April 2010
- Slate Receives Hand-Drawn Maps
- Julia reports back on the submissions she received after she asked readers to send in hand-drawn maps. “Slate readers sent in nearly 200 maps, and they ranged from hasty scribbles on scrap paper to elaborate, multicolored renderings. No matter what…
- New Canadian Map Data in Google Maps Fixes Old Mistakes, Creates New Ones
- Google Maps is using new map data in Canada, abandoning the Tele Atlas data with which I had so many problems in September 2008. According to Google, “In Canada, we’ve made use of data from organizations such as the National…
- How to Read an Ordnance Survey Map
- As part of a series on learning new life skills, Sam Watts learns how to read an Ordnance Survey map. Though not necessarily how to fold them. They’re, ah, big. Via OrdnanceSurvey….
- Flights Resume over Europe: A Visualization
- This video is a visualization of the resumption of flights over European airspace after everything got shut down due to volcanic ash. ITO World combined flight data from flightradar24.com with OpenStreetMap map data; there are some gaps in coverage…
- Earth View in Google Maps
- Nearly two years after releasing a browser plugin allowing Google Maps API developers to embed Google Earth into a web page, Google has integrated “Earth view” into the Google Maps site itself: “Earth” is now a tab beside “Map” and…
- The Guardian on ‘Magnificent Maps’
- Speaking of Magnificent Maps, today’s Guardian has an article about the exhibition….
- Magnificent Maps Blog
- We’re one week away from the opening of Magnificent Maps at the British Library; in the meantime, there’s an accompanying curators’ blog, which started up earlier this month. Via Mapperz….
- Earth Observatory and Eyjafjallajökull
- NASA’s Earth Observatory has posted a lot of images of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption; handily, there’s an index. Previously: Eyjafjallajökull and European Airspace; Eyjafjallajökull….
- Will Google Bring Turn-by-Turn Navigation to the iPhone?
- Several Apple-oriented sites I follow have reported that Google, fresh off its launch of Google Maps Navigation in the U.K. and Ireland, may be about to release turn-by-turn navigation for the iPhone. That was based on the following line in…
- IBM’s Tiny World Map
- Another entry in the microscopic-map sweepstakes: IBM researchers, demonstrating a new manufacturing technique, have created a tiny three-dimensional map of the earth. At 22×11 µm, it’s smaller than the 40-µm map of the world I blogged about in January,…
- Antarctic Geospatial Information Center
- The University of Minnesota’s campus paper, The Minnesota Daily, takes a look at the University’s Antarctic Geospatial Information Center (AGIC), which provides maps and GIS analysis to Antarctic researchers….
- The Disappearing Aral Sea
- Cartophilia and The Map Scroll look at the Aral Sea, once the fourth-largest lake in the world, now all but dried up due to irrigation diversion. The above time-lapse video captures the Aral Sea’s disappearance. NASA’s Earth Observatory has…
- Google Maps Navigation Comes to the U.K. and Ireland
- Previously U.S.-only, Google Maps Navigation is now available in the U.K. and Ireland on Android phones. Jemima Kiss of the Grauniad’s PDA blog runs it through its paces. This being satellite navigation in Britain, hilarity is predestined to ensue. Here’s…
- A Book of Hand-Drawn Maps: From Here to There
- Cartophilia reports that the book of hand-drawn maps collected by the Hand Drawn Map Association (see previous entry) is coming out this fall: Princeton Architectural Press is publishing From Here to There: A Curious Collection from the Hand Drawn…
- Leica’s Geotagging Camera Is a Rebadged Panasonic
- Leica has announced the V-Lux 20, a compact digital camera with a built-in GPS (Digital Photography Review, Photography Blog). It’s essentially a rebadged Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS7 (TZ10 outside the U.S.), similarly equipped with an onboard GPS, the announcement of…
- Mapping Apple’s Top U.S. Market Areas
- According to a market analysis by Experian Simmons, about 21.6 percent of U.S. adults own some Apple product or other, Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech reports. A map shows how each market area deviates from that norm, with the national average…
- Qinghai Earthquake Imagery in Google Earth
- Google hasn’t completely abandoned China; high-resolution imagery taken after last week’s earthquake in Qinghai is now available through Google Earth (KML link)….
- Another British Map Roundup
- So it’s map week on BBC Four, with both Maps: Power, Plunder and Possession and The Beauty of Maps to watch (at least if you’re in the UK, grumble), and the British Library’s big exhibition opens at the end of…
- Ordnance Survey 1, Swedish Girls 0
- JonesCat Publishing, the company publishing The Hills Are Stuffed with Swedish Girls, a comic novel with a cover parodying the Ordnance Survey’s Landranger map series, is throwing in the towel and going out of business, Grough reports; the company…
- Shannon Rankin
- Shannon Rankin slices up maps to create new forms: “While bearing traces of the original form, I deconstruct maps to create new geographies, suggesting the potential for a broader landscape.” Her portfolio is extensive (and is also reproduced on…
- Jason LaFerrera’s Wildlife Map Collages
- Jason LaFerrera makes images of wildlife out of collages out of old maps. From Jason’s artist statement: “The textures and contours of old maps are fascinating, even the tattered and stained parts. In this series, I digitally manipulate cartographic…
- Eyjafjallajökull and European Airspace
- The Norwegian Meteorological Office has put together a time-lapse animation showing the spread of the ash cloud emitted by the Eyjafjallajökull volcano. I’ve converted it from the original animated GIF, which is nearly 14 MB, and uploaded it here….
- Mapping the Muni
- Eric Fischer took publicly available data from the Muni — the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency — showing the geographic coordinates of their vehicles to create this map showing average transit speeds over a 24-hour period. “Black is less…
- Updated Maps of Saturn’s Moon Dione
- The Jet Propulsion Laboratory continues to release updated maps of Saturn’s moons based on Cassini imagery. Yesterday was the turn of the fourth-largest Saturnian moon, Dione: JPL released two polar stereographic maps of the northern and southern hemispheres, as…
- ‘South Africa is Oprah’s Territory’
- Here’s a lighthearted interactive map showing the celebrity recolonization of Africa — which is to say, which African countries have become the pet project of which A-list celebrity. What, no love for Guinea-Bissau? Via Andrew Sullivan….
- World Debt Cartogram
- Ben Hennig’s cartogram showing each country’s debt-to-GDP ratio really emphasizes just how screwed North America, western Europe and Japan really are. Credit: SASI Research Group (University of Sheffield). Via Geospatial News and La Cartoteca….
- Google Maps Adds Driving Directions in 111 Countries
- Google Maps announces driving directions for 111 new countries, largely in Africa, central Asia, Central and South America, and island countries around the world (from Aruba to Vanuatu)….
- Eyjafjallajökull
- There are satellite images of the ash clouds thrown up by the eruption of the volcano under Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull glacier; the one above, captured by NASA’s Terra satellite on Wednesday, shows the ash plume following a straight line from…
- British Map Roundup: Parker in the Telegraph, BBC TV Series
- Mike Parker has an essay in the Telegraph that refers to the two upcoming BBC TV series and British Library exhibition; Parker’s Map Addict, which I reviewed last October, is now available in paperback. As for those two BBC series,…
- Garmin Oregon 450 Reviewed
- On GPS Tracklog, Rich Owings has a review of Garmin’s Oregon 450 handheld GPS receiver. (I’m finally at a point where I can read such reviews and understand what they’re getting at.) Rich recommends it: “The Oregon 450 is…
- Recently Observed GPS Quirks
- I drove to Toronto and back over the weekend. I knew the way, but I used my Garmin nüvi 255W (see previous entry) to navigate. Of course, there were some quirks. I have the following observations about what it…
- Comic Book Cartography
- Comic Book Cartography collects maps and diagrams from comic books — more the latter (e.g., cutaways of superheroes’ headquarters) than the former so far. Via Boing Boing, among others. At right: Jack Kirby’s World of Kamandi. Previously: The Marvel…
- Boy Scouts’ Geocaching Merit Badge Requirements
- The requirements for the Boy Scouts of America’s forthcoming geocaching merit badge have been released, though the badge itself has yet to appear. Via geoparadigm….
- Edward Weller’s 1868 Map of London
- MAPCO, which makes high-resolution scans of antique maps available online, has added a lot of material since I first blogged about them in 2007; one of their more recent additions has been showing up a lot in my Twitter…
- Five Years of Google Maps Mashups
- Mike Pegg, now with Google, returns to his old stomping grounds at Google Maps Mania to muse on the fifth anniversary of the first Google Maps hack. “Keep in mind that an API for Google Maps did not yet exist….
- British Election Previews
- With an imminent general election in the U.K., we should be getting our hands on some examples of electoral map cartography. There are already some early examples of the form, showing the state of things going into the campaign: the…
- Another Look at MapArt’s Founders
- Here’s another profile of MapArt’s founders Hart and Rita Schwerdt, this time from Inside Toronto. The retrospectives seem to be coming because, at 70, they’re handing over the reins to their son. Previously: Mapmobility/MapArt Founders Profiled….
- Review: National Geographic World Atlas
- National Geographic World Atlas is a $1.99 application for the iPhone and iPod touch (iTunes link) that provides high-resolution scans of National Geographic’s wall maps. Included are standard, executive and satellite versions of National Geographic’s world map in the…
- Living Proof
- The Globe and Mail on a new book co-published by Ecotrust Canada and the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, Living Proof: The Essential Data Colection Guide for Indigenous Use-and-Occupancy Map Surveys by Terry N. Tobias: “The book, seven years…
- New York Times Taxi Map
- Via multiple sources, the New York Times’s taxi map shows the average number of taxi pickups by street for Manhattan for each hour of the week — an incredibly deep portrait of where New Yorkers get their cabs. (Interesting to…
- Ordnance Survey OpenData
- The Ordnance Survey made a bunch of its mapping data freely available on April 1; lists of downloadable data are here and here. ESRI Mapping Center discusses the data; via AnyGeo, GeoWeb Guru and Mapperz. The Independent covers the release…
- Navigation Apps and the iPad
- I’ve expressed my enthusiasm before about what the iPad could do for mobile mapping, especially the 3G models with GPS and ubiquitous network connectivity: take everything that’s been done with the iPhone, and quadruple the screen real estate —…
- 3D Street View
- A 3D mode for Google Street View, requiring 3D glasses, turned up yesterday, which made me wonder whether it was a time-limited April Fool’s gag, but it’s April 2 and it’s still there. Moreover, the mode actually works. Jennifer found…
- Another Solar Eclipse Map
- Regarding my previous post about solar eclipse maps, Michael Zeiler writes to point to his map of solar eclipses from 2010 to 2050 (4 MB PDF), which uses a Mollweide projection (which he prefers to cylindrical projections used in…
- Google Maps Envelopes
- Not a Google initiative or an April Fool’s gag, Google Mail Envelopes is a project by two industrial design students at Syracuse University, who posit a “send envelope” button in Gmail that prints a map showing directions from the…
