January 2006
- National Geographic Maps: News from Evergreen
- In response to competition from the online mapping services, National Geographic Maps is restructuring, moving away from producing general-interest maps and towards specific niches, such as recreation, emergency, geology and other field work, the Denver Business Journal reports (via All…
- Exhibition Roundup: NOAA, Versailles, Miami, Bangkok
- Some upcoming map and map-related exhibitions to tell you about: Silver Spring, Maryland: From a NOAA press release: “Artifacts representing nearly 200 years of science, service and stewardship by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its ancestor agencies will…
- Off the (Digital) Map
- We’ve seen before how suburban growth in some U.S. regions can be so fast that the digital mapping companies can’t keep up. The implications of living in an area so new that it’s not mapped yet are surprising: GeoCarta points…
- Link Roundup for January 29
- I’ve been off my feed a bit this past week, so I’ve got some catching up to do. I’ll start with a few random links from here and there about this and that. From the Google Blog: “Not only have…
- Canadian Election Maps: After the Vote
- In response to Glenn’s complaint about a dearth of maps showing the results of the 2006 Canadian federal election, Cartography whips up a couple of beautiful maps showing the 2004 and 2006 results, with intensity indicating the percentage. Meanwhile, the…
- Olivio Barbieri’s Model World
- Olivo Barbieri’s model world: “It’s often hard to convince people that Olivo Barbieri’s aerial photographs are real. They look uncannily like hyperdetailed models, absent the imperfections of reality. Streets are strangely clean, trees look plastic, and odd distortions of scale…
- Canadian Election Maps: Before the Vote
- The polls are starting to close in the Canadian federal election, and no doubt there will be a plethora of election maps in fairly short order. In the meantime, while we wait for the results, there are already a number…
- Link Roundup for January 21
- A clickable map of Tlingit tribes, clans and clan houses in the Pacific Northwest. Via Plep. MapPoint B2B on the future of MSN Maps and Directions, viz., none: “The time has come to say good-bye to MSN Maps and Directions…
- Question: 3-D Wall Map for a School?
- Ted Czarnecki writes, “I am a teacher and our school is trying to improve students’ knowledge and familiarity with geography. Does anyone know of a large 3-D (hands on) map that we could purchase and install on a hallway wall?…
- Map Questions RSS Feed Updated
- While procrastinating the big post on the Chinese map, I’ve moved and revamped the map questions RSS feed: it now shows all open questions (they stay open for 30 days), as well the answers to those questions. (I’ve also been…
- Link Roundup for January 17
- I’ve got to hunker down and produce a big post about the controversial Chinese map that purportedly proves that the Chinese discovered the Americas, but in the meantime, here are a few links about satellite images, online maps and advertising….
- Virtual India
- The first public build of Virtual India (the Microsoft Research project with imagery that satisfies Indian security concerns; see previous entry) is now online, according to the Virtual Earth blog. Four languages; street maps for Bangalore only; works in Firefox…
- Forbes Smiley Case: Fallout at Yale’s Beinecke Library
- The Hartford Courant’s Kim Martineau has been on the Forbes Smiley case for months, and has generally led the reporting on the story (see the Map Thefts category archive for earlier coverage). In today’s edition, she has a story that…
- Utah Atlas of Panoramic Images
- Dr. William Bowen writes to tell us about his project, the Utah Atlas of Panoramic Images: “This latest web publication includes 887 photorealistic mathematical simulations of Utah’s complex landscape.” He adds that “it is important to realize that the panoramas…
- Question: Maps and Copyright?
- Recently I’ve received several questions relating copyright and reproducing other maps, so I thought I’d deal with them all at once. The first question deals with reproducing maps that may or may not be in the public domain; the second…
- Link Roundup for January 14
- Ben Keene, the editor of Oxford University Press’s atlas program (see previous entry), looks at the changes in geography he had to deal with in 2005 (via World Hum). MapQuest has inadvertently left Edmonton off a map of Canadian cities…
- Kartentisch
- Claus Moser has begun a German-language map blog: Kartentisch: Die Welt ist ein Atlas. This looks promising and I will keep an eye on it, my badly atrophied and rudimentary German notwithstanding….
- Link Roundup for January 13
- If I make these posts a regular occurrence, I’ll have to come up with a catchier title. Anyway, onward, with a few things about online maps and a couple of conferences to tell you about: Ads appearing on Google Maps?…
- NPR on Google Maps Mashups
- More radio news. Our friend Mike Pegg of Google Maps Mania was on NPR’s All Things Considered today, talking about Google Maps mashups, bien sûr; here’s the story page, from where you can listen to the audio. In referencing this…
- Google Earth Basics
- Our friend Frank Taylor of Google Earth Blog has put together a page of Google Earth Basics for people new to Google Earth. That’s basically me: while I’ve been reporting what I could about Google Earth since its launch, I…
- Link Roundup for January 12
- As an experiment, a lot of new links at once: A new Google Earth blog with a rather unwieldy title: Using Google Earth for Earth Science and Remote Sensing (via Ogle Earth). The Prejudice Map is built by querying Google…
- Google Earth for Mac Officially Released
- A busy day for Mac users, and not just because of the Macworld keynote. Google Earth for the Mac is now officially available (via GPS Review). Key system requirements: OS X 10.4 (Tiger), a 400-MHz processor, and 16 MB of…
- Garmin Announces Mac Compatibility
- In a press release, Garmin announced today “that it will immediately begin to make its line of GPS and mobile electronics devices compatible with Mac OS X version 10.4 ‘Tiger.’ This makes Garmin the first major GPS designer and manufacturer…
- AHA: GIS and History
- At last weekend’s meeting of the American Historical Association, there was a session on GIS and History, the papers presented at which are available as PDF files (on the page, click on the name of the presenter). Historians regularly import…
- We Are Mapmakers
- Anthony Doerr in The Morning News: “We are mapmakers, all of us, tracing lines of memory across the spaces we enter. We embed memories everywhere; we inscribe a private and complicated diagram across the landscape; we plant root structures of…
- Book Review Roundup
- Very Spatial reviews Making Maps by John Krygier and Denis Wood, an unusual book that is in my review queue as well. (I’m so profoundly behind on reviews it’s embarrassing, but a review of this book is forthcoming.) Here’s a…
- Pardon My Dust: Tags and Other Changes
- I’ve been fiddling with the site again (see previous entry), so periodic bouts of weirdness may have been appearing over the last few days and may continue to appear. (I’m flouting web design best practices by coding live rather than…
- The Other World’s Oldest Map
- Never mind the Soleto Map: pottery doesn’t count as maps, apparently. The City of Turin (Torino), as part of its celebrations related to next month’s Winter Olympics, will have on display the first-century-BC Papyrus of Artemidorus, which, while several centuries…
- Programming MapPoint in .NET
- Chandu Thota announces that his new book, Programming MapPoint in .NET, which covers APIs for MapPoint 2004, MapPoint Web Service, Microsoft Location Server and Virtual Earth, is now available. A sample chapter is available via O’Reilly’s online catalogue, and there’s…
- Comments RSS Feed and Other Changes
- I got Hacking Movable Type for Christmas and it’s been giving me all kinds of ideas for this site. First, I’ve set up a new RSS feed that tracks the most recent reader comments. Now that comment spam has been…
- 2006 Bloggies: I Have No Shame
- Nominations for the 2006 Bloggies — the sixth annual weblog awards — are now open, and close on the 10th. Since I have neither shame nor subtlely, may I do what every other attention-whoring blogger does at this time of…
- Undersea Cable Maps
- A collection of maps of undersea cables, beginning with Atlantic telegraph cable maps from 1858 and finishing with a world cable map from 1992. Most of the maps are older, though, and quite interesting. Via Things Magazine….
- Oxford Atlas of the World
- Two Gadling bloggers are dead keen on Oxford’s Atlas of the World, Deluxe Edition; see Erik’s post and Kelly’s earlier post. I had thought that the gold-standard atlas was the Times Comprehensive (at least that appeared to be the consensus…
- BBC and NPR Do Maps
- Coincidentally, two public-radio programs had items on digital maps and geospatial technologies today. Both have already aired but you’ll be able to listen to them online. On BBC Radio 4, Shop Talk had a program on digital mapping with about…
- AP Article on Online Maps, Features
- A followup to the AP wire story that made the rounds last week, by the same writer, looking at what Google et al. do with the digital mapping data: Roads, highways are just the beginning for digital maps. Via GPS…
