The Map Room

The Harvard Crimson’s coverage of Forbes Smiley’s guilty plea naturally focuses on the maps taken from Harvard’s Houghton Library. When last we heard, Harvard was conducting an inventory; according to the article, “Houghton Library discovered that 13 maps were missing from their collection. Of those 13 maps, Smiley has admitted to stealing eight, including a map of the new world by Hernan Cortes from 1524.”

See the court documents for a full list of what Smiley admits to stealing.

Forbes Smiley might not be out of the woods yet. Three maps that went missing from the British Library last year (and reported here last September) are still missing. They were not among the maps that Smiley confessed to taking (see previous entry), but British authorities are still wondering whether he was responsible for their disappearance. From the article by (who else?) Hartford Courant reporter Kim Martineau:

Even if Smiley is eventually linked to all four of the maps missing from the British Museum, it doesn’t appear that it would jeopardize his plea deal because the U.S. government is pleased with his cooperation. He faces up to six years in federal prison when sentenced this fall.

The U.S. Attorney for Connecticut, Kevin O’Connor, said Tuesday that investigators had found no evidence that Smiley was lying. In some instances, Smiley gave up more valuable maps than the ones the libraries had reported missing, he said. Smiley’s business records provided further detail. He recorded the sale of maps he acquired legitimately but also the maps he fenced to the trade. His cooperation led the FBI to nearly 80 stolen maps they could not otherwise have traced.

“We have no reason to believe he would have omitted those maps,” said O’Connor.

It’s important to remember that regardless of whether Smiley is responsible for the loss of these three maps, he is not — by a long shot — the only map thief out there. (If you haven’t already done so, go and read Miles Harvey’s Island of Lost Maps. Do it now.)

See previous entries: Three Maps Stolen from British Library; Smiley Suspected in British Library Thefts; More British Library Theft Coverage.

E. Forbes Smiley III is based in Martha’s Vineyard; local coverage of his case — of his court appearance and guilty plea last week and the case in general — appeared in yesterday’s Martha’s Vineyard Times and today’s Vineyard Gazette.

See the Map Thefts category archive for earlier entries on this subject.

Cartography has a review of Else/Where: Mapping — New Cartographies of Networks and Territories (web site), a collection of 40 essays; my impression is that the contributors come from a design rather than cartographic background.

Meanwhile, on atlas(t), Claire has been having fun reading Mark Monmonier’s new book, From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps Name, Claim and Inflame, which sounds like lots of fun: see her posts here, here and here. If all goes well, I’ll be reviewing this book myself later on; if nothing else, I’m sure I’m going to enjoy reading it.

• Buy Else/Where: Mapping at Amazon.com
• Buy From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow at Amazon.com

Yahoo! has added high-resolution satellite imagery for a number of “international” (read: non-U.S.) cities. They list a fair number in Mexico, a few in Canada, and several in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Cartography compares the imagery with Google Maps by looking at how each service displays a single location: the (new) Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

All Points Blog reports that MapQuest has released a beta of a new (for them) thing for their directions feature: multi-point route building (press release).

See previous entry: More About MapQuest’s Future.

Drat. Garmin’s previously announced plans for Mac compatibility across its product lines (see previous entry) have been delayed somewhat: Training Center will come at the end of the year rather than the spring (obviously), with other products to follow. See also GPS Review.

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 (the service through which I also pump my RSS feeds). You can subscribe through the link on the main menu: clicking on it will make a subscription form appear.

Once you’ve subscribed — there is a confirmation process to go through — you’ll get a daily e-mail message containing the posts from that day, if there are any.

Subscribing should not expose you to any spam; FeedBurner has been a trustworthy company so far.

Simon Elvins’s “Silent London”: “Using information the government has collected on noise levels within London, a map has been plotted of the capital’s most silent spaces. The map intends to reveal a hidden landscape of quiet spaces and shows an alternate side of the city that would normally go unnoticed.” Via Boing Boing.

See previous entry: London Noise Map.

The National Post’s coverage of the Forbes Smiley affair focuses on the nine early maps of Canada that were recovered after Smiley’s arrest.

See previous entries: Breaking News: Forbes Smiley Pleads Guilty; Forbes Smiley Case: Court Documents; Hartford Courant: “For Map Thief, a World of Deceit.”

An excellent story about the denouement of the Forbes Smiley affair by Kim Martineau appeared in yesterday’s Hartford Courant — which, again, has provided the leading coverage on this case. Martineau’s article goes into more detail about the missing maps, how they were recovered, and which ones are still missing (and why) than the list in Exhibit A provides. Plus reaction from the community of map dealers (oh look: there’s Arader again), including those that Smiley stiffed by selling them the maps he stole. Don’t miss this one.

See previous entries: Breaking News: Forbes Smiley Pleads Guilty for other news coverage (still being updated!); Forbes Smiley Case: Court Documents.

See the Map Thefts category archive for complete coverage of the Forbes Smiley case.

Thanks to Tony Campbell, I’ve acquired copies of the following court documents related to Forbes Smiley’s guilty plea last Thursday (see previous entry):

• The single-count indictment to which Smiley pled guilty (two pages, 28 KB);
• The full text of the plea agreement (13 pages, 140 KB);
• Exhibit A, a table listing the 97 maps Smiley admits to stealing, their owners, and whether they’ve been recovered — five are listed as not recovered, five are listed as unrecoverable, the rest have been returned (six pages, 67 KB); and
• Exhibit B, a table listing the 18 maps that the prosecutor could prove Smiley stole without his cooperation, along with their owners, whether they’ve been recovered (one not, two unrecoverable) and — differently — the government’s estimated value of those maps (one page, 18 KB).

The documents are PDF files.

The Berlin City Map Project puts 26 maps of Berlin, from 1738 to 1989, online. It’s an amateur project; the author uses a flatbed scanner to scan city plans a piece at a time. Images are watermarked. Thanks to peacay for the link.

The European Space Agency has released more than a thousand high-resolution satellite images, most of which were acquired by the Agency’s Earth Observation satellites. Here’s the site for the images; it’s searchable rather than browseable, unfortunately. Via Cartography and La Cartoteca.

The Associated Press:

E. Forbes Smiley III, 50, of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., pleaded guilty to one count of theft of major artwork in connection with the theft of a map from Yale University. He admitted taking a total of 97 maps over eight years from other institutions, including the New York and Boston public libraries, the Newberry Library in Chicago, the Harvard University library and the British Library in London. The oldest maps dated back to the 1500s. …

Smiley was released after posting $50,000 bond. He later pleaded guilty to three larceny charges in state court in connection with the Yale map thefts.

Smiley faces nearly six years in prison on the federal charge and will have to pay restitution. The amount has not yet been determined.

Sentencing on the federal charge is scheduled for September 21; he also faces up to five years on the state charges.

Thanks to Smiley’s cooperation, the article notes, most of the stolen maps have been recovered.

Update: The Hartford Courant story covers the same ground in a bit more detail (via MapHist).

Update #2, June 23 at 7:30 AM: BBC coverage.

Update #3, June 23 at 5 PM: More original, non-wire-service reporting from the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Daily Telegraph. The story is apparently being well covered everywhere Smiley stole a map; WCVB-TV in Boston picked up the AP story.

Update #4, June 24 at 8:15 AM: Coverage in the Manchester Union Leader, thanks to Smiley’s New Hampshire connections.

Update #5, June 24 at 11:00 PM: Yale Daily News.

Update #6, June 26 at 11:00 PM: Still more news articles: An updated story from the Daily Telegraph; an earlier story from the New York Times that I’d missed; WTNH-TV in New Haven.

Science fiction writers frequently create maps of the worlds they create for their stories; one of Robert J. Sawyer’s fans turned around and made him a globe from those maps. From his blog: “A fellow named Patrick J. O’Connor, who lives in Chicago, made this wonderful globe for me of the Quintaglio home world from my novels Far-Seer, Fossil Hunter, and Foreigner.” He calls it the coolest thing ever, and I’m disinclined to disagree.

Interspersed with Cartography’s coverage of the CCA conference were a couple of tidbits about the government’s decision to get out of the business of paper maps. From this post:

Representatives of [Natural Resources Canada] were there to explain their plans for paper topographic maps and answer the many questions and heated comments from audience members. Essentially nothing has changed. Paper maps will still be discontinued. Raster files of the sheets will be made available to distributors — although none have appeared yet. Eventually all the topographic data will be replaced by a set of vector data layers collectively to be called CanVec — but don’t hold your breath as this won’t occur for another 3 years.

Tie this in with the rumour that Natural Resources Canada was set to release topo data in shapefile format free of charge, this week, but was put on hold by the minister responsible while he reassesses the situation.

See previous entries: Paper Maps: Doomed in Canada, But Not Elsewhere?; Canadian Topo Map Update: CBC Coverage; Canadian Topo Map Update: Globe and Mail Coverage; Canadian Government Abandoning Paper Topo Maps?

Via Daring Fireball, I stumble across a page of podcasts from the SXSW Interactive conference from last March, and notice that one of them is from a session about maps called “How to Make the Most of Maps.” The description: “Map hackers discuss how to get started on hacking, the differences between mapping platforms, why maps are cool and the future of mapping.” Page down about two-thirds of the way or go directly to the audio file here (MP3 file, 26 MB). The session lasts about 57 minutes; the audio isn’t the greatest.

A reminder that Forbes Smiley — the map dealer caught cutting rare maps from books in a Yale University library last year — is due in court tomorrow. From an AP story in the Boston Globe: “Smiley, who pleaded not guilty to the charges last year, could face about five years in prison based on the plea agreement, said New Haven State’s Attorney Michael Dearington. Federal prosecutors would not comment on details of the charges.”

The paintings of Sarah Trigg: “Taking inspiration from secondhand surgery textbooks, airport layouts, and fuzzy aerial photos found on the Web, Trigg maps fictive terrains that are part landscape, part bodyscape.”

Mixing the map and medicine metaphors is not accidental:

Her “Metastatic Explorer” series began with a map of early Native American tribe territories and languages from The National Atlas of the United States of America. On top of that she layered the routes of European explorers from the 1600s through the 1800s. “The idea was to get a sample, like a doctor would biopsy a tissue, of several systems that were developing in the United States around that time,” Trigg says. “I found it interesting that the explorer system seemed to develop with no regard to the forms of the Native American system — despite having to contend with the same geography. And eventually the explorer system caused the Native American system to change its normal functioning, much like cancer cells do to normal cells.”

More on Trigg (along with some other samples of her work) here, here and here; she also has a home page. Via Kottke.

Google Maps Mania reports that, as expected, the new high-resolution satellite imagery that came to Google Earth earlier this month has now trickled down to Google Maps.

More about the concept of “naive geography” — the idea that how ordinary people perceive geography has implications for the design and use of GIS applications. Alan Glennon has, for a GIS class, written two short essays looking at the reasons for and against using naive geography in geospatial software design. An interesting exercise that sheds some light on the concept and its (potential) practical application.

See previous entry: Two Concepts.

The MTGoogleMaps Movable Type plugin (now at version 4.0) has some competition, kind of: MTMaps, now at version 0.6, which also uses Google Maps. Developer Patrick Calahan writes, “MTMaps is different from other map plugins in that it associates map coordinates with each blog entry. This in turn makes it trvial to, for example, create a single map showing the locations of each of your entries. MTMaps also extends the Movable Type user interface by embedding a map control within the eantry form. This makes it much easier to locate coordinates.” You can see the plugin in action on Patrick’s blog.

See previous entries: Google Maps Plugin for Movable Type; Triangulations: March 20.

The Hartford Courant, which has done most of the front-line reporting on the Forbes Smiley map theft case (see many previous posts in the Map Thefts category), fulminates against the man in an editorial this morning: “To cultural guardians, this is no less serious an affront than desecration of a church. … When it comes to crimes against property, this is about as low as one can go. Monetary value is beside the point. It’s one thing to steal mere objects out of greed, but quite another to pilfer irreplaceable treasures, hugely important to the study of history, that belong not to one victim, but to civilization.”

The Atlas of Canada (see previous entry) is celebrating its 100th anniversary. Canada Post is issuing a stamp to commemorate the occasion; the 51¢ stamp features geographer James White, a map of Canada, and proportional dividers. It will be issued on June 30, but was unveiled today at the GeoTec/CCA conference in Ottawa (day one coverage from Cartography). For more information, see the press releases from Canada Post and Natural Resources Canada. Via MapHist.

This really doesn’t have anything to do with maps per se, but I think you’ll be interested in it anyway. Last week’s Los Angeles Times had a profile of John Trichak, whose job it is to approve all the proposed street names in Riverside County. No mean task in the fastest-growing county in the U.S.

Trichak has a few hard-and-fast rules. If the street is a cul-de-sac, for example, he requires that the name end with “Court” or “Circle.”

If a street within 10 miles has the same name as the proposed name of a new street, the proposed name is rejected. He recently threw out Cypress Drive because there is a Cypress Avenue nearby. He also rejected Merriman Drive because a Merrimac Court exists 6½ miles away.

“Everything is the same but one letter,” Trichak said, so if it was said in a hurry, it could be misunderstood.

And if the name doesn’t roll off Trichak’s tongue easily, then it probably won’t get a place on a map.

“If I can’t pronounce it, you can’t have it,” he said. “It’s as simple as that.”

Via atlas(t).

See previous entry: LA Times: Maps Outpaced by Suburban Growth.

Last one, I promise. Just some links to summing-up posts for Where 2.0.

• Geography 2.0: Alan Glennon on how his expectations of the conference turned out
• Mapping Hacks: Jo Walsh sums up the conference
• O’Reilly Radar: Some of Tim O’Reilly’s favourite talks
• Wired: Where 2.0 Gives the World Meaning

See previous entries: Where 2.0 Begins Today; Where 2.0: Day One; Where 2.0: Day Two.

Ooo. A map of lightning strikes based on NASA satellite data (more on which here). Via BLDGBLOG.

Update, June 20: Frank has made a Google Earth layer out of this map.

On We Make Money Not Art, Régine rounds up previous stories about drivers in the UK being led astray (into rivers, along cliffs) by their dashboard GPS navigation units. (Or rather, about drivers in the UK allowing themselves to be led astray.) Anyway, she’s found another example: caravan drivers getting stuck in a narrow lane in the Welsh village of Llandwrog. Choice quote from Gwilym Jones, who lives at the lane’s entrance: “It’s easy to say they should have more common sense, but really if they don’t know the area they have no reason to doubt what the computer is telling them.” Via Bruce Sterling.

See previous entries: Because My Car Said So; Crackpot Directions Send Drivers Along a Cliff.

More from the Vineyard Gazette on the news that Forbes Smiley may plead guilty on the 22nd. See previous entry: Forbes Smiley to Admit Map Thefts.

Roundups of the second day of the Where 2.0 conference (see previous entry):

• Anything Geospatial (the day’s posts; Glenn is a machine)
• Ed Parsons: It’s All About Data …
• Google Earth Blog: Day Two at Where 2.0
• Monkey Bites (the day’s posts)

For the big sum-up, see this paper (PDF) by the co-chairs of the conference on “The State of Where 2.0” (via O’Relly Conferences).

There will be a third Where 2.0 conference; it’ll be held at the same location on June 19-20, 2007.

Tony Straka is looking for a way of creating maps of imaginary places with open-source web mapping tools. He writes, “One thing I have searched for is fictional maps created with one of these programs and I cannot seem to find any. The short question is, do you know if it is possible to create a map in worldKit using custom models and imagery? I was wondering if you knew of any fictional maps like Middle-earth, Narnia, Lost etc. created with worldKit or another open-source Google Maps clone?”

Reports from across the geospatial blogosphere on day one — yesterday — of the Where 2.0 conference (see previous entry):

All Points Blog: “These first sessions are not really about the future of mapping. … Where is about local search and more correctly about social networking using location technology.”

Ed Parsons is struck by “the number of innovative companies which have based their business propositions on building on the Google Maps API. Many of these applications seem to be totally reliant on the continued availability of a mapping platform which abstracts all the complexity of managing constantly changing geospatial databases of hundreds of gigabytes of information to a simple JavaScript API. While this continues to be the case everybody is happy — the bear is asleep … but I got the distinct impression that things may be beginning to change.”

Mix-ins vs. Mashups: Search Engine Watch covers the Virtual Earth/Live Local keynote. Via Chandu Thota.

See also Google Earth Blog’s notes from day one, Where 2.0 Conference News, many recent posts on O’Reilly Radar, and yesterday’s posts from Wired’s Monkey Bites and, as I mentioned before, Anything Geospatial.

Photos from Where 2.0 are being posted to Flickr: here are Glenn’s; here are C.S.’s; and here are James Duncan Davidson’s official photos.

Update: Very Spatial podcast of day one.

Photo credit: James Duncan Davidson/O’Reilly Media

A look back on Google’s Geo Developer Day on Monday, with some additional links on the subject.

For summaries of the event, look at these reports from MacWorld and Search Engine Watch.

The Google Maps API Blog discusses the new geocoding feature.

On Geography 2.0, Alan Glennon takes a look at the KML-in-Google-Maps feature here and here.

Meanwhile, Google has announced an extension to their Picasa photo-management software, Picasa Web Albums. What Google doesn’t mention, though, but which Stefan and Frank have picked up, is that you will apparently be able to geotag Picasa photos from within Google Earth, which sounds neat.

And on a personal note, my new Intel Core Duo iMac arrived yesterday; the Mac version of Google Earth is insanely fast on it. (Of course, I upgraded from a G4 iMac, so there ought to be an improvement; but it’s not like my Internet connection changed.) I haven’t tested the new version 4.0 beta on the old hardware — is it faster than version three?

See previous entries: Breaking News: Google Earth 4.0; Google Maps Update: KML, Geocoder, Enterprise.

Photo credit: spanaut

The Hartford Courant: “E. Forbes Smiley III, 50, who lives on Martha’s Vineyard, is due to appear in U.S. District Court in New Haven on June 22 to accept responsibility for a staggering number of thefts, bringing a yearlong FBI investigation to an end.”

The Forbes Smiley case first came to our attention last August — he was arrested just over a year ago — and I’ve been following it ever since; see the Map Thefts category archive for earlier posts on the subject. Considerable credit must go to this article’s author: Kim Martineau has been the lead reporter on this case for the duration.

An interesting tidbit from this article that I didn’t know before (or had forgotten): the library had videotape of Smiley slicing a map from de Jode’s 1578 Speculum Orbis Terrarum. In other words, they pretty much had him from the outset. Indeed, Smiley has been cooperating with the authorities for months.

We’ll find out on the 22nd what charges Smiley will plead to, and what penalties he’ll face. Then he’s off to state Superior Court to face three larceny charges.

(Thanks to Paul for the link.)

The folks behind Yahoo! Local and Maps now have a blog. In their most recent post, they announce they’re lifting restrictions on commercial uses of the mapping API.

CNet’s review of the major mapping sites — part of an ongoing comparative look at “Web 2.0”-style web applications — concludes that Google Maps has been surpassed by Yahoo! and Microsoft in terms of features, and gives Yahoo! the nod for best overall mapping service. From the review: “But which mapping service makes the most of the dynamic Web? While we found Yahoo to be the most practical directions finder — and Google the best worldwide tour guide — Microsoft’s integration of maps with its other Windows Live tools intrigued us.” Via Windows Live Local/Virtual Earth.

Meanwhile, our friend Catholicgauze, following in Paul’s footsteps (see previous entry), is embarking on his own multipart review of the online mapping sites, and not just the top sites — 10 sites in all will be tested.

See previous entries: Online Mapping Sites Compared Again; TechCrunch Compares Mapping Services; Schuyler Looks at the APIs; Reviewing Online Map Services; Comparing Online Mapping Services.

Where 2.0 gets under way today in San Jose and runs through tomorrow. I won’t be there, because travelling to conferences is expensive, but a number of mapping and geospatial bloggers will be, such as Glenn from Anything Geospatial, Ed Parsons from the Ordnance Survey, Alan Glennon of UCSB and Frank Taylor of Google Earth Blog. So I’ll be looking forward to their reports.

Meanwhile, via O’Reilly Radar I learn about the Where 2.0 podcast (podcast link), which at the moment has three episodes of interviews with people who will be presenting at the conference.

For last year’s Where 2.0 conference, see previous entries: Where 2.0; Summing Up Where 2.0.

Update: Jesse of Very Spatial is liveblogging the event; so is Glenn. See also the Where 2.0 conference blog.

For a so-called “remaindered link,” this is an impressive post: Jason Kottke began by linking to a story in today’s New York Times about Egbert Viele’s 1874 map of Manhattan — still used today by civil engineers because it shows the original shoreline and underground waterways. He also linked to this listing (you can buy a print for a mere $1,600) and the entry on David Rumsey’s eponymous site. But he didn’t stop there, oh no: he stitched together a massive (9859×3115, 8.6 MB) image of the map, and then put out a zoomable flash version. A lot of effort for a link — but it’s quite the map, don’t you think?

The announcement of version 3.5 drew my attention to iMap, and since I assiduously follow map-related software for the Mac, as you know, I should mention its existence here: it’s apparently an application that lets you generate maps from data fairly easily and export them as PDFs for use in other applications. Handy if you’re looking to put together some maps for a presentation — many of the examples in the gallery are in that vein — and, at $199, clearly meant for professional use rather than casual dinking around. I can definitely see the usefulness of something along these lines, though.

Martyn Davis has written up his experiences getting bike routes onto a GPS-enabled bike computer using Linux command-line applications and a bit of Google Maps. Via MAKE: Blog.

Also from Google’s Geo Developer Day. In addition to the new version of Google Earth and upgraded imagery for Google Earth (coming soon to Google Maps), an entry in Google’s official blog announces the following major new features of Google Maps:

1. You can now view Google Earth KML files directly in Google Maps.
2. The API now supports geocoding (for several countries).
3. Google Maps for Enterprise — presumably a solution that does not have the free API’s requirement that a mashup page be publicly accessible.

News from Google’s Geo Developer Day, reported by Google Earth Blog, Ogle Earth and The Unofficial Apple Weblog: Google Earth version 4.0 (beta) is now available, with a new interface for all platforms. I say “all platforms,” because there is now a Linux version available for download (see previous entry). The Mac version (see previous entry) is now a Universal binary (it will run natively on Intel- and Power PC-based Macs) and appears to be feature-complete: Plus and Pro versions, for example, are now available on the Mac.

Another review of MapPoint 2006, this time from Directions: “What were they thinking? Was this product an afterthought? Did Microsoft all of a sudden realize it had not planned for the next version of MapPoint and had to get a release out the door anyway with minimal improvement?”

See previous entries: MapPoint 2006; MapPoint 2006 Review.

GIS Monitor has a review of Basic GIS Coordinates, a book which addresses the challenge of trying to apply mathematical coordinate models to an inherently irregularly shaped planet. From Matteo’s review:

Basic GIS Coordinates explains the progression of ideas that are the foundation of coordinate systems — including state plane coordinates, UTM coordinates, and the rectangular system. Van Sickle traces both the intellectual and technological developments — the concepts and the means — of measuring our world. He includes just enough history to entertain and to clarify why things are as they are — without distracting from the flow of his technical explanation. Likewise, he refrains from overwhelming the reader with the supporting mathematics.

Via Slashgeo.

• Buy Basic GIS Coordinates at Amazon.com

Canadians in general must have maps on the brain; it’s not just me, and it’s not just the Canadian bloggers, cartographers and geospatial pros that keep getting featured on this blog (see, for example, the two previous posts). Otherwise, why would this getup — for an Ontario government tourism thingy — even be considered as a marketing gimmick, other than as an homage to a Simpsons episode (“I’m Idaho”)?

I fortuitously spotted this while shopping at the IKEA in Ottawa this morning. If it weren’t for the photographic evidence, I might have begun to wonder whether I was working too hard on this site.

Cartography notes the upcoming launch, during the Canadian Cartographic Association’s 2006 conference this month, of Jeffrey Murray’s upcoming history of Canadian cartography, Terra Nostra, 1550-1950: The Stories Behind Canada’s Maps. The book sounds quite interesting. So does the conference — but, though I live only an hour away, I doubt I’ll be able to attend, so I’ll look forward to Paul’s report.

Update, June 21: Press release announcing the book’s launch.

• Buy Terra Nostra at Amazon.ca
• Buy Terra Nostra at Amazon.com

In a Directions article, Kevin Flanders argues that Canada’s disproportionately large contribution to open source GIS projects is a result of federal government funding, which he contrasts with U.S. government contracts to proprietary GIS vendors.

Via James and Glenn, I discover ESRI’s new public (and possibly collaborative) blog about the GIS industry, Geography Matters. Still in its early stages; ought to be interesting to see how it develops.

NASA’s new CloudSat satellite takes cross-section images of cloud interiors, allowing researchers to see cloud formations in 3D. The images are essentially transects rather than maps, but can supplement and inform weather-related satellite imagery the same way as ground radar can. The image above is from a warm front over the Norwegian Sea on May 20 — the first image it took. Details (and more images) from Live Science (via Very Spatial) and CNet.

Great post by Claire on what she calls the “taxonomy of geographic names” — learn new and useful words like “toponym” (place name), “allonym” (one of two toponyms applied to a single feature, e.g. Istanbul/Constantinople) or “exonym” (place name in a foreign language, e.g., in English, “Moscow” for Moskva and “Florence” for Firenze). She points to this Glossary of Toponymic Terminology, from which these definitions no doubt are derived; that site has more, but much of it is mundane. (Does a glossary of geographic terms really need to define “alphabet?”)

The New York Times reports the death on Monday of Caleb D. Hammond, Jr., who from 1948 to 1974 was president of C. S. Hammond & Company, the map publishing house founded by his grandfather. He was 90. You’ll recognize the name if you ever had a Hammond world atlas. Or an inflatable globe — I remember my nursery school (I was all of four years old) having one of those. Via All Points Blog.

Google Earth Blog and Ogle Earth report that more areas of the planet now have high-resolution imagery in Google Earth, many of which are low-population areas like South Georgia Island, Siberia, the Australian interior and — wow — the Himalayas. The Caribbean got an update, too, says Frank. Alas, my own isolated neck of the woods is still low-res.

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.

Old meets new: Google Earth layers for London in 1666 and 1690. Suddenly the purpose behind e_Perimetron becomes clear. Via Things Magazine.

This is a nice find: a good-sized collection of maps of North Carolina, some dating as far back as the 17th century. The maps were scanned by the state archives; the ones I perused were in quite high resolution. Some of the scans are of photocopies (such as the 1730 map of the Carolinas’ coastline at right) but are nevertheless clear. Via MapHist; see also First Printing.

Cartography links to more maps and imagery of the Indonesian earthquake, including satellite images here and here, as well as situation maps from ReliefWeb.

See previous entries: Indonesian Earthquake; Indonesian Earthquake in Google Earth.

With Manhattan Elsewhere, Jason Kottke updates Bill Rankin’s Errant Isle of Manhattan using Google Maps and Google Earth (Rankin used MapQuest). The idea is to play off the differences in size and density; in both projects, it’s very surprising to see how small Manhattan is compared to other conurbations.

Depending on your vantage point, Manhattan seems either very big or very small. On [a] complete map of the New York City area, Manhattan is dwarfed in size by the other four boroughs and surrounding megopolis. But for someone on the ground in Manhattan, the population density, the height of the buildings, the endless number of things to do, and the fact that many people don’t often leave their neighborhoods, much less the island, for weeks/months on end makes it seem a very large place indeed. This divergence sense of scales can cause quite a bit of cognitive dissonance for residents and visitors alike.

Blog entry; MetaFilter. See previous entry: Radical Cartography.

For people in the geospatial industry, ESRI is omnipresent; for people outside the industry, ESRI is scarcely on our radar, despite their dominance of the GIS software market. For those of us in the latter category, this Forbes article, profiling ESRI owner Jack Dangermond and examining how ESRI is responding to the revolution in popular computer mapping (as opposed to professional mapping), is as good a start as any. It does start from the public perspective — presupposing that we’re familiar with Google Maps, but not necessarily with the more-established ESRI, or the geospatial industry in general — which is handy. (Plenty of GIS blogs focus much of their attention on ESRI, which is something I’m woefully equipped to do, so check them out too.) Via Cartography and Slashgeo.

While governments fret about losing security at the hands of publicly available, high-resolution satellite imagery, it’s worth remembering that revealing things that governments would rather leave hidden is frequently a very good thing. Last week, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as part of a pilot program to explore the use of geospatial technology in human rights campaigns, released images showing the destruction of the Porta Farm settlement in Zimbabwe. Here are images from before (June 2002) and after the settlement of 6,000 to 10,000 people was razed in June 2005 as a reprisal against political opponents of the regime:

(Image credit: Copyright © 2006 DigitalGlobe, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Via Kottke. See previous entry: A Google Maps Update.

Via Kathryn Cramer, Google Earth overlays for last weekend’s earthquake in Indonesia.

See previous entry: Indonesian Earthquake.

e_Perimetron is a new quarterly web journal, the focus of which is the application of geospatial technologies to old maps. The first issue, for example, has articles that transform old maps to conform to known coordinates, assign projections to portolans, and so forth. The question under study, I guess, is how to go about making old maps useful in a digital context. Via Cartography.

There’s more to the story of Big Stick’s neighbourhood maps being barred from Chicago Public Schools (see previous entry) than meets the eye, Adena says in Directions: she recounts the map company’s conflicts with local realtors — lawsuits, sponsorships gone awry, bribes to change neighbourhoods’ names — and speculates that that history might have been behind the school board’s decision. Though it’s clear that the map company’s history with Chicago realtors is colourful to say the least, I wouldn’t necessarily make the connection without something more tangible. Otherwise I’d be saying that the company seems to have a propensity for trouble — what would I be implying, then?

See previous entry: Mapmaker Gets C&D from Chicago Schools.

• Buy Chicago Neighborhood Map (2nd edition) at Amazon.com