Site News

Introducing the Calendar
Today I’m launching a new feature here on The Map Room: a calendar of map-related events. It’s meant to cover conferences, talks, and similar events; exhibitions are more problematic because (1) there are so many of them and (2) their… »
Posted on Monday, August 4, 2008 at 8:46 AM
Categories: Site News
Another Ping
Oh, hi. No, I’m still here. My contract — I’m now in the 12th month of a 10-week contract — finally wraps up this week, and the last few weeks have been crazy. Hence, not as much time or energy… »
Posted on Sunday, June 22, 2008 at 10:49 AM
Categories: Site News
Comment Moderation
I’ve just discovered that my spam filters have been a bit too aggressive lately. I’ve now approved some comments from the past month or so that were sitting in the junk comment queue. Honestly, I didn’t realize they were there…. »
Posted on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 at 12:13 PM
Categories: Site News
Five
Five years ago today, I wrote the first entry on this blog. I started The Map Room because I was unemployed and needed something to focus my interest and attention while I went about the dreary job of job hunting…. »
Posted on Monday, March 31, 2008 at 12:21 PM
Categories: Site News
Site Notes: Facebook and Feedburner
As an experiment, I’ve set up a Facebook page for this site. On a similarly crass and commercial note, I’ve set up a network on Feedburner for map blogs. Map bloggers who use Feedburner to produce their RSS feeds who… »
Posted on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 5:55 AM
Categories: Site News
Ping
Apologies for the lack of new entries lately; I’ve had my hands full with a couple of things that needed dealing with. And then recovering from dealing with said things. New entries will be forthcoming soon. Lots of catching up… »
Posted on Thursday, February 14, 2008 at 8:43 PM
Categories: Site News
Redesign in Progress
Visitors to The Map Room may have noticed some screwy things going on today. I got it into my head to redesign this site, live. (No safe, out-of-the-way test sites for me, no sir.) The bulk of the work is… »
Posted on Monday, January 28, 2008 at 7:46 PM
Categories: Site News
A News Roundup and a Programming Note
A few links to news stories to tide you over during the holidays: The Montreal Gazette on OpenStreetMap The Chicago Tribune on map collecting The Times rambles about the technology behind in-car navigation devices I’ll be off for about a… »
Posted on Saturday, December 22, 2007 at 9:25 PM
Categories: Collecting, Driving Directions, Site News, Surveying
Two Thousand
This is the two thousandth post I have made to The Map Room. It’s taken me a while to get here: four years, four months, and a few extra days. When I started this blog, I was interested in maps,… »
Posted on Sunday, August 12, 2007 at 12:10 PM
Categories: Site News
PC World: 100 Blogs We Love
Oh. I seem to have made PC World’s 100 Blogs We Love (relevant page here; the single-page printer friendly version is easier to peruse), among some much more impressive company…. »
Posted on Sunday, July 1, 2007 at 2:31 PM
Categories: Site News
Three More Blogs; Directory Update
First, three more map/geospatial blogs for you: Free GeoTools by Leszek Pawlowicz, which started in January; points to (mostly Windows) software tools and data sources; covers quite a bit of ground, actually. Hablandodesigs by Juan Manuel Uribe Medina, a Mexican… »
Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 11:29 AM
Categories: Blogs, Site News
Redesign in Progress, Sort of
I’ve been mucking around with the site design today. No real design goals in mind — that would presuppose that I know what I’m doing — just tinkering, seeing what works. Weird stuff may manifest itself from time to time… »
Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 8:55 PM
Categories: Site News
URLs Changed
In preparation for a Movable Type upgrade, I have changed all the URLs for the individual entry and archive pages. Old links are being autoforwarded to the new URLs, so don’t worry about that. But this change will probably cause… »
Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 1:07 PM
Categories: Site News
Comments Back On, TypeKey Required
The short version: comments are back on, though I haven’t finished all the planned upgrades; and TypeKey registration is now required to comment on this blog. About TypeKey: it’s free and relatively painless, so hopefully it will not be too… »
Posted on Sunday, March 11, 2007 at 8:25 AM
Categories: Site News
Comments Temporarily Disabled
I’ve disabled commenting until I figure out how to reduce the memory usage of the comments script and improve the performance of the site overall. (The script has been getting killed by DreamHost’s automated process watcher, a sign that it’s… »
Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 1:48 PM
Categories: Site News
Scheduled Downtime
The Map Room and my other sites will be offline for several hours while my hosting provider’s building management performs emergency maintenance; details here and here. The outage is expected to take place Sunday morning between 2:15 EST/7:15 UTC and… »
Posted on Saturday, February 24, 2007 at 8:37 PM
Categories: Site News
Milestone
This is, by my count, the 1,500th post to The Map Room, which I will now waste by emitting stunned noises at having reached the 1,500-post mark. Whoa…. »
Posted on Wednesday, October 25, 2006 at 6:25 PM
Categories: Site News
Donations and Advertising
A couple of announcements related to my sad attempt to earn a living from web projects like these. This site now accepts donations via PayPal via the button on top of the right-hand sidebar. (Donations may also be made against… »
Posted on Monday, October 23, 2006 at 11:21 AM
Categories: Site News
Outage, Access Issues and Router Upgrades
Ongoing core router issues at DreamHost have made this site inaccessible for much of the last 12 hours. They promise that a major upgrade Monday evening will (hopefully) solve this problem (my sites will be offline again for 30 to… »
Posted on Saturday, September 9, 2006 at 7:51 AM
Categories: Site News
New Design
Every so often, I get fidgety about my current site design and start thinking about a change. That happened again recently, and, as a result, a new site design went up last night. I wanted a lighter, three-column design that… »
Posted on Monday, September 4, 2006 at 12:08 PM
Categories: Site News
I’m Back
Just back from my trip (see previous entry) — I still managed to post a few entries, so you may not have noticed my absence. Back to my regular posting routine shortly…. »
Posted on Tuesday, August 22, 2006 at 6:43 PM
Categories: Site News
On Vacation; Site Updates
I’m on vacation as of tomorrow, and will be for a couple of weeks. As is typical for me, I’ll continue to post new entries as I’m able to do so — it just won’t be at the same frenetic… »
Posted on Wednesday, August 9, 2006 at 10:56 AM
Categories: Site News
Status/Outage Updates
My hosting provider has had a serious spate of outages and other technical difficulties lately. Rather than post every last incidence of the site going down, I’ve decided to post such reports to my WordPress.com account; check there for updates… »
Posted on Monday, July 24, 2006 at 1:48 PM
Categories: Site News
Sporadic Outages
Short outages during the past two days — a result of my hosting provider having all sorts of trouble happen to them (more here). With any luck, I’ll have some new entries for you tomorrow…. »
Posted on Monday, July 17, 2006 at 11:47 PM
Categories: Site News
E-mail Subscriptions Now Available
While many of you use RSS to find out when new entries have been posted to this site, others may have no idea what those three little letters mean. Just for you, I’ve just set up e-mail subscriptions via FeedBurner… »
Posted on Wednesday, June 28, 2006 at 9:19 AM
Categories: Site News
Downtime
Sorry about the downtime (since yesterday afternoon); I goofed up with the .htaccess file in a way that generated a server error for the entire site, and only realized the problem just now. My bad…. »
Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 at 12:16 PM
Categories: Site News
Trackbacks Off
I’ve disabled trackbacks: too much spam was getting through the filters; not enough legitimate pings received to make it worthwhile; and sending trackback pings to other servers frequently generated errors that resulted in multiple pings being sent every time I… »
Posted on Thursday, May 25, 2006 at 8:57 AM
Categories: Site News
Feed Problems
As Hugo has noticed, there is a problem with The Map Room’s RSS feeds: yesterday they stopped updating properly, and starting yesterday and continuing today you may receive an error when trying to retrieve the feed. The problem is at… »
Posted on Saturday, April 22, 2006 at 10:03 AM
Categories: Site News
Anniversary
Last Friday, The Map Room turned three years old. I’m not making much of a fuss this year (compared to last year, when I simultaneously launched a reader survey and a webhosting-bill fundraising drive, and posted an essay in honour… »
Posted on Tuesday, April 4, 2006 at 11:24 AM
Categories: Site News
Updates: Movable Type 3.2, Site Design
I just finished upgrading to Movable Type 3.2; if you’re reading this, it presumably went well. But there’s always a chance of a bug somewhere that needs fixing, so if you experience some wonky behaviour on this site, that might… »
Posted on Sunday, March 12, 2006 at 4:48 PM
Categories: Site News
Category Changes
I’ve been meaning to reorganize the entry categories for some time, and I’ve taken a first step this morning: “Web Tools,” which mainly covered Google, Mapquest et al., is now Online Maps; “Hacks” is now a subcategory of Online Maps… »
Posted on Wednesday, March 8, 2006 at 11:41 AM
Categories: Site News
AdBrite Problems
Since yesterday, AdBrite has started running network ads — for such relevant products as job sites, online pharmacies, etc. — on the ad strip on the right sidebar despite my wishes; I’ve e-mailed them to complain, but based on what’s… »
Posted on Wednesday, February 1, 2006 at 10:31 AM
Categories: Site News
Map Questions RSS Feed Updated
While procrastinating the big post on the Chinese map, I’ve moved and revamped the map questions RSS feed: it now shows all open questions (they stay open for 30 days), as well the answers to those questions. (I’ve also been… »
Posted on Thursday, January 19, 2006 at 12:06 PM
Categories: Site News
Pardon My Dust: Tags and Other Changes
I’ve been fiddling with the site again (see previous entry), so periodic bouts of weirdness may have been appearing over the last few days and may continue to appear. (I’m flouting web design best practices by coding live rather than… »
Posted on Saturday, January 7, 2006 at 9:39 AM
Categories: Site News
Comments RSS Feed and Other Changes
I got Hacking Movable Type for Christmas and it’s been giving me all kinds of ideas for this site. First, I’ve set up a new RSS feed that tracks the most recent reader comments. Now that comment spam has been… »
Posted on Wednesday, January 4, 2006 at 10:33 PM
Categories: Site News
New Directory Page
I’ve created a new Directory page: it’s a combination of my old Communities page, which listed associations, online communities and mailing lists, and my blogroll, which I removed from the sidebar in the last redesign to reduce clutter. I’ll try… »
Posted on Thursday, December 15, 2005 at 3:16 PM
Categories: Site News
RSS Readership Seems Excessive
I don’t care what Feedburner tells me; there is no way I can have 88,184 readers of my partial RSS feed. (Until yesterday it was reporting a number that fluctuated between 800 and 1,000.) The culprit appears to be My… »
Posted on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 at 9:01 AM
Categories: Site News
Brief Site Outage
The Map Room was unavailable for a couple of hours today (as were my other sites) due to a router problem at DreamHost, my hosting provider…. »
Posted on Friday, November 18, 2005 at 1:17 PM
Categories: Site News
Site Design Changes
The tinkering with the site design I mentioned Sunday got a bit more involved this evening — or rather it got carried away, since I didn’t expect to be finished already. Still a few details to work on over the… »
Posted on Friday, November 4, 2005 at 10:57 PM
Categories: Site News
Tinkering with the Site Design
I had a bit of energy today, so I started making some minor changes to the site design, mostly with the aim of reducing clutter, adding some white space and just simplifying the design. At the moment it’s in medias… »
Posted on Sunday, October 30, 2005 at 10:10 PM
Categories: Site News
Book Review Policy
A couple of authors have asked me whether I’d be interested in reviewing their books and where to send them. To aid future inquiries, I’ve now added information about book reviews to the About page: what I’m willing to look… »
Posted on Tuesday, October 4, 2005 at 12:11 PM
Categories: Books, Site News
Outage
The Map Room was unavailable for nearly seven hours today; my hosting provider was knocked offline by the power outage that hit Los Angeles this afternoon. All my sites were offline until just a few minutes ago. More posts tomorrow…. »
Posted on Monday, September 12, 2005 at 11:17 PM
Categories: Site News
Reader Survey Results: Part Two
Here’s the long-promised, long-delayed second part of the results of The Map Room’s reader survey. You may recall that the survey took place in early April, and it took me approximately forever to get around to tabulating the results. The… »
Posted on Sunday, August 28, 2005 at 10:16 AM
Categories: Site News
Reader Survey Results: Part One
Way back in April, I asked my readers to fill out a short survey; 120 of you did, which I thought was pretty good. It’s taken me some time to compile the results — which is putting it mildly, since… »
Posted on Friday, August 5, 2005 at 7:58 PM
Categories: Site News
New Site Design
This morning I uploaded a new design that I’ve been working on for a few days. I hope you like it; some of you had expressed a dislike of the old olive-green-and-yellow colour scheme. I was beginning to feel it… »
Posted on Sunday, July 31, 2005 at 5:55 PM
Categories: Site News
Offline for Four Days
Shortly after my last post on Friday, our cable connection to the Internet was snapped, presumably by a passing vehicle, and we’ve only been able to get it reconnected today. (One of the disadvantages of living in a small town… »
Posted on Tuesday, July 19, 2005 at 11:32 AM
Categories: Site News
New Full-Text RSS Feed
A new full-text RSS feed is now available. The original, excerpts-only feed is still available, and will remain as the default feed for autodiscovery. But those of you who’ve been asking for a full-text feed now have that option. (In… »
Posted on Thursday, June 30, 2005 at 11:31 PM
Categories: Site News
Tags Page Update
An update to the Tags page: instead of the old method of displaying map-related photos from Flickr, which was built from a search-based RSS feed and updated only when the index pages on this site were rebuilt, you can now… »
Posted on Monday, May 9, 2005 at 10:57 PM
Categories: Site News
Communities Page Update
The Communities page has been updated with more links to map societies stolen taken from this site (see previous entry). It’s still a long way from definitive, though; there must be dozens of mailing lists alone still out there…. »
Posted on Thursday, May 5, 2005 at 6:13 PM
Categories: Site News
A Site Update
I’ve redesigned the site a little bit — trying to make it a bit less cluttered. Hope it agrees with you. (For those of you who detest the colour scheme, I hope to have something for you shortly.) The non-blog… »
Posted on Monday, April 11, 2005 at 1:00 AM
Categories: Site News
Survey Closed
Thanks to everyone who responded to the reader survey — all 120 of you. That’s plenty for me to work with, and it’s been a week, so I’ll close it and get to work on the results, which I hope… »
Posted on Wednesday, April 6, 2005 at 11:22 PM
Categories: Site News
Donation Thanks and a Task List
I’d like to thank everyone who’s donated so far (see previous entry). I appreciate it very much. One problem with the donation model is that the value-for-money equation is poorly defined: a subscription model yields tangible benefits, but a donation… »
Posted on Sunday, April 3, 2005 at 9:26 PM
Categories: Site News
Survey Response
Response to the reader survey (previous entry) has been tremendous, much more than I expected. Thanks for taking the time. I have the best readers. If you haven’t done the survey yet, there’s still time — my plan is to… »
Posted on Friday, April 1, 2005 at 10:50 AM
Categories: Site News
The Map Room Turns Two
Today marks The Map Room’s second anniversary. There have been more than 460 entries since my first; during that time I’ve learned just how much there is out there about which I know nothing, from psychogeography to triangulation to geocaching…. »
Posted on Thursday, March 31, 2005 at 12:25 AM
Categories: Site News
One Less Bill to Worry About
When The Map Room made Fimoculous’s list of best blogs of 2003, he said this: 27) The Map Room — I love niche publishing, especially when it’s a niche worth adoring. A site all about mapping? I’d probably pay for… »
Posted on Thursday, March 31, 2005 at 12:18 AM
Categories: Site News
Readership Survey
It’s a dubious way to celebrate this blog’s second anniversary, but I thought it’d be neat to do a reader survey. If you don’t mind answering 20 questions, I’d be grateful if you’d give it a shot. All questions are… »
Posted on Thursday, March 31, 2005 at 12:15 AM
Categories: Site News
Minor Site Changes
Two minor changes. First, the search form on the left-hand side now searches just The Map Room, not the entire mcwetboy.net domain. (A full web search remains an option.) I didn’t realize until recently that you could narrow a Google… »
Posted on Tuesday, March 29, 2005 at 11:04 PM
Categories: Site News
More on Comments
The details of my efforts to get comments working on this blog after the upgrade to Movable Type 3.15 are set out on my personal blog, if you’re truly interested. But insofar as how commenting will work from here on… »
Posted on Sunday, March 6, 2005 at 11:22 AM
Categories: Site News
Comment Snafus
Comments aren’t working the way they should. You can still comment if you’re willing to put up with additional hurdles and error messages, but there’s something up with the TypeKey authentication: my test comments get sent to the approval queue… »
Posted on Thursday, March 3, 2005 at 12:42 AM
Categories: Site News
Map Folksonomies
New feature. Map Folksonomies now has its own page; it used to be on the left-hand sidebar. This page links to mapping-related tags used on sites that use tags. So far that means del.icio.us, Flickr, and MetaFilter (including the Ask… »
Posted on Wednesday, March 2, 2005 at 11:52 AM
Categories: Site News
Comments and Moderation
All right, I think it’s working now. Comments on this site now use TypeKey authentication. If you have a TypeKey identity, you can post a comment and it will show up immediately; otherwise, it will be held in a queue… »
Posted on Wednesday, March 2, 2005 at 2:41 AM
Categories: Site News
Upgrade in Progress
I’ve just upgraded the blogging software that powers The Map Room to Movable Type 3.15. This site may not work as expected as I try to work out the kinks. Commenting in particular might be problematic. Patience in the meantime…. »
Posted on Wednesday, March 2, 2005 at 12:48 AM
Categories: Site News
Broken Links
I’ve gotten a couple of requests to fix links in older posts. I should say something, for future reference, about what my informal policy is on this subject. Which is, in a nutshell, that I don’t plan to repair dead… »
Posted on Wednesday, February 23, 2005 at 12:37 PM
Categories: Site News
Map Questions RSS Feed
If you’d like to track Map Questions by RSS, a feed is now available. It’s a full-text feed in RSS 1.0 format, and contains the 15 most recent questions and the number of answers given so far to each answer…. »
Posted on Sunday, January 16, 2005 at 11:23 AM
Categories: Site News
New Feature: Map Questions
Announcing a new feature on The Map Room: Map Questions. Here’s the premise. Every now and then I get a question by e-mail about a map-related subject — for example, where they can buy a certain map, or whether an… »
Posted on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 at 2:26 PM
Categories: Site News
2005 Bloggies
Since I have neither shame nor subtlety, let me point out that nominations for the 2005 Bloggies are now open, if you’re interested in nominating this (or any other) blog in one of the categories…. »
Posted on Tuesday, January 4, 2005 at 3:33 PM
Categories: Site News
Electoral Maps
Organizational note: the recent posts about the U.S. election results have been moved, along with related older posts, from the News & Politics category to the new Electoral Maps category…. »
Posted on Monday, November 22, 2004 at 2:45 PM
Categories: Current Events, Electoral Maps, Site News
A Look at The Map Room’s Traffic
Site owners are invariably far more interested in their sites’ traffic stats than their readers are, but I hope you won’t mind this brief digression. Have a look at the daily page views (I don’t have discrete daily visitor stats)… »
Posted on Saturday, November 13, 2004 at 1:31 PM
Categories: Site News
Redesign in Progress
Page layout might be a bit weird for the next day or two as I give The Map Room a bit of a makeover. Your patience, please, if I occasionally break things in the process. Update: I seem to be… »
Posted on Saturday, September 25, 2004 at 2:09 PM
Categories: Site News
Absence
Once again I’ve been away from The Map Room for too long: life and other projects have conspired to keep me from posting here, and now I’ve got a rather large backlog of stuff to post. Apologies to those who’ve… »
Posted on Wednesday, June 16, 2004 at 12:31 AM
Categories: Site News

Note: Entries from 2003 were not categorized and will not appear in the category archives. Please consult the monthly archives.