November 2008
- Maps in Movies and TV
- A part of the Maps in Literature project, which is interesting enough in itself (in Italian and English), Maps in Movies and TV looks at the use and portrayal of maps in TV programs and movies, focusing on fiction rather…
- Cruise Ship Sinking Blamed on Map Errors
- Via GeoCarta comes this curious story about a cruise ship accident that may have been the result of faulty nautical charts of the area, rather than negligence on the part of the ship’s crew. In April 2007 the Sea Diamond…
- Nikon Geotagger Reviewed
- Here’s a review of Nikon’s upcoming GP-1 geotagger, which got my attention because I’m planning to lay hands on it for my D90 as soon as possible. (Which would make it my first-ever GPS unit, believe it or not.)…
- Google Maps Updates: iPhone 2.2, Korea and, um, Pegman
- Google Maps has now come to South Korea, but only from the Korean version of Google Maps (compare this view of Seoul with this one). This is apparently due to Korean export restrictions on mapping data. Via Google Maps Mania….
- World War II Escape Maps
- Over the past few months there has been some discussion on MapHist about “escape maps” — maps handed out to Allied pilots and air crews during World War II, printed on fabric (cloth, silk or rayon) and intended to…
- The Washington Post on Waldseemüller
- An article in today’s Washington Post looks at the mystery about where the information found in Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 map — the first one to label the New World as “America” — came from, and interviews John Hessler, author…
- Bad Mapping Data and Emergency Response
- Bad mapping data has serious consequences in at least one area, Chad argues: “Emergency responders can’t get to some locations because the map data they have is WRONG. … That kind of a mistake really is the difference between life…
- Argentina Appears in Google Maps
- Finally! Argentina gets roads and streets — and municipalities — in Google Maps. It was one of the larger remaining countries without significant coverage. Bolivia, Paraguay and the Guianas still look pretty empty….
- Mapping England
- A curious review of Simon Foxell’s Mapping England in the Times earlier this week; it took about half the piece to actually come around to the book: It’s not the world’s best-edited book — there are factual slips and…
- Champlain Map Auctioned for £130,000
- A 1612 map of New France drawn by Samuel de Champlain — briefly the subject of an investigation by Harvard curators who thought it might be a copy that went missing a few years ago — has fetched £130,000 at…
- Errors in Google’s Transit Ads
- Google “has added New York City transit directions and brought its ads to the Big Apple, wrapping an ‘S’ shuttle train that runs between Grand Central and Times Square. Trouble is, the directions it gives in the ads aren’t always…
- The KML Handbook
- The Google Geo Developers Blog announces the publication of The KML Handbook, written by the tech writer who wrote the KML 2.1 and 2.2 documentation, Josie Wernecke. Quoth the announcement: “It explains all the various elements and features of…
- CNN on The Atlas of the Real World
- The Worldmapper team’s Atlas of the Real World continues to get lots of media coverage; the latest is from CNN. The Atlas “has redrawn the map giving vivid new insights and bringing economic, social and environmental data to life,”…
- Where 2.0 2009: Call for Proposals
- Where 2.0 2009, the conference’s fifth iteration, will take place from May 19 to 21, 2009; proposals are due by December 2. O’Reilly Radar outlines some of the topics the conference may cover….
- Historians and GIS
- A debate on the question of what GIS can offer world history, based on this article by J. B. Owens (PDF), triggered a lengthy discussion on MapHist earlier this month. Unfortunately, the MapHist discussion was sidetracked by a throwaway comment…
- East Is West
- xkcd is back again, with some questions about terminology. It’s all about your starting point. (Thanks, Frank.) Previously: xkcd on Driving Directions; Upcoming Hurricanes; D&D Map of Online Communities….
- NYCityMap
- The New York Times’s Verlyn Klinkenborg takes a look at the City of New York’s mapping portal, NYCityMap: At first, NYCityMap feels a little clunky, especially if you’re used to navigating in Google Maps. But what’s interesting are its hidden…
- More 2008 Election Maps
- Jason Kottke, who’s been collecting 2008 U.S. presidential election maps, posted these two maps of “Obamaland” and “McCainland” — the counties that voted for one or the other — not in red, blue or purple, but in stark, one-bit…
- Three Mapping Errors in the News
- Sometimes a mapping error is just a mistake, as when a textbook inadvertently leaves the upper peninsula of Michigan off a map of the U.S. (via GeoCarta) or when a certain V. Putin’s Web site shows four Russian-occupied islands as…
- More Cartograms!
- Mark Newman is once again getting an awful lot of online attention for his maps and cartograms of the 2008 U.S. presidential election results; he did the same thing for the 2004 presidential and 2006 congressional results (see previous…
- The Onion’s Election Map
- The Onion also has an election map. It’s what you’d expect. Via MAPS-L….
- The New York Times Maps Electoral Shifts
- More good stuff from the New York Times: a slideshow showing the shift in support for presidential candidates since 2004, based on exit polls and the results. Five of the slides show county-by-county voting shifts; at right, counties where…
- Cartograms for the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election Results
- As I predicted, some cartograms of the U.S. presidential election results are already available. These cartograms distort the size of each state based on the number of their electoral college votes — making Rhode Island, with four electoral votes,…
- Kottke’s Election Map Collection
- Jason Kottke is collecting election maps produced by various media outlets; his page gathers a screenshot and a link to the map in question. (The screenshot is often from early last night, so does not reflect the final results —…
- Three U.S. Election Maps
- CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times provide election results maps that I like. All three are interactive: you can hover over each state to obtain the overall results, and click to zoom in to see county-level results. In…
- Elections on Ice!
- Those of you watching NBC or MSNBC for your dose of election coverage last night may have noticed that they transformed the ice rink at the Rockefeller Center into an election map; apparently they did this the last time,…
- Election Night
- A few more links before the results come in: Google’s list of geo tools for election day. Top five election day mashups (via Make). A map of poll closing times (via Andrew Sullivan). Update, 6:30 PM: Mapping the Scenarios: Geo…
- More Historical Maps of U.S. Presidential Elections
- The University of Richmond’s Voting America site says it “offers a wide spectrum of cinematic visualizations of how Americans voted in the presidential elections at the county level, from the beginning of the modern party system to the present day.”…
- Mapping Obama vs. Kerry
- Patrick Ruffini maps the swing in Democratic presidential election support from 2004 to 2008: “This is a post about relative change, not absolutes. Obama is likely to do better than John Kerry in every single state, even Kentucky and…
- Vladimiro Valerio’s Maps and Atlases
- Vladimiro Valerio has been scanning his map collection and uploading them to his Maps and Images site. Ten atlases and four single-sheet maps, a total of 280 images, are available so far. They range from the sixteenth to the…
- Bad Buyer Behaviour
- Customers of a store that sells “antiquities, notable books and rare maps” have apparently been getting a bit out of line, the Wisconsin State Journal reports. The store’s proprietor, John Taylor, ended up posting a note, Martin Luther style, to…
- U.S. Presidential Election Newspaper Endorsements
- A map showing presidential endorsements by U.S. newspapers. Circle colour indicates which candidate (both now and in 2004); circle size shows relative circulation; mousing over provides more information about the paper. Via Andrew Sullivan….
- If the World Could Vote
- If the World Could Vote is an interactive map showing the popularity of the two U.S. presidential candidates in other countries. (Democracy not being strictly endemic to the U.S., the title is inaccurate.) No surprise that Barack Obama is polling…
- That SNL Weekend Update Map Sketch
- Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” segment recently took a swing at the touchscreen interactive electoral maps that have become nearly ubiquitous in U.S. election coverage (i.e., John King on CNN). Here’s the entire segment: Via Very Spatial….
- Montréal Gets Google Transit
- Montréal now has transit trip planning in Google Maps. A good thing: Montréal is an awful place to drive, but its Metro is wonderful; it’s one of the few North American cities where it’s relatively easy to go car-free. Ottawa…
- How to Choose an Atlas
- Ben Keene provides “some simple guidelines” on how to choose an atlas; since he’s the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World — the 15th edition of which has come out before I had the chance to review…
