The Map Room

Randy Cohen in the New York Times Sunday Book Review (free registration required): “I propose to create, with the help of the Book Review’s readers, a literary map of Manhattan — not of its authors’ haunts but those of their characters, a map of the literary stars’ homes.” Reader submissions of their favourite characters’ homes and hangouts due by May 11, with the map itself slated to come out on June 5.

Another unfortunate result of the Ordnance Survey’s copyright on its mapping data: the Journal of Maps announced last week that, because of the Ordnance Survey’s restrictive licencing, “we are currently unable to accept any maps based upon OS data.” (See previous entry: Journal of Maps.)

Mapping Hacks has a report on the Forum on Open Geodata that took place earlier this month (see previous entry), where the argument was put forth that the Ordnance Survey should open up its data for the economic spinoff benefits it would engender. This is a departure from the usual arguments one hears from open-whatever advocates (“data wants to be free”) who sometimes sound like they expect entities to act against their own self-interest or else.

Another point raised at the forum: open mapping provides low-density data that can’t compete with the Ordnance Survey’s precision, but that precision isn’t always needed. Open mapping (see previous entry) has a niche, in other words.

Meanwhile, online mapping may soon render the whole open-mapping vs. Ordnance Survey conflict obsolete: online mapping suppliers neatly sidestep the Ordnance Survey’s copyright, but, if Google Maps’s extensibility, well documented here, is any indication, webservices based on online mapping sites would blow free mapping projects out of the water too.

When third parties started riffing on Google Maps — whether through hacks or by posting screenshots of its satellite images — I wondered what Google thought about it. After all, the satellite photos are watermarked with copyright notices. I suspect they’re okay with it, though, since the official Google Blog linked to a whole mess of them last Friday. How about that? Google isn’t Sony. But I think we already knew that.

Anyway, here are a couple more hacks of Google Maps. Here’s one that shows New York subway stops (via — and requested by — Kottke). Or, how about a program that lets you view Google Maps on your Tivo (via Gizmodo)?

A couple of links about GPS-equipped PDAs — those gadgets I covet but cannot possibly ever afford. Brighthand’s got a review of the Garmin iQue M5, which runs Windows Mobile instead of Palm OS like Garmin’s other PDAs (see previous entry). It is, naturally, hella expensive. Meanwhile, Engadget has been tracking HP’s all-in-one (literally: Bluetooth, cellphone and GPS) monstrosity, the hw6500: specs, pics. I catch these things because I follow the gadget blogs and also have an interest in PDAs (or hadn’t you noticed); sooner or later I’ll have to bone up on GPS units that don’t have PDAs or cellphones attached.

When you’re used to the idea that the map you’re looking for is frequently only a click away, it’s disconcerting to read about Shobhit Mahajan’s attempts to buy maps from the Survey of India, where it seems that “the idea is to deter everyone but the most determined customer.”

I’ve been away working on a web development project for most of the last week — without broadband — so I’ve been without my usual source-checking and web surfing routine. Because if I hadn’t been away, I would have immediately spotted FoxTrot’s series on Google Maps’s satellite images, beginning with Monday’s strip and continuing this week. Comic strip archives usually expire after 30 days, so go see quick.

Google Maps comes to the UK and Ireland. More from the Google Blog. Thanks to Thierry for the catch.

At the Slovak National Museum in Bratislava until April 27: Slovakia in Maps from the 16th to the 20th Centuries.

Green maps come to Sauchie, The Herald reports; it’s the first green map in Scotland.

So what is lurking below the surface in Sauchie? Enid Trevett, 46, a local youth worker, points out a few features likely to be included in the map – a 150-year-old oak tree and a woodland spot particularly good for viewing stars.

“What we map on the green map is anything that makes life worthwhile — a good view, anywhere to buy fresh produce. We could map toxic hotspots if there are any,” she said.

(See previous entry.)

Nothing you haven’t already seen before, but this BBC story briefly covers the recent excitement over the Google Maps satellite stuff, including Memory Maps (see previous entry) and Google Sightseeing (see previous entry).

One of four surviving copies of the first map to label the New World as “America” — a 1507 map by Martin Waldseemuller — is being auctioned by Christie’s in June. Better issue a share certificate on your firstborn, though: it’s expected to fetch £800,000. Via Here Be Dragons.

Shipwreck Central, the home page of the documentary series The Sea Hunters, has a really neat interactive shipwreck map that’s both zoomable and searchable. (Thanks to Gooberoo for the link.)

The Green Map system has been around for 10 years. Essentially, it’s a framework for locally produced environmental maps, the focus of which is a set of icons that denote points of ecological interest. The site does not host maps per se, but links to a lot of them. Though many of the Green Maps don’t have online versions, there’s a lot to read about the making of them. Via Bruce Sterling.

DigitalGlobe’s Vatican Gallery, including a satellite shot of St. Peter’s square on April 5 (1.5 MB JPEG, 2168×2164 resolution), showing mourners in line to view the Pope’s body. Via Jason.

As I said in my brief entry about NASA World Wind last November, my lack of access to a Windows PC — at least one I can install big software packages on — prevented me from checking it out. Manuel de Freitas wrote me last week to say something about that:

I have been playing obsessively for the last week with NASA’s World Wind so I quickly zoomed-in on your entry on this amazing piece of software. Well, if it’s true you haven’t seen it yet, probably I can persuade you into borrowing/stealing/buying a Windows PC and install this 170 MB software package. It’s worth the trouble.

Combine a slick real-time-3D program with auto-download mapping for the ENTIRE world, with data from a number of satellites, PLUS an immense number of “plug-in” animations that you can superimpose on the globe or the maps, PLUS all the country boundaries, all the flags, even ALL the cities and villages in the world, and you’ve got something to cry for. To repeat a word I’ve used above, it’s really amazing.

I don’t know Keyhole, but now I feel I don’t need to know it. Please check it. I’m not as devoted to maps as you, but I’m excited enough to feel compelled to write to you about it.

I think he likes it. So does Patrick Strang:

If you’re like me and can browse through maps for hours and hours you must test NASA World Wind. It has got to be the most fascinating piece of software I’ve ever used, and I use it on a regular basis just out of sheer enjoyment. Imagine the whole world browsable, with satellite images of different detail. Download it now — that’s an order!

Oh, for a port.

More scripts to change the mapping service that Mac OS X’s Address Book uses (see previous entry): this one points it at the Swiss map.search.ch (see previous entry); this one points it at Multimap. Via Mac OS X Hints.

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 pages have been moved around a bit, but the old URLs are being forwarded. Notable changes:

• A new page, Communities, lists map-related mailing lists, web pages and societies; the list was getting too big for the sidebar. Additions welcome.
• Folksonomies is now Tags, and includes a feed from Flickr of photos tagged with mapping terms. More could be done with this page — once I figure out how.
• Nothing on the Preferences page yet, but there will be soon.
• The “Contact Me” link has been replaced with a form on a separate page. Use this form rather than the old e-mail address, which is getting clogged with spam.

I’ve been saving up a bunch of Google Maps satellite imagery links for you over the weekend.

• Google Maps and Accountability: Dave Shea explores the possibilities of using Google Maps as a tool for whistleblowing rather than a threat to privacy, by posting images of clear-cut logging areas in central British Columbia.
• This mash-up of Google Maps and Craigslist takes Craigslist rental and real estate listings and plots them on a map using — you guessed it — Google Maps. Be advised that it blows up under Safari, but support is promised. Craigsmaps is a similar project that does it differently. Either way, it’s an excellent demonstration of what neat things can be done with location data. Via MetaFilter.
• A new blog, Google Sightseeing, links to Google Maps images of famous landmarks. Obviously neat.
• Scoble’s response to Google Maps: “Now, I’ve seen Microsoft’s future mapping strategy and I’ve been sworn to secrecy. Don’t count us out yet. After all, we have TerraServer and a few other things that work well on maps.” James Kew responds: “Well, OK, Terraserver. Microsoft got there first. But who cares? Google Maps is attractive not because it was first (there’s been mapping on the web for years) but because it’s the easiest to use.”

All for tonight. No doubt there’s more out there.

Chandu Thota has added an API and other features to BlogMap (see previous entry). Via Scoble.

Those interested in computer game maps (see previous entry) should take note of WoWmapview, a map viewer for World of Warcraft: “It uses the data files included with the game to display the 3D game world, which you can explore by flying anywhere. It allows access to off-limits developer areas and unfinished instance maps.” Via Ceejbot.

Robin Hall writes, “Saw the piece on the back of Online in The Guardian today and am interested in starting a project here in Letchworth.” (See previous entry.) “Given that I have access to a group of people interested in the promotion of community projects here in Letchworth, do you have any observations about how such a project might be kick started?” If there’s anyone from the open mapping community in the U.K. reading this blog, I’m sure Robin would appreciate a few pointers.

Yesterday’s Guardian had a piece exploring the dichotomy between ground-level, do-it-yourself, open-source mapping projects done by people walking about with GPS units, and the massive geodata owned by government agencies.

So why would anyone want to make their own map, especially when abundant geodata already exists? The main reason is cost — geodata is expensive. With the exception of the US and Denmark, all the world’s major mapping agencies copyright geodata. In Britain, all government documents are controlled by crown copyright. The weblogs of community cartographers are calling for Britain to adopt a mapping strategy similar to the U.S., where the government publishes all non-classified documents in the public domain, including highly accurate geodata.

Another item in the Open Mapping vs. Ordnance Survey story. Via Here Be Dragons and Mapping Hacks.

GoogleMaps Satellite View Real-World-Mix, uploaded by kokogiak.

The funniest take yet on the Google Maps screenshot craze that’s sweeping Flickr (see previous entry), from kokogiak.

Update: Not on Flickr, but just as funny.

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 to share with you soon.

The Royal Canadian Geographic Society, which publishes Canadian Geographic, launched the Canadian Geographic Atlas Online yesterday. It garnered lots of media coverage. Too bad it sucks.

To begin with, there isn’t much in the way of maps: it’s more a learning centre for the geography of Canada, with considerable focus on schoolchildren. There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s just a stretch to call it an atlas. Second, there’s really only one real map, and while you can zoom in on it to a certain degree and select layers, it’s surprisingly crude and basic. And third, the site is very badly designed. Links are frequently popups that maximize to fill the screen — while only using about a quarter of it — and hide the scrollbars, preventing you from seeing the material at the bottom of the page (and I’m on a 1440×900 screen here, folks, which is bigger than average). The maps were also extremely slow on opening night — I waited up to 30 seconds every time I tried to pan and zoom — but they’ve since gotten better, with lags of only a second or two. Chalk it up to first-day traffic, but their systems should have been more robust.

Bottom line, this is a mediocre effort that doesn’t live up to the hype. (I can’t believe this made The National!) Unless you’ve got a Grade 7 school report due tomorrow, you’re much better off with the government’s own Atlas of Canada (see previous entry).

Flickr users have gone nuts with posting screenshots of Google Maps’s new satellite photo feature (see previous entry), if the “map” and “maps” tags are any indication. There’s also a new Flickr group called Memory Maps, the idea of which “is to take a satellite image of your neighborhood from your childhood, and use ‘notes’ to tell the story of you growing up.”

On a related note, Jason Kottke argues that the hullabaloo about Google Maps, as compared to other services that have been offering similar features, boils down to a superior user experience that makes Google Maps much more fun to play around with — which, given all the Flickr foolery linked to above, is plain to see.

Google Maps has added satellite images to its service as of late Monday, and it’s done so in a really useful manner: one click toggles between maps and satellite photography. Try zooming in without your jaw hitting the floor. The photographs, which aren’t available in all resolutions for all areas, are a result of Google’s acquisition of Keyhole last year. Many thanks to Cam Watson for the tip; there’s also an AP wire story. As was the case with the original Google Maps announcement, this news will likely spread quickly, if only because people will enjoy playing with the satellite and aerial photography so much. As they should. (So far, the first thing most people want to do seems to be to find their house.)

More on the attempt to produce GIS data for the UK independent of Crown copyright (see previous entry: there will be a Forum on Open Geodata on April 14 in London; see the link for speakers and details. From the page: “This forum will be a discussion about different applications with a civic society focus, such as participatory planning or problem reporting, which could be initially built using free base maps and geocoding facilities.” Via Boing Boing.

The World Islands is a $1.8-billion project to construct several hundred artificial private islands off the coast of Dubai — in the shape of a world map. The glitzy official site is here. Via Boing Boing and MetaFilter.

GRASS, the open-source GIS software, has been available for Mac OS X before; on Friday, OpenOSX announced GrassPro, which, in addition to GRASS 6.0.0, adds several related utilities. Panther and X11 required.

Karen Wynn Fonstad, the freelance cartographer who authored atlases of Middle-earth, Dragonlance and other fantasy worlds, died March 11 of complications from breast cancer. She was 59.

This Toronto Sun article from 2002 reviews her best-known work, The Atlas of Middle-earth. (See previous entry.)

Today’s Oregonian has a review of Peter Turchi’s Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, which I see that a few of you have ordered from Amazon via this site. I haven’t had a chance to look at a copy; if you’ve read it, what do you think about it?

• Buy Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer at Amazon.com

Huw — probably my best link submitter — writes in with another one: a series of maps on UAV safety. That’s unmanned aerial vehicles: think Predator drones. Unmanned aircraft are apparently 100 times less reliable than manned aircraft; the maps show just how reliable they would have to be in order to meet a target level of safety in various areas of the U.S. — much more so in more densely populated areas.

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 has no explicit quid pro quo. However, there is at least an implicit promise to keep it up, and not, say, run off with the money and leave the site lying fallow — which was the complaint on one major site after a successful fundraising campaign.

I hope I don’t run into that problem. Apart from the posts, I’ve got some plans to keep the site fresh. You can see them on this task list I’ve just set up. Health issues will interfere with my progress from time to time, but you’ll at least be able to see what’s in the queue.

John Resig points us to this article in Directions about Urban Mapping’s neato Cracker Jack-box mapping technology — which was covered here a year ago when it was called “Dynamap”. (The old site is completely gone, and they haven’t forwarded the domain to the nearly-identical-but-at-a-new-URL site; grumble.) Anyway, the article is a good exegesis of what the technology does and what it’s good for.

Possibly the strangest way I’ve yet had a link submitted is via someone’s comment in the reader survey: “Excellent reading. Combines well with www.webmapper.net.” Hold the phone — I hadn’t actually heard of webmapper.net. (Insert Jon Stewart going “whaaaaa?” all bug-eyed here.)

So I check. And it turns out that Webmapper is another map blog, by Edward Mac Gillavry, a Dutch GIS developer. From the about page:

All about visualising geographic information online, except when it’s not. The website started off as a personal test bed to develop webmapping applications. This evolved in becoming a show case, reflected in the website’s motto “webmapper: what the map can be.” Using a variety of Web technologies, it shows how to make the most of the characteristics of the Web. Recently, emphasis has shifted to a themed blog. It discusses the latest trends in location based services (LBS), Web cartography, and geo-blogging.

Like Mapping Hacks (see previous entry), Webmapper is a bit more technical than yours truly’s blog: if you’re a generalist like me this might be over your head, but if you’re into map geekery you should be all over this.

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 keep it up for a week.

I’ve been having a peek at the results as they come in, and I’m already noticing a few trends. First, most of you are interested amateurs rather than professionals, which is useful to know.

Second, a lot of you are using RSS, more than I thought. (Mostly via My Yahoo!, too, which surprised me.) This means I should do more on the RSS front: for starters, I’ve added auto-subscribing links for various online aggregators on the left sidebar.

And third, while many of you found this site via Yahoo! — I sense a trend there — a lot of you found it through a link from another blog. It seems churlish of me not to have a blogroll, but until recently there haven’t been many map-focused blogs that lasted more than a month or two. Now, though, there are. So I’ve put one back up, again on the left sidebar.

These are just a couple of quick things I can do right away; more will come later, after I’ve had a chance to really go through the results and once I’ve had some time to think about what to do and how to do it. In the meantime, I’ve got some map entries to post.