AndroGeoid takes a look at the new official Bing Maps app for Android. AndroGeoid is a new blog about mapping, location, GIS, GPS, geography and so forth on the Android platform; it’s by Leszek Pawlowicz, whom you may remember from the very good Free Geography Tools blog. Via GPS Tracklog.
Recent updates to MapQuest include the ability to embed a map in your web page with a bit of HTML. I’m not sure whether to be pleased to see this feature at last or to be depressed that it took so long: even the Ordnance Survey has had embeddable maps since April.
Update, Sept. 8: Josh Babetski of MapQuest sends this correction: “MapQuest has had an embeddable maps feature for years, the feature was simply ported over to the new UI. Our blog post on it should have been more clear about the distinction, apologies for that.”
Interesting piece by Andrew DuVander on the state of mapping APIs. “Today we’re amidst another location and mapping revolution, with mobile making its impact on the web. And with it, we’re seeing even more geo services provided by both the old guard and innovative new mapping platforms.” Via Very Spatial.
An interactive map (built in ArcGIS) showing damaged infrastructure in and around Christchurch, New Zealand, after Saturday’s magnitude-7.1 earthquake. Via Esri.
The Making Maps blog has an excerpt of Denis Wood’s new book, Rethinking the Power of Maps (previously). In Chapter 1, available as a PDF file, Wood argues provocatively that there were no maps before 1500 — making a distinction between maps in the modern sense, made in the modern way, and descriptive illustration. Definitely worth a read. (It’s also available on the publisher’s page for the book.)
Meanwhile, another book from Denis Wood is coming: Everything Sings: Maps for a Narrative Atlas. “Surveying Boylan Heights, his small neighborhood in North Carolina, he subverts the traditional notions of mapmaking to discover new ways of seeing both this place in particular and the nature of place itself. Each map attunes the eye to the invisible, the overlooked, and the seemingly insignificant. From radio waves permeating the air to the location of Halloween pumpkins on porches, Wood searches for the revelatory details in what has never been mapped or may not even be mappable. In his pursuit of a ‘poetics of cartography,’ the experience of place is primary, useless knowledge is exalted, and representation strives toward resonance.” Press release.
I always enjoy reading Jeffrey Murray’s articles in Fine Books and Collections magazine, and his latest, on the three-dimensional scale models made of military fortifications and cities for Louis XIV and his successors, is no exception: it’s a fascinating look at a way of visualizing places in three dimensions that began two centuries before 19th-century bird’s-eye city illustrations. Via MapHist.
Previously: The Making of the Atlantic Neptune; World War I Trench Maps.
The University of Minnesota’s UMNews on Rebecca Krinke’s public art installation, Unseen/Seen: The Mapping of Joy and Pain:
On the surface (both literally and figuratively) Rebecca Krinke’s latest public art piece is simply a giant laser-cut map of Minneapolis and St. Paul. But once she added in two types of colored pencils — gold and gray —and let local citizens color in their personal places of joy and pain, it became something much more.
The map has turned into a sociology experiment of sorts and a sounding board for people’s emotions: hope and despair, contentment and anger, love and hate.
Via Geospatial News.
It’s pretty abstract, but with interesting jolts of thoughtfulness: David Schneider’s … And Points Inbetween: Meditations on Maps. Via The Daily Dish.
Macworld has a roundup of hurricane tracking apps for the iPhone and iPad — after all, it’s not like there won’t be any more of them after Earl.
The report on the recent earthquake in New Zealand includes an interactive map (Flash-only) of the felt reports submitted from around the country. Via Keir Clarke.
Here are the USGS’s maps of that earthquake.
Update, 9:10 AM: Google Maps Mania has more links.
With the wellhead capped this is rapidly approaching old news, but it’s still worth admiring the cartographic virtues of the Times-Picayune’s interactive map of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, with a timeline from April 20 to July 28. Via Andrew Matranga.
At the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin today, Navteq announced a new form of voice navigation called Natural Guidance:
NAVTEQ Natural Guidance leapfrogs today’s linear navigation instructions — e.g. “turn right in 50 meters on Kurfürstendamm” — by guiding the way humans instruct each other, through descriptions of orientation points such as distinctive points of interest and landmarks — e.g. “turn right after the yellow shop” or “turn right at the traffic signal.” Research shows consumers desire more intuitive and practical directions because it is easier to follow and allows the user to keep their eyes on the road. NAVTEQ Natural Guidance enables applications to use recognizable and easily understandable points of reference close to the decision point to highlight the next maneuver.
Landmark-based navigation isn’t the only way people navigate. I’m probably highly weird in that I tend to navigate by streets and highway markers, not by landmarks — I’m not going to turn left at the Wendy’s because I’m not looking for or at restaurants when I drive. Having said that, people who navigate like me — all 12 of us — are already well served by voice-based turn-by-turn directions. I imagine that people who use landmarks will much prefer this sort of navigation — assuming Navteq can get it working properly.
It’s available for eight cities so far, with plans to expand. No word in the press release about the devices on which Natural Guidance will be available. Via CNet.
Hodder Geography is running a map doodle competition: they want entrants to draw “your own map of your world, real or imagined,” scan it and send it in. Via Thierry Gregorius.
Not the first hand-drawn map competition, not by a long shot — I may have to create a new category. Previously: Mapplers, an Online Atlas of Hand-Drawn Maps, Seeks Contributors; Slate Receives Hand-Drawn Maps; Slate Wants Hand-Drawn Maps; Londonist Wants Hand-Drawn Maps; Hand-Drawn Map Assoociation Book and Contest.
The United States of Star Wars assigns a planet from the Star Wars universe to each state (list here), which then illustrated appropriately. According to the creator, Rebecca Crane, “Planets were assigned based on partial terrain, landmarks that correlate with the planet and state, types of people in the state and planet, famous landmarks, or slightly randomly selected (but loosely based on facts) from my brother and myself.” Some choices may raise eyebrows (especially South Carolina). Via Tor.com.
As I understand it, the Garmin GPSMAP 62 and 78 series, like their 60-series and 76-series predecessors, are essentially the same under the skin, except that the 76 series is for marine use (and floats). GPS Information reviews them both. Via GPS Tracklog.
Previously: GPS Tracklog Reviews the Garmin GPSMAP 62s; Geek.com Reviews the Garmin GPSMAP 62.
Today’s Globe and Mail included this article discussing how GIS helps business productivity, with an aside on the challenge of getting good data in Canada (exacerbated by the federal government’s recent decision to drop the long-form census). Via All Points Blog.
BBC Homes and Antiques has a piece on map collecting; unfortunately, like several other such articles I’ve read on the subject, it doesn’t really cohere and isn’t well-written at all. Via Jonathan Potter Ltd.
Check out this image taken yesterday by Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite GOES-13 of Hurricane Danielle (top), Hurricane Earl (lower left) and a developing tropical depression (now Tropical Storm Fiona). Here’s one from this morning, more up to date but less picturesque, and here’s a closer look at Danielle and Earl from Sunday.
The announcement of Facebook Places frankly reminds me of the last rollout of location services by an Internet giant: Google Latitude.
The sort of people who have no qualms about sharing their location — who are eager to do so — are already using Gowalla, Foursquare and so forth; Facebook didn’t get to be Facebook by being dumb, so those services are integrated into Places.
From what I’ve been reading, the privacy critique of Facebook is essentially as follows:
I’ve already got friends concerned about this, even though Places isn’t available in Canada yet. This isn’t the first time a move by Facebook has generated privacy worries, but this is precisely the sort of thing that can cripple the rollout of geolocation services. The benefits offered by this sort of thing — serendipitous meetups — aren’t important enough to outweigh those concerns for enough people.
It’s Garmin night tonight, apparently. (This is what happens when I start paying attention to consumer GPS devices.) Garmin announced the Edge 800, a touchscreen GPS for cyclists, today. Rich’s post points out the pertinent details and differences about this gadget, and links to two early reviews at DC Rainmaker and About.com GPS; the rest of us won’t get to see it until October.
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