outside of CalTopo on Oct 1, with all other layers no longer available in other apps and sites in January 2021.  We know […]

GOES Live Fire Detection Layer

In response to the recent California fires, we’re launching a new, highly experimental layer: live fire detections from the GOES 17 (West) satellite. GOES 16 and 17 are geostationary satellites positioned over the eastern US (16) and western US (17), streaming images back to Earth on a near-real-time basis. You’ve probably seen their imagery used […]