November 2005
- Time-based Tube Map
- Attention London tube map freaks: Oskar Karlin, whom we’ve met before, designed a new map of the London Underground as a design project. “I knew couldn’t just do a normal re-design; something had to be added. I started thinking what’s…
- Business Week Reviews Google Maps
- The thing that annoyed me most about that AP article was that it was picked up by clueless news organizations who ran it under headlines to the effect that MapQuest was leading the hot online mapping sector, when the truth…
- Map of the Star Wars Galaxy
- This map of the Star Wars galaxy (or, in insiders’ lingo, the Galaxy Far, Far Away or GFFA) is probably not “canon” (i.e., official), but it’s sort of interesting anyway. Via Cartography, who didn’t think much of it….
- TV Exec Donates Wyoming Maps
- Jack Rosenthal, a Wyoming TV executive, has donated his collection of old maps of the state to a local museum. More about Rosenthal and his map jones in this quasi-coherent article from the Caspar Star-Tribune. Via GeoCarta….
- MacGPS Pro 6.1
- Speaking of bias, my overwhelming interest in Mac software reveals itself when I point out that version 6.1 of MacGPS Pro was announced yesterday. It adds support for some USB Garmin GPS receivers (serial-port support via an adapter only prior…
- Presidential Approval Ratings Maps
- It’s on DailyKos, so it’s a partisan source to say the least, and the analysis is definitely predicated on a preference for Democrats, but these maps showing state-by-state breakdowns of the President’s approval rating poll results might be worth a…
- AP: MapQuest and the Competition
- This AP story about MapQuest (alternate link) more or less states the obvious: that despite its market leading position, MapQuest is under threat from its mapping rivals whose innovations make MapQuest look like it’s standing still. Exhibits in evidence include…
- Exhibition Roundup: Cartography of Globalization, Quivira Collection
- At the Toronto Free Gallery until December 17, “Here Be Dragons: The Cartography of Globalization,” an exhibition of “counter-cartography”. From the gallery’s flash-based web site: “Recently, activists, artists and researchers have used the form of the map to visually represent…
- Coordinates Now in DOAJ
- According to a post on MapHist by the journal’s editor, Coordinates, the journal of the ALA’s Map and Geography Round Table, is now indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (about which I posted on MetaFilter a couple of…
- Copyright Traps
- Publishers frequently use “copyright traps” to prove that someone plagiarized their work. Without evidence of the actual act of plagiarism, it’s difficult to prove that someone publishing a rival phone book, dictionary or encyclopedia didn’t just copy material wholesale from…
- Question: Google Maps and Old Versions of Safari
- Google Maps may no longer work in older versions of Safari, Apple’s web browser. Joel Riggs wrote yesterday: “For the past 24 hours it appears that maps.google.com (aka Google Local) is not loading in Safari browsers … is this an…
- My Least Favourite Use of Old Maps
- Tony Campbell pointed out this little gem in an article about waste reduction during the holidays: “Reuse holiday wrapping, or use old maps or comic pages from the Sunday paper for wrapping gifts” (my emphasis). The sound you just heard…
- ICHC 2005 in Budapest
- To follow up on my previous post, here’s the home page for this year’s ICHC, held last July in Budapest, which its coordinator, Zsolt Török, wanted me to point you to….
- Swiss Journal and Conference on the History of Cartography
- Thomas Klöti passes on links to the home pages of the Swiss-based Cartographica Helvetica, a German-language journal about the history of cartography, and the forthcoming International Conference on the History of Cartography, which takes place in Berne in July 2007….
- Soviet Spies Map the World
- During the Cold War, the Soviet Union compiled topographic maps of virtually every corner of the world, to the extent that they are the only topo maps available for certain countries. The maps were both standardized and accurate; they were…
- Google Maps WordPress Plugins
- The WordPress Geo plugin allows bloggers using WordPress to specify a default location for their blog and assign geographic coordinates to specific posts. Dylan Kuhn takes this one step further with his Geo Mashup plugin, which takes that geographic data…
- VanMap: Vancouver Map System
- VanMap is a GIS viewer for the city of Vancouver, British Columbia; it’s got a surprising number of layers, more of which were added last September. (Use “VanMapLite” if you’re having browser difficulties with the main interface.) Via Vector One,…
- Mapping Sony BMG’s Malicious Rootkit
- Some background, in case you haven’t been following tech news lately: it was recently discovered that certain recent compact discs from Sony BMG contained a rootkit that secretly installed hidden files when you tried to play it on your PC….
- Map History Latest News; Arader Buys a Map
- Our friend Tony Campbell has added a Latest News page to his awe-inspiring Map History/History of Cartography site, where he plans to bring news items to our attention. (Let the duel of Google Alerts commence!) Anyway, he’s just started, but…
- Another Review of Mapping Hacks
- Karen Ruby reviews Mapping Hacks: “The book is a good resource to increase your geospatial knowledge by doing, not simply reading. The hacks range from very simple mapping hacks to more complex hacks that require specialized software and coding to…
- Yahoo! Directions on an iPod
- iPods have been used for subway maps before (see previous entries: 1, 2, 3); now this site generates driving directions from Yahoo! Maps that can be exported to a photo-capable (i.e., colour-screen) iPod. Via Scoble….
- Paula Scher: The Maps
- Paula Scher: The Maps is an exhibition of Scher’s paintings at the Maya Stendhal Gallery in New York; it runs until December 17. From the Gallery’s web site: “This show, consists of a series of twelve large-scale canvases — intricate,…
- The Western World’s Oldest Map
- In today’s edition of the Daily Telegraph, an article about the oldest map in the western world: the Soleto Map, unearthed two years ago in southern Italy, which dates to 500 BC. The map, which is on a postage-stamp-sized fragment…
- Brief Site Outage
- The Map Room was unavailable for a couple of hours today (as were my other sites) due to a router problem at DreamHost, my hosting provider….
- CNet on Mashups
- As part of a series on new web technologies, CNet has a long article about mashups that, like previous articles from other news organizations, serves as both an introduction to and summary of the whole Google Maps (and Yahoo! Maps,…
- A Brief History of Rand McNally
- Samuel John Klein’s Brief History of Rand McNally is up on Designorati today. Interesting to see that William Rand and Andrew McNally started with railroads (road travel was some decades away); their first map, in 1872, was the Railway Guide….
- Google Maps: API Blog, Wayfaring
- Google has launched a Google Maps API blog to keep developers better informed about changes to the API, plus, they say (because there’s only one post so far), tips and so forth. Via Google Maps Mania. But if the API…
- Volunteers Map Trails with GPS
- The 19th edition of the Connecticut Forest and Park Association’s “Walk Book” was generated by volunteers with GPS receivers; it took them three years to cover approximately 1,200 km of trails. With 40 per cent of the trails on private…
- Mapping the French Riots
- Cartography looks at the maps generated by news organizations covering the riots in France (which began in the suburbs of Paris and have since spread), and finds them generally wanting. Frankly, as someone who’s spent time in Paris and am…
- A Greasemonkey Script Combining Google Maps and Flickr
- GMiF (“Google Maps in Flickr”) is a Greasemonkey script (a Firefox browser extension) that allows you to see your geotagged photos on Google Maps from within Flickr. Thanks to Noel for the link….
- GTA Digital Mapping Project
- Plep points to the Greater Toronto Area Digital Mapping Project, done by the University of Toronto’s map library. It’s old-style and not very accessible (it requires a plugin), but it’s got a collection of old maps and more recent aerial…
- USGS Insiders’ Blog
- Topo Employees is an insiders’ blog by and for employees of the USGS national mapping program; presumably recent controversies about outsourcing maps and relocating their headquarters are fuelling a certain amount of disgruntlement above and beyound what is normal for…
- A Font for Maps: Cisalpin
- Cisalpin is a relatively new font specially designed as a standard font for maps; its page on Linotype, in addition to being the place to buy the font, outlines some of the typographic requirements of cartography. Via Cartography….
- General Maps of Persia, 1477-1925
- Here’s another big, expensive atlas to tell you about: Cyrus Alai’s General Maps of Persia, 1477-1925. According to Tony Campbell, who wrote the introduction and brought it to our attention on MapHist, Alai spent 15 years examining 1,200 maps…
- Designing Better Maps Reviewed
- GIS Monitor reviews Cynthia Brewer’s Designing Better Maps: “Brewer’s advice is authoritative, practical, and useful to novice and experienced mapmakers alike. She focuses on just a few key questions — how to design a map so that its layout…
- Google Local for Mobile
- Last month I mentioned that MapQuest was moving into mobile devices and even paper; I said it was a good idea, because maps are more useful when they’re portable. Online map services are fine and good in front of the…
- Odyssey Map Store Profile
- The author takes a while to get to the point, but today’s Indianapolis Star takes a look at the Odyssey Map Store, which apparently is the only dedicated map store in Indiana. No web site that I’ve been able to…
- U.S. Electoral District Ballot Initiatives
- A feature of many U.S. electoral maps has been the gerrymander: electoral districts drawn, sometimes ludicrously, to favour one party over another. In order to try to prevent that from happening, two upcoming ballot initiatives — one in California, one…
- The Class Implications of the Forbes Smiley Case
- Alan Bisbort, writing in the Hartford Advocate, pokes at the class implications of the Forbes Smiley case brought out, in part, by William Finnegan’s New Yorker article (see previous entry): Smiley was one of the elite in the antiquarian trade….
- CNet Profiles TeleAtlas
- CNet’s Elinor Mills profiles TeleAtlas, one of several mapping data companies that provide the online map services with their data (along with NAVTEQ, for example, they provide data for both Google and Yahoo!). The article looks at data collection and…
- Yahoo! Mapping APIs
- Simon Willison takes a look at Yahoo’s various mapping APIs. It’s a good (if brief) overview. Via Daring Fireball Linked List. See previous entry: Yahoo! Maps Upgrade….
- Site Design Changes
- The tinkering with the site design I mentioned Sunday got a bit more involved this evening — or rather it got carried away, since I didn’t expect to be finished already. Still a few details to work on over the…
- Google Maps Plugin for Movable Type
- If you’re a blogger using Movable Type — which reminds me that I need to upgrade to version 3.2 at some point — you might be interested in the MTGoogleMaps plugin. It requires a Google Maps API key, naturally, but…
- Scoble on the Map Wars: We’re Doomed
- Scoble says both Yahoo! Maps and Virtual Earth are doomed: “it’s not about maps, it’s about the advertising platform that Google has built. It’s not about prettiness, it’s about who has the most user generated content (I still hate that…
- Yahoo! Maps Upgrade
- Breaking news: Yahoo! has upgraded its mapping service with a new, Flash-based beta version with substantial interface improvements. In the 15 seconds or so I’ve had to play with it, it works very well — the inset for zooming is…
- Map of Narnia
- This interactive map of Narnia, a tie-in with the upcoming movie The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, is actually quite good: it’s a compilation of material from several Narnia books (specifically, Prince Caspian and The Silver Chair) and adds…
