November 2009
- 1858 Map of Cape Cod Republished as Book
- Henry Walling’s five-foot-square “Map of the Counties of Barnstable, Dukes and Nantucket, Massachusetts,” produced in 1858, is now available as a hardcover book, the Cape Cod Times reports: “The new book’s maps were shot digitally by Truro photographer Charles…
- The New York Times on Two Map Books
- I’m about halfway through Toby Lester’s Fourth Part of the World and hope to have a review for you soon. In the meantime, check out this brief review in the New York Times’s travel section that covers both Lester’s…
- eBay Maps Black Friday
- As a way of promoting itself during the holiday shopping season, eBay has mapped “all U.S.-based buyer and seller transactions on eBay on Black Friday, November 27, 2009 (12:00:00 AM to 11:59:59 PM EST).” Via All Points Blog and…
- Biking and Hiking in Northeastern Pennsylvania
- Pennsylvania’s Department of Transportation has produced a map of biking and hiking trails in the northeastern part of the state. “The routes generally use existing highways that have been identified as desirable roads for bicycling. In some cases, the route…
- How Cheap Can GPS Devices Get?
- With TomTom apparently coming out with a GPS device priced at $59(!), DailyFinance asks: just how much lower can GPS prices get? Via Gadling….
- Google Maps Tips
- Google Maps’s Tips for Life page is a bit too preciously titled — it’s more a collection of tips on how to use Google Maps, based on four user profiles (local search, global browsing, navigation, business listings). More thorough than…
- The Nine Nations of China
- Economics professor Patrick Chovanec has grouped the provinces and autonomous regions of China into what he calls the Nine Nations of China — regions with their own “resources, dynamics, and historical character.” Of course there’s an interactive map. Via…
- Mark Ovenden: The French (Re-)Connection
- The following is a guest post by Mark Ovenden, who relates how, in the cavernous confines of the abandoned Court Street Subway station in Brooklyn, now re-used as the Transit Museum, three great innovators in the world of transit map…
- Review: Paris Underground
- Paris Underground: The Maps, Stations, and Design of the Métro by Mark Ovenden Penguin, 2009. Softcover, 176 pp. ISBN 978-0-14-311639-4 It’s possible that I know the Paris Métro better than any other subway system in the world. In the summer…
- 2005 Global Land Survey
- NASA’s Earth Observatory site has a feature article on the 2005 Global Land Survey, a collection of 9,500 Landsat images captured between 2004 and 2007: The images are detailed enough to make out features as small as 30 meters (about…
- The Scotsman on the NLS Map Collection
- “You could lose yourself in here,” says The Scotsman’s Peter Ross, in his expansive piece about the National Library of Scotland’s map collection. Via MapHist….
- Keith Thompson’s Caricature Map of Europe
- Caricature maps usually belong to a specific period — i.e., the late 19th and early 20th centuries. So it’s interesting to see Keith Thompson’s modern take on a 1914 caricature map of Europe. Via Kottke. Update (Feb. 3, 2010):…
- Map Art on the Radio
- KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio’s Weekday spent an hour last Thursday morning on maps and art; the program featured Katharine Harmon, two local artists whose work appeared in her latest book, and a local art historian. Via All Points Blog….
- Diabetes and Obesity in the U.S.
- In the current issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, there’s a study that models — and maps — the estimated prevalence of diabetes and obesity at the U.S. county level. It’s always…
- Geotagging Apps for the iPhone
- Macworld reviews four geotagging applications for the iPhone. Now the iPhone geotags its own photos — if you take a photo with the iPhone’s built-in camera, it can be automatically geotagged. But these applications turn the iPhone into a GPS…
- Essential Skills for a GIS Career
- Michalis Avraam has compiled a list of the essential skills for a successful GIS career, based on a discussion at a GIS Day event in Seattle. Via Slashgeo….
- Twitter Supports Geotagging
- Twitter geotagging is now officially available, though only through the API — which means that third-party applications can do things with it, but it won’t show up in the web interface. It’s off by default; users have to enable it….
- UK Government to Free Ordnance Survey Data
- Holy shit. Pinch me, check the date to see that it’s not April 1, then read this British government press release: “The Government will consult on proposals to make data from Ordnance Survey freely available so it can be used…
- County-by-County U.S. Unemployment Map
- Via Maps-L, LaToya Egwuekwe’s animated map of county-by-county unemployment rates in the U.S. from January 2007 to September 2009. I quibble that there is no slider, but the map is well done. (Am I right in guessing that this…
- The New York Times on User Contributions to Online Maps
- The New York Times looks at user contributions to online maps, starting with Google, with its Map Maker program covering 140 countries and its recent opening of its U.S. maps. “People have been contributing information to digital maps for some…
- Senators Draw Their States
- Al Franken’s uncanny ability to draw all 48 contiguous states of the U.S. from memory inspired the National Geographic Society to ask other senators to draw their home states from memory, labelling at least three important places on that…
- The Daily Telegraph Reviews The Fourth Part of the World
- The Daily Telegraph reviews The Fourth Part of the World, the new book on the Waldseemüller map by Toby Lester: “Just telling the story of the invention of the name, the creation of the map, its disappearance, and its…
- Street View Taken to Court in Switzerland
- The Swiss federal data protection commissioner is taking Google to court. Hanspeter Thür argues that Google’s blurring of faces and licence plates in its Street View imagery of Switzerland is insufficient and that Google has not complied with his recommendations,…
- Manitoba Historical Maps
- I grew up in Winnipeg, so I was thrilled to discover the thousand-plus maps of Winnipeg, Brandon and the rest of Manitoba posted on the Manitoba Historical Maps Flickr account. The maps include old city maps, transit maps, insurance…
- Mapping New York’s Shoreline, 1609-2009
- Vanity Fair points to Mapping New York’s Shoreline, 1609-2009, an exhibition at the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwartzman building that runs until June 26, 2010 (exhibition details here). Drawing on The New York Public Library’s collection of…
- Real-time Kinematic GPS
- If GPS isn’t accurate enough for you, you should probably look into something like real-time kinematic (RTK) navigation, which corrects GPS signals down to an accuracy of one centimetre. RTK is explained on Wikipedia and Magellan’s site. Make points to…
- Another Look at the Linda Hall Library’s Celestial Atlases
- The Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology in Kansas City, Missouri gets a mention in the travel section of the New York Times (in an article on rare book collections that are accessible to the public) for its…
- A Homemade Globe
- Large globes can be kind of pricey; David Burwell built his own 20-inch globe using the Generic Mapping Tools datasets and a beach ball mold. Ingenious. Via Boing Boing and Make….
- Geography Fail
- The Fail Blog does maps, too….
- Mapping School Innovation
- A report by the Center for American Progress and the U.S. Chamber of Congress ranks states on the performance of their schools in eight categories of “innovation”; naturally, these grades have been put on an interactive map. Via Cartophilia….
- U.S. Interstates as Tube Map
- Check out Cameron Booth’s map of the U.S. Interstate Highway system in the style of a diagram (i.e., the London Tube map). Not the first time I’ve seen something like this, but this is a very, very good implementation….
- GeoVation
- GeoVation encourages people to create “great ideas based on geography,” which is to say, map mashups. There are two competitions: one for ideas, more than 100 of which have been posted so far; and one for ventures, which involves prize…
- Google Latitude Location History Creeps Out Valleywag
- Valleywag thinks Google Latitude’s location history feature (previously) is creepy: “Google said it can now keep a detailed list of everywhere you go, play your trips back like movies and generate ‘alerts’ for unusual movements. Who wants this? The CIA?…
- 30 Superb Infographic Maps
- Webdesigner Depot’s 30 Superb Examples of Infographic Maps: “Map illustrations are a dime a dozen; however, a strong and balanced display of graphics, information, and colors is what makes an infographic stand out and reach its target audience effectively.” Via…
- Strange Maps: Frank Jacobs Interviewed
- More media coverage of Strange Maps, the book version of what is basically the most popular map blog out there: the Freakonomics blog interviews the book’s (and blog’s) author, Frank Jacobs. Previously: Updates on Two New Books; Strange Maps,…
- Pacific Northwest Mapmaker Closing
- Totem Publications, a Pacific Northwest publisher of detailed maps of obscure parts of Washington state, appears to be winding down, the Everett Herald reports. For certain parts of the state, the maps are “the only map game in town,” offering…
- The History of the ICHC
- The International Conferences on the History of Cartography themselves have a history: this page is an index to pages on every conference since 1964; each conference page has a list of the papers presented, and some of them have photo…
- Maps Without Legends
- The Morning News has a different kind of map quiz: “We’ve removed the legends and all other telltale labels from the maps below, and challenge you to guess what each map depicts using only clues contained within the maps: the…
- Polar Maps of Enceladus
- More maps of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, in the form of two polar stereographic maps released today for its northern and southern hemispheres. The maps are mosaics compiled from the best Cassini and Voyager images. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute….
- Online Maps Miscellany
- I should have waited: this Google LatLong post summarizes all the Street View updates: not only Hawaii and Mexico, but also Spain and the Netherlands. Meanwhile, Latitude has added a couple of features: history and alerts. Not to disrespect the…
- Also, Hawaii
- In addition to Mexico, Street View has also come to Hawaii….
- The Grim Reaper’s Road Map
- The Grim Reaper’s Road Map: An Atlas of Mortality in Britain, which came out last year, “analyses over 14 million deaths over the 24-year period 1981-2004 in Britain. It gives a comprehensive overview of the geographical pattern of mortality,”…
- Calendria
- Like Cartophilia, designer Elizabeth Daggar sent me a copy of her unusual project, Calendria, the full title of which is the World Atlas of Calendria for the Year 2010 of the Common Era, as Observed and Faithfully Recorded by…
- Google Maps Launches in Mexico
- A Mexican version of Google Maps has launched; here’s Google’s announcement from last Friday (in Spanish). As Google Maps Mania also notes, Street View imagery has been added for seven cities in Mexico; that was supposed to have launched today,…
- Geocaching T-Shirts
- Very Spatial points to an amusing geocaching t-shirt on Zazzle.com: “I use multi-million dollar satellites to find Tupperware in the woods. What’s your hobby?” A look at the t-shirt page’s recommendations reveals lots of other geocaching-themed t-shirts on the…
- The First Thematic Maps
- Zachary Forest Johnson provides “a quick outline of the first maps created with six common cartographic symbologies. … The six symbologies are the classic thematic cartography representation methods: choropleth, proportional symbol, dot density, flow, isarithmic, and cartogram.” Only one of…
- New York Subway Map Quilt Fabric
- Our latest example of map miscellany comes in the form of quilting fabrics with a pattern resembling a New York subway map from a quilt shop in New York City. Probably not for use in navigation. Via Very Spatial….
- Rethinking Maps Reviewed
- Jeff Thurston reviews Rethinking Maps: New Frontiers in Cartographic Theory, a collection of essays: In summary, this book cuts a wide swath. It is not solely for cartographers or map makers. Rather, it is about the processes that motivate…
- Live Marine Traffic Maps
- Since 2004, the International Maritime Organization has required all vessels of 300 or more gross tons to carry an AIS transponder, which transponder transmits position, speed and course and other information about the ship. MarineTraffic.com takes that data and plots…
- Nunannguaq: In the Likeness of the Earth
- At the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, north of Toronto, until January 17, 2010, an exhibition of Cape Dorset art: Nunannguaq: In the Likeness of the Earth: In Inuktitut, the word Nunannguaq translates into “in the likeness of the…
- ‘A Significant Step Down in Quality’
- Peter Batty weighs in on the quality of Google’s new, homegrown map data: As anyone in the geo world knows, all maps have errors, and it’s hard to do a really rigorous analysis on Google’s current dataset versus others. But…
- Children Map the World, Volume Two
- Remember Children Map the World, the collection of maps from the biennial Barbara Petchenik Children’s Maps Competition? I blogged about it four years ago. Now there’s a second volume; whereas the first volume covered the first 10 years of…
- Paris Underground
- While browsing in, of all places, a science fiction bookstore, I stumbled across a new book by Mark Ovenden that looked quite interesting in the brief time I had to look at it: Paris Underground: The Maps, Stations, and…
- The Map as Art
- The National Post takes a look at Katharine Harmon’s new book, The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography, which I briefly mentioned back in August. Via AnyGeo. Meanwhile, a related exhibition curated by Harmon along with Christopher Henry,…
- Mapping the Moon using Kaguya’s Laser Altimeter Data
- Here’s a map of the Moon generated by laser altimeter data from the Japanese lunar probe Kaguya, which has just been released. In this image, brighter/yellow is higher elevation, darker/red is lower elevation. This map is centred on the…
- New York Times Maps the 2009 Elections
- The New York Times’s election results page has maps for the New York City mayoral and council races, plus the New Jersey governorship. Via Map Hawk….
- Too Soon?
- Steven Citron-Pousty wonders whether Google dropped Tele Atlas before their own data was ready. “Google’s routing data sucks right now and there are no two ways about it.” Via Peter. Previously: Google Stops Using Tele Atlas in the U.S….
- ABC News Critiques CDC Flu Map
- ABC News critiques the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s map of influenza (both seasonal and H1N1) activity, arguing that it fails to show the differences in severity from state to state or within states — all but…
- The Limitations of GPS While Hiking
- Gadling reminds us that handheld GPS units do have their limitations when you hike with them in the wilderness: they don’t have turn-by-turn directions, they may not get a signal in rough terrain (e.g., in a canyon), and they’re dependent…
- NOAA Survey Vessel Hits Blue Whale
- Odd and a bit horrific: a NOAA survey vessel mapping the ocean floor off the coast of California struck and killed a 21-metre female blue whale on October 19. (The endangered blue whale is the largest animal species ever known…
- Sanborn Maps at the Library of Congress
- The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Online Checklist is the Library of Congress’s online, continuously updated version of its 1981 publication, Fire Insurance Maps in the Library of Congress. The searchable database provides listings of the 50,000 editions of Sanborn Maps…
- Mapping Manchester
- Mapping Manchester: Cartographic Stories of the City opened last June and runs until January 17, 2010, at Manchester’s John Rylands Library. From the promotional leaflet (PDF): Mapping Manchester showcases the wealth of cartographic treasures held by the University of…
- Map Cuts
- Etsy seller studiokmo produces interesting map cuts — maps of cities where the city blocks are cut out, leaving a transparent lattice of streets. So far, she’s produced maps of New York and Paris; London is next, and she…
- Astrum 2009
- Astrum 2009: Astronomy and Instruments, an exhibition of astronomical equipment, celestial globes and manuscripts taking place at the Vatican Museums until January 16, 2010, includes equipment like astrolabes and planetariums, and 16th- and 17th-century celestial globes by Coronelli and Vanosino….
- Two More Blogs
- Two more map blogs have come to my attention recently: the new ArcGIS Data Blog and El mundo de los mapas, a Spanish-language blog that has been around somewhat longer….
