Category: mapping

Did you know that you can print your own BatchGeo maps? All you need is data you’d like to map and a free BatchGeo account or, for a higher-quality image, a BatchGeo Pro account. With that, you’ll be able to print hard copies of your maps four different ways for your easy access or to share with others.

View Neighborhood Garage Sale in a full screen map

For example, we might print the neighborhood garage sale map above so that we could share it with eager second-hand shoppers. The hard copy will help everyone navigate the sale more easily. There are all sorts of situations that call for printed maps and the benefits of having a hard copy.

Why Print Your Map?

The digital version of your BatchGeo map is accessible on the web or via your mobile device. However, if you find yourself without wifi or cellular data, a printed map can be a lifesaver. Printed maps may also be useful for those who don’t have regular access to computers or cell phones, as well as the less tech-savvy among us who prefer paper versions. But even if you’re Bill Gates’ nephew, you can still find yourself in a situation where a hard copy of your map is more useful than one that lives on the web. Here are some examples of such situations:

• Pinning a local crime map to your community’s bulletin board
• Sharing a wedding map guide with your guests
• Highlighting your favorite places in the neighborhood with guests

And there are many more uses for a printed map. But first, you must make your map!

Make a Map From Your Data

You’ve come to the wise conclusion that you can no longer live without a printed Google Map made with BatchGeo and the first step is to make your map. To do so, gather the data you’d like mapped into a spreadsheet. Be sure to include headers and separate columns for any location data such as city or state. Then, to make a map from your data:

1. Open your spreadsheet
2. Select (Ctrl+A or Cmd+A) and copy (Ctrl+C or Cmd+C) all your data
3. Open your web browser and go to batchgeo.com
4. Click on the location data box with the example data in it, then paste (Ctrl+V or Cmd+V) your own data
5. Check to make sure you have the proper location data columns available by clicking “Validate and Set Options”
6. Select the proper location column from each drop-down
7. Click “Make Map” and watch as the geocoder performs its process

Once you’ve made your map, you can customize its markers and design. You have the option to choose from seven to 10 different location marker colors, depending on which version of BatchGeo you have. In both versions, you can select from one of three marker shapes and you can also customize the base map style with the five different options. Once your map looks exactly the way you want it, it’s time to print.

4 Ways to Print Your Map

There are four ways to print your maps made with BatchGeo. You may have access to one or all of these printing options depending on if you use the free version or if you’ve upgraded to BatchGeo Pro.

Printing For Free Users

If you’re a free BatchGeo user, you can utilize the print function of your web browsers in order to print your maps. In most web browsers, this is accessible via File → Print. You would then proceed with your usual steps for printing on your computer.

Another way to print as a free user involves right-clicking your map, selecting the Print option, and choosing between two print styles: Advanced or Simple.

Quick Multi-Print For Pro Users

As a BatchGeo Pro user, you gain access to higher-quality printed maps via exporting. Exporting maps results in better quality than printing directly from your browser. Multiple maps can be exported and printed quickly by navigating to the My Maps page and locating the map you wish to print. Click on the PDF or the Image button to the right of the map’s title to export your map into a high-quality PDF or PNG Image file.

Since we’re focusing on printing, a PDF file may be your best bet if you wish to print your map. However, if you’re looking to upload your map image online, a PNG Image file will be better. Your web browser will determine if the exported PDF or PNG file will be downloaded or display right in your web browser. Either way, the universal language of printing (File → Print) will work to print your exported map.

Advanced Printing For Pros

For another way to get even better quality printed maps, BatchGeo Pro users have the advanced option to print. Unlike the quick-print option, advanced printing allows you to control both the size and the zoom of your map image.

To print the entire map or a zoomed-in map:

1. Open up your map
2. Optional: Zoom in on the section of the map you’d like to be printed
3. Right-click on your map within the BatchGeo web browser
4. Click Export PDF / Image
5. Under the Image Export Format, select either PDF or PNG Image
6. Under Image Size, select one of the two sizing options: Match Window Size or High Res 11” x 17” Printout

A clear, high-quality PNG image of your map will be downloaded to your computer, and from there you can print it as you normally do.

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The four different ways of printing your map highlight the “pros” of BatchGeo Pro. However, the free version of BatchGeo still comes with incredible amounts of useful features to use with your maps, such as map grouping and map badges. No matter which version of BatchGeo you elect to use, map-making has never been easier.

2020 was full of deadly surprises: COVID-19, unprecedented wildfires, and a nationwide racial reckoning. The latter led to rebrands for various university halls, snack cakes, and Grammy-winning bands. The Washington Redskins’ name change may be the most well-known, but more than 115 others are in the process of updating their names—or have already done so.

From education to food, drink, and sports, companies in nearly every industry are saying out with the old and offensive and in with new names on the map below.

View Reported Name Changes Due to George Floyd Protests in a full screen map

The map’s name changes come from Wikipedia’s List of name changes due to the George Floyd protests. There are nine categories to group by, the majority of which are education-related. Check out the regions of the world with the most changes, or read on for more information.

Nine Categories of Changes

The George Flloyd name changes span over 115+ buildings, products, and companies from countries around the world. However, there are some commonalities. The changes can be broken down into the nine categories below:

• Education – 55 name changes
• Geography – 21
• Food and drink – 15
• Industry – 11
• Lodging – 4
• Music – 4
• Government – 3
• Healthcare – 3
• Sports – 3

Let’s take a more in-depth look at a few of these categories, starting with that with the most: education.

Education

The 55 name changes related to education (most of which are buildings: halls, gyms, and the like) include eight from the United Kingdom and 47 in the U.S. Specifically, England makes up seven of the eight, leaving Scotland with the remaining single change. The U.S. state with the most is North Carolina with the following seven changes:

• Hoey Hall Lovill Hall → TBD
• Helms Center → Hawks Athletic Center
• Daniels MS → Oberlin MS
• Burwell Hall → Queens Hall
• Zebulon B. Vance HS → TBD
• Parkwood HS Rebels → TBD
• Hoey Auditorium → University Auditorium

North Carolina isn’t the only Southeastern state with multiple education-related changes. In fact, 21 of the U.S.’s 47 changes (nearly 45%) take place in Southeastern states, which frequently reference Confederates and segregationists. North Carolina is joined by Virginia (with 5 changes), Florida (3), West Virginia (2), Louisiana (2), South Carolina (1), and Alabama’s (1) as you can see on the map when you group by a category like ‘Education.’

Food & Drink

Fans of Uncle Ben’s rice should note it’s move towards a new name of Ben’s Original. Consumers who avoided the brand due to the pejorative “uncle” and the packaging’s display of a white-haired Black man in a black bow tie, which is reminiscent of servitude, may now be more inclined to make a purchase. Along with Uncle Ben’s rice, Aunt Jemima breakfast food and 13 other food and drink products are undergoing name changes, including:

• Arabian Joe’s, Baker Josef’s, Josephsbrau, Pilgrim Joe’s, Thai Joe’s, Trader Giotto’s, Trader Jacques’, Trader Joe San, Trader José’s, Trader Ming’s, and various others → Trader Joe’s
• Beso de Negra confectionery → TBD
• Bully Hayes Restaurant → TBD
• Colston Arms pub → Ye olde Pubby Mcdrunkface (temporarily)
• Coon cheese → TBD
• Crazy Horse Beer and Burgers → Lucky Horse Beer and Burgers
• Dixie Brewing Company → TBD
• Eskimo ice lolly → O’Payo
• Eskimo Pie ice cream bar → TBD
• Geechie Boy Mill → TBD
• Redskins and Chicos lollies → TBD
• Sambo’s restaurant → Chad’s
• Zigeunersauce condiment → Paprikasauce Ungarische Art

Notably, the Trader Joe’s change is the only one regardless of category reported before the 2020 racial unrest. Trader Joe’s first announced they would make these changes in July of 2019, though the brand recently changed its stance. Read about it in detail when you sort the map by ‘Food and drink’ on the map. For now, let’s hike the ball into sports territory.

Sports: Washington Redskins Are No More

Three name changes are coming to the sports world, the most widely-recognized being the NFL’s Washington Redskins name change.

The American football team has gone by the name since 1933, though attempts to remove what various groups like the National Congress of American Indians consider a racial slur to Native Americans have been underway for decades.

When the George Floyd protests renewed attention to racial justice, a group of 87 shareholders and investors worth $620 billion signed and sent letters to Nike, FedEx, and Pepsi. In the letters, they urged the major sponsors to cut ties with the team and the NFL unless the name was changed. At the same time, retail companies removed team merchandise from stores. In response, on July 23, the Washington Football Team became the new, temporary name. Team rebranding usually takes over a year, so an official replacement will be chosen later.

In addition to the newly dubbed Washington Football Team, Canada’s Edmonton Eskimos football team is now the Edmonton Football Team (temporarily). Finally, the Baseball Writers Association of America’s Kenesaw Mountain Landis Award will no longer reflect the MLB’s first commissioner, Landis, who resisted efforts to integrate both the major and minor leagues.

Make sure to check out the other categories of name changes on the map, like geography. For now, let’s move on to the name changes that have already been completed.

Completed Name Changes

While education, food, and sports name upgrades are all in the works, several have already been enacted. Of course, that means there are still those that are reported but not yet executed (which represents the least progress made) or have a decision pending. Some are supported by one or more officials and are closer to being partially or fully changed. So before you search for Lady A in place of the band Lady Antebellum or The Chicks instead of the Dixie Chicks on Spotify, let’s see which name changes are totally official by sorting the map by the “Date Executed.”

First Finalized in June 2020

The first protests were reported at the end of May. By the end of the following month, 28 out of the 60 completed changes were complete, the first occurring on June 3rd when Nicholls State University announced P. G. T. Beauregard Hall and Leonidas K. Polk Hall will forevermore be the College of Science and Technology and the College of Education and Behavioral Sciences.

July’s First Finalizations

The first change enacted in July took place on the 1st when the Watson School of Biological Sciences was renamed as the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory School of Biological Sciences and the King Leopold Ranges were newly dubbed the Wunaamin Miliwundi Ranges.

August & Beyond

Name changes slowed after July, though a few did take place in August. On August 1st, Colorado official’s announced the Stapleton neighborhood will now be called Central Park.

All-in-all, there are 59 TBD name changes to keep an eye out for. Still, there’s plenty you can do while you wait, including making a map of what’s important to you.

Map What’s Important to You

Knowing the 60 name changes that were already made and those that are TBD is important for more than navigating maps, supermarket shopping, or buying sports jerseys. This mass rebranding was the result of the 2020 United States racial unrest.

Store information that you find important on a map for easier visualization of trends. For more ways you can utilize BatchGeo to learn about history, see Flashcard Maps: Learn US State Capitals, Flowers, and Birds. Otherwise, to get started making your own map, head to batchgeo.com.

The very best way to display location data is on a map. You can see patterns visually before you’d ever understand them in data. The human brain is built for spatial relation, so we can use geographic visualization to help people understand proximity, plan routes, and make decisions. It’s no wonder that web and mobile maps have gained in popularity and usage in recent years. Customers have come to expect a map-based interface for location results.

Making maps for your website or mobile app does not need to be difficult, nor expensive. Among the platforms you can use to create maps are Google Maps, Mapbox, and BatchGeo. Based on your needs and volume of usage, the pricing can range from free to hundreds or even thousands per month,

In this article, we’ll look at Google Maps pricing compared to Mapbox and BatchGeo across various levels of usage. We’ll also break the price down by the two most common ways to use location data: to display maps and to perform address geocoding.

You’ll see that, despite some “free” usage at low levels, Google Maps and Mapbox quickly become expensive with their usage-based pricing. The simple pricing of BatchGeo, plus its additional features like Excel integration and code-free implementation, make it preferable to these geographic juggernauts. 

Map Display Pricing by Volume

For many years, the standard Google Maps API was completely free. Developers could create and display as many maps as they wanted. And many did, which led to an uproar when the company began charging in 2011. Around the same time, Mapbox was founded to provide an alternative to Google Maps based on OpenStreetMap data.

The table below shows the cost to display maps on a web page or in a mobile app (per 1,000 views) at various numbers of views per month.

	50,000	250,000	500,000
Google Maps	$3	$6	$7
MapBox	$0	$3	$3
BatchGeo Pro	$4	$4	$4

Cost per 1,000 views based on total views per month

Each provider has a defined amount of free usage:

• Google Maps offers $200 per month across its Maps Platform, which translates to about 25,000 map views without charge. The $200 discount is included in the numbers in the table.
• Mapbox includes about double the amount of free usage, not charging for the first 50,000 map views.
• BatchGeo is free for maps up to 250 locations with limited views

To create a Google Maps or Mapbox map, you’ll likely need to write some code. Both provide SDKs for JavaScript, which can be used to embed the map into a web page. You’ll either need a programming background yourself or will have to hire a web developer to add Google Maps or Mapbox to your website.

BatchGeo provides an easier way to embed maps on the web without writing any code. Using a simple Excel spreadsheet or comma-separated values (CSV) file, you can copy-paste or upload location data. Then, after declaring a few options, BatchGeo builds embeddable maps automatically.

Regardless of the map platform you use, you’ll need to use a geocoder in addition to display maps. Google Maps and Mapbox charge for it separately, as shown in the next section.

Geocoder Pricing by Volume

Displaying a map is only half of the equation if you have addresses that need to be added to a map. Google Maps, Mapbox, and BatchGeo all offer geocoding to convert human-readable locations into coordinates to plot on a map. As with display maps, there is free usage and some other terms to consider.

The table below shows the cost to geocode (per 1,000 geocodes) at various numbers of geocodes per month.

	50000	250000	500000
Google Maps	$1	$4	$5
MapBox	$5	$5	$5
BatchGeo Pro	$0.30	$0.40	$0.39

Cost per 1,000 geocodes based on total geocodes per month

Something to consider with geocoding APIs is that you may come up against rate limits. Both Google Maps and Mapbox restrict the number of geocode requests that can happen during a period of time. Google Maps usage limits are 50 per second. Mapbox is more restrictive, with only 600 per minute allowed. BatchGeo allows up 25,000 geocodes per map and will automatically run them 100 geocodes at a time.

In addition to writing the code to access the Google Maps or Mapbox geocoding APIs, you’ll need to make sure your code handles caching and rate limiting. As with display maps, BatchGeo handles every aspect of geocoding when you upload or copy your location data to our mapping and geocoding tool.

Finally, a note on combined pricing: there is some potential undercounting for Google Maps and over-counting for BatchGeo. Google Maps $200 free usage also applies to geocoding, but it can only be used once per month. The two tables in this article each count the discount. Depending on your usage, the actual cost of Google Maps may be slightly (or substantially) more.

BatchGeo pricing is inclusive of both map views and geocodes, with the larger usage determining the price. That can make the already-inexpensive BatchGeo look even more affordable. In the next section, you’ll see what else is included in the BatchGeo Pro monthly pricing.

BatchGeo: Easy Maps with Advanced Features

For many map projects, BatchGeo is easier to create and cheaper to operate. Depending on your usage level of display maps and geocoding, you could save hundreds or thousands of dollars by using BatchGeo. In addition, your maps will automatically include handy tools you’d otherwise need to code yourself.

Each BatchGeo map can include additional data about each location, so you can visualize other data in your spreadsheet. Display the name in a box when each marker is clicked, and filter which markers are displayed with built-in data grouping.

To achieve a similar approach with the Google Maps or Mapbox display APIs, you’d need to write a lot of additional code. And this is only one of several BatchGeo features, which includes custom colors, different map styles, and mobile access for your entire team.

If you wish to provide a store locator map (to discover your multiple locations or retailers who carry your product), you’ll save a bunch of time with BatchGeo. A location finder and full text search can be included with every BatchGeo map. Simply enable the store locator, with either a left-side or below-map list of locations, when you create or edit your map.

Finally, you can embed any map seamlessly into your own site. Similar to sharing a YouTube video, you just copy some simple HTML code and paste it where you want the map to be displayed. The embedded map is fully functional and completely interactive, with a much richer “out of the box” experience than Google Maps or Mapbox. And all without coding, for a much lower price.

Try BatchGeo for free and add your data to create a map today. We’ll do all the mapping and geocoding for you (no code, rate limits, or coordinate refreshes). Then pay one monthly price that stays affordable as you grow.