April 2005
- A Literary Map of Manhattan
- Randy Cohen in the New York Times Sunday Book Review (free registration required): “I propose to create, with the help of the Book Review’s readers, a literary map of Manhattan — not of its authors’ haunts but those of their…
- Journal of Maps: No Ordnance Survey Data
- Another unfortunate result of the Ordnance Survey’s copyright on its mapping data: the Journal of Maps announced last week that, because of the Ordnance Survey’s restrictive licencing, “we are currently unable to accept any maps based upon OS data.” (See…
- More on Open Geodata and the Ordnance Survey
- Mapping Hacks has a report on the Forum on Open Geodata that took place earlier this month (see previous entry), where the argument was put forth that the Ordnance Survey should open up its data for the economic spinoff benefits…
- More Google Maps Hacks
- When third parties started riffing on Google Maps — whether through hacks or by posting screenshots of its satellite images — I wondered what Google thought about it. After all, the satellite photos are watermarked with copyright notices. I suspect…
- Windows Mobile GPS Thingies
- A couple of links about GPS-equipped PDAs — those gadgets I covet but cannot possibly ever afford. Brighthand’s got a review of the Garmin iQue M5, which runs Windows Mobile instead of Palm OS like Garmin’s other PDAs (see previous…
- Buying Maps from the Survey of India
- When you’re used to the idea that the map you’re looking for is frequently only a click away, it’s disconcerting to read about Shobhit Mahajan’s attempts to buy maps from the Survey of India, where it seems that “the idea…
- FoxTrot on Google Maps
- I’ve been away working on a web development project for most of the last week — without broadband — so I’ve been without my usual source-checking and web surfing routine. Because if I hadn’t been away, I would have immediately…
- Google Maps for Britain and Ireland
- Google Maps comes to the UK and Ireland. More from the Google Blog. Thanks to Thierry for the catch….
- Slovak Map Exhibition
- At the Slovak National Museum in Bratislava until April 27: Slovakia in Maps from the 16th to the 20th Centuries….
- Sauchie’s Green Map
- Green maps come to Sauchie, The Herald reports; it’s the first green map in Scotland. So what is lurking below the surface in Sauchie? Enid Trevett, 46, a local youth worker, points out a few features likely to be included…
- The Beeb on Google Maps
- Nothing you haven’t already seen before, but this BBC story briefly covers the recent excitement over the Google Maps satellite stuff, including Memory Maps (see previous entry) and Google Sightseeing (see previous entry)….
- Auction of First Map of the New World
- One of four surviving copies of the first map to label the New World as “America” — a 1507 map by Martin Waldseemuller — is being auctioned by Christie’s in June. Better issue a share certificate on your firstborn, though:…
- Shipwreck Interactive Map
- Shipwreck Central, the home page of the documentary series The Sea Hunters, has a really neat interactive shipwreck map that’s both zoomable and searchable. (Thanks to Gooberoo for the link.)…
- Green Maps
- The Green Map system has been around for 10 years. Essentially, it’s a framework for locally produced environmental maps, the focus of which is a set of icons that denote points of ecological interest. The site does not host maps…
- Vatican Satellite Images
- DigitalGlobe’s Vatican Gallery, including a satellite shot of St. Peter’s square on April 5 (1.5 MB JPEG, 2168×2164 resolution), showing mourners in line to view the Pope’s body. Via Jason….
- Reaping the World Wind
- As I said in my brief entry about NASA World Wind last November, my lack of access to a Windows PC — at least one I can install big software packages on — prevented me from checking it out. Manuel…
- More Address Book Hacks
- More scripts to change the mapping service that Mac OS X’s Address Book uses (see previous entry): this one points it at the Swiss map.search.ch (see previous entry); this one points it at Multimap. Via Mac OS X Hints….
- A Site Update
- I’ve redesigned the site a little bit — trying to make it a bit less cluttered. Hope it agrees with you. (For those of you who detest the colour scheme, I hope to have something for you shortly.) The non-blog…
- A Google Maps Update
- I’ve been saving up a bunch of Google Maps satellite imagery links for you over the weekend. Google Maps and Accountability: Dave Shea explores the possibilities of using Google Maps as a tool for whistleblowing rather than a threat to…
- New BlogMap API, Features
- Chandu Thota has added an API and other features to BlogMap (see previous entry). Via Scoble….
- World of Warcraft Map Viewer
- Those interested in computer game maps (see previous entry) should take note of WoWmapview, a map viewer for World of Warcraft: “It uses the data files included with the game to display the 3D game world, which you can explore…
- Question: Getting Involved in Collaborative Mapping?
- Robin Hall writes, “Saw the piece on the back of Online in The Guardian today and am interested in starting a project here in Letchworth.” (See previous entry.) “Given that I have access to a group of people interested in…
- The Big and the Little
- Yesterday’s Guardian had a piece exploring the dichotomy between ground-level, do-it-yourself, open-source mapping projects done by people walking about with GPS units, and the massive geodata owned by government agencies. So why would anyone want to make their own map,…
- Ground-level Google Maps
- GoogleMaps Satellite View Real-World-Mix, uploaded by kokogiak. The funniest take yet on the Google Maps screenshot craze that’s sweeping Flickr (see previous entry), from kokogiak. Update: Not on Flickr, but just as funny….
- Survey Closed
- Thanks to everyone who responded to the reader survey — all 120 of you. That’s plenty for me to work with, and it’s been a week, so I’ll close it and get to work on the results, which I hope…
- Canadian Geographic’s Crummy Canadian Atlas
- The Royal Canadian Geographic Society, which publishes Canadian Geographic, launched the Canadian Geographic Atlas Online yesterday. It garnered lots of media coverage. Too bad it sucks. To begin with, there isn’t much in the way of maps: it’s more a…
- More on Google’s Satellite Images
- Flickr users have gone nuts with posting screenshots of Google Maps’s new satellite photo feature (see previous entry), if the “map” and “maps” tags are any indication. There’s also a new Flickr group called Memory Maps, the idea of which…
- Google Maps Adds Satellite Images
- Google Maps has added satellite images to its service as of late Monday, and it’s done so in a really useful manner: one click toggles between maps and satellite photography. Try zooming in without your jaw hitting the floor. The…
- Forum on Open Geodata
- More on the attempt to produce GIS data for the UK independent of Crown copyright (see previous entry: there will be a Forum on Open Geodata on April 14 in London; see the link for speakers and details. From the…
- The World Islands
- The World Islands is a $1.8-billion project to construct several hundred artificial private islands off the coast of Dubai — in the shape of a world map. The glitzy official site is here. Via Boing Boing and MetaFilter….
- OpenOSX GrassPro
- GRASS, the open-source GIS software, has been available for Mac OS X before; on Friday, OpenOSX announced GrassPro, which, in addition to GRASS 6.0.0, adds several related utilities. Panther and X11 required….
- Karen Wynn Fonstad
- Karen Wynn Fonstad, the freelance cartographer who authored atlases of Middle-earth, Dragonlance and other fantasy worlds, died March 11 of complications from breast cancer. She was 59. This Toronto Sun article from 2002 reviews her best-known work, The Atlas of…
- Review of Maps of the Imagination
- Today’s Oregonian has a review of Peter Turchi’s Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, which I see that a few of you have ordered from Amazon via this site. I haven’t had a chance to look at a…
- Unmanned Aircraft Safety Targets
- Huw — probably my best link submitter — writes in with another one: a series of maps on UAV safety. That’s unmanned aerial vehicles: think Predator drones. Unmanned aircraft are apparently 100 times less reliable than manned aircraft; the maps…
- Donation Thanks and a Task List
- I’d like to thank everyone who’s donated so far (see previous entry). I appreciate it very much. One problem with the donation model is that the value-for-money equation is poorly defined: a subscription model yields tangible benefits, but a donation…
- Urban Mapping (Was: Dynamap)
- John Resig points us to this article in Directions about Urban Mapping’s neato Cracker Jack-box mapping technology — which was covered here a year ago when it was called “Dynamap”. (The old site is completely gone, and they haven’t forwarded…
- Webmapper
- Possibly the strangest way I’ve yet had a link submitted is via someone’s comment in the reader survey: “Excellent reading. Combines well with www.webmapper.net.” Hold the phone — I hadn’t actually heard of webmapper.net. (Insert Jon Stewart going “whaaaaa?” all…
- Survey Response
- Response to the reader survey (previous entry) has been tremendous, much more than I expected. Thanks for taking the time. I have the best readers. If you haven’t done the survey yet, there’s still time — my plan is to…
