May 2008

Google Earth in a Web Browser: Google has announced a new plug-in and API that will allow Google Earth to be run from within a browser, once the plug-in has been downloaded. Windows-only so far (but most browsers on Windows), so I can’t add to what…; posted to Google Earth, Hacks & Mashups | May 28, 2008
CSAA Getting Out of the Paper Map Business: The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the California State Automobile Association, one of only two regional auto associations still producing their own paper maps, is getting out of paper map publishing by the end of the year. Maps of northern…; posted to Roads | May 27, 2008
Ottawa Construction Map: The City of Ottawa has announced a map (PDF) of its upcoming road, bridge and sewer construction projects (around here, we call construction “infrastructure” for whatever reason). The map’s a bit unwieldy: several years’ worth of construction, indicated by year…; posted to Ottawa | May 27, 2008
The Dione Atlas: Cassini’s imaging team has released an atlas of Saturn’s moon Dione. The atlas is available as a set of 15 PDF files at a scale of 1:1,000,000. Via Bad Astronomy and Universe Today. This is the third atlas of…; posted to Astronomy | May 25, 2008
Two Longviews: The Daily News of Longview, Washington, has a piece about another Longview, Washington that is causing some confusion online: “It may be a field rather than a city, but that other Longview has established its place on the Internet, often…; posted to Mapping Errors | May 25, 2008
A Japanese Caricature Map of the World: BibliOdyssey provides another example of what I suppose is called a caricature map: these are maps where representative caricatures are twisted into the shapes of the countries they are meant to represent. This one comes from Japan circa 1914….; posted to Antique Maps | May 25, 2008
This Side Up: Hilarity ensues when road painters marking no-parking areas on a road in Waltham Abbey, Essex, paint the wrong side of the road because they read the map upside down. (This is not the upside-down map the Australians had in mind.)…; posted to Fun | May 25, 2008
ScapeToad: Cartogram Software: ScapeToad is software for making cartograms. André Ourednik, its development supervisor, writes: “ScapeToad is a cross-platform, open-source application written in Java, designed and using the ESRI Shapefile format for input and output. It also exports maps in SVG format and…; posted to Cartography, Software | May 19, 2008
Map Thief Bellwood Sentenced in Denmark: Map thief Peter Bellwood was sentenced by a British court to four and a half years in prison in 2004; now Denmark has had its crack at him: he was sentenced last Wednesday to a year in prison, plus a…; posted to Map Thefts | May 18, 2008
Uncoordinated: Mapping Cartography in Contemporary Art: Opening today at Cincinnati’s Contemporary Art Center and running until August 17: Uncoordinated: Mapping Cartography in Contemporary Art. See also ArtDaily. Announced last year; see previous entry (the description is unchanged; the dates are not)….; posted to Art, Exhibitions | May 17, 2008
Online References and Print Publishing: A Publishers Weekly article on the impact of online references like Wikipedia on reference publishing — multi-volume encyclopedias are essentially toast — has the following passage about maps and atlases: Encyclopedias aren’t the only place publishers are feeling pain, though….; posted to Books, Publishers | May 17, 2008
More on the Festival of Maps: Coverage of Baltimore’s Festival of Maps continues to trickle in: last month, The Johns Hopkins Newsletter had a review; a brief review appeared earlier this week on My Wonderful World. The exhibition closes June 8: if you haven’t seen it…; posted to Baltimore Festival of Maps | May 17, 2008
WorldWide Telescope Reviews: Ogle Earth’s Stefan Geens, normally a (fellow) Mac user, borrows a Windows machine for his in-depth review of WorldWide Telescope: “My initial impression stands: WWT is a wonderful piece of software that excels at rendering Earth’s view of the universe…; posted to Astronomy, Software | May 14, 2008
Yahoo Maps Traffic Update: Yahoo announces upgraded real-time traffic coverage: more cities, more detail, more roads….; posted to Online Maps, Traffic Conditions | May 14, 2008
Google Maps API for Flash: The Google Maps API now has a Flash version, alongside its regular JavaScript and static versions. On the Google Maps API blog, Mike Jones writes: So, what do I like about the API for Flash? Smoothness and speed are a…; posted to Hacks & Mashups | May 14, 2008
TomTom DealDeal ClearedCleared: TomTom has received the go-ahead from the European Commission for its takeover of Tele Atlas: AP, Bloomberg, Reuters. In a nutshell, the existence of a competitor, Navteq/Nokia, would remove any incentive on the part of the merged TomTom/Tele Atlas to…; posted to Industry News | May 14, 2008
Mapping the Democratic Primaries and Caucuses: On Daily Kos (don’t start), Meng Bomin has a series of maps illustrating the county-by-county results (so far) of the presidential primaries and caucuses of the Democratic primary. On these maps, Obama support is coloured blue, Clinton red, and…; posted to Electoral Maps | May 14, 2008
Yahoo’s Internet Location Platform: Yahoo’s announcement of its Internet Location Platform will be of great interest to web developers and programmers interested in geolocating data, but completely abstruse to everyone else. The platform uses something called Where on Earth ID (WOEID), a numerical tag…; posted to Hacks & Mashups | May 13, 2008
Reports from Where 2.0: Beyond the conference blog, several geobloggers are filing reports from Where 2.0. Here’s a sampling: All Points Blog: Getting Warmed Up for Where 2.0; Where 2.0 Monday. Google Earth Blog: Day One. RenaLId: Day 1, Day 2 — Morning Sessions…; posted to Conferences, Video | May 13, 2008
Comment Moderation: I’ve just discovered that my spam filters have been a bit too aggressive lately. I’ve now approved some comments from the past month or so that were sitting in the junk comment queue. Honestly, I didn’t realize they were there….; posted to Site News | May 13, 2008
WorldWide Telescope Now Available: Apparently, “by the end of the month” means something a little sooner — i.e., right now: WorldWide Telescope is now available for download. See coverage from Astronomy, Sky and Telescope and Virtual Earth, an Evangelist’s Blog. It’s a beta (probably…; posted to Astronomy, Software | May 13, 2008
Inuit Tactile Maps: Middle Savagery has a post about tactile maps, particularly as practiced by the Inuit: The Inuit made songs, but they also made maps. These were often sketched in snow or sand, but some of them were sketched on paper with…; posted to Miscellany | May 12, 2008
Chinese Map Crackdown Names Google: The Chinese government’s crackdown on doubleplus-ungood online maps that perpetrate crimethink progresses; now the investigation is naming names. Agence France-Presse: “China has launched an investigation into online mapping services by Internet giants including Google and Sohu in an effort to…; posted to Censorship, Security & Privacy | May 12, 2008
Urban Rail Maps: Urbanrail.net is a fan site about the world’s urban rail networks; it features an extensive collection of rail network maps that are produced by the site’s author and are original to the site, though (and this is to be…; posted to Cities, Mass Transit | May 12, 2008
Cyclone Nargis in Google Earth: Links to Cyclone Nargis-related data viewable in Google Earth are available at Google Earth Blog, Google LatLong and humanitarian.info. Via Ogle Earth. Previously: Cyclone Nargis; More on Cyclone Nargis and Burma….; posted to Current Events, Google Earth | May 12, 2008
WorldWide Telescope This Month?: Digital Earth Blog notes reports that Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope may be released by the end of this month — or at least Bill Gates has been quoted saying that it will. I’ll be very interested to know the system requirements….; posted to Astronomy, Software | May 12, 2008
Erik Laffer’s Cartography Series: At the Amrose Sable Gallery in Albany, New York until May 25, an exhibition of Erik Laffer’s Cartography Series. The Albany Times Union has a review: “[T]he frenetic undercurrents of Laffer’s abstractions seem to strike a chord with our…; posted to Art | May 11, 2008
Lights Out for the Electric Map: Like many large map installations, the Electric Map of the Battle of Gettysburg has gone the way of the dodo. The 30×30-foot map has been illustrating troop movements during the battle using more than 600 light bulbs since it opened…; posted to Big Maps, Historical Maps | May 11, 2008
Where 2.0 2008: The 2008 iteration of the Where 2.0 conference gets under way tomorrow; O’Reilly Radar rounds up the week’s activities. Previously: Where 2.0 2007….; posted to Conferences | May 11, 2008
First Map of an Extrasolar Planet: Astronomers have produced the first map of a planet outside the solar system. The resolution is admittedly low — all we know is that there’s a “hot spot” offset from the planetary noon by some thirty degrees — but what…; posted to Astronomy | May 10, 2008
More on Cyclone Nargis and Burma: More on the devastation wrought on Burma (Myanmar) by Cyclone Nargis: UNOSAT has maps of the affected regions (as PDF files); the maps show the extent of flooding and the villages that have been completely submerged or flooded. Via Glenn….; posted to Current Events, Google Earth, Satellite & Aerial | May 10, 2008
Painting on Maps: An interesting thread on MapHist about painting on maps — i.e., using a map like a canvas — yielded links to the following artists. Suzanne Howe-Stevens: “Using maps as a background or frame allows her to emphasize the borders that…; posted to Art | May 7, 2008
Cyclone Nargis: Satellite images from before and after Cyclone Nargis struck the Burmese (Myanmarese?) coast….; posted to Current Events, Satellite & Aerial | May 7, 2008
Microsoft Pro Photo Tools and Geotagging: Microsoft Pro Photo Tools support geotagging, which is interesting, but it’s a bit hubristic to say that geotagging is going mainstream as a result of that, as the title of the article describing Pro Photo Tools’ geotagging features does. Which…; posted to Geotagging, Software | May 4, 2008
Longest Drives in Google Maps: Alan Taylor: “I set out to find the longest distance for which Google Maps would give Driving Directions. Now that they’ve shut down the fun ‘swim the Atlantic’ feature, things have changed a bit. It turns out there are multiple…; posted to Driving Directions, Online Maps | May 4, 2008
‘Mapping’ at the Discovery Center of Idaho: At the Discovery Center of Idaho in Boise until June 8, an exhibition called Mapping: The goal of Mapping is to put mapping tools, from sextants to software, in the hands of visitors and let them explore the science and…; posted to Exhibitions | May 4, 2008
Banks Map Included in Cook Collection Sale: A sale of the largest private collection of Cook memorabilia includes, as one of its highlights, the Banks Map, depicting Australia and New Zealand. Printed in 1772 in a run of only 100 copies, the map was privately done while…; posted to Collecting | May 2, 2008
Atlas of Yellowstone: It’s scheduled for completion in 2010, but already the Atlas of Yellowstone, tantalizing bits of which that have already been completed are already available for preview, looks more than promising. It goes beyond maps of just the park, although…; posted to Books, Topo Maps & Trails | May 1, 2008
All Streets: This is lovely: All Streets by Ben Fry, a data visualization of “[a]ll of the streets in the lower 48 United States: an image of 26 million individual road segments. No other features (such as outlines or geographic features)…; posted to Roads | May 1, 2008
The USGS in Afghanistan: The U.S. Geological Survey is running a number of projects in Afghanistan, including the Afghanistan Airborne Geophysical and Remote Sensing Survey, for the Afghan government: “Data collected during this survey will provide basic information for mineral and petroleum exploration studies,…; posted to Energy & Resources | May 1, 2008
Cities at Night: NASA’s Earth Observatory has a page of photos of cities at night taken from space; at right, Tokyo. “Astronauts circling the Earth have the wonderful vantage point of observing the nighttime Earth from 350-400 kilometers above the surface, taking…; posted to Cities, Satellite & Aerial, Tokyo | May 1, 2008

The Map Room

A Weblog About Maps

May 2008

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