The Map Room

Macworld has a (mixed) review of Route 66’s Route USA 2004, which, despite this review in a Mac magazine, is cross-platform. The reviewer found it sluggish, among other quirks (the usual trip-generation snafus), but liked the GPS integration. See previous entry.

Behavioural psychologists are using navigating techniques as a means of testing whether gay men and women show “cross-sex shifts” in some of their cognitive abilities — i.e., whether gay men think more like straight women and lesbians like straight men.

The hypothesis is that homosexual people shift in the direction of the opposite sex in other aspects of their psychology other than sexual preference. That is, gay men may take on aspects of female psychology, and lesbians acquire aspects of male psychology.

The study takes as given that men and women, on average, navigate differently: women tend to use landmarks; men tend to use compass points. Anecdotally we know there are exceptions to this rule (and in my personal experience it’s not necessarily all one or the other). But if you take as given that spatial reasoning is gendered, then the old stereotype that women are terrible at directions is a result of maps that reflect male-oriented spatial reasoning: i.e., directions and street names (e.g., “go east on Maple Street”) rather than landmarks (e.g., “turn right at the Wendy’s”).

Anyway. The researchers concluded that gay men adopt both male and female navigational strategies, while lesbians’ spatial reasoning is similar to that of straight women.

Gay men employ the same strategies for navigating as women — using landmarks to find their way around… . But they also use the strategies typically used by straight men, such as using compass directions and distances. In contrast, gay women read maps just like straight women, reveals the study of 80 heterosexual and homosexual men and women.

This is bound to be controversial, or at the very least grist for a good debate. There’s already a lively discussion about this on the Map Lovers Tribe, where I found this.

HopStop provides directions, by public transit or by foot, for New York City addresses: enter starting point and destination and it provides the route and a small map. Via Kottke.

Attention Mac users: Google Maps now works with Safari. Via TUAW.

Map.search.ch is an online map of Switzerland; it launched last October. Like Google Maps, it uses the XMLHttpRequest object (a.k.a. “Ajax”) to allow you to zoom and scroll dynamically without reloading the page. Impressive stuff. Via Simon Willison, via Slashdot.

From time to time I get a question from someone who wants to know how much a map they have is worth. I’ve been reluctant to post these questions individually because it could be construed as free advertising; also, the question and answer, being so specific, would be of limited value to other readers.

At the same time, it is a reasonable question. So let me phrase it in general terms: how should someone go about determining the monetary value of their maps?

I presume there are appraisers who specialize in antique maps. Are there also online resources for this sort of thing? Or, if you yourself know something about the subject, what sort of things make a map more or less valuable?

Either there’s an awful lot of map-related activity going on at the University of Texas at Arlington’s Virginia Garrett Cartographic History Library (see previous entry), or Google Alerts is particularly good at picking up their stories. Either way, here’s a Shorthorn article on their latest exhibition, about the European Age of Exploration.

The exhibit, which is on the sixth floor of the Central Library, features replicas spanning nearly five centuries of mapmaking and includes the division’s first use of interactive computer technology in a public display.

The electronic guide introduces visitors to a medieval mappamundi, or world map. Geographic representations from this period include religious imagery and historical figures from artists “explaining the world as well as drawing it,” said exhibit curator David Buisseret, a history professor.

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 links. Unless the link goes dead almost immediately, or I typed it incorrectly in the first place, I won’t fix it. You may safely assume that the link worked when I posted it, but that there are no guarantees that it will continue to do so forever.

People change their sites all the time, and links expire, especially news links. If a major mapping site changes its URL, that’s newsworthy enough to post a follow-up. But if a page goes dark with no forwarding address, what do I do? Search for it? Delete the post, or update it? With 416 posts on The Map Room (as of this one) over nearly two years, this could be a maintenance nightmare, especially further down the road. I think that what time I spend on this site should be focused on new links rather than checking up on all the old ones.

Lorraine Brace writes, “We have a very old and important cloth map of the Village of Norwood that is very fragile and we need advice as to how to preserve it from any further deterioration.” She’s writing from Norwood, Ontario, which should give you some context as to the age of the map — I’m guessing that “very old” is fewer than 200 years is this case. (Lorraine, you may want to add more details in the comments.)

We haven’t had a question about map preservation yet, and if you can contribute something, please do so. I’d love to read about this.

A few random links about map sites this morning.

Mapquest hacks, to use or avoid highways or toll routes (via Ask MetaFilter; see also this).

In OS X’s Address Book, clicking on the address brings up a contextual menu in which one of the options, “Map Of,” takes you to a Mapquest map of that location. There are a couple of hacks available to change that to another map site, such as Google Maps (Firefox only; via The Unofficial Apple Weblog) or Yahoo! Maps.

Thierry Rousselin observes something interesting about how landmarks are displayed in Google Maps. The entry is in French, but he writes, “important objects have to wait until the 9th or 10th level of zoom while some selections (like historic landmarks or golf courses) appear at very low levels of zooms.”

It seems to be MetaFilter Monday here on The Map Room. MetaFilter’s hidden jewel is Ask MetaFilter, where the MeFi hive mind answers questions posed by its members. Tag support just got added here, and there are already a few map questions. (Another place for your questions, if this here site doesn’t do it for you.)

Anyway, the most recent question asks whether there’s a single source for maps of major cities’ bike routes. The responses, while not being able to provide said single source — there’s a project for an enterprising sort — have at the least provided links to bike routes for a few cities. Worth a look.

Ancient Routes, “[a] site devoted to exploring the ancient trade routes around the Mediterranean,” has a few maps of said trade routes, mostly of the Middle East. Via MetaFilter, again.

MetaFilter is one of the best-kept secret sources for map links, and now that Matt has added tag support, they’re all the easier to find: just look for the map and maps tags.

Of course, tagging is optional, and some map-related posts slip through the map/maps net — like this bizarrely intriguing map of Ukraine (772 KB JPEG) by Sergey Poyarkov (via this post).

As you know, I like to keep track of what Mac mapping or GPS software is out there. Here’s another one: GPSNavX, which is boating software — both navigation and GPS — for OS X. The folks behind this one have also provided a page linking to other OS X marine and GPS apps. Via x180.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if a topo map mated with a pop-up book? No, you probably haven’t; you’re not that strange. I don’t know where these guys got the idea to make pop-up topographical maps for ski resorts, but the concept is original enough. It’s meant as a visualization aid: ski resorts, after all, are pretty damn vertical places, whereas maps are inherently flat. No idea whether this concept works in practice. They’ve got a couple of maps out already, with more promised. Via Gizmodo.

Opening February 24 at the Rosenbach in Philadelphia: an exhibit called You Are Here: Maps and the Invention of Place:

Using examples from the Rosenbach’s collection — which spans over 300 years of cartography — the exhibition considers the carefully crafted and sometimes conflicting stories that maps tell through the information they include and exclude. Emphasizing the narrative quality of maps, from the personal history revealed in George Washington’s survey book to tales of global conflict depicted in a 1635 Belgian map of North America, You Are Here: Maps and the Invention of Place invites its audience to uncover the creative imagination and political contexts that have shaped maps throughout history.

Press release.

Jonathan Corum is back with Mapping the Iraqi Election. “This set of maps for the provisional results of the Iraqi election allows you to adjust the map style, size, and scale,” he writes.

Before and After the Beeching Axe: in 1963 the Beeching Report recommended the closure of a number of rail services in the UK. This page at Joyce’s World of Transport Eclectica has maps related to that report, showing the state of the British rail network both before and after the report, as well as maps from that report. (See also the links at the bottom of the page, whence I extracted the next two items.) Via Plep.

Richard Fairhurst is working on an historical atlas of British railways: at the moment, it’s a single-page, one-megabyte PDF file; the web version is offline for the time being.

Or, if you’d like maps of the present-day British rail network, National Rail has a page for you.

Nicolas Jasson has submitted a frighteningly impressive number of links to Japanese rail and transit maps. His e-mail, which I’ve edited to incorporate links into the text, is as follows:

I am very interested in railways and transit and Japanese mapping is usually very accurate and always up-to-date. A few samples:

JR East Tokyo local network [PDF]. This is a fraction of the whole rail network of the Tokyo area: it shows only the JR-East network, not the subways, not the numerous private railways.

Official 3D map of Tokyo station [PDF] requires Japanese-enabled Adobe Reader, otherwise as a GIF.

Mapion is probably Japan’s best map website, recently upgraded with Mapion BB (BroadBand). The Tokyo station area with Mapion, part of a fully-interactive map coverting the whole of Japan, every single building or house is accurately shown, together with its number in the block (the basis of the address system).

The new version of the Tokyo subway map, where each station has been allocated a code, the first letter for the line, and a sequential number: English version [PDF]; all Japanese (1, 2) [PDF]; central Tokyo [PDF], with added graphics for the principal monuments.

There is a vast quantity of transit maps on the web, like this one for the Hankyu, a local rail company operating in the Kansai region. [second link added]

Map of the last surviving tram line in Tokyo. Original Japanese map.

A knowledge of Japanese is required for many of these links. I’m astonished at the work Nicolas put into this.

Waban_star writes in with a link to MICRODEM, “a microcomputer mapping program written by Professor Peter Guth of the Oceanography Department, U.S. Naval Academy.” It’s available for free, apparently, from the site. Waban says, “This is a good program, if not always user friendly. This can be used to teach yourself about Geographic Information Systems, Tiger census data, aerial mapping, satellite photography, digital elevation models, etc.” Has anyone else used this program? What do you think?

Skip Armstrong works for an adventure travel company in Costa Rica, and would like to make a map. But he’s not sure where to start:

I would like to create a map of the rivers of Costa Rica and would like some input on how this might be done. I would like to use Adobe Illustrator but am in the dark on any other tools/software that might be available. Also, what books would you reccomend to a cartographer just getting started?

Skip’s question is applicable to anyone who wants to start a map and doesn’t know where to begin. MAPublisher comes immediately to mind — it’s a set of map plugins for Adobe Illustrator (see previous entry) — but it’s expensive, and Skip hasn’t mentioned how much detail he wants: an overview for publicity purposes, or something more topographical? Also, while the Illustrator/MAPublisher combo is fine for professional-level mapmaking (if I’m not mistaken), is there something a bit more entry-level that even tyros like me could handle?

Jim Weber writes to inform us about a non-commercial project he’s started: Links 4 Maps is a links directory for maps and cartography. It’s already got a number of good links already.

Ben Tesch has posted subway maps for Oslo and Tokyo on Flickr, which is handy.

For those interested in web geekery, Joel Webber looks at the HTML, graphics and XML behind Google Maps. Via Boing Boing.

Newsfactor’s Business Report has a short article on Google Maps that looks at it from, naturally, the business angle, i.e., how Google can monetize maps.

I originally posted this in the comments, but I’ll repost them here in case you missed it: Rafe Colburn and Aaron Swartz give their takes on Google Maps.

Google Maps is on crack, uploaded by gillicious.

It was only a matter of time before Google Maps (see previous entry) spat out some crazy, non-linear directions for getting from point A to B like the well-publicized Norwegian MapPoint incident last month. While not as spectacular, Flickr user Gillian Gunson may be the first to publicly share something wonky.

Now I’m the first one to say that using online mapping services for directions is not a good idea (see previous entry), but Google Maps is nevertheless still in beta. That caveat aside, let’s have some fun: has anyone found anything juicy yet?

UC Berkeley has scanned and put online about a hundred years’ worth of USGS topographic maps of the San Francisco Bay area. Via Plep.

(I was going through my e-mail and stumbled across a link that Huw had submitted in late December and that, probably because of the holidays-induced chaos, I simply forgot to post. Anyway, here it is now.)

Last December, the BBC reported that map thief Peter Bellwood was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for stealing dozens of antique maps from the National Library of Wales. He used a razor to slice 50 pages away from antique atlases, and sold them to map collectors for £70,000.

His modus operandi sounds like it could have come straight from the pages of Miles Harvey’s Island of Lost Maps. This book, which takes as its focus another particularly successful map thief, also looks at the phenomenon of map thievery in general and the shadier side of map collecting.

Stop the presses! Google Maps has just been launched. (Via MetaFilter.)

First impressions. This is frigging amazing, with smooth scrolling and zooming: you’re not constantly reloading pages like in MapQuest. Huge mapping surface. And drop shadows.

No Safari support yet, but it’s coming.

I’m impressed by the detail. They’ve got my area, which is kind of a rural backwater: they’ve got the roads all named, but strangely not the towns. Oh well, data’s rarely perfect — especially when it’s just a beta launch. And for a beta this is awfully impressive.

So, what do you think?

Aerial photography of Dubai, which is apparently in the midst of a beggar-the-imagination construction boom. Via Things Magazine; see MetaFilter (1, 2) for background.

In 1608, Capt. John Smith explored the Chesapeake Bay area, and in 1612 a map of his travels was printed. Now, nearly 400 years later, in an attempt to prove that Smith visited the site of the present-day town of Vienna, Maryland, researchers are using digital technology to cross-reference Smith’s map with modern-day maps.

“The map is drawn correct unto itself as far as he (Smith) was concerned. The problem was we were trying to overlay a 400-year-old map over new maps to see where they aligned. We found some interesting evidence when we used ‘rubber sheeting,’ where we mathematically transformed John Smith’s representation of the Nanticoke River to today’s representation. Some complicated mathematical formulas are involved, but in essence you stretch and pull Smith’s map to fit with points on maps showing today’s geography,” [Salisbury geography professor Michael] Scott said.

Comparing old maps to modern cartography is obviously tricky.

Dave Van Epps writes, “I am trying to locate maps that together will give me information at approximately 10,000-year intervals, back to 100,000 years ago, of coastlines, glaciers, continents, major rivers and seas.” Presumably he’s looking for the changes wrought by glaciation and ice ages. Is there a resource for Dave out there?

Jason Endres is trying to survey his property.

I recently purchased 50 acres of rolling forest land and I am trying to find the best means to create a fairly precise topographic map of the area. In addition to the physical terrain, I would like to map out property boundaries, streams, tree stands, old logging roads and stone walls. I assume I will need to buy a handheld GPS unit, but I wonder what features I will need, how much accuracy I can expect, and what software will streamline this project. I’m a complete newbie (and a confused one at that) when it comes to GPS and from what I’ve read, I’m very limited by my Mac.

Will I be able to simply walk around the property with the handheld unit and come back with all the info I need to connect the dots?

Here come the Map Ladies:

Susan Pietrantoni and Kathleen Cote are the “Map Ladies” who travel to schools throughout the surrounding communities including Tewksbury and introduce the art of cartography. They have developed a two day program about maps, why they are used, the important parts of a map and developing skills that allow students to create their own maps.

What a great name.

Found at Flickr: la worldmap, a collection of photos by Bertrand Eberhard of people interacting with what appears to be a large world map on the floor of the Beaubourg museum in Paris.

Transport for London (London’s transit agency) has a journey planner that I would try if I knew anything about the city; alas, I’ve never been. (Many of my readers have, though, so let me know if it’s any good.) Their bus and walking maps are also available, as PDFs, from this page on the BBC site. Via MetaFilter.

California’s Megan’s Law web site uses maps to list registered sex offenders. After clicking through the disclaimer, the user selects a county, which brings up a map on which each dot represents a registered offender. Clicking on one of the dots brings up the offender’s details, including the address and offenses. Flagrantdisregard was creeped out by the fact that 18,507 are registered in the Los Angeles area. Me, I’m spooked by the fact that so much is available so easily, but I suppose that’s the point. Via Boing Boing.