July 2008
- Geocache Causes Bomb Scare in Ottawa
- A geocache near a bus rapid transit station in Ottawa triggered a bomb scare that led to a four-hour shutdown of a major boulevard last week, CBC News reported on Monday. Police detonated the package, and are asking geocachers to…
- Map Shirts
- Nikolas Schiller points to several t-shirts with map-based designs, including this one; he’s not happy about their likely sweatshop origins, though….
- More on Walking Directions
- Richard sends along an AP story (on CNN) about online maps for walkers and bikers — it seems that high gas prices are putting people in the mind to think about other forms of transportation, and are noticing that most…
- Mapping Atmospheric Water Vapour
- A NASA satellite, the Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason-2, primarily measures the height of the ocean surface with a radar altimeter. It also has a sensor to measure atmospheric moisture; this map represents water vapour in the atmosphere measured…
- InterRail’s European Railway Network Map
- La Cartoteca links to InterRail’s maps of the European railway network. The maps are PDFs (they’re essentially verso/recto pages of a single-sheet map) and show major network connections and cities….
- Revisualizing Westward Expansion
- At the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, until October 12, Revisualizing Westward Expansion: A Century of Conflict, 1800–1900, an exhibition of maps from UTA’s Virginia Garrett Cartographic History Library: “[T]he maps in this exhibition span the century,…
- Upcoming Hurricanes
- Web comic xkcd imagines upcoming hurricanes. Via Cartophilia….
- New York Ocean and Great Lakes Atlas
- The New York Ocean and Great Lakes Atlas, an online atlas of the state’s water resources, was announced yesterday. From the press release: “Currently, more than 200 data sets that contain information on such resources as storm drains, wetland boundaries,…
- Fantasy Cartography
- Fantasy Cartography is a blog that reprints scans of maps from science fiction and fantasy novels, as well as role-playing and computer games. The archives are quite extensive. Via La Cartoteca….
- Geotagging on Linux
- Marc Merlin describes how to geotag photos on Linux using GPS Visualizer and gpsPhoto; not for people who don’t like to hack with code a bit. Via Using Google Earth….
- The Mannahatta Project
- The Mannahatta Project’s goal “is to reconstruct the ecology of Manhattan when Henry Hudson first sailed by in 1609 and compare it to what we know of the island today. The Mannahatta Project will help us to understand, down…
- Review: Rhumb Lines and Map Wars
- Rhumb Lines and Map Wars: A Social History of the Mercator Projection by Mark Monmonier University of Chicago Press, 2004. Hardcover, 238 pp. ISBN 0-226-53431-6 Rhumb Lines and Map Wars is Mark Monmonier’s response to the controversy over the Mercator…
- Walking Directions
- Google has announced walking directions for its online maps: the directions allow you to go the wrong way down one-way streets and appear for distances less than 10 kilometres. Since it’s Google, it’s in beta; there are some interesting hurdles…
- Virtual Earth Imagery Updates
- Speaking of which, the Virtual Earth evangelist blog also reports on 14.3 terabytes of new imagery for Virtual Earth….
- Flat Maps for a Round Planet
- Microsoft’s SQL Server Developer Center is an unusual place for it, but there it is anyway: a primer on map projections entitled Introduction to Spatial Coordinate Systems: Flat Maps for a Round Planet. The summary: “This paper is an introduction…
- B.C. Geodata Available Online, Through Google Earth
- As reported last year, the provincial government of British Columbia is making its geographic databases available online and via Google Earth. The announcement was made last Friday; the Vancouver Sun has coverage. Via, and more at, AnyGeo….
- Mapping Satellite Coverage
- Satbeams displays satellite coverage maps — i.e., where on the world signals can be received from a given satellite — in a Google Maps context. Neat, comprehensive, and fascinating to look at. Via Mapperz and Ogle Earth….
- Paper Covers Rock, GPS Beats Radar Gun
- An 18-year-old driver was able to beat a speeding ticket by using data from a vehicle-tracking GPS, which, an expert affirmed at trial, was sufficiently accurate enough to disprove a radar gun’s clocking of 62 mph in a 45 mph…
- A Shift in Online Map Searching
- “When I stated operating this site in 1997, the most common question I received was related to locating a place on the planet,” writes About.com’s Matt Rosenberg. No more: Today, site like Google Maps and software like Google Earth have…
- Combining a Globe and an Atlas
- More good stuff from Modern Mechanix; this time, an item from the April 1930 issue of Popular Science about a combination globe-atlas: it was a globe “with a complete index and gazetteer inside it. Inserted in the globe are…
- Two Blogs
- The Toronto Star has a map blog, the main content of which is a map of the week feature and which anchors the Star’s online mapping efforts. Thanks to Richard for the link. Chris Watson wrote to tell us…
- Names on the Land
- In Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, a review of George R. Stewart’s Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States, a 1945 work on place names in the United States. Bill Kauffman’s review “a learned…
- Link Roundup: Mid-July Edition
- Facebook app whereyougonnabe? gets an upgrade focusing on integration with other platforms (previously). Diana Eid takes a look at map art, focusing on three artists we’ve seen before: Matthew Cusick, Elisabeth Lecourt and Susan Stockwell (via GeoCarta). On the…
- More Nautical Charts in Google Earth
- Another collection of nautical charts for use within Google Earth, this time from Navimatics (KML link). The marine maps cover the coastline of the lower 48, and are derived from NOAA’s Electronic Navigational Charts. Via Ogle Earth and Free…
- Cartography Design Annual
- Nick Springer writes, “I have just published the Cartography Design Annual #1, a compilation of some of the best designed maps from 2007.” It looks interesting: the volume seems to be based on submissions from the CartoTalk community, which…
- Inaccurate SBA Map Excludes Eligible Firms
- “The Small Business Administration relies on an outdated, inaccurate map to maintain its billion dollar HUBZone program that is rife with fraud, according to a government report,” according to the Washington Post’s small business blog: The report said the map,…
- 51 Things You Aren’t Allowed to See on Google Maps
- Blurred Out: 51 Things You Aren’t Allowed to See on Google Maps, a compilation of locations whose aerial imagery has been obscured in Google Earth and Maps. Categories range from government and military facilities to power generation sites; the list…
- The Vacationeers: Google My Maps Gets Spooky
- The Vacationeers, they are at it again: Via Cartophilia. Previously: Google Maps Street View Is Right Behind You….
- Mac Software: GISLook & GISMeta, GPSInfo and GPS2Aperture
- Stefan looks at three GIS and GPS applications for the Mac: GISLook & GISMeta (shapefiles in Cover Flow and Quick Look), GPSInfo (geotagging photos), and GPS2Aperture (ditto)….
- BBC Olympics Map
- I have a professional interest, you might say, in the Olympics. The BBC’s Olympics map maps the 2008 Games’s venues in Beijing (and, in a couple of instances, elsewhere in China). The map was built using Virtual Earth and…
- Abstract Satellite Images
- Environmental Graffiti reprints a collection of beautiful false-colour Landsat 7 images — 30 in all — first put on display by NASA at the Library of Congress in 2000. Via Andrew Sullivan….
- Society of Cartographers Summer School 2008
- Steve Chilton writes in to remind us of the 44th annual summer school of the Society of Cartographers, which takes place from September 1 to 4 in Aberdeen, Scotland. “Presentations include ones on changing coastlines, 3D panoramas, kayak mapping, and…
- Review: Lost States
- Lost States: Real Quests for American Statehood by Michael J. Trinklein CreateSpace, 2008. Softcover, 95 pp. ISBN-13 978-1438215334 Lost States: Real Quests for American Statehood chronicles 42 proposals for U.S. statehood that never went anywhere (though some very nearly did)….
- Oceandots
- Oceandots is a collection of NASA satellite and astronaut imagery of the world’s islands and atolls — and not just the tiny, isolated ones like Pitcairn, Clipperton or Tristan da Cunha, either, though they’re certainly well represented and are…
- Unexploded WWII Bombs
- Sixty-eight years after the Blitz, there are still thousands of unexploded German bombs littering the British landscape, and they’re still being dug up. Now a map of likely unexploded bomb locations has been released, with locations extrapolated from historical records…
- MapPoint and Streets and Trips 2009
- The Virtual Earth evangelist blog announces the imminent release of the 2009 editions of Microsoft’s MapPoint and Streets and Trips, with the former available in September and the latter in October….
- Atlas Maior Exhibition
- An exhibition of Joan Blaeu’s Atlas Maior and other maps held at the University of Amsterdam Library’s Special Collections — and they appear to have quite the Blaeu collection — along with maps by his contemporaries, is now underway and…
- Vasi’s Grand Tour of Rome
- The University of Oregon team that brought us the Nolli Map of Rome has something new for us: Imago Urbis: Giuseppe Vasi’s Grand Tour of Rome, which links Giambattista Nolli’s 1748 map of Rome with Vasi’s contemporary etchings of…
- Nokia Completes NAVTEQ Takeover
- Nokia’s acquisition of NAVTEQ is now complete (previously; via Engadget)….
- A Map in the Sand
- A photo of a map drawn in the sand, taken by Stanley Greene, has won second prize in the General News category in the 2008 World Press Photo contest. The poignant map depicts an attack on a village in Darfur…
- Google Earth Imagery Updated
- Google Earth Blog has a roundup of the latest imagery updates to Google Earth. Update, 7/16: Google LatLong post….
- Flounder Lee
- “Recently, my artwork has involved mapping in one form or fashion and I thought you might enjoy it,” Flounder Lee writes. My work titled Self-Organized Mapping was all about mapping my life. I walked and photographed the yard where I…
- TV Program Shows Nepal as Part of India
- Television stations routinely make cartographic errors in their graphics, but I bet none have backfired quite like this. An Indian television program’s logo erroneously showed Nepal as part of India; Nepal was not pleased. Via GeoCarta….
- Following Signs, Asking for Directions Beats Maps, GPS
- Reader’s Digest organized a race from one end of Britain to the other, with each of three teams using a different means of navigation. The Scotsman reports on the results: “The race was won by a team relying on road…
- GPS on the iPhone 3G: Engadget’s Review
- I’ll have more to say about location-aware iPhone applications once I’ve installed the 2.0 software update on my iPod touch and played with a couple of them. I won’t be able to say anything about the GPS on the iPhone…
- A Most Dangerous Voyage
- A Most Dangerous Voyage: An Exhibition of Books and Maps Documenting Four Centuries of Exploration in Search of a Northwest Passage takes place at the University of Alberta’s Bruce Peel Special Collections Library until August. The official exhibition page…
- De Wit Maps Digitally Restored
- Five maps by Frederick de Wit (1630-1706) have been digitally restored: rather than trying to restore the badly damaged originals, the maps were instead digitized and the digital copies were then manipulated. Missing parts were spliced in from other…
- This Isn’t England
- This Isn’t England: “So for the last two years I’ve been taking pictures of Britain on world maps. Not accurate maps, but drawings or illustrations of maps. The differences are amazing. You might assume that all maps were accurate, or…
- Two Upcoming GIS Books
- James is looking forward to two upcoming books on GIS from ESRI Press: Building a GIS (Amazon) and The Business Benefits of GIS: An ROI Approach (Amazon, web site)….
- Finn Nygaard Poster
- John Emerson writes about this poster from Finn Nygaard: “Check out this crazy map from this famous Danish poster designer. I’ve no idea what the point is, but I found it pretty compelling.”…
- International Conference: Historic Maps and Imagery for Modern Scientific Applications
- Ralph Rosenbauer writes to point out the upcoming International Conference on Historic Maps and Imagery for Modern Scientific Applications, taking place in Bern, Switzerland from November 28 to 30, 2008. From the web site: “The conference serves as a platform…
- Three Blogs
- Google Earth Design has been around for more than a year, but I’ve apparently missed it until now; the subject of good map design within Google Earth seems a laudable one. Ryan Strynatka writes about his blog, The Fiducial…
- Holographic Google Earth
- This is interesting: a video demonstrating a touchless, holographic interface using Google Earth. The projection is 2D, not 3D; think of it as a screen projected in midair, not a fully rotatable virtual globe in three dimensions. Via Google Earth…
- The History of Cartography in a Nutshell
- The History of Cartography in a Nutshell, an astonishing single-paragraph article by Professor Vladimiro Valerio. From the introductory editor’s note: “About five years ago Professor Valerio was asked to prepare a short article on the history of cartography for a…
- The Case Against James L. Brubaker
- More on the Brubaker case: a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Montana outlines the federal case against James L. Brubaker, who pleaded guilty last month to charges of possession and interstate transportation of stolen…
- Link Roundup: Early July Edition
- Off camping for a few days; here are a few links to tide you over: Roger Hart’s very good blog, GeoCarta, has moved to a new address and a new platform. The Sandusky Library Archives Research Center’s map collection is…
- Thermal London
- This is interesting: thermal images of London from space, from the air, and from a high vantage point. Part of a site dedicated to thermal imagery of London, but this page is what’s of interest to us. At right,…
- European Digital Archive of Soil Maps
- The European Digital Archive of Soil Maps collects old soil maps from countries around the world, with a view to preserving them for later conversion into digital format. The archive is absolutely huge: it covers every inhabited continent. Special…
