December 2006
- Garmin Training Center for the Mac: Real Soon Now
- The Garmin blog announces the (long-delayed) availability of Training Center (the fitness software used by the Edge and Forerunner lines). Only not quite yet: “now available” (as per the press release headline) means that you can pick up a CD…
- Miami International Map Fair
- I briefly mentioned the Miami International Map Fair — which touts itself as “the number one map fair in the world,” a place for map collectors and dealers to do all kinds of business — last year, but after…
- Author Claims Chinese Visited Americas and Made Maps in 2200 BC
- If you thought Gavin Menzies’s claim that the Chinese discovered America in 1421 was risible, if you thought Liu Gang’s purported 1418 map was a fraud, you’d better brace yourself: a Virginia author argues that the Chinese visited America around…
- Panoramic Map of New York
- Dave Kellam has scanned a panoramic map of New York, dating from 1939 or thereabouts, that he picked up a few months ago at a used bookstore. (Lucky find, that.) Via Plep….
- Maps and Directions for the Blind
- A couple of recent items about maps and directions for the visually impaired. Rachel Magario, a blind graduate student at Kansas University, is working to create tactile campus maps — “maps for the blind that are created by the blind”…
- Encasing Waldseemüller’s Map
- The only remaining known copy of Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map — the first to name the New World “America” — is owned by the Library of Congress. (Four gores also survive, according to the Waldseemüller Wikipedia page; one…
- Google-Endoxon Update
- I didn’t know much about the implications of Google’s Endoxon purchase when I blogged it last week, but your comments helped a great deal. Stefan at Ogle Earth has even more information, with more on Endoxon itself; he also links…
- Journals Roundup
- The winter 2006 issue of Documents to the People, the official publication of the Government Documents Round Table of the American Library Association, is a special issue on map librarianship. It’s available for download as a PDF file (3 MB)….
- Fishing Maps from Aerial Photographs
- Still catching up on some older stories. Two weeks ago, the Florida Times-Union profiled a local home-based business, Outfitter’s Mapping, that produces aerial photographic maps of Florida fishing areas. Via All Points Blog….
- CSM on Georgia Map Controversy
- Last Wednesday’s edition of the Christian Science Monitor had a long, thoughtful article about the State of Georgia’s decision to remove 488 communities from its official map: “[T]he action has triggered a deeper debate about how Americans view one another…
- Yahoo Integrates Maps and Mail
- My impression of Yahoo’s mapping stuff is that it lags behind the competition in terms of satellite imagery and mashups, but they’re ahead of the game in terms of integrating it with their other services (Exhibit A: Flickr maps). The…
- CBC: Four New Atlases
- “Atlases, believe it or not, are hot this year,” says the CBC’s Shaun Smith in a review of four thematic atlases published in Canada this year: The Canadian Hockey Atlas; The Wine Atlas of Canada; The Geist Atlas of Canada…
- A Complaint About Google Earth 4’s User Interface
- Brian refuses to use Google Earth 4; he’s using version 3.x instead. “Why? Not for any technical reason. No; it’s purely a matter of user interface. It used to be, if not good, at least passable. Now, it’s a pain…
- Russia Lifts Imagery and GPS Restrictions
- The Russian government has lifted a (widely ignored) ban on the use of high-resolution images and high-accuracy GPS. Reuters: Until now, global positioning systems that helped locate ground objects more precisely than in a radius of 30 metres (98 ft),…
- Virtual Earth Updates: 3D City Textures, Italy
- A major update to Virtual Earth this week: new three-dimensional city textures for Minneapolis-St. Paul, Tacoma, Sacramento, the L.A. suburbs and Irving, Texas on the one hand; a massive imagery and terrain update for Italy on the other. James explores…
- Google Maps Updates: India, Singapore, Hong Kong
- Google Maps Mania reports Google Maps updates — streets and roads, place names, cities — for India, Singapore and Hong Kong. Previously: Google Maps Africa Update; Google Maps Updates for Brazil and Japan….
- Electoral Geography
- For an election map junkie like me, Electoral Geography is a very, very dangerous and wonderful place. Where else can you find, under one roof, choropleth maps of the election results in Malta and Madagascar? Fantasic — I’m going to…
- Harvard Library Acquires Ukrainian Map Collection
- Bohdan Krawciw, a Ukrainian-born writer, translator and critic, amassed a map collection of some 900 items before his death in 1975. In November 2005, his daughter donated the collection to Harvard University; the University announced the acquisition this month:…
- More Google Earth Terrain and Imagery Updates
- Yet another round of terrain and imagery updates for Google Earth; Stefan and Frank pass along the details. The updates include, among other things, a terrain upgrade for Mt. Saint Helens. Previously: Google Earth Terrain and Imagery Upgrades; Another Google…
- Matthew Cusick
- An exhibition of Matthew Cusick’s art, which uses collages of old maps, just wrapped up at the Lisa Dent Gallery, but the images are still available online. From the Artkrush review: “Clipped from yellowed atlases and geography textbooks, the…
- Google Buys Endoxon
- Google has acquired Swiss mapping company Endoxon — or at least its Internet, mapping and data processing units; the cartography, analysis and geodata units have been spun off as Mappuls AG. The acquisition is apparently meant to bolster the technology…
- EWG U.S. Mining Database
- There has been an explosion in mining claims lately; the Environmental Working Group’s U.S. Mining Database uses the Google Maps API to show active mines and claims on federal lands in the western United States. (There’s also a Google Earth…
- Visualizing U.S. and German Postal Codes
- The U.S. ZIPScribble Map by Robert Kosara plots U.S. ZIP codes in ascending order, one connected to the next. Pretty! A similar map applies the same method to the travelling salesman problem: it maps the shortest distance between ZIP…
- New York Fire Insurance Maps
- Fire insurance maps, with their incredible detail, are always a great find; we’ve got a couple in local collections here, and I just think they’re magnificent. Unfortunately, they originally had onerous copyright restrictions that prohibited making copies, so these treasures…
- Toronto Transit Map
- Torontoist calls this transit map of Toronto “the best map ever in the history of anything.” What it looks like to me is the TTC transit map superimposed on a Google Maps interface. Not that that isn’t impressive in…
- GPS Data into Google Earth
- Gizmodo shows us how to download route data from a Suunto X9i GPS watch and a Garmin Forerunner and export it into Google Earth, using a couple of applications. Not so much a how-to guide, but it does show you…
- Georgia Map Removal Update
- Boing Boing’s update on the State of Georgia’s decision to remove 488 communities from its official map includes a link to a complete list of the affected communities in a WTVC news story. Oh yeah, and this image. Previously:…
- Ask MetaFilter Roundup
- Recent map- and GPS-related questions on Ask MetaFilter (they even come with answers): Why haven’t GPS prices dropped as much as other electronics? The consensus seems to be that the GPS electronics cost next to nothing; the price point is…
- Virtual Earth Upgrades
- Improvements to Virtual Earth announced this week include a new navigation control for bird’s-eye imagery and a new distance-measurement tool; James likes….
- More Maps Added to David Rumsey Collection
- Another 1148 maps have been added to the David Rumsey Map Collection. This happens once or twice a year, but when it’s this many maps at once (as it usually is), it’s worth noting. Via MapHist; thanks also to Paul….
- Best of Geospatial 2006
- Sean Gillies has compiled a list of the best of the geospatial community and blogosphere for 2006. I can’t really add to it (though I’m listed) because I’m not really a member of that community, just an imperfect observer. If…
- Soviet-Era Topo Maps of Russian Cities
- Paul sends along a link to these scans of topo maps of Russian cities. The Soviet-era maps date from the 1980s, from what I can tell; they’re downloadable as very large TIFF files. Previously: Soviet Mapping Update; Soviet Spies…
- Google Earth Layers Roundup
- A few new Google Earth layers to tell you about. Data from several web communities — Wikipedia, Panoramio and the Google Earth Community — are also available in a new “Geographic Web” layer. The “London: A Life in Maps” exhibition,…
- Jimmy Carter Accused of Map Plagiarism
- Maps are taking a curious central position in the controversy over former U.S. president Jimmy Carter’s new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. A former executive director of the Carter Center resigned over the book, charging that it contained inaccuracies and…
- University of Chicago Press Blog
- The University of Chicago Press has a blog that talks up their books; of interest to us is the Cartography and Geography category, where you can find links to reviews and discussions of such books as Mark Monmonier’s From Squaw…
- Microsoft Put Technology Before Experience: Berkowitz
- A profile in the International Herald Tribune of Microsoft’s new online services chief Steve Berkowitz sheds some light on how the software giant develops its web services (including its maps, of course). Berkowitz isn’t shy about criticizing Microsoft’s past practices:…
- Stolen Bus Found Through GPS
- A weird GPS story from my neighbourhood: someone stole an Ottawa city bus a couple of nights ago, but thanks to the bus’s onboard GPS system, it was recovered within a couple of hours. The city’s buses are being equipped…
- Georgia Removes Nearly 500 Communities from the Map
- In an attempt to make the official map “clearer and less cluttered,” the Georgia Department of Transportation has removed 488 communities from that map. The communities were mostly — but not always — “placeholders” with populations under 2,500. That number…
- Tanto: Italian Map Blog
- Andrea Borruso writes to tell us about his blog about cartography, GIS and other subjects; since it’s in Italian, I can’t say much about it, but I can at the very least point it out to you….
- Update: The Kims Used a Paper Map
- As I noted in an update to my earlier post, the body of James Kim was found yesterday. But online maps or GPS navigation systems cannot be blamed for the Kim tragedy, as some have surmised (based on little more…
- A Reader’s Guide to Geoblogs
- Directions tries to makes sense of the rather large geospatial and mapping blogosphere with A Reader’s Guide to Geoblogs. It says something about your perspective, though, if maps, “paper and otherwise,” are considered a special interest while ESRI and Autodesk…
- Canadian Topo Maps Aftermath
- Via Maps-L, a letter in the Dec. 4 issue of The Hill Times, a weekly newspaper covering the Canadian government, from Heather McAdam of the Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives argues that while paper topographic maps have been…
- Were the Kims Led Astray by Online Maps?
- On the other hand, sometimes stories about being led astray by navigation systems aren’t so amusing. The tech community has been concerned about the disappearance of CNet senior editor James Kim and his family while on vacation: his family was…
- Ambulance Goes Slightly Astray
- Another screwup thanks to blindly following a GPS navigation system instead of, well, thinking, this time by a British ambulance that went 200 miles off-course on what was supposed to be a routine, 20-minute transfer. The drivers, according to the…
- Earth from Space
- The Smithsonian’s Earth from Space is an online exhibition of satellite imagery; images include climate, geology and human activity. It’s also a physical exhibition, on a tour that began last month and continues until January 2010. Lesson plans are…
- Oxford Atlas Reviewed
- Matt Rosenberg has a brief but enthusiastic review of the 13th edition of the Oxford Atlas of the World. “This is a fantastic and beautiful atlas with an amazing collection of maps, satellite images, country information, data and thematic…
- Ed Parsons Leaves Ordnance Survey
- First Chandu, now this: Ed Parsons is leaving the Ordnance Survey; he’s been their chief technology officer for more than five years….
- Yahoo! Imagery on OpenStreetMap
- This is an interesting development: Yahoo! is letting OpenStreetMap use its aerial imagery. If that isn’t a boost to the project, I don’t know what is. I wonder what’s behind this move. See also The Earth Is Square and Geobloggers….
- Mobile Maps Compared
- Gizmodo compares Windows Live Search for Mobile and Google Maps Mobile on a phone running Windows Mobile, and finds the Google option wanting, but then the Microsoft app was native and the Google app was coded in Java: “Google Maps…
- Wisconsin Public Radio: Mapping the Imagination
- On yesterday’s episode of Wisconsin Public Radio’s To the Best of Our Knowledge, there was a segment called Mapping the Imagination, featuring, among others, Peter Turchi, the author of Maps of the Imagination, and Simon Winchester, the author of The…
- The Atlas of Climate Change
- The Journal Times of Racine, Wisconsin has a profile of University of South Carolina geography professor Kristin Dow, one of the co-authors of The Atlas of Climate Change: Mapping the World’s Greatest Challenge. She grew up in Racine, so…
- Garmin Discontinuing PDAs
- At one point I was a heavy PDA user and was watching the release of Garmin’s Palm OS-based PDAs with built-in GPS (naturally) — the iQue series — with great interest. Times have changed: I’ve gone back to pen…
- Beck’s British Motorways; Monopoly’s London
- A map of British motorways, done in the style of Beck’s London Underground Map. (Interesting FAQ: “Should I use this map to plan a road trip? No.”) From the same site, a map of the locations used on the British…
