Yale University is considering a series of new library security measures following three (!) reviews set into motion by the Forbes Smiley case, Yale Daily News reports (not Safari-compatible). Among other things, reading rooms will be videotaped and cataloguing and internal communications will be improved. You may recall that after a thorough inventory, Yale identified 78 maps that were missing but not admitted to by Smiley. Previously: Reese Donates $100K to Yale for Map Digitization; Yale Issues Statement About Smiley Investigation; Yale’s Missing Maps; Forbes Smiley Case: Fallout at Yale’s Beinecke Library.

Meanwhile, of related interest but not explicitly about maps, this Times story about internal thefts at European libraries — in particular, the case of Reinhold K. and Ludwig M., a night porter and bookseller who will go on trial next month for stealing biology texts from the University of Erlangen.

Both links via Tony Campbell on MapHist.

Oh. So that’s how it’s done. Via Matt.

Giambattista Nolli’s 1748 map of Rome was the subject of a major web project by the University of Oregon that launched last year; a print of the map is now available for sale through that same web site. Even the special release price of $85 is not exactly cheap, but it looks like a quality reproduction to say the least: digitally remastered, high-quality paper. And, even at two-thirds the original size, it’s still a big map, at 114 cm × 133 cm. Thanks to John Emerson for the link.

Previously: Interactive Nolli Map.

Régine Debatty of We Make Money Not Art attended the Resistant Maps conference over the weekend, and has a two-part* report here and here. Summary: “It was a small, unaffected and friendly event but it was also one of the most stimulating and thought-provoking conferences I’ve attended this year.” Via Geobloggers and Maps-L. The photo at right is also by her; here are others.

Previously: Resistant Maps.

*Update, 3:45 PM: I swear, I thought she was done: here’s part three.

The Norman Transcript reports on the publication next month of the fourth edition of the Historical Atlas of Oklahoma; unfortunately (for our purposes), the article focuses on the essays rather than the maps (173 of them), which are dispensed with in a couple of sentences.

• Buy Historical Atlas of Oklahoma at Amazon.com

Robert Fisk’s column in last Saturday’s Independent, complaining about what he saw as France’s self-serving interest in maintaining Lebanese independence, includes the following passage about colonialism and mapmaking:

Amid such geopolitical uncertainties, it is easy for westerners to see these people in the borders and colours in which we have chosen to define them. Hence all those newspaper maps of Lebanon — Shias at the bottom and on the right, the Sunnis and Druze in the middle and at the top, and the Christians uneasily wedged between Beirut and the northern Mediterranean coast. We draw the same sectarian maps of Iraq — Shias at the bottom, Sunnis in the middle (the famous “Sunni triangle” though it is not triangular at all) and Kurds at the top.

The British army adopted the same cynical colonial attitude in its cartography of Belfast. I still possess their sectarian maps of the 1970s in which Protestant areas were coloured orange (of course) and Catholic districts were green (of course) while the mixed, middle-class area around Malone Road appeared as a dull brown, the colour of a fine, dry sherry. But we do not draw these maps of our own British or American cities. I could draw a map of Bradford’s ethnic districts — but we would never print it. I could draw a black-white ethnic map of Washington — but the Washington Post would never dream of publishing it. […] And by the way, when did we ever see an ethnic map of Paris and its banlieues?

There are hardly any posts up yet, but the London: A Life in Maps exhibition now has an accompanying blog. Via MapHist.

Previously: London: A Life in Maps — Now Open and Online; Peter Barber on “London: A Life in Maps”; More About “London: A Life in Maps”; London: A Life in Maps.

Oops. Thanks to a proofreading error, the Brendan T. Byrne State Forest appears as the “Brenda Bryan State Forest” on recently issued AAA maps of New Jersey. Byrne is a former state governor.

The Halifax Chronicle-Herald’s “On the Job” feature looks at mapmaking as a career and the local GIS job market (which, in Nova Scotia, isn’t huge, but still).

I was not previously aware of the existence of pocket globes: made of wood, paper or papier-mâché, from the late 18th and early 19th century, and frequently three inches or less in diameter. More about them at Dream Tree and Moon River; this page has some listed for sale, at thousands of pounds each. Via Kottke.

I can’t keep up with all the GPS product announcements — too many of them! — so as a general rule I don’t bother trying. But GPS Review’s Tim Flight e-mailed me to point out something interesting about the new GPS receivers from Bushnell: “Some of them have the ability to load satellite imagery, and aerial photography onto the device,” he writes. “Other manufacturers have talked about doing it … but looks like Bushnell beat everyone to the punch!” Note, though, that the imagery is apparently only downloadable from Bushnell’s web site. See also GPS Review on the Bushnell Nav 500, Onix 200 and Onix 200 CR.

February 11-14, 2007: 35th annual conference of the Australian Map Circle, National Library of Australia, Canberra. Via Maps-L.

May 29-30, 2007: Where 2.0, San Jose, California. Proposals due January 7. Via O’Reilly Conferences.

GeoData Blog is a French-language blog about geospatial data by Christophe Charpentier (who’s spent more than six years working on Cartosphère). Up and running since March, but really taking off in the last two months. Via Catholicgauze.

The British Library exhibition, “London: A Life in Maps,” is now open, both in real life and online. The virtual exhibition that Peter Barber referred to is now online as part of the overall London: A Life in Maps web site. Interesting to see that it presents the maps through a Google Maps interface. Via MapHist; see also Ed Parsons.

Previously: Peter Barber on “London: A Life in Maps”; More About “London: A Life in Maps”; London: A Life in Maps.

Catholicgauze has been reading a book that sounds interesting: Explorers House: National Geographic and the World It Made, by Robert Poole, a former NG executive editor. It’s an insiders’ history of the National Geographic Society, with a focus on the organization itself (and the people that ran it, replete with their racial biases, nepotism and other foibles), rather than their expeditions.

• Buy Explorers House at Amazon.com

The most recent issue of the Revue de la Bibliothèque nationale de France concerns cartography; most of the articles appear to be about early modern maps, though there’s one about the Internet as well. The table of contents, introduction and one of the articles are available online as PDFs. The issue costs €19. In French only. Via MapHist.

Over on Ask Metafilter, a question about real-time GPS data logging has gotten a few answers; the questioner is trying to get at the data (altitude, speed) that is recorded but not necessarily logged by standard software.

Ogle Earth reports on terrain and imagery upgrades in Google Earth; locations updated include 12 German cities, six British regions, the island of Oahu, and the troubled Sudanese region of Darfur.

ACME Mapper started out as a front end for TerraServer; it’s now a Google Maps mashup that adds TerraServer data (including USGS topo maps) and NEXRAD weather radar data as additional layers — though these added layers are U.S.-only. Via Catholicgauze.

Geobloggers points to an upcoming conference/exhibition in Genoa, Italy this weekend: Resistant Maps: Artistic Actions in the Interconnected Urban Territory.

The representation of territory holds a historical role in the privileges of power. Geographical data has always been in its hands. The regaining of this representation goes through description and sharing practices (often in personal perspectives too). This is possible thanks to collaborative tools and the consequent value shifting of maps. Maps are not granted anymore by structures of power, but built by individuals who, drawing on the ideas of the psychogeographical movements, redraw the urban space according to fresh new coordinates.

If you want your city to be included in Google Transit, point them to the Google Transit Feed Specification, which sets out the format in which the transit data must be encoded. Via Google Blog.

Previously: Google Transit Adds Five Cities; Google Transit.

Die Urpositionsblätter der Landvermessung in Bayern is an online collection of 19th-century topographic maps produced by Bavarian land surveyors. There are more than 900 of these 1:25,000-scale maps, put online by the Bavarian state library. Via BibliOdyssey, which shares some examples outside the map interface.

You could previously view Google Earth KML files in Google Maps, but, the Google Maps API Blog reports, you can now do a few more things with KML/KMZ files (e.g., image overlays) within the Google Maps interface.

A new book from the University of Chicago Press looks interesting: Cartographies of Travel and Navigation, edited by James R. Akerman, a collection of essays about the history of all kinds of transportation-related maps — railroads, roads, nautical and aviation. Via Maps-L.

• Buy Cartographies of Travel and Navigation at Amazon.com

Ben Keene, the editor of Oxford University Press’s atlas program, looks at the geographic changes over the past year — new parks, new countries, old cities with new names — that cartographers will have to deal with when they update their maps (previously).

Update, 12/31: See also 2006: The Year of Mapping Dangerously, also by Ben Keene.

• Buy Oxford Atlas of the World, 13th Edition at Amazon.com

The Geist Atlas of Canada: Meat Maps and Other Strange Cartographies
by Melissa Edwards
Arsenal Pulp Press, 2006. Softcover, 128 pp. ISBN 1-55152-216-0

Early on in The Map Room’s existence, we learned about a quirky feature emanating from Geist, a quarterly Vancouver-based literary magazine. Called Caught Mapping, it presented a map of Canada based on a whimsical theme that pointed to placenames that fit that theme — for example, “The Meat Map of Canada” has pointers to Lac Steak, Rump Cove and Mignon Corner. There were many others: maps of board games, house pets, automotive terms. There was a map for Margaret Atwood and a map for Stan Rogers. The feature proved very popular and went on to attract quite a bit of media attention, putting Geist on the map, so to speak. But I like to think that you heard about it here first.

Now those maps have been assembled in a book, The Geist Atlas of Canada: Meat Maps and Other Strange Cartographies, which offers a few advantages over the individual maps, at least as they’re found in Caught Mapping’s online archives. For one thing, they’re in colour. For another, facing each map is a bit of an explanation of some of the names on the map, changes since it was first published, and feedback from readers wondering why their favourite place names were left out. And, most usefully, all the place names are listed in an index at the back of the book.

Caught Mapping is essentially a work of toponymy: the modus operandi behind each map seems to be to choose a theme (for example, kitchen implements) and then searching a reference like the Geographical Names of Canada to find toponyms that fit that theme (for example, Spoon Lake). In some cases, the results turn up some very unusual placenames; in others, the association between the theme and the placename is not immediately obvious (for example, “Glenn” on the celestial map), and requires a little free association, if not a footnote. And some maps reveal placenames that sound like they’re named after someone famous, but in fact are named after someone local and otherwise forgotten.

To be honest, a collection like this can get a little repetitive. Some of the map themes are a little too precious, and each map (save two) is the same map of Canada (a “modified Geistonic projection” that is just laterally compressed) with an off-kilter compass rose. But there’s plenty here that’s entertaining and amusing. If you’re curious about unusual place names, and a bit of the history behind them, you’ll find a lot to enjoy in this book.

I received a review copy of this book. More about my book review policy.

Previously: Geist Gallery Details; Geist Exhibition, Media Coverage; Geist Mapper; Caught Mapping Archives; Caught Mapping.

• Buy The Geist Atlas of Canada at Amazon.ca

Chandu Thota is leaving the Virtual Earth/MapPoint group to join another group within Microsoft. He’s been there four years, during which time we heard about a good deal of his work. For example, some previous entries: Thota on Virtual Earth APIs; Programming MapPoint in .NET; New BlogMap API, Features.

The international bug in Virtual Earth 3D has been fixed by version 1.1, which was released over the weekend (James Fee, WLL/Virtual Earth).

Version 3.0 of MapCruncher was released Friday; changes include support for transparency and the new 3D Virtual Earth engine (James Fee, WLL/Virtual Earth). Previously: MapCruncher Update; MapCruncher.

For an exhibition that doesn’t even open until next week, “London: A Life in Maps” is generating all sorts of attention — it’s the launching-off point for this essay on mapping London by Peter Ackroyd in next week’s New Statesman, wherein he touches on everything from the Great Fire to Beck to Phyllis Pearsall. Via MapHist.

Previously: Peter Barber on “London: A Life in Maps”; More About “London: A Life in Maps”; London: A Life in Maps.

ExtremeTech has published a sample chapter of its book, Hacking Google Maps and Google Earth by Martin C. Brown. The excerpt deals with customizing the map output for a community site (e.g., icons and markers, loading data in from XML), and is heavy on the code. Via All Points Blog.

• Buy Hacking Google Maps and Google Earth at Amazon.com

Peter Barber — Peter Barber! — writes:

London: A Life in Maps will be accompanied by a virtual exhibition, available on the BL website, for people who can’t visit. Though the emphasis of the exhibition will be on the great cartographic images and panoramas of London and on the ways in which the concerns of Londoners through the ages are reflected in maps, there will be a few items that may be of special interest to map specialists (in addition to rarities like one of the original copperplates for the “Copperplate Map” of London of the late 1550s, or the sole survivor of the manuscript cartographic survey of London prepared immediately after the Great Fire of 1666 or the sole complete example of Thomas Milne’s Land-Use Survey of 1800). These are the preliminary sketches, accompanied by a brief diary, by the statistician Gregory King for a survey of St Katharine’s by the Tower in May 1686. King was one of the surveyors employed by Ogilby and this demonstrates how closely his surveying methods conformed to the practices recommended by William Leybourne. Another cartographic “special” is a manuscript sheet from an abortive and hitherto undrecorded detailed survey of London apparently undertaken in about 1800 by Thomas Milne, possibly in competition with both Horwood and Ordnance Survey.

Previously: London: A Life in Maps; More About “London: A Life in Maps.”

Even as Google was announcing a new calling feature on Google Maps, which allows people to enter their phone number on a map-based business search result and have Google connect them to that business for free (even if it’s long distance), Valleywag was pointing out the prank possibilities of the service — after all, you don’t have to enter your own number. Oh dear. (See, however, #5 on Google’s FAQ. It’s not like Google couldn’t figure out when pranking was going on.)

Our recent discussions of Yahoo! Maps’s features have focused, it must be said, on their new, beta version rather than their older, default version: you have had to choose the new version deliberately. Until today: Yahoo! announces that the beta is now default for broadband users; the older version remains for dialup. (Truth be told, modern online maps are very bandwidth intensive, as I discovered when I tried to use Google Maps on dialup.)

Also from the Yahoo! Maps and Local Blog, an announcement of their European coverage upgrades, detailing which countries got comprehensive (vs. just “major”) coverage, and which just have coverage of their capital cities.

Previously: Yahoo! Maps Road Data Upgrade.

This is interesting, even for a non-football fan like myself: NFL TV distribution maps that show which games get broadcast where, with a discussion of how that gets determined. Via Kottke.

An American Scientist article from 1996 discusses the ways in which computer algorithms might improve — or at least depoliticize — how electoral district boundaries are drawn. Taking North Carolina’s congressional districts as an example, the author, Brian Hayes, looks at some of the ways — some less ideal than others — a computer might redraw the boundaries given certain criteria. Above: the first map shows the somewhat gerrymandered status quo at the time the article was written; the second map is an example of computer-generated redistricting. Via Andrew Sullivan.

Previously: Congressional District Maps; U.S. Electoral District Ballot Initiatives; State Redistricting Pages; Texas Congressional Redistricting.

The Boston Public Library has released a list of maps classified as missing from the Leventhal Map Center. According to yesterday’s press release, the list has been released now that Forbes Smiley has been sentenced.

[T]he Boston Public Library is releasing this list in an effort to aid in the recovery of missing map materials throughout the scholarly community. Anyone who has information about, or knows the location of, any of these maps is asked to please notify Ronald E. Grim, Curator of Maps, Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library.

There’s no web page for the list, so I’m reprinting it after the jump. Via MapHist.

Meanwhile, see John Woram’s Missing Maps page, a compilation of the lists of missing maps from several libraries. Also via MapHist.

Previously on the Leventhal Center: Leventhal Map Center Web Site Launches; Forbes Smiley Case: 10 Maps Missing at Boston Library.

Previously on lists of missing maps: NYPL Issues Missing Maps List; Harvard’s List of Missing Maps; Yale’s Missing Maps.

Update, 11/16: Boston Globe coverage (via MapHist).

Continue reading this entry »

Links regarding the Virtual Earth 3D launch last week have been piling up in my files; time once more to clear out the queue and share them with you.

Brian Flood takes a good look at some of Virtual Earth 3D’s details (controls, API, file format).

Pace Frank Taylor’s initial dismissiveness, he posts some impressions after using it for a few hours.

James Fee looks at the 3D models outside the U.S., and notes that their appearance in aerial or hybrid mode only leads to some interesting results when only low-resolution imagery is available.

A localization bug prevents Virtual Earth 3D from running on computers “with regional settings specifying a numeric format that used commas instead of decimal points.” Sigh.

Stefan Geens does a comparative review with Google Earth, in considerable detail.

More media coverage from Newsweek, which gives some background on Virtual Earth 3D’s development (including the acquisition of Vexcel). Via All Points Blog.

Previously: Virtual Earth 3D; Virtual Earth 3D Roundup.

The Time-Gun Map of Edinburgh, published in 1861, overlays concentric circles to show “the time taken for the sound of the one o’clock gun to travel from Edinburgh Castle to different parts of Edinburgh and Leith.” Being able to calculate that your neighbourhood is eight seconds away, say, from the one o’clock signal and being able to set your clock that precisely — well, David Tomlinson would be elated. Via Kottke.

The Telegraph has more about “London: A Life in Maps,” the upcoming exhibit at the British Library (see previous entry). It opens on the 24th. Via MapHist.

Allan Doyle on the “life-changing” impact of a GPS: “I don’t know about you, but my mental map of greater Boston has been simplified to an abstraction that borders on the scary. Of course, I didn’t realize that until I got a GPS and started using a Nokia 770 running Maemo Mapper.”

An article in yesterday’s New York Times about collecting old road maps and other assorted gas-station paraphernalia — “petroliana.” Profiles John Margolies, the co-author of Hitting the Road: The Art of the American Road Map, who gave a recent presentation on the subject in New York recently and whose collection of petroliana the Library of Congress is in negotiations to acquire. Via MapHist.

Previously: Petrol Maps; Art of the Road; More Road Maps; Early Highway Maps.

• Buy Hitting the Road at Amazon.com

Engadget covers this weekend’s opening of Garmin’s flagship retail store in Chicago, with plenty of photos to stimulate those who would find an upscale store dedicated to GPS products stimulating. Also points to Garmin’s corporate blog, which I don’t think I saw before this.

The Greenwich Emotion Map was created by people walking around the community wearing devices that measured galvanic skin response; the compiled results suggest a collective emotional response to each location. Maps are available in Flash, PDF (20 MB) and Google Earth formats; a few have been printed, too. Via WorldChanging.

A couple of Google Earth items that made me happy.

First, via Ogle Earth, the Google Earth Automator Pack, a (still-in-development) collection of Automator actions for the Macintosh version of Google Earth.

Second, maps from the David Rumsey collection are now a Google Earth layer under “Featured Content,” Frank at Google Earth reports:

Open the folder and turn on the map that interests you. The first link shows you the locations of the different map and each description gives you a few details. You can then turn on each map and they will be overlayed in GE. Some of the larger maps are “regionated” which means they will load more detail as you get closer. I’m sure some of my mapping friends like Jonathan Crowe will be curious to see these.

You think?

Previously: Onions Have Layers, Google Earth Has Layers; David Rumsey Site Updates; David Rumsey Profile.

• Buy Cartographica Extraordinaire at Amazon.com

Google Maps has added highway and street data for some African localities, Google Karten and Google Maps Mania report. They report Johannesburg and Cairo with street-level maps; I checked Algiers and it’s got them too. Other localities have major routes only: for example, I checked Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso — it only has major routes, as do the countries I checked.

It will probably be a while before the really interesting maps of the 2006 U.S. mid-term elections begin manifesting themselves. In the meantime, we must make do with some surprisingly basic choropleth maps for the Senate and gubernatorial races, and, sometimes, no maps at all for the House of Representatives. Konquest Online rates five of the media’s offerings (via Slashgeo). As is often the case, the New York Times’s efforts are above average; a cartogram is used for the House. County maps are also provided in Senate seats at least. CNN uses a more traditional map to represent the House seats, but the maps are small; tables are front and centre. ABC’s maps are in that vein: choropleth for state-wide races, tables for the House. (Glenn isn’t impressed with their use of Google Earth on TV, either.) MSNBC uses a pushpin-based Virtual Earth/Live Local mashup, with predictably pushpin results.

So, not much to write home about yet. But if the 2004 U.S. elections were any indication, the most interesting maps will come later, and from non-media sources. Send me your links to the best of them.

Europe, at least, “now has roads, and rivers and normal map stuff like that” in Yahoo! Maps, Rev Dan Catt reports.

The Guardian reports that the British government has decided to end a subsidy to the Ordnance Survey. The subsidy appears to have had two purposes: one, to ease the OS’s transition from a state-run agency to what is referred to as a “trading fund” (essentially, a state institution run like a business); and two, to subsidize the mapping of regions that would not otherwise be economical to map — “mountains and moorlands,” precisely the places where, when people get lost or planes crash, accurate maps are needed.

While abrupt, this decision was in the works for years, and in fact the subsidy’s annual amount has been shrinking since it began in 1999. The OS says it’ll continue to make such unprofitable maps, but one expert predicts that prices for all their maps will have to rise to make up the difference. It’s a bit more complicated than it sounds, because the OS’s status is complicated, and I don’t pretend to understand a bit of it. Via All Points Blog.

The Atlantic Neptune, “a magnificent four-volume atlas of sea charts and views of the east coast of North America, published during the American Revolutionary War by Joseph Frederick Wallet Des Barres (1722-1824),” has been scanned and put online by the National Maritime Museum. Via MapHist.

The Library of Congress has a map of the congressional districts for 2006. Via MapHist.

Much attention is being paid to Ottawa County, Michigan, for providing maps of real-time election results through its GIS and County Clerk offices. IE only, unfortunately, so I can’t see them. Catholicgauze, James Fee, Very Spatial.

The Party Affiliation Map mashes up polling, precinct and other data from Leon County, Florida using Map.Net Server 2007. IE/Firefox. Via Via Virtual Earth.

Episode 68 of A Very Spatial Podcast has electoral geography as its topic.

Roundups of election maps online: Catholicgauze (Part One), Catholicgauze (Part Two), Geospatial Semantic Web Blog.

More when, you know, we actually have some results come in.

Previously: Google Earth U.S. Election Layers.

In other Virtual Earth news, a localized version for Japan was also launched yesterday, replete with geocoding, yellow pages, road maps and satellite imagery.

Reactions to, and follow-up stories about, yesterday’s announcement of Microsoft’s Virtual Earth 3D thingy (previously):

The AP story focuses on the Microsoft vs. Google implications of this release (via MapHist).

In that vein, Frank Taylor at Google Earth Blog says, noting the specific system and browser requirements (IE 6 or 7, plugin, Windows XP SP2), “I don’t really see this as a big threat to Google Earth.”

Chandu Thota notes that the 3D version of Virtual Earth/WLL uses the same API as the 2D version.

James Fee has a bunch of quick posts about this: a first look with screencaps, advertising, only one window at a time, comparing the eye candy with Google Earth, and, um, Camden Yards.

Map GIS News Blog Etc. Etc. has a couple of posts on the announcement and using it in a London context (looking at the UI and the imagery).

Virtual Earth 3D made the CBS News, the WLL/Virtual Earth blog reports. Note, please, that Microsoft product getting on TV isn’t exactly groundbreaking.

Between high-rise buildings and easily accessible satellite imagery, buildings’ roofs are getting a second look — not just by casual viewers dinking around with Google Earth, but by architects, the L.A. Times reports. Sometimes the impact of new mapping technology turns up in surprising places. Via All Points Blog and Google Earth Blog.

CNet reports the launch of Virtual Earth 3D, a component of Live Search that integrates three-dimensional models of 15 U.S. cities (so far) into search results — a flyover/Flight Simulator view, I suppose. Comes with virtual billboards for advertising. Microsoft’s press release is here.

Update, 6:25 PM: The WLL/Virtual Earth blog has more, including a great big screenshot and a movie (Windows Media).

The Austrian National Library has put online 50 maps from its collection, spanning five centuries. Sorted by century (from the 15th to the 19th) and with one of those zoom interfaces. Text and interface in German only. Thanks to peacay for the link.

Not every GPS receiver has driving directions; not every GPS user needs them. There are, in fact, plenty of GPS receivers for other users, and have been for years; you just don’t hear about them as much. Recently, GPS Tracklog took a look at GPS units for cyclists and runners.

Previously: Walking Directions.

Update, 11/07: Hikers, too.

Via Make: Blog, DIY map fold-outs that you print, cut, and fold into a polyhedron. Mark Wilson used one to make a unique, rhombicuboctahedral gift wrapper (shown here).

Or, if your tastes run to metal rather than paper, and you have a plasma cutter instead of a pair of scissors, you could use digital map data to create an eight-foot metal globe. Also via Make: Blog, as you might imagine.

Aaron Koblin took FAA flight data and made some flashy animations out of the flight paths. Via atlas(t).

The Antique Map Price Record is a CD-ROM-based reference tool that bills itself as more than just a listing of map prices (at auction, for example); it also contains reference images and bibilographical material, according to the publisher, who also maintains a list of antique map dealers on the site. Now in its 21st edition (vols. 1-16 were in book form), the CD-ROM sells for $149; updates to previous editions are $50. (Note that Mac support is touch and go: the Mac version is an OS 9/Classic app that will not work on Intel-based Macs.) I imagine that map collectors rely on this, or something like it, rather heavily. Via Map the Universe.

The Onion Radio News: Local Father Fails to Forcibly Re-Fold Map.

Today I received the following letter, dated October 30, from the Canadian Minister of Natural Resources, Gary Lunn, in response to my letter asking him to overturn the decision to stop producing paper topographic maps. You will recall that shortly after I sent that letter (but almost certainly before it arrived), Mr. Lunn did, in fact, reverse that decision.

The text of the letter:

Dear Mr. Crowe:

Thank you for your letter of October 5, 2006, expressing your interest in the continuing availability of paper topographical maps. We have received a large number of letters and e-mails from citizens such as yourself from across the country on this issue.

Immediately upon learning of the former government’s plans to eliminate the production of paper topographical maps, I reversed the decision., I recognized that electronic maps would not be acceptable to many current users and decided that we should offer the option of both paper and electronic versions.

This government recognizes the need to continue to supply high quality, current geospatial information for its citizens, either directly or through private-sector distributors.

At this time I am pleased to inform you, and to assure you, that you will be able to receive either paper or electronic maps produced by Natural Resources Canada.

Again, thank you for writing and bringing this issue to my attention. Your intervention did indeed matter and influence my decision.

(Not my intervention; it arrived too late. But in the aggregate this was true: letters and e-mails surely mattered in this case.)

A scan of the letter after the jump.

Continue reading this entry »

From Lifehacker, a top-ten list of map mashups that aren’t based on Google Maps. Thanks to Joel Riggs for the link.

Platial has introduced MapKit, which integrates their service, built atop the Google Maps API, into your web page or blog (though there seem to be issues with certain blogging engines, including WordPress and Blogger). It looks profoundly easy to set up, and, once integrated, it can include reader-submitted pushpins, video, imagery and so forth. Coverage of this release from O’Reilly Radar, All Points Blog and Google Maps Mania.

See also Platial’s blog, Platial News and Neogeography.

Previously: Neogeography; Triangulations: March 27.

Carl Weber’s thesis that the Marquette Map is a hoax received a rough reception at a history conference last month: apparently, many historians aren’t buying his claims or his evidence, suggesting that they can be refuted “in about five minutes.” See the comments on this thread. As is often the case with academic controversies, this one goes ad hominem pretty fast, and I don’t pretend to know who’s on the side of right here. These comments were posted before I posted my original entry on this subject (but after I had done the research); I really ought to have incorporated the controversy into that post. Via MapHist.

A good article on geotagging in today’s New York Times that could stand as a general introduction to the subject: it explains how geodata can be assigned to photos, discusses the photo-sharing services that support it, and mentions a few of the hardware options. (GPS-equipped cameras are not widely available yet, so workarounds, whether hardware-based like Sony’s little gadget or manually adding location data to each photo, are required.) Via All Points Blog and About.com Geography.

A new beta of Google Earth 4 adds previously pay-for features (drawing paths and polygons) to the free version, brings altitude to image overlays (critical for weather, among other things) and includes other refinements, Google Earth Blog reports.

See previous entry: New Google Earth Beta.

Mapz: A GIS Librarian takes a look at some mapping-related Firefox extensions: All Your Maps Are Belong to Us, which converts URLs for other mapping sites to Google Maps; GMiF, which embeds a Google Map on a Flickr photo page if the photo is geotagged; and Get Directions from Google Maps, which generates a Google Map by right-clicking a highlighted address on a web page. Definite Google-centric trend here.

See previous entry: Firefox 2.0 and Online Maps.