February 2009
- Growth in Las Vegas
- NASA’s Earth Observatory provides Landsat 5 images of Las Vegas in five-year intervals from 1984 to 2009. The images show the city’s incredible rate of growth over that period. They also line up perfectly, so once again I’ve taken the…
- Wired on Model Cities
- Richard Akerman sends along a link to this article on model cities in the March issue of Wired. Model cities aren’t just for show; they can have real utility. In 1957 the US Army Corps of Engineers created the Bay…
- GPS Supplemented with Dead Reckoning
- Everything old is new again. CNet’s Mark Rutherford looks at the NaviSeer, which addresses the problem of GPS dead zones (e.g., indoors or in deep valleys) with a high-tech implementation of an old navigation system: dead reckoning….
- Mapping Mars
- Emily on the Planetary Society Blog: “Planetary cartographer Phil Stooke has been working on a cool project to compose and compare maps of Mars that show how we saw the planet throughout the Space Age.” It is very cool. The…
- Historic Map Works
- Historic Map Works is building a business offering cadastral and other antique maps online; from their collection of 1.2 million maps, most of which were obtained by buying the companies who published them, more than half a million have been…
- Science on a Sphere: Return to the Moon
- Astronomy reports on Return to the Moon, a short film designed for the Science on a Sphere platform (see previous entry): “‘Return to the Moon’ takes imagery and data sets from the Apollo, Clementine, and other missions and projects them…
- TomTom TroublesTroubles
- On GeoCarta, Roger Hart has been following the story of TomTom’s financial difficulties — lower sales, job cuts, and, most recently, the fact that TomTom lost €989 million last quarter, thanks in no small part to the €1.048-billion writedown of…
- Google Maps API E-Book, GeoChalkboard Blog
- Eric Pimpler of the GeoChalkboard blog (which I was not aware of prior to this) has posted the the fifth revision of Mashup Mania with Google Maps, a free 52-page e-book on the Google Maps API; direct link to the…
- Mapping the Gamburtsevs
- An international scientific expedition has wrapped up its mission to map the Gamburtsev Mountains. What’s the twist? The Gamburtsevs are in Antarctica — under up to four kilometres of ice. The mapping was done seismically, as you can well imagine….
- Map Corsets
- Representations of maps seem to be a popular source material for corset makers: Mayfaire Moon is releasing a corset in honour of the publication of Catherynne M. Valente’s new fantasy novel, Palimpsest; ProfMaelstromme offers an underbust “steampunk map corset”…
- Topographic Prominence
- On About.com, Rob London explains the concept of topographic prominence — the measure of a peak’s height around its surroundings, and therefore a measure of its inherent awesomeness. Via Matt….
- Yahoo Maps Upgrades
- No new data, but Yahoo announced some upgrades to Yahoo Maps’s interface and international support (languages, kilometres-vs.-miles) yesterday….
- Another Nikon GP-1 Review
- I spent some of today taking some test shots (finally!) with the Nikon GP-1 geotagger attached to my D90; I hope to have a review for you soon. Meanwhile, John Biehler’s review covers a lot of the ground I…
- Report: Google Surpassed MapQuest in January
- Edward has a couple of additional data points to add to the Google vs. MapQuest market share question; in addition to the four-point gap Hitwise reported, comScore apparently says that Google beat MapQuest in January; Compete.com reports something similar. Edward…
- GIS for Dummies
- GIS for Dummies is now out (see previous entry); Leszek has some information about the author, Michael DeMers, an associate professor of geography at NMSU and the author of several other books on GIS, including the textbook Fundamentals of…
- USDemocrazy.net
- USDemocrazy.net, a project of the UMBC’s Imaging Research Center that aims to explain the U.S. electoral process (it seems to be a work in progress), opens with this crazy map of the United States — the handiwork, I presume,…
- Collector Makes Donation to Polish Museum
- A 75-year-old collector, Tomasz Niewodniczanski, has donated a portion of his collection to the Royal Castle in Warsaw (now a national museum). “The donation includes maps and plans of Polish towns and letters and manuscripts of Polish kings — from…
- Review: Two Inexpensive Star Atlases
- Sky and Telescope’s Pocket Sky Atlas by Roger W. Sinnott Sky Publishing, 2006. Coilbound, 124 pp. ISBN 1-931559-31-7 The Cambridge Star Atlas, Third Edition by Wil Tirion Cambridge University Press, 2001. Hardcover, 96 pp. ISBN 0-521-800846 Rod Mollise’s recent look…
- Review: Maperture
- Maperture is a free geotagging plugin for Aperture, Apple’s pro-level photo management application. It allows you to click on a map (Maperture uses Google Maps) to assign geographical coordinates to your photos. Maperture worked as advertised on two batches of…
- iPhone Weather Radar Applications
- iPhone Central reviews a trio of weather radar map applications for the iPhone and iPod touch: Radar in Motion, RadarScope (“the heavyweight here”; pictured at right) and Weather Radar (“the weakest of the trio of offerings discussed here”). RadarScope…
- Map Use: Reading and Analysis
- ESRI Press has just published the sixth edition of Map Use: Reading and Analysis, which it acquired from its previous publisher. From the press release: “Replete with nearly 500 maps, photographs, tables, and charts to illustrate the text, this…
- Google Latitude’s Implications
- Analysts, observers and pundits are trying to grapple with the implications of Google’s Latitude, which is apparently new enough to confound our expectations about location awareness and privacy. Privacy International says that security flaws could endanger user privacy: “PI has…
- Gizmodo’s Most Insane Things Never Seen on Street View
- This is silly: Gizmodo’s Photoshop contest inviting people to make up things you’ll never see on Google Street View. Above: Kevin Foster’s first-place homage to Blade Runner; as you might expect given the Giz’s readership, science fiction tropes abound….
- Gerrymandering in Florida
- Here’s the Miami Herald on the unfair state of electoral districting and a campaign to amend Florida’s competition to require competitive, fairly drawn electoral districts. Previously: More on Gerrymandering and Computer-Generated Districts; Gerrymandering as Computer Game….
- Geospatial Science at RMIT
- The Age has a brief piece on the geospatial science program at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology — “apparently the only dedicated cartography degree in Victoria and one of only two in Australia.”…
- Uncle Rod Looks at Star Atlases
- I’ve been meaning to do a review of the star atlases and books about star charts I have in my possession. Until I get around to doing that, please read this post by Rod Mollise — “Uncle Rod” — which…
- TomTom Home for the Mac
- When it comes to Macintosh compatibility with GPS units, past entries have largely focused on Garmin’s Mac support. But Garmin certainly isn’t the only game in town on the Mac. Macworld reviews TomTom Home 2.5 for the Mac, which “allows…
- Mapping the Holocaust
- Mapping the Holocaust: the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s website has a substantial map section; the maps are fairly basic, at the level of presentations or history textbooks, but not abounding in detail. There are some animated map-based presentations and a…
- News from the Caucasus
- Azerbaijan, Georgia and boundaries. Azerbaijan is developing orthopictomaps at various scales, and is also working out its border with Georgia, which is complicated by differences in 1905 and 1938 maps of the region; they’ve settled on 300 out of 490…
- The Tyrrell Museum’s Dinosaur Globe
- While visiting the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta last December, I encountered this globe in the horned dinosaur section of the museum. At the push of a button, a projector displays the location of the fossil beds for…
- The Map Reader
- The Map Reader is an independent film from New Zealand whose protagonist is an introverted teenager obsessed with cartography: trailer; reviews here and here; IMDB entry….
- Twelve Animals
- Behold Kentaro Nagai’s Twelve Animals, where the world’s continents and islands are rearranged to resemble the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac. The shapes the continents form aren’t always easy to recognize. It’s also kind of neat to see,…
- IPCC Climate Change Map Criticized
- Two researchers are criticizing a map found in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report because it “failed to follow several cartographic principles and effectively display information, despite its important content.” In their view, the map misleads because…
- Market Share Update
- Hitwise reports that MapQuest continues to hold a small lead over Google Maps, even though it looked like Google would soon overtake it a few months ago. Still, compared to last year, when MapQuest held a 50-to-22 lead over Google,…
- Lordy Rodriguez: States of America
- Lordy Rodriguez: States of America, which runs from February 21 to May 17 at the Austin Museum of Art, “is the culmination of a multi-year project to systematically reconfigure the United States of America, including all fifty states as…
- Sports Illustrated Body Painted Maps
- Brooklyn Decker’s turn (slightly NSFW) in the 2009 Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition is not the first example of body painting using map imagery, not even in SI. Body painter Joanne Gair, who did the artwork on Decker, painted a world…
- Google Earth and GPS
- Google Earth’s GPS support was once limited to its $20/year “Plus” version; now that that version has been eliminated, it’s available in the free version. Free Geography Tools and Google LatLong have some details; about 200 receivers are supported….
- How Maps Help and Hurt
- An even-handed article on Spiegel Online looks at how Google Maps can be used to help or even save people (e.g., providing information on Australia’s bushfires) to how it can be used to hurt people (e.g., displaying sensitive personal information…
- Photocartographies: Call for Submissions
- The curators of an upcoming exhibition that combines photography and cartography are looking for submissions: This exhibition reveals mapping itself as a generative process of knowledge creation, a liberatory method for re-imagining and re-imaging our world, its built and natural…
- The Map Scroll
- More competition (always welcome) in the form of The Map Scroll, a new blog about maps that started in January that has, as its goal, “one new bitchin map every goddamn day.” I look forward to us stealing each other’s…
- USGS Map Price Increases
- Via All Points Blog comes word that USGS map prices are going up by $2 to $3 per sheet, effective March 2. Get your orders in now, people….
- Mapping Australia’s Bushfires
- NASA imagery of the bushfires in the Australian state of Victoria can be found here (from which I took the above image) and here. See also Universe Today. Imagery from NASA’s MODIS imagery is apparently being updated twice daily….
- Sony GPS-CS3KA
- Richard notes the arrival of Sony’s new GPS logger. “After essentially creating the category of GPS loggers for photo geotagging with the GPS-CS1 in 2006, Sony inexplicably let the product languish for three years with only minor upgrades. They…
- Geotagging on a BlackBerry Storm
- Joe Francica tries uploading geotagged photos from his BlackBerry Storm to Flickr; difficulties ensue (“it wasn’t a straightforward or intuitive process”)….
- Inuit Routefinding and Oral Tradition
- Inuit mapping and routefinding continues to be a subject of interest — and, it turns out, of considerable complexity. “Inuit trails are more than merely means to get from A to B. In reality, they represent a complex social network…
- London 2012 Interactive Map
- Is it too early to talk about the 2012 Olympic Games? Apparently not: the London 2012 organizers have released an interactive map of the Games that maps Olympic venues as well as their news and blog entries. Via Londonist….
- The ‘Map-Making Renaissance’
- Another look at the “renaissance in map-making that is rapidly changing how we use and combine maps and data,” driven by GIS and GPS and freely accessible mapping tools, this time from the Toronto Star….
- Lethal Legacy: Map Theft Crime Novel
- Crime novelist Linda Fairstein’s latest book, Lethal Legacy, has a distressingly familiar plotline. From, believe it or not, The Courier Mail of Brisbane, Australia: “[Series protagonist Alex] Cooper and regular police associate Mike Chapman delve into the shady world…
- Circling Cartography
- Circling Cartography, an exhibition of the work of Marie DesMarais, is taking place this month at the Proximity Gallery in Fishtown, Philadelphia. “The almost whimsical forms and colors combine with found materials including paper, fabric, wood and glass to create…
- One Hundred Million Geotagged Photos
- Here’s one way to measure geotagging’s progress: how many Flickr photos have been geotagged? Answer: about a hundred million — or around three percent of the total (via)….
- Hand Drawn Map Association Book and Contest
- The Hand Drawn Map Association is (a) in conjunction with Princeton Architectural Press, publishing a collection of hand-drawn maps, and (b) is running a contest, in part to solicit submissions for said book. The contest runs until the end…
- CoreLocation and Snow Leopard
- It’s an Apple rumour, so take with the usual mountain-sized grain of salt, but if the next release of Mac OS X (10.6 “Snow Leopard”) includes the CoreLocation framework previously seen on the iPhone/iPod touch platform, says rumour site AppleInsider,…
- The Growth of Target
- Nathan Yau has created an animated map showing the growth of the Target store empire across the United States; he previously made a map showing the same thing for Wal-Mart. He’s also released the code so that others can…
- Oblique vs. Top-Down Imagery
- Ryan Strynatka compares oblique imagery to top-down imagery. In a nutshell, tall buildings. “One problem with nadir imagery is that it can be difficult to tell how tall buildings are, or gather any information about buildings (or anything other features…
- Google Wants Your Aerial Imagery
- Got aerial imagery? Google wants it — and now that Google Earth 5.0 supports historical imagery, it doesn’t matter how old it is (Google LatLong). James makes a valid (albeit snarky) point that this is another example of Google wanting…
- Reasons Not to Use Google Latitude
- PC World’s J. R. Raphael offers three reasons he won’t be using Google Latitude: “Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t want every aspect of my life to be public domain — even when it comes to my close friends and…
- A U.S. Presidential Election Mashup
- Kaitlin Duck Sherwood has a nice mashup of the 2008 U.S. presidential election results with demographic and other data. Choropleths galore! Via Google Maps Mania….
- Rumsey Donates Maps to Stanford
- David Rumsey — he of the eponymous website — is donating his entire collection of 150,000 maps, plus digital copies, to Stanford University. Just not all at once: “While Rumsey’s agreement with Stanford calls for his entire collection to be…
- Virtual Earth Imagery Update and Other News
- January’s Virtual Earth imagery update includes a total 37 terabytes of data, Microsoft’s first use of Digital Globe satellite imagery, and, among other things, bird’s-eye imagery for Paris and other French cities (see also, naturally, GeoInWeb. In other Microsoft…
- California Man Reads Map While Driving, Crashes
- A man reading a map while driving got into an accident in California; GeoCarta notes wryly that it’s not just GPS that gets you into trouble. Me, I’m just worried California will ban maps from cars….
- Envisioning Maps
- Envisioning Maps is an exhibition at the Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion Museum in New York. I’m not sure how long it runs: the museum’s page says it runs until June 26; the ArtInfo page says it closes, um,…
- Google Latitude
- Google Latitude is a friend-tracking tool for mobile devices; it’s also an iGoogle gadget. Using a mobile device’s built-in GPS (or manual updates), it shows the location of at least those friends who’ve added themselves to the service. See the…
- Accessible Transit Maps
- Randy Plemel has been making stroller- and wheelchair-accessible maps of transit systems — in other words, maps where only the accessible stations are shown; non-accessible stations are erased. After earlier takes on the London Underground and New York Subway,…
- Train Unable to Stop Because of GPS Failure
- Last month, because its onboard GPS failed, a train in England wasn’t able to stop at any stations until the end of the line, forcing passengers to double back. It’s not just British cars running into trouble with GPS, you…
- Google Earth 5.0: Oceans, Historic Imagery and Mars
- Google Earth 5.0 was released today, with a bunch of new features. The ocean layers were not unexpected: ocean floor bathymetry was released a couple of weeks ago (see Stefan’s critique), and the previously announced presence of Sylvia Earle…
- Shenandoah Valley Mapmaker
- At the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley in Winchester, Virginia until May 10, 2009, Jed Hotchkiss: Shenandoah Valley Mapmaker, a collection of Civil War maps by the Confederate Army’s mapmaker. The amazing maps of Jedediah Hotchkiss helped Confederate officers…
- ‘A Notorious Gentleman Thief’
- Map thefts are a part of a greater whole: the theft of antiquarian books. The Guardian profiles a book thief who has managed to elude capture, William Simon Jacques, “one of a handful of highly intelligent, well-educated criminals who operate…
- Miami International Map Fair 2009
- The sixteenth annual Miami International Map Fair takes place this weekend, on February 7 and 8, 2009, at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida; The Earth Times reprints the press release (previously)….
