February 2008
- Geography Tutor Videos
- Excerpts from TMW Media Group’s Geography Tutor video series have been posted to YouTube; map-related clips include the above video on map projections, this clip on the International Date Line and this clip on the use of colour in…
- Hand Drawn Map Association
- The Hand Drawn Map Association “is an ongoing archive of maps and other interesting diagrams created by hand. Whenever you draw a map explaining how to get somewhere or find a map or other hand drawn diagram laying around…
- True Marble Satellite Imagery Freely Available
- Unearthed Outdoors has made its True Marble 250m-resolution satellite imagery available for download under a Creative Commons licence; their 15m-resolution imagery costs money. The files are available either in GeoTIFF or PNG format and range from 32-kilometre to 250-metre…
- WorldWide Telescope Announced
- Microsoft gave a demonstration today of its forthcoming WorldWide Telescope application, the site for which is now online, but we still don’t have very much hard information about it. A lot of reactions. Robert Scoble, who when he saw a…
- Another DIY Camera GPS Project
- A guide to building a homemade GPS attachment for a Nikon digital SLR that mounts on the hotshoe and connects via the 10-pin connector. If you’re at all uncomfortable with using a soldering iron, go no further. Via MAKE:…
- Smelly Maps
- Maps with scents? The Globe and Mail explains: Carleton University cybercartographer Fraser Taylor and his colleagues have already developed multimedia maps and atlases that use sound, music, photos and artwork to convey information about places such as Antarctica and the…
- Malaria Atlas Project
- The Malaria Atlas Project has released maps and other data (including .kmz files) showing the global limits of Plasmodium falciparum malaria. Via La Cartoteca….
- The Longitude and Latitude Song
- John Krygier points to the “Longitude and Latitude” song. Performed by Tom Glazer and Dottie Evans, the song comes from Space Songs, one of several science-education albums recorded in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Six of those albums can…
- Transportation and Communications Maps of Mexico
- Ken Arroyo Ohori writes, “The Mexican Secretariat of Communications and Transport provides good maps on all forms of transportation in Mexico. Maps are divided by state and have just been updated.” The maps are good-quality PDFs, which means they’re big…
- A Geotagging Roundup
- Two recent articles on geotagging, both of which describe it as an emerging trend, mainstream acceptance of which is just around the corner. This Associated Press story describes its potential and its utility, along with current methods, but notes that…
- More About John Bartholomew
- More obituaries of John Bartholomew, who died last month, from the Guardian, Independent and Times. Via MapHist….
- The History of the Cartogram
- John Krygier looks at the history of the cartogram, beginning with an “apportionment map” from 1911 that he says is “one of the earliest cartograms I have seen” and continuing with a discussion of the history of the term:…
- Designed Maps
- The ESRI Mapping Center blog reports on a new book from ESRI Press: Designed Maps: A Sourcebook for GIS Users. It’s by Cynthia Brewer, who also wrote Designing Better Maps: A Guide for GIS Users (see previous entry). The…
- Geotagging Icon Proposed
- Bruce McKenzie proposes a standard icon to indicate geotagged content, in the same vein as standard icons for RSS and so forth. Funnily enough, it’s a pushpin. Via Richard….
- A Cartographic Scriber Writes
- Ralph Jackson writes, “I was a cartographic scriber in the United States Air Force a few decades back. I was quite fast and accurate with this skill. Is scribing still used anywhere in map production today or has it gone…
- Blogging the Festival of Maps
- Hugh Yeman writes, “I recently caught the cartography bug, and I’ve spent the last several weeks writing almost exclusively about two visits to the Chicago Festival of Maps. As I’ve researched the exhibit items I’ve been quite surprised to find…
- ‘Extraterrestrial Islands in a Methane Sea’
- Since, as you know, I’m deeply interested in the mapping of the other planets and moons of the solar system, I was very much interested in two recent posts by Peter Minton, in which he takes Cassini imagery of…
- 74 Maps Stolen from British Library
- A note from the British Library’s Security Co-ordinator, Judith Barnes, that appeared on Shelf:Life and has been reprinted at PhiloBiblos: I very much regret to report that we have discovered the theft of 74 maps from Description de l’Univers, contenant…
- The Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail Map
- At the University of Maine’s Folger Library this Wednesday, cartographer Michael Hermann and Penobscot Nation Tribal Historian James Francis will give a presentation on the Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail Map. “‘The Process of Map Design: equal cartographic voice’ will be an…
- Pittsburgh GPS Review
- “GPS units are like friends with personality quirks that sometimes can be hard to figure,” writes Bob Karlovits in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “They know all the answers. They are insistent on telling you them. They never admit to being wrong.”…
- Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope
- Microsoft will be launching a competitor to Google Earth’s Sky feature, called “WorldWide Telescope,” on February 27, TechCrunch reports. The downloadable desktop software is claimed to be “significantly better” than either Google Earth or Stellarium in terms of data and…
- ‘When GPS Turns Bad’
- Computerworld’s David Ramel sums up the rash of stories about drivers getting into trouble by (blindly) following directions from their GPS navigation device. “These things actually seem to happen fairly often,” he writes. “For some reason, most of them occur…
- The Holy Grail of Geotagging
- David Thulin is searching for a geotagging camera: I have been looking far and wide for the tools needed for immediate and automatic geotagging of images taken. My quest took me through Yahoo! Answers, numerous searches through forums and gadget-sites…
- Swiss Trains in Real Time
- Centred on Zürich, this site provides real-time positions of Swiss trains — the icons freaking move — based on their schedules. “The current view is based on the Swiss train timetable, and does not yet show the actual GPS-positions…
- 2007 Sandars Lectures: Sarah Tyacke
- The 2007 Sandars Lectures, Conversations with Maps: World Views in Early Modern Europe, were given by Sarah Tyacke last March; the text of her three lectures, and accompanying slides, are now available online as PDF files. Via MapHist….
- Nokia Maps 2.0 Beta
- Nokia announced its Maps 2.0 Beta last week; its key feature is pedestrian navigation — i.e., turn-by-turn navigation on foot, rather than in a car (see also CNet Reviews). CNet’s Margaret Reardon tried out the service in Barcelona, with…
- Rumsey Collection in Second Life
- I have no direct experience with Second Life, but the David Rumsey Map Collection is setting up a presence there. This long blog entry on Not Possible IRL has all the details. The screenshots make it look quite evocative…
- Transit Maps of the World (Again)
- Cartophilia has a review of Mark Ovenden’s Transit Maps of the World — well, it’s not so much a review as an excuse to share images of transit maps, but I certainly don’t mind. I’ll be ordering my own…
- Google Sky Lawsuit
- A contractor is suing Google for allegedly stealing the idea for Google Earth’s Sky feature. Stefan argues that the lawsuit is “demonstrably frivolous,” citing evidence that the contractor was not the first person to moot the idea. From my perspective,…
- An Exhibition Roundup
- The Daily News Transcript of Norwood, Massachusetts, covers the exhibition of bird’s-eye-view maps, Boston and Beyond, at the Boston Public Library (see previous entry). I expect that Boston is easier to get to for most of my readers than Windhoek,…
- Mapping Colonial Conquest
- The South African Mail and Guardian reviews a collection of essays edited by Norman Etherington, Mapping Colonial Conquest: Australia and Southern Africa: “By probing the ‘secret histories’ encoded in maps, which continue to influence the political, legal, social and…
- Daily Maps
- National Geographic’s Map of the Day site provides (in a vein similar to that of NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, which it is strongly reminiscent of) a map along with a brief description every weekday (more or less). Maps…
- ‘Mapping the Universe’ at the Adler Planetarium
- The Festival of Maps continues to ripple through the media: yesterday’s New York Times carried a review of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, focusing on the remarkable Atwood sphere, which predated more modern planetarium projectors, and the Mapping the Universe…
- Review: Canada Back Road Atlas
- Canada Back Road Atlas MapArt, 2007. Paperback, 702 pp. ISBN-13 978-1-55368-614-9 MapArt is easily the largest publisher of road maps in Canada, publishing not only maps of cities and metropolitan areas (both as folded maps and as coil-bound and saddle-stitched…
- Mapping the Human Impact on Marine Ecosystems
- A map of the human impact on global marine ecosystems has been published in today’s issue of Science; it reveals that only four percent of the world’s oceans have not been affected by human activity. Matt Perry was part…
- Blogs into Books
- First came the BibliOdyssey book, a dead-tree compilation based on our friend PK’s excellent blog about archival images (some of which are maps, so I have no qualms about mentioning either blog or book; here’s the Amazon link for the…
- Historical Atlas of Canada
- The huge Historical Atlas of Canada was published in three volumes between 1987 and 1993. An online version, the Historical Atlas of Canada Online Learning Project, is now being developed by the University of Toronto’s geography department. It would…
- Connie Brown’s Custom Maps
- The Hartford Courant reports on an interesting business: Connie Brown, working as Redstone Studios, paints one-of-a-kind, custom maps for her clients. Preparing the highly personal maps can take up to a year, and she usually works on three commissions at…
- Cadastral GIS Horror Stories
- On the Surveying, Mapping and GIS blog, Dave Smith recounts some GIS horror stories involving cadastral data errors — and the ludicrous things that are done to resolve them. “If you have discrepancies, data gaps, quality issues, other issues, I…
- Ed the Map Maker
- This is an article celebrating 40 years of service by Ed Maslonka, the cartographer of Grand Island, Nebraska, but it also offers a taste of what goes on, mapping-wise, in municipal planning departments….
- Map Store Declares Bankruptcy, Closes
- A map store in Tampa Bay declared bankruptcy; MAPSource, the last map store in the area, closed its three stores and printing plant. The owner cited “a definite malaise in the map industry as a whole” and the rise of…
- Rozel Point Southwest
- Don’t miss Cartophilia’s post about the most curious quadrangle map in the USGS’s catalogue: Rozel Point Southwest, Utah. In the middle of Great Salt Lake. You can see where this is going….
- Ping
- Apologies for the lack of new entries lately; I’ve had my hands full with a couple of things that needed dealing with. And then recovering from dealing with said things. New entries will be forthcoming soon. Lots of catching up…
- Australia Returns Stolen Map to Spain
- A map stolen from a copy of the 1482 Cosmographia held by Spain’s National Library that turned up in a Sydney gallery has been returned by the Australian government. Previously: Of 19 Stolen Maps, 11 Have Been Recovered; Map Thief…
- Light Pollution Maps
- Light pollution is the bane of astronomers worldwide. Cities generate so much light that their glow can be seen from great distances; that sky glow interferes with astronomical observations, reducing what can be seen, both with the naked eye and…
- ‘You Have No Idea Where China Is, Do You?’
- At least a year old, but I only saw this FedEx ad for the first time this morning:…
- Restoring the Texaco Map
- The Texaco Map was a large-scale replica of Rand McNally’s New York state road map on display — underfoot — under the Tent of Tomorrow at the New York State Pavillion during the 1964-1965 World’s Fair. The map comprised 567…
- Market Doubts About Nokia-Navteq Merger
- There are stock market doubts about the Nokia-Navteq merger, according to a piece in Medill Reports (which is written by graduate journalism students). “According to [Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Yair] Reiner, Nokia has yet to file for antitrust clearance by…
- Jobo Photo GPS
- Jobo has reannounced its Photo GPS camera accessory, which attaches via the camera’s hot shoe (or PC terminal, if your camera has one and you need a flash) and adds geographical data to your image files’ EXIF data when…
- Early Google Maps Hack Retired
- The end of an era. Adrian Holovaty’s chicagocrime.org, one of the original Google Maps hacks that predated the release of the official API and that was frequently held up in the media as practically the archetype of the mapping hack,…
- Census Atlas of the United States
- The Census Atlas of the United States “is a large-format publication about 300 pages long and containing almost 800 maps. Data from decennial censuses prior to 2000 support nearly 150 maps and figures, providing context and an historical perspective…
- Festival of Maps: Mapping Today
- “The flagship exhibit at the Field Museum has closed, but Chicago’s Festival of Maps continues. The Newberry Library’s two exhibits are up for two more weeks, and exhibits at several institutions continue through March,” writes Dennis McClendon. “If you’re more…
- Commendation for Recovering Stolen Maps
- Last October, the Rare Books and Manuscript Section (RBMS) and the Map and Geography Roundtable (MAGERT) of the American Library Association passed a resolution commending booksellers, auction houses and map dealers for their assistance in recovering stolen maps. “Their efforts…
- Iapetus
- The Cassini-Huygens mission’s map of Iapetus — one of Saturn’s moons — has been updated to reflect the exciting (to us astronomy geeks) images taken during Cassini’s flyby of the moon last September. (Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.) Via…
- GE E1050 Digital Camera: Built-in Geotagging
- I make a point of noting when digital cameras with built-in GPS and geotagging are announced. And, while GE isn’t exactly known for consumer digital cameras, its new E1050 camera does have built-in GPS for in-camera geotagging, which I…
- The Gough Map Book Published
- The 14th-century Gough Map, the oldest surviving map of Great Britain, is getting renewed attention with the publication of Nick Millea’s study, which, Tony Campbell says, “is the first study for fifty years of this highly important map.” To…
