February 2010
- Spacing Atlantic on Mapping Halifax
- Spacing Atlantic, an urban blog covering cities in Atlantic Canada, has a series called [Re]Presenting Halifax, which looks at historical and contemporary maps and diagrams of the Halifax region. Four posts so far, including this one on Atlantic Neptune cartographer…
- The Surgical Sieve
- The Surgical Sieve, published in the British Medical Journal, is a differential diagnosis tool in the form of a London Underground map. The Collins Maps Blog has the background….
- Maps of the TV Series Lost
- The best maps of the island in the Lost TV series, from official and fan sources, as compiled by the sci-fi blog io9….
- EU Privacy Watchdog Raises Street View Concerns
- CNet reports that the European Union’s privacy watchdog sent a letter to Google outlining its concerns about Street View; in the letter, the watchdog “told Google that it should warn towns and cities before it snaps photos for its online…
- Mapping the Chilean Earthquake’s Tsunami
- I’ve found two NOAA maps showing the progress and impact of the tsunami generated by this morning’s 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile. Note that the wave is happening as I write this and that by the time you read this post…
- Londonist Wants Hand-Drawn Maps
- Londonist is putting out a call for hand-drawn maps of London: “Draw a map of your local area, be it home or work, indicating all the corners, bars, parks, features and characters that are important to you. You can…
- GovTrack’s Congressional District Maps
- GovTrack has printable U.S. congressional district maps. While the maps are high enough resolution to be high resolution at large sizes, they’re not what I’d call print-quality: based on OpenStreetMap data, they’re cluttered and not particularly pretty. Via Geospatial News….
- Time on Ricci
- It’s been covered before, but see Time magazine’s coverage of the Library of Congress exhibition of Matteo Ricci’s 1602 Chinese-language map of the world. Previously: NY Times on Ricci Map Exhibition; 1602 Ricci Map Now on Display; “Impossible Black Tulip”…
- London Bus Route Map
- Google Maps Mania and Mapperz are enthusiastic about Transport for London’s new Google Maps-based bus route map; the area bus maps, in PDF format, are some of the most confusing system maps I’ve ever seen….
- Historic Aerial Photography Online
- The Collins Maps Blog points to two major collections of aerial photography that are browsable online: the National Library of Scotland’s collection of Ordnance Survey air photo mosaics of Scotland, taken between 1944 and 1950; and the National Collection of…
- Shoddy Construction and Earthquake Damage
- The New York Times maps zones in Istanbul where poor construction could lead to a large number of deaths in the event of an earthquake; it also has a world map showing which cities in the world have large populations,…
- Cartouches
- A big blog entry from the David Rumsey Map Collection about cartouches, “the elaborate decorations that frame map titles and other information about the map,” including 50 (!) examples thereof….
- New York Times 3D Map of Vancouver Olympic Venues
- Joe Francica surveys some online maps of the Vancouver Olympic venues, and ends up preferring the New York Times’s 3D map. “My only criticism is that I wanted to get closer to the action. I had hoped to fully…
- More GPS Satellites Being Pressed into Service
- The New York Times reports that the number of operational GPS satellites will be increased over the next couple of years from 24 to 27, using spares already in orbit, to improve GPS signals in Afghanistan. The rest of us…
- OpenOrienteeringMap
- Oliver has produced OpenOrienteeringMap, an orienteering map based on OpenStreetMap data, in two formats: The Street-O map contains the level of detail equivalent to the Street-O maps used for informal orienteering races around the streets of London and other urban…
- The Last of the Wild
- The Last of the Wild “depicts human influence on terrestrial ecosystems using data sets compiled on or around 2000.” Sample maps showing the human footprint on the world and continental level are available; the data can be downloaded as…
- Tables for Determining a Globe’s (or Map’s) Age
- One way to determine the age of a recent globe (or world or regional map) is to look at the political boundaries: if you know when boundaries changed or when countries became independent, for example, you should be able to…
- Iran’s Persian Gulf Campaign Takes to the Skies
- Iran’s war to keep people from calling the Persian Gulf by another name — the Arabian Gulf — has opened a new front: map displays on airplanes’ in-flight monitors, with the Iranian government threatening to ban airlines from Iranian airspace…
- Understanding Free Ordnance Survey Data
- Simply Understand takes a stab at what the opening up of Ordnance Survey data (see previous entry) will mean, in plain language. Via Mapperz….
- More Haitian Post-Earthquake Maps
- The mapping of post-earthquake Haiti continues. ReliefWeb has a collection of useful maps, including this OCHA map of population movements out of Port-au-Prince as of last Wednesday. Via geoparadigm….
- A Map of the World in EPS Vector Format
- Alejandro Polanco Masa, author of La Cartoteca (which in my view is one of the best map blogs out there, despite the fact that he writes in Spanish and I can barely understand it), has announced a personal project:…
- Affluent Parents Afraid of Mud, Injury and Maps
- The Telegraph’s headline: Countryside ban for children because mum’s [sic] cannot read maps and hate mud. Less sensationally (and less sexist): researchers at Hertfordshire University found that affluent suburban families in the south of England were keeping their children away…
- Google Earth for Android
- The mobile version of Google Earth is now available for the Android mobile phone platform. It’s available for the Nexus One and most devices with Android 2.1. (Which, Gizmodo says, “effectively limits it to the Nexus One. The good news…
- A Geotagging Roundup: Aperture 3, Casio Exilim EX-10HG
- Aperture 3 was released earlier this month; the new release adds the geotagging features we previously saw in iPhoto ’09. (Previous versions of Aperture required plugins — for example, Maperture.) An important difference, noted by CNet’s comparison of the “carryover…
- Yahoo and Disputed Geodata
- How Yahoo deals with disputed place names and boundaries in its geodata, using Cyprus (and, more specifically, how to deal with the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus) as an example….
- Ed Parsons Receives Honorary Doctorate
- Congratulations to Ed Parsons, Google geospatial technologist and map blogger, on receiving an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Kingston University. Via Mapperz….
- Ovi Maps on the Nokia N97
- Jay Montano goes on and on about how much he loves Nokia’s Ovi Maps on his N97, now that it’s been updated to version 3.03….
- A Book Roundup
- 1. Author Reif Larsen (The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet) is speaking at Montana State University on March 8. Larsen will explore the narrative power of both cartography and literature, providing a behind-the-scenes peek into the creation of “The…
- The Known Universe
- The Known Universe, a short film from the American Museum of Natural History, “shows the known universe as mapped through astronomical observations,” zooming out from the Himalayas to the Cosmic Microwave Background and back in again. Via Christian Junk….
- TED: Blaise Aguera y Arcas Demos Bing Maps
- Via multiple sources, Blaise Aguera y Arcas’s TED talk demonstrating some of the more amazing, augmented-reality features in Bing Maps….
- TED: Lalitesh Katragadda on Google Map Maker
- Here’s Google’s Lalitesh Katragadda, speaking at TEDIndia 2009 about the impact of Google’s Map Maker on that part of the world that is not adequately mapped, particularly with respect to natural disasters. Thanks to Richard for the link….
- OpenStreetMap and the Haitian Earthquake
- This video is a visualization of the OpenStreetMap community’s response to the Haitian earthquake. Christopher Osborne explains: “In the video, each flash represents a new edit into OpenStreetMap, and this visualisation is a vivid picture of how much work…
- Two Map Exhibitions in New England
- Two ongoing map exhibitions in New England to tell you about: Map Talk: A Conversation with Maps at the JCB, at the John Carter Brown Library of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island until March 30. Via MapHist. Writing the…
- George Washington’s Yorktown Map Sells for $1.15 Million
- George Washington’s personal copy of The Battle of Yorktown, a map made by Jean-Baptiste Gouvion 10 days after the battle in 1781, sold at auction earlier this month for $1.15 million. Via MapHist and Map History/History of Cartography….
- Google Maps Labs
- Google has added Labs to Google Maps; Google has used the Labs category to offer some quirky, optional and experimental features to its established products (when Beta isn’t enough, I guess). In the case of Google Maps, that means some…
- Shuttle Radar Topography Mission 10th Anniversary
- NASA is marking the 10th anniversary of the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), which took place aboard Endeavour during STS-99, with an image gallery. Previously: Exploring Ways of Using SRTM Data….
- A Map Envelope
- Look what designer Beste Miray Dogan has come up with: envelopes lined with a Google Maps printout of the return address. Via Make….
- Geotagged Flickr Photos in Bing Maps, Street View
- Geotagged Flickr photos are now available via Bing Maps and Street View, and Rev Dan Catt, late of Flickr, bemoans the fact that that while Google and Microsoft had to use the API, “Yahoo, who has direct access to all…
- Forbes Smiley on the Silver Screen
- Actor Fred Melamed is working on a movie about Forbes Smiley, according to an interview in New York magazine: I’m writing a screenplay now, which I’m trying to direct, and it’s about a man who was a well-known map expert,…
- Social, Schmocial
- On the sidebar, you’ll notice a new Google Friend Connect box. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it yet, but if you use Google Friend Connect, you can use it here. The Map Room’s Facebook page has been around…
- PopMatters Reviews The Fourth Part of the World
- PopMatters has a long review of Toby Lester’s Fourth Part of the World (which I reviewed last December). Update: And here’s another review in the Providence Journal (via Map the Universe). Buy The Fourth Part of the World at Amazon.com…
- When Street View Comes to Small Towns
- Colby Cosh’s reaction to the discovery that his home town — Bon Accord, Alberta: population 1,534 — is now in Google Street View: [W]hat I felt was more like roller-coaster horror/panic. My memories of Bon Accord are pretty much all…
- Mapping Facebook Connections
- Pete Warden has been visualizing Facebook connections, and has noticed that some local networks form clusters in surprising ways. [I]t’s been remarkable to see how groups of them form clusters, with strong connections locally but few contacts outside the…
- IFR Enroute Low Altitude Charts in Google Earth
- Matt Fox has put together a Google Earth layer of IFR Enroute Low Altitude Charts, which are used for airplane navigation under instrument flight rules at altitudes below 18,000 feet (5,500 metres); note that the charts are not current and…
- Hey, I Can See My House
- For the rest of you, the news is straightforward: Google Street View has added imagery from Norway and Finland, and has dramatically expanded its coverage of Canada, including more than 130 cities and major highways; it’s also added ski runs…
- Mapping Missouri Opens in Kansas City
- Mapping Missouri: Maps from the Collection of the Missouri State Archives opens today at the National Archives Central Plains Region headquarters in Kansas City. “Drawing from diverse examples such as land survey maps made by Antoine Soulard from 1796-1806…
- Harm de Blij Interview
- Catholicgauze has an interview with Harm de Blij, who opines on the state of geography, geography education, and geopolitics. De Blij’s most recent book, The Power of Place (see previous entry), is on my to-read pile….
- Grover’s Map of South America
- I remember well this Sesame Street bit, starring Grover the waiter and his restaurant customer, who misses his flight to South America because Grover won’t shut up about “this wonderful, glorious map.” When I stumbled across it again tonight,…
- Leventhal Does RSS, Flickr
- Via MapHist, I learn that the Boston Public Library’s Norman B. Leventhal Map Center has a newish RSS feed. It also has a Flickr account, though that’s been up and running for some time….
- Apple, iPhone Developers, and Location-Based Ads
- Apple says that iPhone developers should not use Core Location, the API that provides an iPhone user’s location, just to provide location-targeted ads. Ed Parsons and GPS Review have what I think is the correct take on this: if you’re…
- New Maps of Pluto Show Seasonal Changes
- NASA has released new maps of Pluto, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. Even through the Hubble, everyone’s favourite Kuiper Belt Object is only a handful of pixels across, and the Hubble can only make…
- Google Earth Updates: World War II Iimagery, Higher-Resolution Sea Floor Data
- Recent updates to Google Earth include higher-resolution underwater terrain data for some parts of the ocean floor and historical aerial photography taken over European cities during the Second World War….
- Ordnance Survey Objects to Comic Novel’s Cover
- The Ordnance Survey’s lawyers are going after the publishers of a comic novel, The Hills Are Stuffed with Swedish Girls, whose cover parodies the OS’s Landranger series, Grough reports: “In place of the OS’s initialled north arrow are the…
- USAF Video on GPS
- Via GPS Review, a short promotional video from the U.S. Air Force’s Space Command about GPS:…
- Geolocation in HTML 5
- Mark Pilgrim on the geolocation API in HTML 5, which is only supported by a couple of browsers at the moment (Firefox 3.5, the iPhone, and Android). When and where it is supported, though, a user’s location can be acquired…
- Aerial Photography of New York in 1924
- Kottke notices that New York City’s mapping portal has aerial photos of the city from 1924. Deroy Peraza has some fun comparing them to aerial photos from the present day. Previously: NYCityMap….
- Radar Image of Port-au-Prince
- NASA has released a post-earthquake radar image of the Port-au-Prince region: “JPL’s Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) captured this false-color composite image of the city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and the surrounding region on Jan. 27, 2010. Port-au-Prince…
- Contour Maps in Stainless Steel
- Wapenmaps are contour maps made of stainless steel. The company, Wapentac, produces several maps of locations in various British national parks. Relatively inexpensive at £20, and small enough (17×8.9 cm) to be shipped by mail, they require some assembly…
- The iPad and Maps
- CNet has a look at maps of Apple’s forthcoming iPad. I freely admit my Apple fanboyishness and confess that I’m looking forward to this gadget. Compared to the iPhone and iPod touch, the iPad’s Google Maps application adds both…
- Geotagging Art
- Geocoded Art geotags public-domain paintings of identifiable locations. The site requires that “a) the image is a recognizable depiction of [a] specific location (not just ‘Tuscan countryside’); and b) the image be in the public domain,” but does not include…
