Relief maps have finally come — natively, that is — to Google Maps with the release of its “Terrain” layer (the Hybrid layer moves to a checkbox on the Satellite layer, hiding or revealing street data). As is often the case with Google, they aren’t the first — Ask.com, Virtual Earth and Yahoo have had this for some time now — but according to Catholicgauze, “Google wins because of more detail, better zoom, and downright prettiness.”

This will be perfect for my map of hiking trails in the Canadian Rockies.

ABC Australia has a nice Google Maps-based map of the results of last Saturday’s elections; there’s also a Google Earth network link (via Google Earth Blog). Links to other maps of the Australian election results welcome.

Can’t get to Chicago for the Festival of Maps? (No. Dammit.) Fortunately, says Navteq’s Kevin Lenane, there’s an online version of the vaunted Field Museum exhibit. “This is the virtual gallery we did for the Field Museum Maps Exhibit,” Kevin writes. “It is, as far as I can tell, the only interactive 3D replica/gallery of a museum on the web. Essentially it’s a map of the Maps exhibit. Would love to hear your thoughts.”

Previously: Festival of Maps Update: Book, KML; Festival of Maps Now Open; Major Field Museum Exhibition Announced (Again); Chicago’s Festival of Maps.

Mad props to two new blogs: Jamie’s Cartophilia, a blog from an enthusiast’s, rather than a professional’s perspective (which sounds oddly familiar); and Richard’s Tech Reviews, a spin-off of his Science Library Pad, which despite its name had quite a few entries (which I linked to) about one of his obsessions, GPS loggers — an obsession that is already on display on the new site. Congrats and best wishes to both.

Flickr Places organizes geotagged photos into location-based pages — even my little town gets its own page. Meanwhile, Flickr’s map goes from pushpins to tags, which may necessarily not be an improvement. Announcements: Flickr Blog, Yahoo Local and Maps Blog.

Previously: Flickr Feeds.

Garmin has withdrawn its $3.3-billion bid for Tele Atlas, leaving TomTom free to nab the company. Instead, Garmin has struck a deal with Navteq, their current map data supplier, to guarantee access to that data through 2015. Via Engadget.

Update: TomTom’s new bid is valued at $4.2 billion (€2.9 billion). Via Engadget.

It’s more of the same: truck drivers sent down narrow streets in Llangadog, Wales, by their satellite-navigation systems are crashing into buildings. Via Engadget.

This is happening too often to fall under the “random idiot” section of the news, however much Engadget or I like covering such incidents. Almost every story comes from Europe, and I have to wonder why. It occurs to me that the narrow and unusual roads on which these drivers invariably ensnare themselves are a rare thing in North America — on this continent, even the most disused back road can usually accomodate a tractor-trailer — whereas in Europe they’re much more common. So I have to ask: Is this a European phenomenon? To what extent are narrow roadways involved? To what extent is the complexity of a centuries-old road network implicated? And to what extent do people rely on GPS navigation systems to navigate that network?

BART, the San Francisco Bay area rapid transit network, is getting new network maps, SF Weekly reports. The new maps will, in the words of a BART spokesman, “have more straight lines” in the idiom of other, diagrammatic maps of subway networks (the archetype of which is Beck’s Tube map); the current map, a thumbnail of which you can see in this post, is much more geographically accurate — which, as the article points out, is doable with an uncomplicated network such as BART’s.

The FBI has recovered two more maps stolen from the Spanish National Library, Reuters reports; out of a total of 19 stolen maps, that makes 11 that have since been recovered. Via Map the Universe.

Previously: Map Thief Surrenders; Some Maps Stolen from Spanish Library Recovered; Map Theft Updates; Spanish Map Theft Update; Maps Stolen from Spain’s National Library.

Joost Depuydt’s new blog, Maps and More, seems to be taking a turn towards maps in advertising and graphic design so far.

A highlight of Vancouver’s Pacific National Exhibition grounds was George Challenger’s massive — at 26×24 metres — exaggerated-relief map of British Columbia, which was on display at the B.C. Pavillion until that building was torn down in 1997. Saved from destruction, the map has since been in storage until a new home could be found. (There was an unsuccessful attempt, chronicled here, to get the map into a new convention centre, and the provincial government stopped paying the storage bills after a couple of years.) The National Post now reports that the map will be repainted and reassembled in a vacant airport warehouse, though no permanent display space has yet been identified. I saw this thing as a kid, and to say it’s impressive is an understatement. Thanks to Melissa Edwards for the link.

“The University of Chicago Press has a special web feature to celebrate the publication of Maps: Finding Our Place in the World, the book that accompanies the exhibit currently at the Field Museum in Chicago,” writes Dean Blobaum. “The online feature is called ‘What Is a Map?’ and includes zoomable images of unusual maps from the book, including historical maps, maps of imaginary worlds, and maps on objects, such as the left-handed glove mapping the London Exhibition of 1851. Variable magnification of the images reveals details that cannot be seen otherwise.” (Links added.)

Meanwhile, Andrew Turner has assembled a KML file of the exhibit locations.

• Buy Maps: Finding Our Place in the World at Amazon.com

Kenwood announced a pen navigation system at the Tokyo Motor Show: details are sparse (see also Coolest Gadgets and Engadget), but it seems to involve a pen that, when scanned over a paper map, transmits data wirelessly to a GPS system. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how this works — does it require special, machine-readable maps? — or what problem, exactly, this solves (if any).

Last week, the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec announced the English-language publication of a book that highlights the cartographic collections of that institution. Mapping a Continent: Historical Atlas of North America, 1492-1814, coauthored by BANQ map librarian Jean-François Palomino and historians Raymonde Litalien and Denis Vaugeois, is a translation of La mesure d’un continent, published earlier this year. From the press release:

Featuring about 40 chapters on subjects as varied as Amerindian cartography, Acadia, North American place names, the Northwest Passage, the hydrography of the St. Lawrence, and England’s conquest of Canada, Mapping a Continent is superbly illustrated with some 200 old maps and prints, taken for the most part from BAnQ’s collections but also from several other famous collections from Canada, the United States and Europe.

The atlas has notably benefited from the participation of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, which holds some of the most beautiful cartographic treasures of New France. At once a reference work and a collector’s item, Mapping a Continent also includes very useful indexes on place names and the aboriginal presence in North America.

More at Kartentisch and Map the Universe.

More information about the BANQ’s map collection is available on their web site.

• Buy Mapping a Continent at Amazon.com
• Buy Mapping a Continent at Amazon.ca

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names got a little bit more visibility recently, with a story in the October 25 edition of USA Today about the disconnect between what an unincorporated settlement in Iowa calls itself — Frytown — and how it appears on some maps — Williamstown. To make matters more confusing, it’s Frytown on Iowa road signs and maps, but Williamstown on online and federal maps. The Board is on the case, but it might take a while; there’s a sidebar that highlights some other cases the Board is working on.

Chicago’s Festival of Maps officially opened on Friday; in addition to its new website, which went live in September, there is also a Festival of Maps blog to help us keep track of the proceedings. And there’s a lot to keep track of: the media coverage alone is immense, and I’ll try to update this blog entry with as much of it as I can. I’m just annoyed that I won’t be able to take any of it in.

Previously: Chicago’s Festival of Maps.

Media coverage: The Chicago Tribune has a special section and blog dedicated to the festival. See also: Go on a maps quest (11/01); Maps help us define our place in the universe (10/27); Map festival to show how far we’ve come (9/18). Other stories:

• Screens, exhibit put world within reach (Daily Herald, 11/04)
• New exhibits in Chicago help find the way (Aurora Beacon News, 11/01)
• Map exhibits help navigate history and “who we are” (USA Today, 11/01)
• Maps from the past on display (WLS-TV, 10/29)
• Off the charts (Time Out Chicago, 8/30-9/05)

Blog coverage: Anything Geospatial, Chicagoist, Map the Universe.

Mentions of individual exhibitions at the Chicago History Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Oriental Institute Museum, and the Chicago Botanic Garden. The big one, of course, is Maps: Finding Our Place in the World at the Field Museum (see previous entry). A list is available via the main Festival of Maps site.

The Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology has released a new Geologic Map of Montana, the first since 1955. The four-foot-by-seven-foot map costs $60 in plain paper and $85 in glossy paper. More from the Billings Gazette.

The Colorado Springs Gazette profiles ski resort illustrator James Niehues, whom we first encountered in March 2006. “For 20 years, Niehues, 61, has been North America’s preeminent ski resort illustrator — the guy who paints the trail maps for almost every mountain from Whistler in Canada to Portillo in Chile. … Since [1988], he’s become alpine skiing’s Annie Liebowitz. He’s painted 144 mountains (including all but a few in Colorado) and an array of aerial views of national parks, golf courses and swanky island retreats. Each has his stylized block signature in the corner. He does 17 to 20 jobs a year, charging from $3,800 to $13,000, depending on the size of the job.”

Three months after TomTom’s €1.8-billion bid for Tele Atlas, Garmin is making a play for the digital mapping data company, with a $3.3-billion bid of its own — a bid fueled by a concern that Garmin not be forced to buy its mapping data from a competitor (an inevitability if TomTom owned Tele Atlas, since Nokia has acquired Navteq). More news coverage: AP, CNN, Investors Business Daily. Blogs: Engadget, GeoCarta, O’Reilly Radar, Valleywag.

It’ll be interesting to see if a bidding war ensues: TomTom has been given until the 8th to match Garmin’s offer or Tele Atlas will terminate their takeover agreement (via All Points Blog). And Garmin’s bid may well succeed: their market capitalization is four times TomTom’s. Still, the Motley Fool argues that Garmin’s ploy is to make its competitor match its bid and pay through the nose for Tele Atlas, since Garmin’s data provider has historically been Navteq (with Tele Atlas providing data to TomTom) (via All Points Blog).

My completely uninformed impression is that once TomTom made the play for Tele Atlas, mapping data clients immediately responded as though this is a game of musical chairs: each desperate to avoid being left standing without a mapping data provider. Trouble is, there are only two chairs in this game — Navteq and Tele Atlas — and more than two major clients.

The BBC reports on the recently released World Digital Magnetic Anomaly Map, which measures the slight variations in the Earth’s magnetic field. The map, available through the Commission for the Geological Map of the World, is a compilation from many different sources — some private, some hitherto secret. Via Free Geography Tools and Infonaut.

I am required to report the following item from the Daily Mail: “A lorry driver who was led off course by his sat nav got his HGV [heavy goods vehicle] so tightly wedged in a narrow country lane he had to spend three nights sleeping in his cab before being rescued.” Via Engadget.

Speaking of election maps, The Electoral Map is a relatively new blog that’s all about them (at least within an American context). What I find interesting is that the maps featured on this blog are definitely about elections and politics, but that there’s more to election maps than mapping the results. Via Catholicgauze.

Swiss TV station Schweitzer Fernsehen (SF) has an interactive map of the results of Switzerland’s 2007 federal election. In German, natürlich. Thanks to Abram for the link.

Street names are becoming a source of confusion in rapidly growing Visalia, California: as the city expands, street suffixes change from rural “roads” to urban “streets,” “avenues” and “boulevards” in conformance with Visalia’s conventions. Which leads, as you might expect, to quite a bit of confusion, especially when maps can’t keep up with the changes — unsurprising in rapid-growth areas, as we’ve learned.

• Stefan reports that Google Karten has moved to gkarten.blogspot.com.
• The ESRI Support Center blog has moved to blogs.esri.com/Support/blogs/supportcenter.

National Geographic Maps has started a blog called Contours, which is being hosted on BlogSpot until their main site is relaunched in January, according to an NG Maps representative.