A couple of articles by Derrick Story about geotagging went up on Macworld’s website back in April: one that looks at four automatic methods of geotagging, and one on using the geotagging features of iPhoto ’09, taking manual geotagging as a starting point. Via Richard.
Divine Sky: The Artistry of Astronomical Maps is a small online exhibition featuring a selection of celestial maps from the library holdings of the University of Michigan.
Divine Sky focuses on the fertile period between 1600 and 1900 that produced some of astronomy’s greatest treasures. This astronomical Golden Age was a time when “the art of science and the science of art enjoyed a unique period of reciprocity.” In revisiting it we are transported to a world where art and science were well balanced and in each other’s service, where the universe seemed smaller, and where the skies were filled with familiar characters from myth and legend.
Divine Sky is divided into four sections. Two deal with star charts: single-sheet celestial maps, and atlases, which form their own genre. All are examples of celestial cartography, a largely mathematical discipline whose goal is to accurately translate the celestial sphere onto the two-dimensional space of the printed page. In contrast, other astronomical maps focuses on diagrams that represent various cosmological theories; these provide insight into historical scientific debates over the structure of the cosmos, and into the evolution of the individual’s relationship with the universe. Drawings and early photographs contains drawings of specific astronomical objects and phenomena, providing a more personal insight into one astronomer’s way of seeing.
At right: Planisphere celeste septentrional, Philippe de La Hire (1702). Via MapHist.
All Points Blog points to a forthcoming iPhone/iPod touch application called Old Map App, which, the developers say, “displays layers of geo-referenced historical maps projected onto a modern coordinate system, so that the same location can be compared over time. Layers can be faded, adjusted, and explored freely. If the user is located within the region of the historical map, the user’s position will be mapped on the old maps to the position of the compass indicator.” The site has a short video demo.
The caption for this photo from the White House’s Flickr photostream: “President Barack Obama looks at a map donated to the White House by the National Geographic Society, in the Oval Office, June 10, 2009.” Official photo by Pete Souza. The map in question is probably this one (affiliate link to National Geographic store).
A post on the Geographicus blog about using antique maps (and reproductions thereof) as decoration: “[T]he decorative qualities of fine maps are widely recognized by interior designers who appreciate their beauty and design flexibility. Depending on the individual map, presentation, and context, a rare or antique map can be modern, traditional, abstract, figurative, serious or whimsical.”
Cambridge Mobile Urban Sensing equips volunteer pedestrians and cyclists with pollution sensors linked via Bluetooth to mobile phones; the result is a real-time map of Cambridge’s air quality — or at least the air quality along the routes the volunteers travelled. The Guardian has more on the project and its implications — I don’t think we’ve ever had pollution maps so fine in resolution, or with data so immediate. Thanks to Richard Akerman for the link.
Every year, Steve Chilton writes to remind us of the summer school put on by the Society of Cartographers; this year’s summer school takes place at the University of Southampton from September 7 to 9, 2009. This year’s themes include emergency mapping, crowdsourcing data and collecting and using crowdsourced data, the Ordnance Survey and its data, transport data, and others (see the draft program).
Previously: Society of Cartographers Summer School 2008.
“I love Bucky, but Cahill’s map is a lot better.” That’s how Gene Keyes opens his latest project, which he describes as “an interlinked set of 17 profusely illustrated web pages detailing the evolution and defects of Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion map. I contrast it with the octahedral projection of B. J. S. Cahill (1866-1944), published in 1909, and developed over a thirty-year period.” Gene, the person behind the B.J.S. Cahill Butterfly Map Resource Page (which I told you about two years ago), is understandably partisan about Cahill’s map (above left) — but, he says, that’s not to say that he’s got a hate on for the Dymaxion (above right):
My purpose here is not to diminish Fuller, but to show that if Cahill had already made a better map than such a visionary as Bucky, it is a feather in Cahill’s cap, not a demerit for the Dymaxion. Fuller’s map was a milestone toward the invention of the geodesic dome: achievement enough. But his map is a poor teaching tool which does not match well with a globe, and that is where Cahill succeeds.
And you thought Gall-Peters vs. Mercator was the only cartographic feud out there.
But 17 pages? That’s almost as long as one of those online camera reviews.
Previously: Myriahedral Projections; Cahill’s Butterfly Map; Dymaxion Map Projection.
After last week’s launch, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has now settled into orbit around the Moon. A USGS press release points out the cartographic aspects of the LRO’s mission: “Among the instruments carried on LRO, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) will acquire high-resolution stereo images that will allow the USGS to create detailed topographic maps of specific sites. USGS maps can be used to prioritize which sites are of the most interest, to guide robotic spacecraft or astronauts to safe landings, and to plan surface operations, including roving and possibly construction on the surface of the Moon.” The LRO’s mission page sets out the data that will be recorded and the instruments that will be recording it; this page on the LRO Camera provides more information on that instrument, including the resolution of its imagery.
Which is a roundabout way of saying: expect lunar maps and imagery to get way better shortly.
Ball State University’s GIS Research and Map Collection has a blog, which has already been running for three years.
“Childhood is a branch of cartography,” writes Michael Chabon in The New York Review of Books:
Most great stories of adventure, from The Hobbit to Seven Pillars of Wisdom, come furnished with a map. That’s because every story of adventure is in part the story of a landscape, of the interrelationship between human beings (or Hobbits, as the case may be) and topography. Every adventure story is conceivable only with reference to the particular set of geographical features that in each case sets the course, literally, of the tale. But I think there is another, deeper reason for the reliable presence of maps in the pages, or on the endpapers, of an adventure story, whether that story is imaginatively or factually true. We have this idea of armchair traveling, of the reader who seeks in the pages of a ripping yarn or a memoir of polar exploration the kind of heroism and danger, in unknown, half-legendary lands, that he or she could never hope to find in life.
This is a mistaken notion, in my view. People read stories of adventure — and write them — because they have themselves been adventurers. Childhood is, or has been, or ought to be, the great original adventure, a tale of privation, courage, constant vigilance, danger, and sometimes calamity. For the most part the young adventurer sets forth equipped only with the fragmentary map — marked here there be tygers and mean kid with air rifle — that he or she has been able to construct out of a patchwork of personal misfortune, bedtime reading, and the accumulated local lore of the neighborhood children.
John Tauranac writes, “Last November I came out with a new map [of the New York subway], which combines a Beck-like map on one side with a truly geographic map on the other.” He writes about it on Gotham City Blotter, where he places it in the context of the dichotomy between schematic and geographic maps of transit systems. One is not necessarily better than the other.
Each style, with modifications, has its own rewards. If the immediate goal of a subway map is to get you from one station to the next, then the barest-boned schematic map can ordinarily work fine. The ultimate goal of a subway map, however, is not merely to get you from one station to another — from A to B — but to get you from where you are (A) to the closest subway station (B) that will get you the subway station (C) that is convenient to your ultimate destination (D).
The Collins Map Blog mentions the British Cartographic Society Awards, in no small part because Collins Geo picked up a couple of them. To view current and past winners, select each award from the BCS’s page; there does not appear to be a page showing all winners and citations for this year or previous years.
Previously: Backroad Mapbook Wins Map Design Award; National Geographic Award in Mapping.
The July issue of Wired has a few tips for improving the performance of your GPS receiver; they include adding an external antenna, giving your unit enough time to acquire a fix, and keeping the software up to date.
Catholicgauze explains how to figure out a map’s age by checking for known changes, like the reunification of Germany, the breakup of the Soviet Union, or the independence of East Timor. I’ve done this too, actually, but it’s just as much of a challenge for maps and globes produced in the 1950s and 1960s, when colonies were being granted their independence, as it has been for the past 20, turbulent, years. (The 1970s and 80s seem so tranquil in comparison.)
Google has made available recent satellite imagery of Tehran from the IKONOS satellite via a Google Earth layer. How recent? Last Thursday. It would have been higher resolution if it had come from the GeoEye-1 satellite, but weather apparently played a factor there.
Brady Forrest compares the maps of Tehran from the various mapping services, with the best maps coming from the services making use of user-generated content — Google (through Mapmaker) and OpenStreetMap. Via All Points Blog.
The iPhone’s version of Safari supports geolocation with the 3.0 software update, and it’s apparently trivial to write the code to access a user’s location; I wonder if it’s this easy with Firefox 3.5.
BusinessWeek’s Stephen Wildstrom explains why iPhone navigation applications are so expensive:
[Y]ou need a source of maps and a data base of directions, driving instructions, and points of interest. There are two main sources of maps, Navteq (owned by Nokia) and Tele Atlas (a TomTom unit) and they aren’t cheap. The companies selling navigation services cannot simply build on top of the Google Maps application built into the iPhone and many other smartphones because Google’s terms of service specifically prohibit its use for real-time navigation. There’s a simple reason for this: Google’s own arrangements with the map suppliers prohibit such uses. And of course, navigation services, whether on-board or network based, entail an assortment of other costs.
Via MyAppleMenu.
One recently announced example of this is Navigon’s MobileNavigator Europe (iTunes link), the introductory price for which is $95. Mind you, it’s a 1.65-gigabyte download — a lot of mapping data to licence from Navteq. Via Gizmodo, Mapperz and TUAW.
More reviews of books previously mentioned here:
Surprisingly, Ross Racine’s artwork is drawn freehand on a computer; “my works do not contain photographs or scanned material,” he says, but you’d be hard pressed to tell. “The subjects of my recent work may be interpreted as models for planned communities as much as aerial views of fictional suburbs, referencing the computer as a tool for urban planning as well as image capture. Investigating the relation between design and actual lived experience, the works subvert the apparent rationality of urban design, exposing conflicts that live beneath the surface.” Thanks to peacay for the link.
Yesterday’s Astronomy Picture of the Day featured a portion of the Dunhuang Star Chart, “one of the most impressive documents in the history of astronomy.” A four-metre scroll dating from the seventh century Tang Dynasty, it’s apparently the first representation of Chinese astronomy. More on the chart from Nature, which notes that it’s on display at the British Library, in celebration of the International Year of Astronomy, until August 18.
James reviews Gretchen N. Peterson’s GIS Cartography: A Guide to Effective Map Design, which, he notes, is written independent of any particular software package. “Gretchen’s book is something that you can use almost anywhere with any medium and won’t get out of date. That is a great value that most technical computing books overlook. GIS Cartography is a great resource to have and one that I’m glad that I have in my technical library. I’m guessing though that it will spend more time next to my computer than on the bookshelf.” James points to the preview on Google Books.
Previously: A Book Roundup.
As a child I drew on road maps, adding streets, freeways, even whole cities where none would ever exist. Dieter Janssen’s map of an imagined Toronto subway network in 2030 has a more serious purpose: he hopes his map, which dramatically extends the existing lines and adds another four, will stimulate discussion of about the future of Toronto’s transit system. Torontoist has a full-sized version of the map and an interview with Janssen, an architecture professor at the University of Toronto. Incidentally, this is not the first imagined future Toronto subway map; I think Torontonians want more TTC. Thanks to Richard Akerman for the link.
Google’s Canadian managing director was summoned before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics yesterday, where he was grilled by Ottawa MP Pierre Poilievre (whom we’ve heard about before) about the privacy implications of Street View, the National Post reports. Note that Street View has not even launched in Canada yet. If a transcript is made available of the committee meeting, it will probably turn up here in a few days (look for meeting 29, June 17, 2009).
Previously: Google Street View Meets Canadian Privacy Laws; Google Street View Privacy Update: Canada, Sweden and the UK; Ottawa Citizen Freaks Out About Street View.
It looks like GIS Web Maps will be a blog that critiques GIS web mapping: “I usually don’t have that much to say. But I know good when I see it. I know bad when I see it. I usually can pick up on something good and bad to say about any GIS and Web Mapping Application out there. Some are downright awful (I’m thinking ArcIMS 3.0 template out-of-the-box awful) and some are fantastic,” the author writes in his/her inaugural post. “On this blog, you’ll see discussions, posts, links, etc. to some of the best and some of the worst.” Probably not a moment too soon.
Firefox 3.5 (Release Candidate 1) adds geolocation as a new feature: it calculates a user’s location based the user’s IP address and nearby wireless access points; location-aware sites can then access that location if the user grants permission. Details here. Via Mapperz.
Four Courts Press announces the publication of J. H. Andrews’s Maps in Those Days: Cartographic Methods Before 1850, which addresses the question of “what early cartographers actually did. … It deals with non-thematic maps of all kinds and of all parts of the world from earliest times to the mid-19th century, with particular reference to classical antiquity, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment in Europe and in countries of European settlement, especially Britain and Ireland.”
Tony Flanders continues his critique of light-pollution maps; this time, he notes that the brightnesses of the respective colours are misleading: “the orange zone appears distinctly darker than the green zone, belying the fact that skies are in fact 9× brighter in the orange than in the green.” He tweaks the maps to try to compensate, reducing the brightness of green and yellow. Truth be told, while we may know intellectually that there is less light pollution in a green zone than in an orange zone, the difference in brightness of the map colours is problematic; but, at the same time, the colours make for a handy reference.
Previously: Testing Light-Pollution Maps; Light Pollution Maps.
The Los Angeles Times has updated its map of 113 Los Angeles neighbourhoods, taking into account reader feedback as to what neighbourhoods comprise what areas. It’s a project that sounds a lot like what the Toronto Star is doing with Toronto neighbourhoods (but I don’t know which one came first). Via MAPS-L.
Earth Observatory, celebrating its 10th anniversary, showcases 10 slideshows of “satellite images documenting how our world — forests, oceans, human landscapes, even the Sun — has changed during the previous decade.”
Previously: Growth in Las Vegas.
Google Alerts are funny sometimes. A short item in the Tumbler Ridge News — Tumbler Ridge is a remote small town in northeastern British Columbia — about how a local writer contributed to a backroad atlas that won a cartography award would not be postworthy in itself, but it gives me my first opportunity to post about the Backroad Mapbooks series of recreational atlases. It’s also my first opportunity to post about the award — namely, the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping/Cartography and Geographic Information Society Annual Map Design Competition. The Northern B.C. Backroad Mapbook won the best-of-category award in the books/atlas category; the rest of the winners from this year are listed here. Past winners may be found here; I bet you’ll recognize some of the names.
Oh, hello. MapQuest now has a dedicated (and free) application for the iPhone and iPod touch, rather than an iPhone-optimized website: details, iTunes store link. Via AppleInsider, the MapQuest Blog and Understanding Google Maps & Local Search.
Previously: MapQuest for iPhone.
Articles from The Map Collector, a quarterly magazine published between 1977 and 1996, are being reprinted on Kuntspedia. About 30 or so articles so far; I don’t know where to begin. Via MapHist.
A copy of a 16th-century atlas of England and Wales by Christopher Saxton is being auctioned at Southeby’s this week, the Yorkshire Post reports; the atlas is expected to fetch a quarter of a million dollars or so.
For more on Saxton and his 1579 atlas of England and Wales, see this page from the University of Glasgow’s Special Collections and this 1979 article from The Map Collector. There are also several books about Saxton, but they appear to be out of print.
Previously: Rare 16th-Century Atlas Up for Auction; Saxton-Boazio Atlas Auctioned for £669,600.
An online version of the Geologic Atlas of Texas has been made available by the Texas Water Development Board. Nothing fancy: just a Flash-based interface to scans of the 1:250,000-scale paper maps, but scans of paper maps will do quite nicely, thank you. Via MAPS-L.
North Korea is very much in the news lately, but very much not on the map. The North Korea Uncovered project is trying to do something about that: it’s a Google Earth layer (KMZ file) that maps installations, landmarks and facilities inside the secretive country. The Wall Street Journal explains how the people behind the project compile their data: “Seeking clues in photos, news reports and eyewitness accounts, they affix labels to North Korean structures and landscapes captured by Google Earth, an online service that stitches satellite pictures into a virtual globe. The result is an annotated North Korea of rocket-launch sites, prison camps and elite palaces on white-sand beaches.” Via Kottke.
Meanwhile, 1:200,000-scale topographic maps of North Korea are now available, if you don’t mind that they’re in Russian and date from the mid-1980s. They come in a massive 129-megabyte zip file that includes plenty of file formats for geospatial professionals, but mere mortals will be able to use the GIFs. Via Free Geography Tools.
The amazing Challenger Map, the giant relief map of British Columbia that was on display at the Pacific National Exhibition until 1997 but has since languished in storage, is back on display, sort of. The Vancouver Sun reports that eight of its 196 sections have been painted, assembled and put on display in the atrium of the RCMP’s Vancouver Integrated Security Unit building in Richmond, a Vancouver suburb. The panels are being used to show diginitaries and security personnel the topography of the Vancouver and Whistler area, but for security reasons will not be accessible to the public during the Olympics. They’re still looking for a permanent home for the entire map. Thanks to Melissa Edwards for the link.
Previously: Challenger Map Gets Reprieve; Challenger Map Update; Another Challenger Map Update.
While a Virginian-Pilot columnist decries the fact that kids these days don’t know how to read a map, and equates map reading with learning to swim (via GeoCarta), an ABC Australia program, The World Today, reports a sudden surge in paper map sales: an RACV manager argues that one reason is “that people are starting to see some of the limitations of their in-car navigation units, that they really want that map so they can see the area where they’re travelling through.” Maps aren’t only about getting you from point A to point B.
Previously: How to Read a Map, for Sat Nav Users; A Third of Britain Can’t Read a Map; GPS Isn’t Making Us Dumb.
Yahoo announces upgrades to the British and French editions of Yahoo Maps; the German version will get them in a few weeks. These have already been implemented on the U.S. edition, haven’t they?
Previously: Yahoo’s “Classic Maps” Discontinued; Yahoo Maps Upgrades; Google, Yahoo Maps Refreshed.
Web comic xkcd’s take on Google Latitude’s privacy implications is … about what you’d expect. And as succinct an explanation as there will likely ever be of why location services will probably never take off.
It’s one thing if your road map has an error in it, quite another if your aviation or nautical maps have an error in them. It can be catastrophic. Which is why, PC World reports, Garmin is recalling data cards that show incorrect water depths off the coasts of Sweden and Denmark. It’s never a good thing when your charts say that the water is deeper than it actually is.
GPS Review explains how to correct an error in a map provided by GPS unit or online mapping service — a process greatly simplified by the fact that, at least in North America, there are essentially only two mapping providers (Navteq and Tele Atlas), which you contact directly. It’s easy to tell which provider to contact, since each GPS manufacturer or website uses just one of them. But don’t expect a speedy resolution: “The total process can take anywhere from several months to multiple years. I don’t mean for this to discourage you from reporting the issue — by all means report it as it only takes a few minutes to submit. But don’t expect that the issue will be fixed within a few weeks.”
TomTom isn’t the only company with forthcoming turn-by-turn navigation software for the iPhone (see previous entry); AppleInsider reports that both Navigon and TeleNav have iPhone applications in development. Via All Points Blog.
Google is taking Street View to biking and hiking trails, USA Today reports. Instead of a car with a camera mounted on the roof, Google employees are using “a modified three-wheeled bike, like the ones used to take tourists for a spin, with a huge antenna and camera on back.” I can think of a few hiking trails that would stymie such a contraption. Only one bike trail in Monterey, California is available right now; trikes are currently working trails in California, Italy and Great Britain. Via the Google Maps Twitter feed.
The Geographicus blog has a few questions for people interested in getting into map collecting but who have no idea where to begin. (Me, I figure that if you have only a “vague idea of what [you] are interested in,” you should probably go off and do some research until your idea is no longer vague — but then I like research.)
Sean Gorman proposes a corollary to Waldo Tobler’s well-known First Law of Geography (“everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things”). Inspired by developments in mobile applications, he adds a temporal element: things that are near for a long period of time are more related than things that are near for a short period of time. This is interesting, but probably less universally applicable.
Previously: Waldo Tobler.
Sky and Telescope’s Tony Flanders decides to test the veracity of light-pollution maps. “They’re based on satellite data collected more than a decade ago, over a long timespan, in varying conditions, and massaged by an experimental mathematical model of how skyglow spreads,” he explains. But his measurements, taken around Boston, “cast some doubt on the mathematical model behind color zones. For one thing, my measurements were consistently darker than the ones predicted by the key to the Clear Sky Chart’s light-pollution maps. More intriguingly, the skyglow did not increase continuously, as I had expected, but followed an unmistakable step pattern. This suggests that highly local conditions play a larger role in skyglow than I would have guessed.”
Previously: Light Pollution Maps.
There was, you may have heard, some news about a new iPhone yesterday; over on O’Reilly Radar, Brady Forrest sums up the geotechnology implications of the new iPhone 3GS and iPhone OS 3.0, including the ability of the web browser and accessories to access location data and the new digital compass.
TomTom also announced its turn-by-turn car navigation system for the iPhone: it will be a combination of navigation software and a car kit. No release date or price for either yet. GPS Review, GPS Tracklog, Mapperz.
Java programmer Kohsuke Kawaguchi built a globe out of Lego; being a programmer, he did so in a programmer-like idiom, hacking together a program to figure out what colours go where, and using CAD software to build it virtually before breaking out the Lego pieces. Thanks to Lance Finney for the link.
The Map Room is a blog about maps by Jonathan Crowe. It covers everything from collecting to the latest in geospatial technology from a generalist’s perspective.
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