July 2010
- Why More Cameras Don’t Come with GPS
- On the New York Times’s Gadgetwise blog, Rik Fairlie asks why more digital cameras don’t come with GPS. “[C]amera makers say they haven’t adopted widespread use of GPS radios in cameras because it’s expensive — it can add almost $100…
- Ottawa Citizen Profiles Tomlinson
- With “father of GIS” Roger Tomlinson receiving the National Geographic Society’s Bell Medal earlier this month, the “local-boy-makes-good” story is inevitable: the Ottawa Citizen has a profile. (This is not his first major award; he’s already got the Order of…
- Londonist’s Directory of London Maps
- Londonist has put together a directory of online maps of London. Via geoparadigm….
- Aquatic Dead Zones, Etc.
- A couple of interesting global maps were posted to NASA’s Earth Observatory site earlier this month: land surface temperatures for early July 2010 and, above, aquatic dead zones — “areas where the deep water is so low in dissolved…
- Isochrone Maps in Google Maps
- Google Maps Mania links to resources on how to create an isochrone map — i.e., a map that shows travel time from a given point by drawing lines like topographic contours — within the Google Maps environment….
- The Map and the Mind
- In this brief excerpt from The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains published on the National Geographic Assignment Blog, Nicholas Carr argues that mapmaking and map reading have advanced the development of abstract thinking. Via geoparadigm. Buy…
- An Astronomy Roundup: Mars, Microsoft and More
- Three related astronomy-related items: Microsoft’s Terapixel project reprocesses images from the Digitized Sky Survey and makes “the largest and clearest image of the night sky ever produced” available in Bing Maps and WorldWide Telescope. More at HPCWire. Via Gizmodo. Staying…
- Darker Than You Think
- Last year, Sky and Telescope’s Tony Flanders questioned the accuracy of the standard light-pollution maps, noting that in certain areas, local conditions were considerably darker than the maps indicated. Now Tony reports on some new developments: In a recent…
- Map Lampshades
- Lampshade designer Sarah Walker makes lampshades out of maps. She’s used Ordnance Survey and Bartholomew maps, likes using out-of-date maps “because I prefer the look of the print colours and enjoy the recycling aspect,” and even applies strips of…
- This American Life on Mapping in 1998
- Geoparadigm uncovers an antique — September 1998! — episode of This American Life on mapping, which features Denis Wood and Toby Lester (on sounds — Waldseemüller was still in his future). Streaming audio or download for a dollar….
- Google Updates Borders
- On a related note, Google has announced improvements to borders for 60 countries. From the examples given, the borders are in some cases much more precise and higher in resolution, and in other cases more closely reflect the geopolitical reality…
- The Washington Monthly on Google and Disputed Maps
- Read The Washington Monthly’s article on the troubles Google has encountered when presenting disputed names and boundaries in Google Earth and Google Maps. The problem, it seems, is that governments and people protesting various boundary and name disputes (Arunachal Pradesh…
- Free as in $2.99
- A new twist from the company I posted about earlier this month that was flooding the iTunes app store with hundreds of $1.99 and $2.99 offline map viewers that use OpenStreetMap tiles. All Points Blog reports that they’re now offering…
- New Map of Global Forest Heights
- Scientists have released a global map of forest canopy heights based on NASA data. “Although there are other local- and regional-scale forest canopy maps, the new map is the first that spans the entire globe based on one uniform…
- Atlas of Historical County Boundaries
- Douglas Knox writes, “Thought you might be interested to know the Newberry recently completed the digital Atlas of Historical County Boundaries. It has historical boundaries for every county in the U.S., dated to the day, freely available online for noncommercial…
- Why Your GPS’s Voice Is Annoying
- CNN’s article, Why GPS voices are so condescending, is more ambitious than its headline: it looks at the limitations of computer speech in general, and why it has the limitations it does. For GPS navigation devices — which is where,…
- GPS Tracklog Reviews the Garmin nüvi 3790T
- Now that I’m using GPS receivers on a regular basis, I seem to be linking to Rich Owings’s reviews on GPS Tracklog on a regular basis. Here’s his review of the new Garmin nüvi 3790T, part of a series…
- iPad as Navigation Tool
- Working from the idea that it’s counterintuitive to use the iPad as a navigation device due to its size, Forbes.com looks at users and software developers who are nevertheless gravitating to using the iPad in just that manner. There’s more…
- Another Look at ArcGIS for iOS
- James Cheshire offers his first impressions of the new ArcGIS iPhone/iPod touch/iPad app. I’m continuing to poke away at it on my iPad, but as I’ve said before, people who know their ArcGIS are better situated to evaluate this…
- NGS Awards Medals to Tomlinson, Dangermond
- Last week, the National Geographic Society honoured two giants of the GIS field — Roger Tomlinson, who practically created GIS in the 1960s while working for the Canadian government, and Jack Dangermond, and ESRI/Esri founder/president/CEO Jack Dangermond — with the…
- No Dig, No Fly, No Go Reviewed
- Mark Monmonier’s latest, No Dig, No Fly, No Go, is reviewed on the H-HistGeog mailing list by Richard Harris. “Had this book arrived without its cover, the author would have remained obvious. This is a Mark Monmonier text through…
- Traverse Me: Jeremy Wood Walks Warwick Campus
- Jeremy Wood has been creating maps from his GPS tracklogs for years. His latest project, a work commissioned by the Warwick Arts Centre’s Meade Gallery, is an intricate map of the University of Warwick’s 300-hectare campus, which he walked…
- Two More Blogs
- Old-Map-Blog posts scans from the author’s collection of antique maps; so far they seem mainly to be from German-language atlas plates. GPSFix focuses on Garmin’s outdoor GPS receivers….
- Google Maps and Short URLs
- Yes, it’s a small thing (pun intended), but short URLs for Google Maps links is both handy and overdue — and a feature that OpenStreetMap actually had first….
- MapQuest Embraces OpenStreetMap
- In an interesting development, MapQuest has launched a site that combines OpenStreetMap mapping data with its user interface and routing directions. MapQuest Open is limited to the U.K. for the time being (a wise decision considering the state of OSM…
- Google’s Oblique Imagery Graduates
- Google’s bird’s-eye oblique imagery has graduated from the API and Google Maps Labs to a spot on the main Google Maps page, at least for a few locations (a couple in Europe and a bunch in South Africa and the…
- Magnetic Declination Calculator
- NOAA’s magnetic declination calculator is handy: enter your coordinates and date and get the difference between magnetic north and true north. Where I live it’s more than 13 degrees, which explains some troubles I’ve been having getting an equatorial telescope…
- Daily Serving on Whose Map Is It?
- Daily Serving takes a look at an exhibition I told you about in May: Whose Map Is It? New Mapping by Contemporary Artists, at Rivington Place in London until July 24. Thanks to Heather Kinsinger for the link. Previously: Map…
- Thermal Map of Antwerp
- This thermal map of Antwerp and the surrounding region measures heat loss from rooftops. In Flemish. Via Ogle Earth….
- Mapplers, an Online Atlas of Hand-Drawn Maps, Seeks Contributors
- Tara Pattenden writes, “I am working on a collaborative atlas made entirely of handdrawn maps. You can see the current results here: www.mapplers.org. I am looking for other people who are keen to be involved in this project. Either…
- ‘A Wrong Turn You Have Made … to the Dark Side’
- First Darth Vader, now Yoda….
- ArcGIS for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch
- ESRI’s ArcGIS for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch is now available in the iTunes app store. It’s a free download that, among other things, provides access to ArcGIS Online. I’ve installed it on my iPad and have been…
- Renewable Resource Maps
- Renewable resources information company 3TIER has produced a number of resource maps showing such things as wind speed, solar irradiance and precipitation to suggest renewable-energy potential; at right, for example, is a map showing global mean wind speed at…
- Mark Monmonier on Restrictive Cartography
- Mark Monmonier has an article in New Scientist about “restrictive cartography” — the same topic as his latest book, No Dig, No Fly, No Go (see previous entry). What I call “restrictive cartography” is not in itself new. Property maps…
- Europe According to Estonians
- It’s a little over a year old, but I’ve only come across it now: Europe According to Estonians. Worth it for the cartography alone….
- Strait Through: Exhibition at Princeton University
- Strait Through: Magellan to Cook and the Pacific, an exhibition from July 17, 2010, to January 2, 2011, in the main gallery of Princeton University’s Firestone Library, documents “the drama of the unfolding exploration of the Pacific Ocean that followed…
- Twenty-Five GPS Devices, One Windshield
- Crossroads, a short video by Garvin Nolte, is a piece of installation art in which a driver drives around with 25, count ’em, 25 GPS navigation devices giving voice directions — a comment, says Nolte, on “the influence of…
- 976 Map Apps and Counting
- I’m trying to decide whether this passes the smell test. While searching for navigation apps for the iPad to check out for possible review, I came across scores and scores of street map apps that were identical except for the…
- LRB on ‘Magnificent Maps’
- Another review of the Magnificent Maps exhibition going on right now at the British Library, this time from Peter Campbell in the London Review of Books. Via MapHist….
- You Can’t Use Your Cellphone’s GPS to Navigate Your Car in Massachusetts
- A new Massachusetts law signed by Gov. Patrick on Saturday bans using a cellphone for navigation; standalone GPS receivers are still okay. In other words, using a TomTom device is okay, but using TomTom’s iPhone app while in the car…
- My Head Is a Map
- Kuntspedia has put online an electronic version of My Head Is a Map, a 1973 festschrift honouring map dealer R. V. Tooley, with essays on the history of map-making and map collecting. It’s also available for download as an e-book,…
- The Making of the Atlantic Neptune
- We’ve heard about The Atlantic Neptune, an 18th-century multi-volume atlas of the eastern shores of North America produced by J. F. W. des Barres. Jeffrey Murray returns to the pages of Fine Books and Collections magazine (see previous entry) to…
- GPS Tracklog Reviews the Garminfone
- GPS Tracklog has a hands-on review of the T-Mobile Garminfone; Rich is impressed with Garmin’s GPS-enabled entry into the U.S. smartphone market, but is concerned that the phone, which runs Google’s Android OS, is stuck at Android 1.6 and…
- GOCE Satellite Maps Earth’s Gravity
- The GOCE satellite has produced a highly detailed map of the variations in the Earth’s gravity field. It shows the difference between the regular ellipsoid shape that is used to represent the Earth’s shape and the geoid — a…
- Nuclear Explosions, 1945-1998
- “1945-1998” by Isao Hashimoto is a video that maps 2,053 nuclear explosions — all but two of which tests — conducted across the globe; only North Korea’s recent tests are excluded, as they occurred after this video was made…
- Lost at Sea: The Ocean in the English Imagination
- An exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., Lost at Sea: The Ocean in the English Imagination, 1550-1750, includes a number of maps from the period that, according to Alice Hudson, writing on MapHist and MAPS-L, map aficionados…
- Big Trouble for Google in China?
- Recent reports from China are leading to speculation that Google Maps (and, by extension, Google Earth) may not be long for that country: All Points Blog, Ogle Earth. Previously: China to Crack Down on Online Maps. Update, July 9: At…
