June 2009
- Derrick Story on Geotagging
- A couple of articles by Derrick Story about geotagging went up on Macworld’s website back in April: one that looks at four automatic methods of geotagging, and one on using the geotagging features of iPhoto ’09, taking manual geotagging as…
- Divine Sky: The Artistry of Astronomical Maps
- Divine Sky: The Artistry of Astronomical Maps is a small online exhibition featuring a selection of celestial maps from the library holdings of the University of Michigan. Divine Sky focuses on the fertile period between 1600 and 1900 that…
- Georeferenced Old Maps on the iPhone
- All Points Blog points to a forthcoming iPhone/iPod touch application called Old Map App, which, the developers say, “displays layers of geo-referenced historical maps projected onto a modern coordinate system, so that the same location can be compared over time….
- Obama’s Map
- The caption for this photo from the White House’s Flickr photostream: “President Barack Obama looks at a map donated to the White House by the National Geographic Society, in the Oval Office, June 10, 2009.” Official photo by Pete…
- Decorating with Maps
- A post on the Geographicus blog about using antique maps (and reproductions thereof) as decoration: “[T]he decorative qualities of fine maps are widely recognized by interior designers who appreciate their beauty and design flexibility. Depending on the individual map, presentation,…
- Real-Time Pollution Maps in Cambridge
- Cambridge Mobile Urban Sensing equips volunteer pedestrians and cyclists with pollution sensors linked via Bluetooth to mobile phones; the result is a real-time map of Cambridge’s air quality — or at least the air quality along the routes the…
- Society of Cartographers Summer School 2009
- Every year, Steve Chilton writes to remind us of the summer school put on by the Society of Cartographers; this year’s summer school takes place at the University of Southampton from September 7 to 9, 2009. This year’s themes include…
- Cahill’s Butterfly Map vs. Fuller’s Dymaxion Projection
- “I love Bucky, but Cahill’s map is a lot better.” That’s how Gene Keyes opens his latest project, which he describes as “an interlinked set of 17 profusely illustrated web pages detailing the evolution and defects of Buckminster Fuller’s…
- The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
- After last week’s launch, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has now settled into orbit around the Moon. A USGS press release points out the cartographic aspects of the LRO’s mission: “Among the instruments carried on LRO, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera…
- Ball State’s GIS Research and Map Collection
- Ball State University’s GIS Research and Map Collection has a blog, which has already been running for three years….
- Michael Chabon: ‘Childhood Is a Branch of Cartography’
- “Childhood is a branch of cartography,” writes Michael Chabon in The New York Review of Books: Most great stories of adventure, from The Hobbit to Seven Pillars of Wisdom, come furnished with a map. That’s because every story of adventure…
- Tauranac’s New York City Subway Map
- John Tauranac writes, “Last November I came out with a new map [of the New York subway], which combines a Beck-like map on one side with a truly geographic map on the other.” He writes about it on Gotham…
- Brtiish Cartographic Society Awards
- The Collins Map Blog mentions the British Cartographic Society Awards, in no small part because Collins Geo picked up a couple of them. To view current and past winners, select each award from the BCS’s page; there does not appear…
- Wired’s GPS Tips
- The July issue of Wired has a few tips for improving the performance of your GPS receiver; they include adding an external antenna, giving your unit enough time to acquire a fix, and keeping the software up to date….
- Determining a Map’s Age
- Catholicgauze explains how to figure out a map’s age by checking for known changes, like the reunification of Germany, the breakup of the Soviet Union, or the independence of East Timor. I’ve done this too, actually, but it’s just as…
- Mapping Tehran
- Google has made available recent satellite imagery of Tehran from the IKONOS satellite via a Google Earth layer. How recent? Last Thursday. It would have been higher resolution if it had come from the GeoEye-1 satellite, but weather apparently played…
- Geolocation and the iPhone’s Web Browser
- The iPhone’s version of Safari supports geolocation with the 3.0 software update, and it’s apparently trivial to write the code to access a user’s location; I wonder if it’s this easy with Firefox 3.5….
- Expensive iPhone Navigation Apps: Navigon’s MobileNavigator
- BusinessWeek’s Stephen Wildstrom explains why iPhone navigation applications are so expensive: [Y]ou need a source of maps and a data base of directions, driving instructions, and points of interest. There are two main sources of maps, Navteq (owned by Nokia)…
- More Book Reviews
- More reviews of books previously mentioned here: Directions reviews GIS Cartography: A Guide to Effective Map Design (see previous entry). The New York Times reviews The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet, a copy of which I now have and…
- Ross Racine
- Surprisingly, Ross Racine’s artwork is drawn freehand on a computer; “my works do not contain photographs or scanned material,” he says, but you’d be hard pressed to tell. “The subjects of my recent work may be interpreted as models…
- Dunhuang Star Chart
- Yesterday’s Astronomy Picture of the Day featured a portion of the Dunhuang Star Chart, “one of the most impressive documents in the history of astronomy.” A four-metre scroll dating from the seventh century Tang Dynasty, it’s apparently the first…
- GIS Cartography Reviewed
- James reviews Gretchen N. Peterson’s GIS Cartography: A Guide to Effective Map Design, which, he notes, is written independent of any particular software package. “Gretchen’s book is something that you can use almost anywhere with any medium and won’t…
- Imagining Toronto’s Subways in 2030
- As a child I drew on road maps, adding streets, freeways, even whole cities where none would ever exist. Dieter Janssen’s map of an imagined Toronto subway network in 2030 has a more serious purpose: he hopes his map,…
- Google Goes to Ottawa
- Google’s Canadian managing director was summoned before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics yesterday, where he was grilled by Ottawa MP Pierre Poilievre (whom we’ve heard about before) about the privacy implications of…
- GIS Web Maps to Critique Web Mapping Applications
- It looks like GIS Web Maps will be a blog that critiques GIS web mapping: “I usually don’t have that much to say. But I know good when I see it. I know bad when I see it. I usually…
- Firefox 3.5 Adds Geolocation
- Firefox 3.5 (Release Candidate 1) adds geolocation as a new feature: it calculates a user’s location based the user’s IP address and nearby wireless access points; location-aware sites can then access that location if the user grants permission. Details here….
- Maps in Those Days
- Four Courts Press announces the publication of J. H. Andrews’s Maps in Those Days: Cartographic Methods Before 1850, which addresses the question of “what early cartographers actually did. … It deals with non-thematic maps of all kinds and of…
- Testing Light-Pollution Maps Redux
- Tony Flanders continues his critique of light-pollution maps; this time, he notes that the brightnesses of the respective colours are misleading: “the orange zone appears distinctly darker than the green zone, belying the fact that skies are in fact…
- Mapping Los Angeles
- The Los Angeles Times has updated its map of 113 Los Angeles neighbourhoods, taking into account reader feedback as to what neighbourhoods comprise what areas. It’s a project that sounds a lot like what the Toronto Star is doing with…
- Earth Observatory: World of Change
- Earth Observatory, celebrating its 10th anniversary, showcases 10 slideshows of “satellite images documenting how our world — forests, oceans, human landscapes, even the Sun — has changed during the previous decade.” Previously: Growth in Las Vegas….
- Backroad Mapbook Wins Map Design Award
- Google Alerts are funny sometimes. A short item in the Tumbler Ridge News — Tumbler Ridge is a remote small town in northeastern British Columbia — about how a local writer contributed to a backroad atlas that won a…
- MapQuest Application for the iPhone and iPod touch
- Oh, hello. MapQuest now has a dedicated (and free) application for the iPhone and iPod touch, rather than an iPhone-optimized website: details, iTunes store link. Via AppleInsider, the MapQuest Blog and Understanding Google Maps & Local Search. Previously: MapQuest…
- The Map Collector
- Articles from The Map Collector, a quarterly magazine published between 1977 and 1996, are being reprinted on Kuntspedia. About 30 or so articles so far; I don’t know where to begin. Via MapHist….
- Saxton Atlas Being Auctioned
- A copy of a 16th-century atlas of England and Wales by Christopher Saxton is being auctioned at Southeby’s this week, the Yorkshire Post reports; the atlas is expected to fetch a quarter of a million dollars or so. For more…
- Geologic Atlas of Texas
- An online version of the Geologic Atlas of Texas has been made available by the Texas Water Development Board. Nothing fancy: just a Flash-based interface to scans of the 1:250,000-scale paper maps, but scans of paper maps will do…
- Mapping North Korea
- North Korea is very much in the news lately, but very much not on the map. The North Korea Uncovered project is trying to do something about that: it’s a Google Earth layer (KMZ file) that maps installations, landmarks…
- Challenger Map Back on Display, Sort Of
- The amazing Challenger Map, the giant relief map of British Columbia that was on display at the Pacific National Exhibition until 1997 but has since languished in storage, is back on display, sort of. The Vancouver Sun reports that…
- A Paper Maps Renaissance
- While a Virginian-Pilot columnist decries the fact that kids these days don’t know how to read a map, and equates map reading with learning to swim (via GeoCarta), an ABC Australia program, The World Today, reports a sudden surge in…
- Yahoo Upgrades European Map Sites
- Yahoo announces upgrades to the British and French editions of Yahoo Maps; the German version will get them in a few weeks. These have already been implemented on the U.S. edition, haven’t they? Previously: Yahoo’s “Classic Maps” Discontinued; Yahoo Maps…
- xkcd on Google Latitude
- Web comic xkcd’s take on Google Latitude’s privacy implications is … about what you’d expect. And as succinct an explanation as there will likely ever be of why location services will probably never take off….
- Garmin Recalls Data Cards Showing Inaccurate Water Depths
- It’s one thing if your road map has an error in it, quite another if your aviation or nautical maps have an error in them. It can be catastrophic. Which is why, PC World reports, Garmin is recalling data cards…
- How to Report Map Errors
- GPS Review explains how to correct an error in a map provided by GPS unit or online mapping service — a process greatly simplified by the fact that, at least in North America, there are essentially only two mapping providers…
- More iPhone Turn-by-Turn Navigation Software Coming
- TomTom isn’t the only company with forthcoming turn-by-turn navigation software for the iPhone (see previous entry); AppleInsider reports that both Navigon and TeleNav have iPhone applications in development. Via All Points Blog….
- Google Adding Trails to Street View
- Google is taking Street View to biking and hiking trails, USA Today reports. Instead of a car with a camera mounted on the roof, Google employees are using “a modified three-wheeled bike, like the ones used to take tourists for…
- Starting a Map Collection
- The Geographicus blog has a few questions for people interested in getting into map collecting but who have no idea where to begin. (Me, I figure that if you have only a “vague idea of what [you] are interested in,”…
- A Corollary to Tobler’s First Law
- Sean Gorman proposes a corollary to Waldo Tobler’s well-known First Law of Geography (“everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things”). Inspired by developments in mobile applications, he adds a temporal element: things…
- Testing Light-Pollution Maps
- Sky and Telescope’s Tony Flanders decides to test the veracity of light-pollution maps. “They’re based on satellite data collected more than a decade ago, over a long timespan, in varying conditions, and massaged by an experimental mathematical model of…
- Some iPhone News
- There was, you may have heard, some news about a new iPhone yesterday; over on O’Reilly Radar, Brady Forrest sums up the geotechnology implications of the new iPhone 3GS and iPhone OS 3.0, including the ability of the web browser…
- Lego Globe
- Java programmer Kohsuke Kawaguchi built a globe out of Lego; being a programmer, he did so in a programmer-like idiom, hacking together a program to figure out what colours go where, and using CAD software to build it virtually…
