May 2006

Indonesian Earthquake: Via Cartography and Catholicgauze, maps and satellite photos produced by UNOSAT of the earthquake-stricken areas of Indonesia, both before and after the quake….; posted to Current Events, Earthquakes, Satellite & Aerial | May 31, 2006
Severe Weather Imagery for Google Earth: Real-time data (or at least near real-time data) exists in the online mapping world, just not the real-time satellite and aerial imagery that uninformed people get exercised about — take traffic congestion data, for example. Weather data is another possibility…; posted to Google Earth, Satellite & Aerial, Weather & Climate | May 31, 2006
Earthshots: Earthshots: Satellite Images of Environmental Change is a collection of Landsat images of certain locations from different years (usually from 1972 to 2000) that show the changes to agriculture, urbanization and other activities in Landsat’s false-colour imagery, from the Ogallala…; posted to Environment, Satellite & Aerial | May 31, 2006
Google Earth vs. World Wind: Via Ogle Earth, a comparison of Google Earth and World Wind. Though I detect a distinct preference for World Wind’s open/free terms of use (it is, after all, a page on World Wind Central’s wiki), it’s quite positive about both…; posted to Google Earth, Satellite & Aerial, World Wind | May 31, 2006
Barnard’s Stars: Edward Emerson Barnard’s posthumous 1927 work, A Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way, has been digitized in its entirety and put on the web by Georgia Tech; here is the web site. Browsable by region and searchable;…; posted to Astronomy | May 31, 2006
China Surveying Hoh Xil Region: China’s official Xinhua news agency reports that the Chinese government has begun mapping a large uninhabited region of western China, variously called Hoh Xil or Kekexili, in the northwestern part of the Tibetan plateau, as part of a project to…; posted to Surveying, Topo Maps & Trails | May 30, 2006
Two Killed During GPS Treasure Hunt: Two men were killed when their Jeep plunged into a ravine in Kern County, California, north of Los Angeles, during what’s described as a GPS treasure hunt (geocaching?). Via GPS Tracklog, where Rich promises to post more details as they…; posted to GPS | May 30, 2006
Question: Info on Copper Engraved Plates?: Charles Ryan writes, “I am looking for information on copper engraved plates used — many, many years ago — for producing maps and charts, particularly for Naval Hydrographic Office charts. Can you recommend a source for doing some research or…; posted to Antique Maps, Nautical, Questions | May 30, 2006
Google Earth Will Be Ported to Linux: Mentioned in passing during coverage of the Linux release of Google’s Picasa photo software is the news that a Linux port of Google Earth has been in the works. From the Linux Today article: [Google Open Source Program Manager Chris]…; posted to Google Earth | May 30, 2006
MapPoint 2006 Review: Matt Rosenberg, the geography editor of About.com, has a review of Microsoft MapPoint 2006: “Microsoft’s MapPoint 2006 is GIS for personal or business use. It’s GIS for those that don’t need layer upon layer of GIS data. It’s GIS for…; posted to Software | May 30, 2006
Review: How to Lie with Maps: How to Lie with Maps (Second Edition) by Mark Monmonier University of Chicago Press, 1996. Softcover, 220 pp. ISBN 0-226-53421-9 While reading this modern classic by Syracuse University geography professor Mark Monmonier (see previous entry), I was struck by how…; posted to Book Reviews, Cartography, Map Projections | May 29, 2006
Russian Forestry Maps: Alexi Karimov’s collection of Russian forestry maps, ranging from 1733 to 1920, are drawn from scans made of maps in the Russian archives for his lectures. Enjoy them on his site, but keep him out of trouble with Russian archivists…; posted to Antique Maps | May 28, 2006
A Microsoft Roundup: Jeff Thurston thinks that MapCruncher (see previous entry) is “innovative”: “It would be interesting to see ‘artistic’ mapping using MapCruncher — personal mind maps, etched drawings, action/reaction layers and other kinds of unique maps created with this product. In other…; posted to Georeferencing, Hacks & Mashups | May 28, 2006
LA County Hiking Maps: Hikers with GPS receivers have mapped out previously uncharted trails between Santa Clarita and Palmdale in northern Los Angeles County, California, the LA Daily News reports. The maps, which were tentatively approved by the county’s Regional Planning Commission this week,…; posted to Topo Maps & Trails | May 26, 2006
Travel Time Maps: mySociety’s travel-time maps demonstrate a way to use coloured maps with contour lines to show travel times, taking as examples rail travel and driving times from points in Cambridge, Edinburgh and London (at right, rail travel time from Cambridge, with…; posted to Miscellany | May 26, 2006
Online Map Mindshare: Stefan compares U.S.-only data from Hitwise and Google Trends that attempt to approximate mindshare for the various mapping sites (and which show MapQuest way out in front) with the equivalent global Google Trends data, and comes to the following conclusion,…; posted to Online Maps | May 25, 2006
Trigonometrical Survey of England and Wales: BibliOdyssey points to, and posts excerpts from, On the Trig, a virtual exhibition from the British Library on the history of the Trigonometrical Survey of England and Wales — latterly known as the Ordnance Survey….; posted to Surveying | May 25, 2006
Trackbacks Off: I’ve disabled trackbacks: too much spam was getting through the filters; not enough legitimate pings received to make it worthwhile; and sending trackback pings to other servers frequently generated errors that resulted in multiple pings being sent every time I…; posted to Site News | May 25, 2006
Major Windows Live Local Update: Windows Live Local got a major update today; see the official blog for an overview of what they call “the biggest release yet of Windows Live Local.” The update includes real-time traffic data (the TechCrunch post covering the launch has…; posted to Hacks & Mashups, Online Maps, Satellite & Aerial | May 24, 2006
When Will We See Street-Level Maps of Mexico?: GPS Tracklog reports that TeleAtlas has acquired source data for Mexican streets and highways. Just last week I was bemoaning the total lack of data on Mexico in Google Maps — I wanted to look up something specific in Nayarit…; posted to Online Maps | May 24, 2006
Great Lakes Ice Atlas: The Great Lakes Ice Atlas is a production of NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory; it tracks the winter ice cover of the Great Lakes from 1973 to 2002, usually every few days to a week. Datasets are also available,…; posted to Environment | May 22, 2006
Japanese Value-Added Maps: Japanese map publishers are responding to the challenge of car navigation systems by shifting their focus to so-called “value-added maps,” the Asahi Shimbun reports in a profile of Maruzen, a Tokyo bookstore with a large map section. According to [Jinbun-sha…; posted to Dealers & Stores, Publishers | May 22, 2006
Old London Maps: Old London Maps is a gem of a collection of antique maps and engravings depicting London from medieval times to the nineteenth century. Greenwood’s map of London (pictured at right; see previous entry) is there, as are many others. Thanks…; posted to Antique Maps, London | May 22, 2006
Mapmaker Gets C&D from Chicago Schools: A map of Chicago so good that police and fire departments are distributing it to their stations has run into bureaucratic obstacles from the public school system: when the mapmaker wanted to distribute free copies of the $50 map to…; posted to Chicago | May 22, 2006
Canada’s Archives Interested in Map Auction?: A 444-year-old map, one of the first with the name “Canada” on it, is up for auction at Christie’s next month, and Library and Archives Canada — the national archives and library — is deciding whether to bid on it….; posted to Collecting | May 21, 2006
Paeans to Paper Maps: A couple of recent comparisons of traditional — even ancient — cartography with the latest mapping technology. First, Ben Macintyre in The Times (via Cartography): The paper map will soon die, and with it something central to human experience. There…; posted to Miscellany | May 21, 2006
GIS Portal for McAllen, Texas: The city of McAllen, Texas has launched a GIS portal, The Monitor reports….; posted to Cities, GIS | May 21, 2006
The Maps of Madison County: Maps of Troy, Illinois and surrounding Madison County have been produced by the Troy Area Chamber of Commerce, the Edwardsville Intelligencer reports. They’re printing 10,000 paper copies of the maps, which are also available online at the above links (nothing…; posted to Miscellany | May 21, 2006
MacGPS Pro 6.4: MacGPS Pro 6.4 is a Universal Binary, which means it will now run natively on Macs with Intel processors (rather than via Rosetta emulation). Via MacNN. See previous entries: MacGPS Pro 6.1; Mac Geocaching and GPS Software; Garmin Announces Mac…; posted to GPS, Macintosh | May 21, 2006
Google Maps Adds Streets for Australia and New Zealand: Google Maps Mania reports that Google Maps has added street data for Australia and New Zealand. See previous entries: Google Maps for Britain and Ireland; Google Maps for Japan; Major Google Maps European Update….; posted to Online Maps | May 18, 2006
Mac, Linux versions of NASA World Wind in September: Those of you who’ve been after me to get a copy of NASA World Wind, even to the point of buying a PC just to do so, will be happy to hear that a Java version that will run on…; posted to World Wind | May 17, 2006
Critical Cartographies: The latest issue of ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Cartographers is a special issue on “Critical Cartographies.” The essays examine the political aspects of cartography, in particular, the implications of passing the power to make maps from an expert…; posted to Scholarly Journals | May 17, 2006
MapCruncher: MapCruncher is this new thing from Microsoft Research that uses the Virtual Earth API (I guess it’s Virtual Earth for the technology, Windows Live Local for the online mapping site) to integrate your own maps into their system: Once you…; posted to Georeferencing, Hacks & Mashups | May 16, 2006
Red Herring: Online Maps and Local Advertising: Red Herring: While not as monomaniacal as the cartographers in Mr. Borges’ fictional empire, the mapmakers busy at work at search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN place a very high value on maps. And their designs don’t lack ambition….; posted to Online Maps | May 16, 2006
Views of the Earth: I love looking at the images on Views of the Earth: Artificial Images of Our Real Planet, where Christoph Hormann has taken satellite images and reprocessed them. The end results are astonishing: views from a height, on cloudless days, that…; posted to Satellite & Aerial | May 16, 2006
David Rumsey at the NYPL: New Yorkers, mark your calendars. David Rumsey will be speaking at the NYPL’s Healy Hall on Monday, May 22, at 5:30 PM. Admission is free; rush seating. His talk, “Thinking Locally, Mapping Globally: The Past and Future of Mapping,” is…; posted to Exhibitions | May 16, 2006
Two Concepts: First, naive geography, from a 1995 paper by Max Egenhofer and David Mark: Naive Geography captures and reflects the way people think and reason about geographic space and time, both consciously and subconsciously. Naive stands for instinctive or spontaneous. Naive…; posted to Miscellany | May 16, 2006
Question: Cataloguing a Map Collection?: My turn to ask a question. As I mentioned in my review of Kashuba’s Walking with Your Ancestors, I volunteer for a local archive that has a small collection of maps that I should, at some point, catalogue. I’d like…; posted to Libraries, Questions | May 16, 2006
Question: Small-town Directions?: Jeff’s getting married, and he needs to provide directions to the wedding’s small-town location. We’re getting ready to order and send out invitations for our wedding, which will be in a small town in Wisconsin. None of the mapping sites…; posted to Questions | May 16, 2006
Lists: On Here Be Dragons, a list of resources for making custom maps for Garmin GPS receivers. On Very Spatial (via), a list of desktop GIS applications….; posted to GIS, GPS | May 15, 2006
National Atlas Outline Maps: Among the printable maps offered online by the National Atlas of the United States are a collection of reference and outline maps suitable for teaching and low-tech scribbling on. Outline maps are a longstanding interest of mine. Thanks to peacay…; posted to Miscellany | May 14, 2006
Journal of Maps Transport Issue: The Journal of Maps has announced plans for a special issue on transport, scheduled for the fall. The call for papers (PDF) explains the scope and submission guidelines….; posted to Scholarly Journals | May 14, 2006
The Marvel of Maps: Thanks to MapHist, a book about maps and art during the Renaissance has been brought to my attention: art historian Francesca Fiorani’s The Marvel of Maps: Art, Cartography and Politics in Renaissance Italy. This book, according to the publisher, “focuses…; posted to Antique Maps, Books | May 13, 2006
Again: TeleAtlas in Berlin: Der Spiegel: TeleAtlas, Berlin. Previously: Navteq, San Diego; Navteq, New York; TeleAtlas, Santa Fe….; posted to Surveying | May 12, 2006
Santa Cruz’s 1550 Map of Mexico City: A 1550 map of Mexico City by cosmographer Alonso de Santa Cruz, currently held at the University of Uppsala in Sweden and normally not available to the public — it’s only one of two maps of 16th-century Mexico City —…; posted to Antique Maps | May 12, 2006
Ed Parsons on OpenStreetMap: Ordnance Survey CTO Ed Parsons has a positive take on the OpenStreetMap workshops, despite their positioning themselves as the archenemy of the Ordnance Survey: I am fully behind the efforts of Steve Coast and the OpenStreetMap movement to create copyright…; posted to Copyright | May 12, 2006
Mark Monmonier: Directions reports that the keynote speaker at this week’s NEGIS conference was professor and author Mark Monmonier, which led me to his web site. Coincidentally, a copy of his classic book, How to Lie with Maps, arrived from Amazon this…; posted to Books, Conferences, GIS | May 11, 2006
OpenStreetMap: Manchester’s Next: Having mapped approximately 90 per cent of the roads on the Isle of Wight last weekend (see previous entry), the OpenStreetMap project now turns to Manchester for its next workshop this coming weekend. Via Boing Boing. See previous entries:…; posted to Copyright, Manchester, Surveying, Tracerouting | May 11, 2006
Amtrak Route Atlas: Amtrak’s previous online attempts at a network map have generally been large PDFs or JPEGs (see previous entry), but they’ve just announced a new, Flash-based interactive route atlas that is much improved over its static predecessors. Click on a route…; posted to Railroads | May 10, 2006
Huygens Probe Images of Titan: Images of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, taken by the Huygens probe during its descent through Titan’s atmosphere last year, have been released. Mercator projection and stereographic versions have also been made, which makes them maps of a sort. More…; posted to Astronomy | May 10, 2006
Alaska’s North Slope: The May 2006 issue of National Geographic had an article on Alaska’s North Slope that featured a four-page map detailing land use, wildlife and offshore oil leases; that map is now available online in an interactive version. Via Slashgeo….; posted to Environment | May 9, 2006
Book Review: Walking with Your Ancestors by Melinda Kashuba: Walking with Your Ancestors: A Genealogist’s Guide to Using Maps and Geography by Melinda Kashuba Family Tree Books, 2005. Softcover, 226 pp. ISBN 1-55870-730-1 I do other things besides this web site; one of these is to volunteer at the…; posted to Book Reviews | May 8, 2006
Think Globally, Act Regionally: GIS for the Social Sciences: Think Globally, Act Locally: GIS and Data Visualization for Social Science and Public Policy Research, is a new textbook from ESRI Press. Authored by San Francisco State University urban studies professor Richard LeGates, the book is part of a project…; posted to Books, GIS | May 8, 2006
London Poverty in 1898 and 2001: Charles Booth’s late-nineteenth-century map of London poverty (see previous entry) is getting some additional attention lately: Boing Boing and Cartography link to this page, which compares Booth’s map with a 2001 map of London, and this Economist article, which discusses…; posted to Antique Maps, London | May 8, 2006
Local British Elections: Edward of webmapper.net has always been good at critiquing the media’s election results maps, and his take on maps of the local British elections is no exception. See previous entries: German Election Results; Dutch EU Referendum Results….; posted to Electoral Maps | May 8, 2006
That National Geographic Survey: Last week, the National Geographic Society released the results of the 2006 National Geographic-Roper Survey of Geographic Literacy, which tested young American adults aged 18 to 24 on their geographic knowledge. It’s probably not surprising that the results were not…; posted to Miscellany | May 8, 2006
The Middle-earth DEM Project: The Middle-earth DEM Project is, writes Carl Lingard, “a non-profit, hobbyists’ project devoted to mapping Middle-earth as a fully georeferenced digital elevation model and topographic map (using Google Earth as one of its targets). We are also seeking to develop…; posted to Imaginary Places | May 7, 2006
Travel Matters Emissions Maps: Travel Matters has put together maps of Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco that show overall and per-capita CO2 emissions. The point is that overall emissions are higher in cities, but lower per capita, because of more efficient transportation options…; posted to Cities, Environment | May 7, 2006
The Marvel Atlas Project: Today is Free Comic Book Day, in honour of which, here is the Marvel Atlas Project, an online attempt to map the locations of the Marvel comics universe. As it turns out, Dr. Doom’s Latveria is in the Balkans. Via…; posted to Imaginary Places | May 6, 2006
Indiana University to Close Map Library?: Indiana University is proposing to close four of its libraries, the Indiana Daily Student, its student newspaper, reports, and one of them is their map library: Heiko Muehr, the branch coordinator of the Map and Geography library, said that he…; posted to Libraries | May 6, 2006
Ask.com Relief Maps: I didn’t pay much attention when Ask.com unveiled its own mapping service a little while back, but now they’ve done something that no other online mapping service has done yet: they’ve added a relief map layer. It only works on…; posted to Online Maps | May 6, 2006
OpenStreetMap to Map Isle of Wight: Via Boing Boing, news that the OpenStreetMap project will attempt to map the entire Isle of Wight this coming weekend. OpenStreetMap’s goal is to produce freely available, copyright-free mapping data for Britain. Unlike the U.S., where government information is public…; posted to Copyright, Surveying, Tracerouting | May 4, 2006
1520+ Hometowns: Tofu’s “1520+ Hometowns” is a collage of all the town names of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, cut from road maps: “In March of 2004 I began a map piece cutting out the hometown of each American serviceman and woman…; posted to Art, Iraq War | May 3, 2006
The University of Tulsa’s Hidden Maps: A University of Tulsa graduate student has stumbled across rare maps in the university library’s collection, including an 1822 map of North America by Henry S. Tanner, the Tulsa World reports. It turns out that incoming maps and other non-book…; posted to Antique Maps, Libraries | May 3, 2006
A Look at the Aerial Photography Business: A rising tide lifts all boats, it’s said, and the interest in the satellite and aerial imagery available through the online mapping services and Google Earth has been very good to the aerial photography industry, who are able to capitalize…; posted to Satellite & Aerial | May 3, 2006
ASCII Maps: Probably the strangest Google Maps hack I’ve yet seen: ASCII Maps, which renders maps in coloured text characters. Weird, and possibly neat, but really quite useless. Crashes in Safari. Via O’Reilly Radar….; posted to Hacks & Mashups | May 3, 2006
Maps from the Sumida Maritime Materials Collection: A collection of 20 maps, dating from the 17th to 19th centuries, from the Sumida Maritime Materials Collection. National and local maps of Japan, a map of Korea, a world map dating from 1699, and several miscellaneous maps make appearances….; posted to Antique Maps | May 1, 2006
Minnesota Maps Online: Digitized antique maps from the Minnesota Historical Society’s collection, which numbers 19,000 maps and 2,000 volumes. The online sample is likely much smaller than that, but nevertheless includes a number of land survey maps, plat books (?) and atlases from…; posted to Antique Maps | May 1, 2006
Map Tattoos: On new mapping blog atlas(t), Claire Light has a neat post about map tattoos: Unfortunately, subsequent repeated google searches didn’t turn up any other map tattoos, treasure or otherwise. What they did turn up were: 1) instances of people using…; posted to Art | May 1, 2006
MapPoint 2006: MapPoint 2006 is coming soon: Microsoft’s desktop mapping software for businesses is coming to North America this month and Europe in the summer. Via Anything Geospatial. See previous entries: Programming MapPoint in .NET; A Microsoft Roundup. Update: All Points Blog…; posted to Software | May 1, 2006

The Map Room

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May 2006

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