November 2007
- Google Maps Adds Terrain Layer
- Relief maps have finally come — natively, that is — to Google Maps with the release of its “Terrain” layer (the Hybrid layer moves to a checkbox on the Satellite layer, hiding or revealing street data). As is often the…
- Australian Elections
- ABC Australia has a nice Google Maps-based map of the results of last Saturday’s elections; there’s also a Google Earth network link (via Google Earth Blog). Links to other maps of the Australian election results welcome….
- Festival of Maps: Field Museum Exhibit Virtual Gallery
- Can’t get to Chicago for the Festival of Maps? (No. Dammit.) Fortunately, says Navteq’s Kevin Lenane, there’s an online version of the vaunted Field Museum exhibit. “This is the virtual gallery we did for the Field Museum Maps Exhibit,”…
- Two More Blogs
- Mad props to two new blogs: Jamie’s Cartophilia, a blog from an enthusiast’s, rather than a professional’s perspective (which sounds oddly familiar); and Richard’s Tech Reviews, a spin-off of his Science Library Pad, which despite its name had quite a…
- Flickr Places
- Flickr Places organizes geotagged photos into location-based pages — even my little town gets its own page. Meanwhile, Flickr’s map goes from pushpins to tags, which may necessarily not be an improvement. Announcements: Flickr Blog, Yahoo Local and Maps…
- Garmin to Tele Atlas: Never Mind
- Garmin has withdrawn its $3.3-billion bid for Tele Atlas, leaving TomTom free to nab the company. Instead, Garmin has struck a deal with Navteq, their current map data supplier, to guarantee access to that data through 2015. Via Engadget. Update:…
- Another GPS Navigation Incident: Some Questions
- It’s more of the same: truck drivers sent down narrow streets in Llangadog, Wales, by their satellite-navigation systems are crashing into buildings. Via Engadget. This is happening too often to fall under the “random idiot” section of the news, however…
- BART Maps Go Linear
- BART, the San Francisco Bay area rapid transit network, is getting new network maps, SF Weekly reports. The new maps will, in the words of a BART spokesman, “have more straight lines” in the idiom of other, diagrammatic maps of…
- Of 19 Stolen Maps, 11 Have Been Recovered
- The FBI has recovered two more maps stolen from the Spanish National Library, Reuters reports; out of a total of 19 stolen maps, that makes 11 that have since been recovered. Via Map the Universe. Previously: Map Thief Surrenders; Some…
- Maps and More
- Joost Depuydt’s new blog, Maps and More, seems to be taking a turn towards maps in advertising and graphic design so far….
- Challenger Map Gets Reprieve
- A highlight of Vancouver’s Pacific National Exhibition grounds was George Challenger’s massive — at 26×24 metres — exaggerated-relief map of British Columbia, which was on display at the B.C. Pavillion until that building was torn down in 1997. Saved…
- Festival of Maps Update: Book, KML
- “The University of Chicago Press has a special web feature to celebrate the publication of Maps: Finding Our Place in the World, the book that accompanies the exhibit currently at the Field Museum in Chicago,” writes Dean Blobaum. “The…
- Kenwood’s Pen Navigation System
- Kenwood announced a pen navigation system at the Tokyo Motor Show: details are sparse (see also Coolest Gadgets and Engadget), but it seems to involve a pen that, when scanned over a paper map, transmits data wirelessly to a…
- Mapping a Continent
- Last week, the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec announced the English-language publication of a book that highlights the cartographic collections of that institution. Mapping a Continent: Historical Atlas of North America, 1492-1814, coauthored by BANQ map librarian Jean-François…
- Frytown or Williamstown?
- The U.S. Board on Geographic Names got a little bit more visibility recently, with a story in the October 25 edition of USA Today about the disconnect between what an unincorporated settlement in Iowa calls itself — Frytown — and…
- Festival of Maps Now Open
- Chicago’s Festival of Maps officially opened on Friday; in addition to its new website, which went live in September, there is also a Festival of Maps blog to help us keep track of the proceedings. And there’s a lot to…
- Geologic Map of Montana
- The Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology has released a new Geologic Map of Montana, the first since 1955. The four-foot-by-seven-foot map costs $60 in plain paper and $85 in glossy paper. More from the Billings Gazette….
- James Niehues Profile
- The Colorado Springs Gazette profiles ski resort illustrator James Niehues, whom we first encountered in March 2006. “For 20 years, Niehues, 61, has been North America’s preeminent ski resort illustrator — the guy who paints the trail maps for…
- Garmin Challenges TomTom for Tele Atlas
- Three months after TomTom’s €1.8-billion bid for Tele Atlas, Garmin is making a play for the digital mapping data company, with a $3.3-billion bid of its own — a bid fueled by a concern that Garmin not be forced to…
- World Magnetic Anomaly Map
- The BBC reports on the recently released World Digital Magnetic Anomaly Map, which measures the slight variations in the Earth’s magnetic field. The map, available through the Commission for the Geological Map of the World, is a compilation from…
- Truck Lodged in Lane for Three Days: Guess Why
- I am required to report the following item from the Daily Mail: “A lorry driver who was led off course by his sat nav got his HGV [heavy goods vehicle] so tightly wedged in a narrow country lane he had…
- The Electoral Map
- Speaking of election maps, The Electoral Map is a relatively new blog that’s all about them (at least within an American context). What I find interesting is that the maps featured on this blog are definitely about elections and politics,…
- Swiss Federal Elections
- Swiss TV station Schweitzer Fernsehen (SF) has an interactive map of the results of Switzerland’s 2007 federal election. In German, natürlich. Thanks to Abram for the link….
- Roads Renamed as Streets
- Street names are becoming a source of confusion in rapidly growing Visalia, California: as the city expands, street suffixes change from rural “roads” to urban “streets,” “avenues” and “boulevards” in conformance with Visalia’s conventions. Which leads, as you might expect,…
- Blog URL Changes
- Stefan reports that Google Karten has moved to gkarten.blogspot.com. The ESRI Support Center blog has moved to blogs.esri.com/Support/blogs/supportcenter….
- Contours: National Geographic Map Blog
- National Geographic Maps has started a blog called Contours, which is being hosted on BlogSpot until their main site is relaunched in January, according to an NG Maps representative….
