October 2007
- Our Dumb World: The Onion’s Atlas
- When I was a child, my first exposure to the wider world was through the National Geographic Picture Atlas of Our World, which, in the classic National Geographic style that eschewed overt criticism of foreign countries, simple maps of…
- Transit Maps of the World
- Mark Ovendon’s Transit Maps of the World sounds delightful: it’s a compendium of maps of urban rail systems of more than 200 cities around the world. Cory Doctorow is smitten: “This is sheer public transit/map porn, and I’m in…
- The National Map Corps
- The United States Geological Survey’s National Map makes use of a corps of volunteers, who are assigned a given area (a USGS quad) and report the names and coordinates of various map features, such as schools, town halls and other…
- New York Public Library Map Blog
- The New York Public Library’s skunkworks is currently experimenting with a number of blogs, one of which — quite naturally, given the existence of the NYPL’s map division — deals with maps: Maps @ NYPL is still at an early…
- Two Map Art Exhibitions
- An exhibition of Matthew Picton’s art just wrapped up at the Pulliam Deffenbaugh Gallery in Portland, Oregon. “His cartography transforms the traditional two dimensional mapping system into a multi-layered sculpture of communication, transportation, and rivers,” says the gallery, “thus both…
- Christa Dichgans
- Christa Dichgan’s art requires close scrutiny: her map-based paintings are countries whose outlines are filled with figures, objects and other tiny details to which a thumbnail such as this (of her 2005 work, “Europa,” a mix of oils and…
- OpenStreetMap on an iPhone
- Speaking of OpenStreetMap, Mikel Maron has come up with a method of viewing OpenStreetMap map tiles on the iPhone’s map application, which normally uses Google. It’s a hack, and requires a hacked iPhone to do it (to access the…
- Living Without Copyrighted Maps
- OpenStreetMap contributor Gregory Marler moved to Durham to begin a university degree, but the OpenStreetMap project does not have a lot of data for Durham. Marler has therefore hit upon the idea that he would not only contribute Durham data…
- Forbes Smiley Haunts Harvard Still
- Forbes Smiley’s impact may still be felt at Harvard, where students endure long lines on their way out of the library for security checks, and where Harvard College’s Houghton Library has posted a list of three maps associated with the…
- More on the Robinson Projection
- On his relatively new Terra ETL Blog, which I had not noticed before, Dean C. Mikkelsen has a nice post explaining the Robinson projection, the compromise projection created for aesthetic purposes by the late Arthur Robinson. (You may recall that…
- Map Thief Surrenders
- The Times reports that the man suspected of stealing 19 maps from Spain’s national library has given himself up in Argentina. César Gómez Rivero, a Uruguyan-born Spanish national residing in Buenos Aires, tried to negotiate a deal with an Argentine…
- Machado’s Maps
- João Machado’s artwork includes map collages “made entirely with vintage maps,” he writes. “The people shown in [my] work are depicted in the maps of the region in which they are from. Sometimes the maps used are contrapuntal to…
- NYC Adopts Compass Decals
- This time it’s for real. A year and a half after John Emerson proposed compass points at subway entrances, and guerrilla-style compass roses began appearing on city sidewalks, the New York City Department of Transportation announces temporary compass decals…
- Some Maps Stolen from Spanish Library Recovered
- More on the case of the maps stolen from the Spanish national library, courtesy of El País: the total number of maps stolen is now listed as 19 (on 12 leaves), but the missing maps are beginning to be recovered,…
- Mapping the Minnesota Lakes Region
- Cathy Hummel couldn’t find a decent map of the Minnesota Lakes region where her family had their cottage, the Fargo Forum reports, so she started a business making her own. Her maps, which have been positively received by fellow cottagers,…
- MapQuest Beta and Blog
- MapQuest — still the ostensible market leader in online mapping, apparently — has taken some steps to catch up with its upstart rivals. Its new blog — yes, MapQuest now has a blog — begins with a post announcing…
- Arno Peters Documentary
- ODT Maps, the publisher (and chief promoter) of the Peters map (and general source of thought provocation about map projections and representationality), has produced a documentary about the map and Arno Peters. From the press release: This fascinating 30-minute documentary…
- The Decline of the Paper Map
- The San Francisco Chronicle charts the decline of paper maps in the face of their digital competition — a subject that we’ve seen from time to time, but not necessarily drawing the same conclusions. The Chronicle reports that paper map…
- GeoPic II: Another Nikon Geotagger
- The holy grail of geotagging is to embed GPS-derived lat/long data into a photo’s EXIF data at the moment it’s taken. There have been a few options for high-end Nikon digital SLRs; now here’s another one: the GeoPic II…
- Wal-Mart’s Spread
- A Wall Street Journal article discussing the end of Wal-Mart’s retail dominance includes a flash map showing the spread of Wal-Mart stores across the United States. Via Boing Boing….
- Map Theft Updates
- More news about the maps stolen from a 1482 edition of the Cosmographia held in Spain’s national library: Spanish authorities have named a suspect, a 60-year-old Spanish citizen of Uruguayan origin currently residing in Argentina; and the missing maps have…
- Google Updates: Imagery and Transit
- A couple of quick updates about Google’s mapping stuff — quick updates seem to be all I have time or energy for at the moment, what with the full-time contract and the resulting lengthy commute. Google Transit’s features have been…
- Nokia Acquires Navteq
- When it was announced last July that TomTom would acquire Tele Atlas for €1.8 billion, Navteq was widely seen as the next acquisition target. The only question was, by whom. The answer is Nokia, which announced today that it was…
