October 2010
- Lego Map of Europe
- Wow: a huge relief map of Europe made of Lego — 53,500 bricks’ worth — with monuments added (not to scale). Via MAKE….
- Video Games and Navigational Skills
- A Vanderbilt University study is looking at whether playing video games improves map-reading and navigational skills. Of interest: 10 hours of first-person-shooter-style video games appears to make up the gender differences in navigational skills. Via @OrdnanceSurvey….
- Weather Bomb
- Oh, so that’s what hit us. This image of the “weather bomb” that surprised the U.S. Midwest and much of central and western Canada — it knocked out our power a couple of times earlier this week — was…
- Review: From Here to There
- From Here to There: A Curious Collection from the Hand Drawn Map Association by Kris Harzinski Princeton Architectural Press, 2010. Paperback, 224 pp. ISBN 978-1-56898-882-5 The Hand Drawn Map Association has come a long way since I first encountered it…
- An Update on Google Maps in China
- Ogle Earth reports on the future of Google Maps in China: “In short, things are still not looking up for Google. Sina’s article references government sources who state that Google will definitely not get its license by the end of…
- Free Heat Maps in Google Maps
- Via Free Geography Tools, a basic — and free — tool for creating heat maps within Google Maps. Previously: A Third-Party API for Heat Maps in Google Maps….
- The Urban Legend of Phyllis Pearsall
- Peter Watts (the British journalist, not the Canadian science fiction writer) pours cold water on the urban myth that Phyllis Pearsall walked 3,000 miles of London streets — repeated by yours truly as well as many others — to create…
- The Evolution of European OpenStreetMap Coverage
- I’m hard on OpenStreetMap sometimes, but that’s mainly in the context of the North American coverage not living up to the rather Eurocentric hype. Because Europe is definitely where it’s at with OSM, as this video chronicling the growth…
- Wikileaks Iraq War Logs Mapped
- The Guardian has taken the data from the Wikileaks Iraq war logs and plotted every death in Iraq on a map. Related article. Via Boing Boing and Google Maps Mania. See Google Maps Mania for links to other map mashups…
- New National Geographic Atlas Reviewed
- Matt Rosenberg reviews the new ninth edition of the National Geographic Atlas of the World (previously). Matt likes and recommends it: “This new edition is absolutely gorgeous, from the clear, color-coded index in the front to the legible-sized font…
- Kite Aerial Photography in Google Earth
- You may recall that our friend Frank Taylor of Google Earth Blog has been sailing around the world. Recently he made headlines because his kite aerial photography of Manihi atoll in French Polynesia, taken last May, has been added to…
- Maps on Copper Bracelets
- Etsy seller fugudesigns has a number of interesting copper cuffs, many of which have etched city maps, subway maps, or subway stops in their design. Chicago, Detroit and New York are featured. $50 apiece. Via Cartophile….
- Google Can’t Use OS MasterMap
- The Daily Mail says that Google has been denied access to the Ordnance Survey’s MasterMap and U.K. local authorities’ guides due to terms in Google’s licence. Google’s competitors don’t have such licensing terms, and the guides are available there, apparently….
- U.S. College Degrees by County
- “Americans are better educated now than ever, but the distribution of people with college degrees is growing increasingly unequal,” write Roberto Gallardo and Bill Bishop in the Daily Yonder. “And the clustering of people with higher education is creating…
- Map World: Online Maps for China
- China’s State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping unleashed its own online mapping service Thursday. Map World is presumably kosher insofar as Chinese mapping restrictions are concerned. It has both maps and satellite/aerial imagery, though the map’s design is rather ugly…
- OpenHeatMap
- OpenHeatMap is an online tool for creating heat maps and choropleth maps; it generates the maps from user data in a spreadsheet and uses OpenStreetMap tiles for the basemap. (Here’s a list of the location variables OpenHeatMap can understand.) Via…
- Maps of Martin’s ‘Song of Ice and Fire’
- Most maps found in fantasy novels are rather uniform in design, following the style of, for example, the black-and-white maps Pauline Baynes did for novels by Lewis and Tolkien. J. E. Fullerton’s maps of the world of George R….
- The Map Room on Twitter
- I’ve been on Twitter longer than most of you, but it was only this morning that I finally got around to setting up a dedicated Twitter account for The Map Room at @maproomblog. Links to all my new blog entries…
- Entitlement and GPS Lock
- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comes up with an interesting example of humanity’s sense of entitlement: how long it takes a GPS receiver to get a satellite lock. Via @wilw….
- GPS Review Has a Love-Hate Relationship with Geocaching
- GPS Review’s love-hate relationship with geocaches: “[L]ately I’ve become a bit turned off by caches placed in places where they simply shouldn’t be. While each area is different, I’d say more than half of the geocaches I’ve visited in recent…
- Ninth Edition of National Geographic’s World Atlas Published
- The ninth edition of the National Geographic Atlas of the World is now available; the official publication date was yesterday. The press release outlines some of the changes from the eighth edition, which came out in 2005: Eleven of…
- Map of a Nation: Hewitt’s History of the Ordnance Survey Is Now Available
- Rachel Hewitt’s history of the Ordnance Survey, Map of a Nation, is now available (at least in the UK; here’s the Amazon.ca listing, but it’s not yet listed on Amazon.com). Not coincidentally, Hewitt has an article about the OS…
- Geographia and Germania
- German researchers say that they have decoded references in Ptolemy’s Geographia and connected ancient Germanic settlements to present-day German cities, which “makes half the cities in Germany suddenly 1,000 years older than previously believed,” Der Spiegel reports. Via @scilib….
- The True Size of Africa
- Kai Krause illustrates how big Africa really is by cramming the shapes of other countries into it — a lot of other countries. Why do you people hate Mercator so much? Via MetaFilter….
- A Critique of OpenStreetMap
- Justin O’Bierne’s critiques of OpenStreetMap’s base map of North America — essentially, the first thing first-time visitors to OSM would encounter: the Mapnik layer — has apparently been stirring up a bit of controversy in the OSM community. Part one…
- Here Be Dragon
- Seen on Fail Blog: North America as a dragon — with Newfoundland apparently as a flaming booger. Is that a good thing? Via @cartophilia….
- Gangs of New York
- New York magazine maps gang activity in New York City (PDF). Cartographically not very much: neighbourhoods coloured where there is some, with icons indicating which gang. Then again, wouldn’t getting more detail get someone killed? Via @brownpau….
- Potlatch 2
- If you’ve been messing around with OpenStreetMap, like I have, you’re probably familiar with Potlatch, its web-based map editor. There’s now a new version, called Potlatch 2, that’s currently under development. If you’re brave enough, you can play with the…
- MapQuest Atlas
- A printed world atlas is more than a bound collection of relief maps; among the additional materials usually found in a world atlas is a section that the Oxford series calls a “Gazeteer of Nations” and the National Geographic atlas…
- What the Boy Scouts’ Geocaching Merit Badge Looks Like
- The Boy Scouts of America have released the design of their geocaching merit badge and accompanying pamphlet; both should be available by the end of the year. Via Garmin. Previously: Boy Scouts’ Geocaching Merit Badge Requirements….
- Hungarian Toxic Sludge Spill in Google Earth
- Google has announced that recent GeoEye imagery of the toxic sludge spill in hungary, taken on October 7, is now available as a KML overlay for Google Earth. The overlay view can be toggled between before- and after-the-spill views of…
- PC World Ranks Online Maps
- In one of those kinda-superficial tech-journalism articles that assigns scores to competing products and services, PC World’s Christopher Null asks, Which Online Mapping Service Is Best? Null compares Google, Bing, and MapQuest, in six categories — how well, Null says,…
- An Update on the Brubaker Case
- On MAPS-L, Rob Lopresti reports that he just learned that map thief James Brubaker, who had been sentenced to 30 months’ imprisonment for a series of book and map thefts from more than 100 libraries, but especially Western Washington University,…
- Rural Schools, Rural Poverty
- According to this interactive map from the Center for American Progress, “almost one-third of American schools are rural, and more than 40 percent of those students are living in poverty” — which is to say that the challenges involved…
- Seventeenth-Century Maps of Siberia Digitized
- An interesting post on the blog of Harvard’s Houghton Library on their recent digitization of a 17th-century sketchbook of maps of Siberia: the Khorograficheskaya Kniga of Semën Ul’ianovich Remezov. Via BibliOdyssey….
- Google Latitude Goes Desktop
- Yesterday, Google announced that Google Latitude can now be accessed directly from a desktop web browser at google.com/latitude; previously, the only way to use Latitude on a computer was via an iGoogle widget. It remains to be seen whether this…
- Ontario Woman Follows GPS into Marsh
- Reports of GPS-induced driving mishaps continue to take a darker turn. The Globe and Mail: “An Ontario woman had to be rescued from the roof of her flooded car after a GPS system steered her astray into an isolated marsh.”…
- Gizmodo on Mobile Navigation Apps
- Gizmodo ranks the best navigation apps for the iPhone and Android platforms, awarding gold, silver and bronze medals (figuratively, of course) in each….
- Huge Relief Map of California in Storage for 50 Years
- British Columbia’s Challenger Map is by no means the only very large relief map to be hidden away in storage. The San Francisco Chronicle has the story of a relief map of California that was once displayed in San Francisco’s…
- A New Map of Online Communities from xkcd
- xkcd’s updated map of online communities “uses size to represent total social activity in a community — that is, how much talking, playing, sharing, or other socializing happens there. This meant some comparing of apples and oranges, but I…
- Dumped Munitions in the North Atlantic
- This map from the OSPAR Commission’s Quality Status Report 2010 shows the locations of dumped munitions — both conventional and chemical — from both world wars in the North Atlantic. Via io9….
- Typographic Maps of Boston and Chicago
- Andy Woodruff announces a new project from Axis Maps: typographic maps — “that is, maps made entirely of typography.” Map features are rendered in repeating lines of type (see example above). Nearly every line of text in these maps…
- How Often Does Google Update Its Imagery?
- Google Earth Blog addresses the question: how often does Google update its imagery for Google Earth?…
- Man Drowns After Following GPS Directions into Reservoir
- Stories about people getting into trouble because their GPS navigation system led them astray are amusing — at least until someone dies. That’s what happened in Spain on Saturday night after a man drove his car into a reservoir, where…
- Blaeu Atlas of Dutch Cities Fetches €330,000 at Auction
- A copy of Joan Blaeu’s Toneel der Steden, a 17th-century atlas of Dutch cities, was auctioned in Amsterdam for a record 330,000 euros on Saturday. Via Cartographie….
- Somehow, It Feels Like Going Downhill
- More research into the phenomenon where people intuitively believe that travelling south is easier than north — i.e., that south is down and north is up. Via My Wonderful World. Previously: North Is Up, South Is Down….
- A GIS Book Roundup
- Adena Schutzberg reviews Muki Huklay’s Interacting with Geospatial Technologies. Despite quibbles about the graphics and the copyediting, Adena says, “This is a solid book that pulls together the research in what hopefully will be a growing area of study…
- A Roundup of iPhone and iPad Map Apps
- The Guardian’s Bike Blog reviews CycleStreets, a free iPhone app; it’s essentially turn-by-turn navigation for cyclists. UK-only, using OpenStreetMap data. Via Steve Chilton. Avenza has announced PDF Maps, a geospatial PDF reader (i.e., PDFs with embedded spatial data). Universal app…
