May 2005
- The History of GIS
- “Yet his search for the dark, hidden ancestors of modern mapmaking illustrates something simple and true: maps — like technological progress itself — are not inherently benevolent.” The history of GIS is controversial: some argue it emerged from the military…
- Google Earth Preview
- Stephen DesRoches downloaded a beta of the upcoming Google Earth (see previous entry) the other day, and has a report and screenshots. Looks impressive. Update: See also Windypundit (via MAKE: Blog)….
- Flash World Map Tool
- The flash photoblog world map “plots images and locations onto a world map using latitude and longitude information,” and integrates with several blogging tools. Some database or XML hackery may be required. There’s also a Flickr version, with a related…
- Seattle Buses in Real Time
- If the amount of maps, software and hardware available is any indication (see previous entries: 1, 2; the Seattle Area Traffic page has moved since that July 2003 entry), the traffic around Seattle can’t be very good. Now here’s another…
- Social Mapping and the Cartographic Modeling Lab
- If you’re interested in social mapping (see previous entry), you shouldn’t miss this AP wire story about the work done by the University of Pennsylvania’s Cartographic Modeling Lab. The focus of the story is their work to correlate childhood obesity…
- Risks in Global Filmmaking Map
- Each year, entertainment-industry insurance broker Aon publishes a map that shows the risks faced by filmmakers in various countries around the world — useful if you’re scouting locations and need to get a sense of what trouble may await you…
- French EU Referendum Results
- Nic Jasson writes, “The spectacular failure of the EU Constitution referendum in France (rejected by 55% of voters yesterday) is easy to understand from this interactive map from the French daily Le Monde, showing the yes/no vote in the 100…
- Adding Google Maps Directions
- Matt Round offers a simple hack for adding Google Maps directions to a web site. Useful if, say, you have a business or institution with a physical presence and you need to provide directions; the user supplies a zip or…
- Google Map and Satellite Tiles
- This so-called Simple Analysis of Google Map and Satellite Tiles is anything but to my uneducated eyes: it looks at the mechanics of how each 128×128-pixel tile is rendered. Way over my head. Via O’Reilly Radar….
- Mixing GPS Data and Orthographic Images with Perl
- Tony has written up a Perl script to take the data from his GPS watch and overlaid it on orthographic imagery from the USGS. These are ridiculously huge and detailed files, but the end result is an extremely precise map…
- Taiwan in Maps
- “Taiwan in Maps,” an exhibition of maps from the 15th century to the present, runs through Sept. 18 at the National Taiwan Museum in Taipei, though as the Taipei Times reports, foreign tourists, at whom the exhibition is at least…
- Maps from the Delaware Public Archives
- As part of its digital archives, the Delaware Public Archives has put online a collection of maps, one of which dates back to 1688. Thanks to Rick Stratton for the link….
- National Archives of Japan Map Collection
- The National Archives of Japan’s Digital Gallery has a substantial online collection of old maps, scanned at high resolution. Thanks to peacay for the link….
- BBC Weather Map Overhaul Draws Complaints
- The BBC recently overhauled the graphics for its weather maps, and that hasn’t gone over very well. Noel Jenkins sent in a link to his take on the affair. Essentially, people are complaining that the BBC has “dumbed down” the…
- MSN Virtual Earth
- Microsoft’s response to Google Maps comes in the form of MSN Virtual Earth, which was announced yesterday at the D: All Things Digital conference and will debut for real some time this summer. The key feature is the service’s “oblique”…
- Global Wind Map
- Further to my previous post on wind atlases, two Stanford University researchers have compiled a global wind map that charts wind energy potential worldwide. Both Wired News and WorldChanging have details and copies of the map….
- Old Map of Middleton, CT
- Dan Brown has been having fun browsing the Library of Congress’s online map collection, and spends some time looking at an old (and, at least on his page, undated) map of Middleton, Connecticut. Via Things Magazine….
- Google Factory Tour: Google Earth, Map API?
- Yesterday’s Google Factory Tour (via Kottke) yielded some interesting tidbits about Google’s operations and future plans, including “Google Earth,” a successor to Keyhole (previous entry) that will debut for real in a couple of weeks. Google Earth is mentioned here…
- Earthquake Forecasts
- We’ve been able to see maps of recent earthquake activity before (see previous entries: 1, 2), but now there’s a map of forecasted earthquake activity in California over the next 24 hours. From the wire story: “The earthquake forecast maps…
- Chicago Crime Maps
- Chicagocrime.org presents crime data from publicly available databases for Chicago. In addition to letting you browse by street, district and so forth, it uses Google Maps — what, couldn’t you see that coming? — to plot crimes on a map…
- Flickr Geotagging Group
- More on geotagging, Geobloggers and Flickr: there’s now a geotagging group on Flickr that discusses ways and means of incorporating location metadata into Flickr photos. Via Google Maps Mania. See previous entries: Automating Geotagging, Google Maps Plus Flickr….
- Another Google Maps Roundup
- More hacks of, and news and commentary about, Google Maps: Hey Google, Map This! Wired’s Daniel Terdiman covers the various Google Maps hacks out there, some of which we’ve seen before here on The Map Room, some of which we…
- Paris 1911
- A reproduction of the 1911 Baedeker guide for Paris — it’s small, and I’m not a fan of the interface, but it’s neat to see how much of the city has remained unchanged (I see a lot of familiar places)….
- Copenhagen Commuter Trains in Real Time
- This page shows the real-time position of trains in the Greater Copenhagen commuter rail network. The trains are colour-coded to show how on time or late they are. Note that the page uses Java. (Nicolas Jasson hid this gem in…
- Houston Traffic Widget
- The Houston Traffic Map widget makes the information found on the Houston real-time traffic map available as a Dashboard widget (for Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger”)….
- Welcome to Nowhere: West Berlin as Mapped by East Germany
- Nicolas Jasson has put together a page showing an excerpt from an East German map of Berlin, dating from the late 1970s/early 1980s, which showed virtually no detail on the other side of the Berlin Wall — for all intents…
- Geograph
- Geograph: “The Geograph British Isles project aims to collect a geographically representative photograph for every square kilometre of the British Isles and you can be part of it.” Via Clean Slate….
- Question: What-If Political Boundaries?
- John Frum is on a mission to collect maps showing political boundaries that never existed — “what I for want of a better word call ‘what if’-maps,” he writes. For example, the map of Europe drawn up by the Germans…
- Art of the Road
- Roadmap Art of the Road is a Flickr group that shares “scanned images from vintage roadmaps from gas stations, municipalities and the like.” The focus is on the cover art, not the cartography, but it’s still of interest. See previous…
- World Wind for the Pocket PC
- As, I guess, a challenge to himself, Casey Chestnut went and made a Pocket PC version of NASA World Wind (see previous entry), porting its basic functionality. Also via MAKE: Blog….
- Automating Geotagging
- Steeev has come up with some scripts (Firefox and Greasemonkey required) to automate the process of geotagging your Flickr photos for Geobloggers (see previous entry). Via MAKE: Blog….
- Question: Large Wall Map of the U.S. with County Outlines?
- Shonin writes: I was wondering if anyone would know where to get a fairly large wall map of the U.S. that only showed county outlines? I used to have one a long time ago, but I have not been able…
- Houston Real-Time Traffic Map
- I’m late in relaying this, but B. Moore submitted a link to the Houston Real-Time Traffic Map, and described it thusly: This is an amazing real time traffic map that is quite sophisticated and useful (at least if you live…
- Tags Page Update
- An update to the Tags page: instead of the old method of displaying map-related photos from Flickr, which was built from a search-based RSS feed and updated only when the index pages on this site were rebuilt, you can now…
- Feel Small Project
- Yet another riff on Google Maps on Flickr: the Feel Small Project, wherein participants take screenshots of their location on Google Maps satellite imagery at every zoom level, then build a slideshow that zooms from the tightest to the widest…
- Worldclock
- Worldclocks, by design company This Is It, rotate a polar projection of the world around a 24-hour dial, simultaneously showing the time in dozens of cities at once. The 2001 version is a 48-inch wall clock; the 2002 version is…
- British Election Results
- Results in the British election are beginning to come in as I write this, and there will likely be a whole bunch of election maps to post over the next couple of days. Right now, though, the Guardian’s interactive election…
- Toggling Between Maps and Photos
- Webmapper considers the ways to toggle between maps and satellite images: with Google Maps it’s just a simple click; they compare that with one of their own projects, as well as Mappy, where “[a] slider widget allows users to change…
- Mapping Geeks Meetup at MEDC
- Chandu Thota wants to organize a mapping geeks meetup at MEDC next week. I suspect that few of my readers are attending a Windows Mobile developers convention, but there it is anyway….
- Cretan Map Exhibition
- Candia — Creta — Crete, Space and Time, 16th to 18th Century, at Eynard Hall, the National Bank Cultural Foundation, Athens. From the Kathimerini: Through seven sections, arranged according to theme, the exhibition traces the island’s history through cartographic depictions,…
- Communities Page Update
- The Communities page has been updated with more links to map societies stolen taken from this site (see previous entry). It’s still a long way from definitive, though; there must be dozens of mailing lists alone still out there….
- More Sites About Google Maps
- Since its launch a little less than three months ago, Google Maps has generated more buzz than any other mapping site since I’ve been paying attention to them. Adding satellite photos only made it worse. That buzz can be measured…
- Google Maps Plus Flickr
- We’ve seen Google Maps posted to Flickr; now, thanks to a little Google Map hackery and the Flickr API, there’s another Google Maps mashup, Geobloggers, which puts geotagged photos on a Google Maps-generated map. All you need to do is…
- Dashboard Widgets
- I installed Tiger last night, about which one of the big to-dos is Dashboard, a layer of HTML/Javascript-based widgets that you can call up with a keypress and dismiss just as easily: handy for things like calculators and quick lookups….
- Map Societies Directory
- Tony Campbell sends along a link to a comprehensive online directory of map societies from around the world. For the most part, these are historical societies with a curatorial or collector’s bent. This will keep me busy updating the Communities…
- Wind Energy Atlases
- A wind energy atlas maps wind energy potential: it shows the average velocity and power of a given area, which is useful for people or companies interested in setting up wind generators. Here are the Canadian Wind Energy Atlas and…
- Trips123
- Trips123 provides traffic and transit conditions for New York City and the surrounding area. It formally launched April 6, five years behind schedule, and has cost $20 million, half of which came from a federal grant. The New York Times…
