August 2010
- Three Tropical Storms
- Check out this image taken yesterday by Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite GOES-13 of Hurricane Danielle (top), Hurricane Earl (lower left) and a developing tropical depression (now Tropical Storm Fiona). Here’s one from this morning, more up to date but…
- Some Thoughts on Facebook Places
- The announcement of Facebook Places frankly reminds me of the last rollout of location services by an Internet giant: Google Latitude. The media freaks out about the privacy implications (see Lifehacker on how to disable the feature). Hardly anyone can…
- Garmin Edge 800 Announced
- It’s Garmin night tonight, apparently. (This is what happens when I start paying attention to consumer GPS devices.) Garmin announced the Edge 800, a touchscreen GPS for cyclists, today. Rich’s post points out the pertinent details and differences about…
- Garmin Announces Nüvi Recall
- Yesterday, Garmin announced a voluntary recall of some 1.25 million nüvi 200W, 250W, 260W, 7xx and 7xxT GPS receivers; 796,000 of those were sold in the U.S. Garmin has identified potential overheating issues when certain batteries manufactured by the third-party…
- GPS Tracklog Reviews the Garmin GPSMAP 62s
- I know I link to Rich Owings’s reviews on GPS Tracklog all the time, but I’ve been interested in the GPSMAP 62 since it was announced and was looking forward to his review of the GPSMAP 62s (the middle…
- U.S. Quilt Map Gone Awry
- On Regretsy, a blog about mishaps posted to Etsy stores, a quilted map of the United States gone a wee bit awry. Via John Reiser….
- National Geographic World Atlas: Eighth Edition on Sale, Ninth Edition Coming Soon
- The National Geographic Store is having a limited-time sale on the deluxe hardcover eighth edition of the National Geographic Atlas of the World. Normally $150, it’s now only $60 — at least until midnight tonight. The reason for this…
- xkcd: I Don’t Want Directions
- xkcd again. Oddly enough, I was like this before GPS: give me your address, I’ll find it on a map and figure out how to get there. People navigate differently; those who don’t navigate like this don’t get those…
- Mapping the Australian Elections
- Useful interactive map of the Australian elections from ABC Australia: a Google Maps mashup that’s better than most; clicking on a constituency (or “electorate,” as the Aussies call them, and they are wrong) brings up data for it on the…
- iExtMap for iOS Reviewed
- James Fee reviews iExtMap, a mobile GIS viewer for the iPhone and iPod touch (it’ll work on an iPad, but not natively). iTunes link. Despite some issues, “I think there is a ton to like about iExtMap,” says James. “Out…
- Fata Morgana: A Map Minus Everything Except Labels
- Damon Zucconi’s Fata Morgana strips Google Maps of all the imagery — no coastlines, bodies of water, or roads — leaving only the labels behind. Zoom out and all you see is country names; zoom in close enough and you…
- Carbon Monoxide and Russian Wildfires
- NASA has released movies showing the carbon monoxide levels present in the air as a result of the recent wildfires in Russia. “They show three-day running averages of daily measurements of carbon monoxide present at an altitude of 5.5…
- Before and After Images of Pakistan Floods
- These dramatic Landsat 5 images show a portion of southern Pakistan before and after the second wave of flooding hit; the images were taken only three days apart. More satellite images of the flooding in Pakistan here. Via Daily…
- The Privacy Implications of Geotagging
- Via many sources, including Tim O’Reilly, here’s a New York Times article about the privacy implications of geotagged photos, which implications generally boil down to whether the person taking said photos with a GPS-enabled camera (usually a smartphone like an…
- Greg’s Cable Map
- Greg’s Cable Map, a Bing maps app showing all undersea cables, including their landing points, data rates, and lengths. Via Mark Graham. Previously: Undersea Cable Maps….
- Obesity and Transportation
- Good correlates how Americans get to work with obesity rates in a map-like infographic that is, well, information-dense and hard to follow at a glance. You have to look closely at each state’s box to see where they rank….
- Chinese Media on the ‘Impossible Black Tulip’
- I don’t think this short article from Paul Fraser Collectibles on Matteo Ricci’s 1602 Chinese-language map of the world adds much to what we already know, but it does include the above video from Chinese media coverage of the…
- The World’s Population by Latitude and Longitude
- Keir Clarke points to this interesting infographic by Bill Rankin that plots the Earth’s population by latitude and longitude. A certain amount of this has to do with available land area — i.e., where the continents are. (I’ve taken…
- Map Watches
- Jennifer points (1, 2) to map watches here and here; note the unusual movements required in each case. Don’t ask how much they cost: I don’t know. Neither you nor I could afford it anyway….
- Geek.com Reviews the Garmin GPSMAP 62
- Geek.com reviews the base model of Garmin’s new GPSMAP 62 series, which replaces the venerable GPSMAP 60 series. The reviewer is not a fan of the user interface or the included base maps, but is impressed by the unit’s…
- Two-Thirds of Britons Admit to Getting Lost: Ordnance Survey
- The Ordnance Survey Blog on the results of their survey on driving and navigation: “Our results show that two thirds of the population admit to regularly getting lost, a figure that soars to nearly eight out of ten in London,…
- Open Maps of Georgia
- Here’s GlobalPost on efforts by a U.S.-funded non-governmental organization, Open Maps Caucasus, to map the country of Georgia — one of the emptier spaces on online maps. Their maps use the same mapping engine as OpenStreetMap, but OSM’s maps of…
- Journeys Beyond the Neatline
- If you’re in Edmonton, an exhibition in the University of Alberta’s Cameron Library, Journeys Beyond the Neatline: Expanding the Boundaries of Cartography, featuring two artist-cartographers affiliated with the university — Michael Coulis and Matthew Rangel — is on now…
- Auroral Activity Maps
- Aurorae are in the news due to the recent coronal mass ejection; NOAA’s maps of auroral activity are found on this page. “The plots on this page show the current extent and position of the auroral oval at each…
- Mapping U.S. State Debt
- This map illustrates a CNNMoney article on increasing levels of debt taken on by U.S. state governments; the map shows the amount of debt per state resident. It’s not as much as you might think: “The median state debt…
- Human Development Index Along the U.S.-Mexico Border
- This interesting map from the 2009 Human Development Report shows the human development index (HDI) in U.S. counties and Mexican municipalities along the U.S.-Mexico border. “What is interesting is that the lowest HDI county on the U.S. side (Starr…
- KickMap: Its Design History, Plus My Review
- Eddie Jabbour’s KickMap — an imaginative redesign of the New York subway map that tries to address the confusing and complex network of express and local lines — first came to my attention in 2007. Since then, the KickMap…
- Review: AllSubway HD for iPad
- AllSubway HD is an iPad app that collects more than 100 subway and mass transit maps from cities around the world. That’s about all that can be said about it: it’s essentially an image viewer, with no other features,…
- Imagining a Hartford Metro
- Brian Cook has imagined a Metro for the Hartford, Connecticut area, and designed a map redolent of Harry Beck’s London Underground and the style of the Paris Metro. He’s doing a limited print run, too. Via Mark….
- More on Google and Disputed Geography
- Public Radio International’s The World interviews John Gravois, author of the Washington Monthly article on Google’s attempts to be a neutral arbiter of disputed place names and boundaries. The audio segment is about four and a half minutes long. Via…
