January 2010
- Washington Post on OpenStreetMap
- The Washington Post’s article about OpenStreetMaps’s “citizen cartographers” portrays it as the efforts of what I guess could be called lovingly obsessive locals who care more about getting it right than “a couple of guys driving a truck down a…
- Envisioning the World
- A travelling exhibition of early printed maps, Envisioning the World: The First Printed Maps, 1472-1700, comes to the Princeton University Library on February 7, and runs until August 1. Through the language of cartography, the maps in the exhibition illustrate…
- 1979 California Water Atlas Now Online
- The David Rumsey Map Collection announces the online availability of The California Water Atlas, “a monument of 20th century cartographic publishing.” When the atlas came out in 1979, it got rave reviews from both historians and scientists. Charles Wollenberg,…
- Jenkins Garrett
- Via MapHist, news of the death of Jenkins Garrett, a Fort Worth, Texas, lawyer and philanthropist, at the age of 95. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram obituary makes no mention of it, but Garrett was a map enthusiast and founding president…
- Off the Map: Seattle-Area Map Art Exhibition
- An exhibition of map art titled Off the Map opens February 12 at the Kirkland Art Centre in Kirkland, Washington (a suburb of Seattle). “Recognizing our increasing dependency on maps, the artists in Off the Map present alternative perspectives and…
- British Library to Hold Map Exhibition, BBC to Air Two Map Series
- This will be a busy spring for maps at the BBC, which has announced that BBC Four will run two television series on maps: a three-part, one-hour series called Mapping the World and a four-part, one-hour series called The Art…
- Two Animated Historical Timelines Map Modern Empires’ Decline
- Here are two animated historical timelines that map geopolitical change over time. This one from the British National Archives, which maps the 20th century, proceeds by period; it gets a few colours wrong here and there, and I’m not sure…
- Chicago Transit Authority Foot Tattoo
- An interesting story on the website of Chicago-area antique map store George Ritzlin Antique Maps and Prints: “The most unusual map we’ve ever encountered recently walked (literally) into our gallery. A nice young woman mentioned in the course of…
- OpenStreetMap and Me
- All the attention OpenStreetMap has been receiving of late with respect to the Haitian earthquake prodded me to stop procrastinating, sign up for an account there, and poke around with it a bit. In what I think was a wise…
- Ordnance Survey Histories Available Online
- Grough reports that the Ordnance Survey has made two previously published official histories of the organization available online: A History of the Ordnance Survey, published in 1980, and Ordnance Survey: Mapmakers to Britain Since 1791, published in 1992. Previously: The…
- Haitian Earthquake: Links for January 24
- A series of maps based on satellite imagery, including maps of damaged building density and oil spillage, from SERTIT. In English and French. Via Dave Smith. Gaia GPS has released a free iPhone app that is intended to help disaster…
- New Exhibition: Writing the Earth
- Writing the Earth: 2,000 Years of Geography and Mapping opens on Saturday, January 30 at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut and runs until May 2. ArtDaily: “The exhibition features a selection of world maps that were printed between 1511…
- Fifty Equal U.S. States
- Neil Freeman’s map imagining 50 U.S. states with equal populations, thereby equalizing congressional overrepresentation from small states and rural areas, is making the rounds of the blogosphere (and Twitterverse™) lately (see, for example, here); we first saw it five…
- Election Map Glitch: Coakley Defeats Brown
- The Boston Globe website briefly had Martha Coakley winning the Massachusetts Senate election over Scott Brown with 100 percent of polls reporting long before the polls had closed, the Boston Herald reports (in typical journalistic Schadenfreude-with-respect-to-the-competition fashion). It was a…
- Anti-Mafia Map Printed for German Tourists
- A tourist map financed by the German embassy in Rome indicates which shops in Palermo, the capital of Sicily, don’t pay extortion money to the Mafia, AFP reports. Inspired by the Addiopizzo movement protesting widespread extortion payments to the Mafia,…
- Sony Digital Camera Has a Compass
- Sony has announced a digital camera, the evocatively named DSC-HX5V, that adds a compass to its built-in GPS. Based on my experience shooting with a GPS logger, direction is a useful bit of data to add; the question is…
- Bing Maps Silverlight Out of Beta
- The Silverlight version of Bing Maps is out of beta, and will become the default over time; those averse to installing Silverlight can still use the default AJAX version. Previously: Bing, Google and MapQuest Add Each Other’s Features….
- Mumbai Maps Missing
- Maps dating back to the early 1800s have been disappearing from the vaults of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai, The Times of India reports: Almost nothing remains of the entire set of maps that date back to 1803-04: they depict…
- Haitian Earthquake: Links for January 22
- This false-colour image of Haiti was taken by the ASTER instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite yesterday. The 15-cm-resolution imagery I mentioned in an earlier entry is available for download from Google; the very large files are intended for GIS…
- Toby Lester to Speak in Boston-Area Library on Sunday
- Toby Lester, author of The Fourth Part of the World, the very fine book about the Waldseemüller Map that I reviewed last month, is speaking this Sunday at the Hingham Public Library in Hingham, Massachusetts, just southeast of Boston….
- William G. Dean
- The University of Toronto’s Department of Geography and Planning reports the death last month of geography professor William G. Dean: “Bill will be best known to University of Toronto geography students, where he taught for over 30 years, and to…
- BBC Radio 4 Series on Maps Coming in March
- Thanks to the Collins Map blog, we know that there will be a series on maps on BBC Radio 4 coming in March: On the Map will be a series of 10 15-minute programs running Monday to Friday at 3:45…
- Ovi Maps Now Free for Nokia Smartphones
- Nokia announced this morning that Ovi Maps for its smartphones, including turn-by-turn navigation, will be free from now on — an inevitable result, I suppose, of two things: the rapid transformation of maps and navigation on mobile devices from paid…
- Google Street View Comes to Sweden, Denmark and British National Trust Properties
- Google Maps Mania reports that Street View imagery is now available in Sweden and Denmark, as well as National Trust properties in the United Kingdom. Update: Google’s announcement; Italy, Taiwan and the U.S. got Street View updates as well….
- Martian DTMs
- High-resolution digital terrain models (DTMs) of the Martian surface, created from stereo images taken by the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The upshot is an extremely detailed topographic/terrain map of the Martian surface — think the Terrain…
- A Zoomable Folding Paper Map
- So, how do you implement zoom on a paper map? Here’s how: each square of the “map2” folds out to reveal a smaller-scale map of the same area. Beyond neat; Anne Stauche’s £8 map of London is the only…
- NY Times on Ricci Map Exhibition
- The New York Times has a review of the Library of Congress’s exhibition of Matteo Ricci’s 1602 Chinese-language map of the world, which, it turns out, is being displayed across from the Library’s copy of Martin Waldseemüller’s map. (Seems appropriate.)…
- Haitian Earthquake: Links for January 20
- Satellite and Aerial Imagery Last night, Google released imagery of Port-au-Prince at even higher resolutions (15 cm) than before (above). The images were taken on Sunday, January 17, and will be available in Google Maps, in Google Earth by some…
- Soft Maps: Map Quilts of Cities
- Soft Maps are quilted maps of cities and neighbourhoods; the maps are stitched into the quilt through a combination of hand and machine stitching. Not inexpensive, to be sure; a number of cities are available, as are custom orders….
- Natural Disasters in 2009
- Reinsurance company Munich Re reports on losses due to natural disasters in 2009; their maps (PDF) reveal, among other things, the high level of insurance losses due to severe weather in the U.S., and the impact of climate change….
- Forbes Smiley Reportedly Released
- There are reports that Forbes Smiley, who was sentenced to 3½ years in prison in September 2006 after admitting having stolen nearly 100 maps from various libraries, was released from prison on Friday: Geolounge, Philobiblos. Smiley, you may recall, was…
- Haitian Earthquake: Links for January 16
- NASA’s Earth Observatory on the above image: “While not detailed enough to reveal earthquake damage to houses and buildings, this regional view of Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, on January 15, 2010, illustrates some of the physical obstacles that have complicated the…
- Mapping Zombies
- io9 and MetaFilter collect a series of maps produced last September on an alternate history discussion board illustrating zombie (and golem) attacks throughout history. At right, The Scourge of 1866 by Nymain1….
- Bing Maps Streetside Imagery for Vancouver, Whistler
- Bing Maps has added Streetside imagery for Vancouver (well, some of it) and Whistler in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics. See also Mapperz. Previously: Bing, Google and MapQuest Add Each Other’s Features….
- Chinese Censorship Infographic
- David McCandless’s infographic showing what keywords and websites are blocked by China’s Great Firewall is an interesting design. Other versions here and here. Via Andrew Sullivan. Buy The Visual Miscellaneum at Amazon.com…
- Haitian Earthquake: Links for January 15
- SERVIR produces maps and data for Central America and the Caribbean, including maps for disaster support. Maps of the Haitian earthquake produced to date include damage assessments from satellite imagery, including damage to Port-au-Prince’s seaport, and a map showing…
- ESA Satellite Imagery of Port-au-Prince
- The European Space Agency says that new satellite maps of Port-au-Prince are being produced. Data are being collected by various satellites including Japan’s ALOS, CNES’s Spot-5, the U.S.’s WorldView and QuickBird, Canada’s RADARSAT-2, China’s HJ-1-A/B and ESA’s ERS-2 and…
- Mapping the Destruction in Port-au-Prince
- The New York Times has produced an extremely effective interactive map showing satellite imagery of Port-au-Prince before and after the earthquake in Haiti. The trouble with looking at the GeoEye-1 satellite’s post-earthquake imagery in its raw form is that it…
- Pobediteli: Soldiers of the Great War
- Pobediteli: Soldiers of the Great War was a Russian Internet project created in 2005 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II (in the former Soviet Union, the Great Patriotic War). It involves an incredible…
- A Gentle Introduction to GIS
- A Gentle Introduction to GIS (114-page PDF; online supplements here) is a beginner’s guide that uses the open-source Quantum GIS for its examples; the project was sponsored by the government of Eastern Cape, South Africa. Via GIS Lounge and Slashgeo….
- Two More Blogs
- Geocurrents, a blog “based on the proposition that geographical knowledge can greatly enhance our understanding of current events” (submitted by Samuel Franco). GIS in Education and Curriculum Integration (via Jesse)….
- Sea Level Isn’t Level
- Altitude on maps is given using sea level as a baseline. But sea level is not a constant, NASA/JPL oceanographer Josh Willis explains: “Even though it’s sometimes convenient to think of the ocean as a great big bathtub, where turning…
- Mapping the Haitian Earthquake
- This post will be updated as needed. Earthquake maps of Haiti and the surrounding area from the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earthquake Hazards Program; these include the ShakeMap (above), which maps the intensity of the quake. Google reports that they’re…
- About BART’s New System Map
- Rachel Berger compares BART’s new, geometric system map with its wigglier, geographically accurate antecedent, providing the now-familiar (for those of us following the debates on subway system map design) context from other cities’ subway systems. Honestly, I’m not sure…
- 2010 Olympic Sites
- Natural Resources Canada has produced a 42×45-inch poster showing the sites for the 2010 Winter Olympics in and around Vancouver. It’s a 1:250,000 topo map with 1:50,000 insets. Interestingly, the base map is in the old topo map format, while…
- 1602 Ricci Map Now on Display
- A copy of Matteo Ricci’s Impossible Black Tulip — a rare 1602 Chinese-language map of the world — is now on display at the Library of Congress. It’ll be there until April 10; after that, it will move to its…
- The New Yorker Looks at ‘Paris Underground’
- Mark Ovenden notes (with obvious delight) that his book about the Paris Metro, Paris Underground (which I reviewed in November 2009), got a glowing mention on the New Yorker website (much like Strange Maps did in October). Previously: Review:…
- A Wish List for a Perfect Fieldwork GPS
- Leszek Pawlowicz imagines a the perfect fieldwork GPS: “I keep getting asked by field professionals what the best handheld GPS is for serious field work. I have to tell them that there isn’t a single model currently available that does…
- Mapping Netflix Rentals
- I’m awfully impressed by the New York Times’s interactive map showing Netflix rental patterns, by neighbourhood, for a dozen U.S. cities. That’s an incredibly complex amount of data to display — especially when you consider that there’s a map for…
- Smallest Map of the World
- It’s still about a hundred times larger than this nanometres-wide map of North America, but the 40-micrometre map of the world produced by the Photonics Research Group of Ghent University-IMEC is almost certainly the smallest map of the world….
- More on the Vinland Map Controversy
- Debate about the authenticity of the Vinland Map continues to rage (as subscribers to MapHist will readily attest). A brief summary is now on About.com (via Matt). That summary points to this site on the controversy, which is still under…
- Distances and Grades
- Interesting discussion at Ask MetaFilter: the original question wasn’t phrased this way (or all that well), but essentially it’s whether changes in elevation make any difference in the distance travelled. For example, is a road with a lot of 10…
- Galileo Satellite Contract Awarded
- I’ve been remiss in covering the other global navigation satellite systems aside from GPS — such as Russia’s GLONASS system, completion of which was delayed by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the European Union’s forthcoming Galileo system, which…
- Chris Yates’s Second Interstate Highway Diagram
- Chris Yates writes: “You covered my old simplified interstate map about 3 years ago, and I wanted to let you know I’ve created a new, revised edition that addresses many of the errors and omissions of the original. Hopefully…
- It’s Cold All Over
- It’s not just Europe: NASA’s Earth Observatory provides the same data mapped to a polar projection of the entire northern hemisphere: “This image illustrates how cold December was compared to the average of temperatures recorded in December between 2000…
- Map Scale Calculators
- A map’s scale can be expressed in several ways: as a ratio (e.g., 1:50,000) or by comparing units (e.g., one inch equals one mile). Converting between the different methods isn’t difficult, but it does take a little math. Free Geography…
- Globetrotter XL
- Globetrotter XL is an online geography game with a twist: you’re given the name of a city and challenged to put it on the map, but your score is determined by how close to the target you can get, in…
- Treehugger’s 22 Most Amazing Maps
- Treehugger’s 22 Most Amazing Maps Changing How We See the World is a collection of environmental maps they saw and liked over the past year. “The year 2009 brought us some incredible maps, illustrating things like how the earth’s carbon…
- Exploring Ways of Using SRTM Data
- The Integrity Logic blog looks at some of the things that can be done with elevation data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM); it gets particularly interesting when the SRTM data picks up artificial structures like skyscrapers and landfills….
