• Books
MapHist is abuzz with excitement over the news that an English translation of Christian Jacob’s apparently significant 1992 work on the history of cartography, The Sovereign Map: Theoretical Approaches in Cartography throughout History, is now available. Is there any more information out there beyond what exists on the publisher’s page?
The Ohio Geological Survey has announced a 1:500,000-scale map of the state’s bedrock geology: “The map shows the distribution of 46 bedrock formations or combinations of formations occurring at the surface or immediately beneath the surficial deposits (mostly glacial) that commonly conceal much of the bedrock in Ohio. The accompanying text explains not only the characteristics and distribution of the state’s various bedrock formations, but also details the many economic mineral commodities, environmental characteristics, and geological hazards associated with the bedrock units.” $15. Via Maps-L.
If you’ve been following this blog’s entries about how digital mapping data providers compile their data (see the Surveying category archives), you’ll know that since time immemorial — or at least the 1940s — mapmakers have compiled their road data by driving the roads. But in Wired’s October issue, there’s a story about how Tele Atlas is moving away from that, thanks to their acquisition of GDT, a company founded by Don Cooke that tried to avoid driving when compiling road data:
Adamant about compiling data, instead of looking for it out the window, Cooke started with road classification information from the Census Bureau and determined rough speed limits so he’d have a sense of which routes were most efficient. Next, GDT acquired detailed aerial photography of major cities. “We could look at a street and see which way cars were parked, even tire rubber going into intersections, and deduce 85 percent of the turn restrictions and one-way attributes,” Cooke says.
See previous entries: Thomas Guides, Navteq on KPCC; NY Times: Navteq in New York; Again: TeleAtlas in Berlin; The New Yorker on Maps and Directions; Again: NavTeq in San Diego; Another Profile: Navteq in New York; TeleAtlas in Santa Fe; More on Digital Map Field Researchers; CNet Profiles TeleAtlas; SF Chronicle: Digital Map Field Researchers; Backcountry Mapping; Online Maps’ Foot Soldiers.
The Library of Congress’s Geography and Map Division is a huge resource of digital images of old maps. On Wednesday they reached a symbolic but impressive milestone: they posted their 10,000 digitized map to their web site: Samuel de Champlain’s 1607 map of the northeastern coast of North America. Via MapHist.
Google Transit, the trip planner that includes public transportation data, started last December (see previous entry) with Portland, Oregon as its single city, presumably as a proof of concept. Today they’ve added five more cities: Honolulu, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Tampa, and Eugene, Oregon. See also Google Maps Mania.
Maps for Canadians is an online campaign to get the Canadian government to reverse its decision to stop printing paper topographical maps. They encourage people to write the Minister of Natural Resources and their local member of parliament; note that postage is free when writing an MP. Via Cartography.
See previous entries: Canadian Topo Map Update: CCA Conference Items; 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?
A renowned dealer who admitted stealing nearly 100 rare antique maps was sentenced Wednesday to 3½ years in prison after one librarian described him as a “thief who assaulted history.”
E. Forbes Smiley III, a 50-year-old resident of Martha’s Vineyard, also was tentatively ordered to pay restitution of $1.9 million, though that figure may change. He is scheduled to report to prison Jan. 4.
The sentence’s length is closer to what the defence was asking for than what the libraries were demanding.
U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton said she wanted to send a dual message with the sentence.
“If you steal human treasurers, then you will go to prison, but if you help recover them, this will be taken into account and weighed in the balance,” she said.
Earlier in this afternoon’s sentencing hearing, representatives of six libraries had urged a stiff sentence for Smiley. (Associated Press coverage: Boston Globe, Hartford Courant, International Herald Tribune, Newsday; the Chicago Tribune covers the Newberry Library’s statement.)
See previous entries: Prosecutors File Brief, Explain Smiley’s Motives; Forbes Smiley’s Sentencing Memorandum; Forbes Smiley Asks for Leniency; British Library/Forbes Smiley Update; Forbes Smiley Case: More on the British Library’s Brief; British Library Demands Harsher Sentence for Smiley.
Update #1, 5:30 PM
The AP story is also available via the Belleville News-Democrat. Kim Martineau’s story for the Hartford Courant contains some additional information, notably the following:
The money Smiley will make selling his home on Martha’s Vineyard and his summer house in central Maine is expected to cover only a fraction of what he owes. As he heads off to jail broke, with his business in tatters, few of the map dealers he betrayed are holding their breath waiting for payment.
Also that, as David pointed out, state sentencing — on three larceny charges — has been delayed to next month, sentence to be served concurrently.
Update #2, 6:00 PM
The AP story is also accessible at the Stamford Advocate. For background, this Bangor News story filed prior to sentencing is a good summary.
Update #3, 8:20 PM
The Times reports that the British Library “was extremely disappointed by the leniency of the sentence imposed.”
[British Library scholarship and collections director Clive] Field said: “In the library’s view, a term of imprisonment of 42 months — equivalent to around 12 days for each of the 98 maps Smiley admitted to stealing — and financial restitution of £1 million, do not adequately reflect the seriousness of the offences.
“Nor do they represent a commensurate punishment of Smiley for his serial thefts, or a serious deterrent to other would-be thieves of cultural property.” He added: “It will go down in criminal and library history as one of the largest, most prolonged, premeditated and systematic of all thefts from libraries, and with no mitigating circumstances.”
The New Haven Independent’s coverage is extensive, and includes anecdotal material from the hearing, plus photographs.
The AP wire story has been updated: Worcester Telegram & Gazette. The first wire story is being mirrored all over the place; this is a major story. See also the Reuters wire story.
Update #4, Sept. 28 at 1:55 PM
University news coverage from the Harvard Crimson and Yale Daily News.
Forbes Smiley’s web site has been taken down; I wonder when that happened. Via MapHist.
Post your thoughts in the comments; that’s what they’re there for.
Update #5, Sept. 28 at 8:05 PM
NPR covered the story as well (via Map the Universe).
Update #6, Sept. 29 at 8:00 AM
The New Haven Register’s coverage highlights some interesting information that may have been in earlier news stories, but I didn’t register it.
On Smiley’s upcoming state sentence:
He faces another sentencing, on state first-degree larceny charges Oct. 13 in Superior Court. Both sides have agreed to a cap of five years on that sentence, which will be served concurrently with the federal sentence.
On Smiley’s prison time:
Arterton agreed with a request by Smiley’s attorney, Richard Reeve, to put off Smiley’s reporting to prison until Jan. 4, 2007, so he can continue identifying maps. She also agreed to recommend Smiley serve his time at a “satellite camp” at Fort Devon in Massachusetts because it has a medical facility for his heart problems. The federal Bureau of Prisons will make the final decision.
Update #7, Sept. 29 at 9:15 AM
The FBI put Smiley’s stolen maps on display; WTNH has footage. Windows Media only, so I can’t view it. Via Map the Universe.
Update #8, Sept. 29 at 4:50 PM
Kim Martineau’s story in yesterday’s Hartford Courant. Via MapHist.
• Environment, GIS
The Conservation GeoPortal is an index of conservation maps and GIS datasets. No maps or data is available on the site itself, just searchable metadata; it points to stuff elsewhere online. More here. Via Maps-L.
A collection of late-19th-century bird’s-eye-view maps of Texas cities will be on display at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas (near Amarillo), from March 17 to June 10 next year. This is presumably the same exhibition that was on display in Fort Worth earlier this year, so if you missed it then, you’ve got another chance.
See previous entries: Texas Bird’s-Eye Views; Exhibition Roundup: Fort Worth, Texas; Hannibal Missouri.
• London, Publishers
The 100th anniversary of Phyllis Pearsall’s birth was celebrated in the UK on Monday. She founded the A-Z Map Company in 1936 to publish a (now-legendary) map of London — which she compiled by walking 3,000 miles’ worth of London streets — that replaced contemporary offerings that were decades out of date. Pearsall died in 1996; more about her here and here. There are also two books about her: her memoir, From Bedsitter to Household Name: The Personal Story of A-Z Maps; and Sarah Hartley’s biography, Mrs. P’s Journey. Via MapHist.
A choropleth map of Flickr photos as a KMZ file for Google Earth; it shows how many photos from each lat/long grid have been uploaded to Flickr. I was intrigued to see that unexpected places like St. Helena and Greenland have had photos uploaded. (What, no photos from Tristan da Cunha?) Via FlickrBlog.
Gawker’s New York City Subway Smell Map, a Google Maps mashup with attitude: “Created from reports sent in by Gawker readers, the map displays particular smells — horrific and sublime — encountered throughout New York’s subway stations.” And you thought the Gawker Stalker map was something. Via MetaFilter.
In 2002, Temple University began working on a flood map of the Pennypack Creek watershed, an area on the north side of Philadelphia that historically has been particularly prone to flooding. The resulting maps, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports in a special section on flooding, were, paradoxically, too good:
After seeing the finished product last month, the agency told Temple that there was a problem: The maps were too precise to be adopted by the federal government.
The researchers’ work was done in such exacting detail — literally house by house — that it was far and above FEMA’s longtime standards for floodplain mapping, said Martin Frengs, an official at the agency’s regional headquarters in Philadelphia. The maps’ quality, he explained, must be uniform across the country because they are the foundation of the National Flood Insurance Program, which FEMA administers.
Temple’s renditions would be Michelangelos in a Grandma Moses gallery.
The Inquirer shows the differences in detail between Temple’s and FEMA’s maps on this interactive map. Via MapHist.
• GPS
This is a strange article; it talks about viewing fall colours and segues into using or buying a GPS receiver for that purpose. It also repeats the canard that a GPS renders paper maps unnecessary: “A foldable map is cheaper and just as portable as a GPS device, but doesn’t tell you directions the way a GPS unit does.” To me that’s like saying a compass renders a topo map obsolete. Then there’s this recommendation for choosing a fall colours route: “Make sure the one you choose is bordered by lots of green, indicating vegetation.” Electronic maps don’t necessarily do that. Via My Wonderful World.
Google Maps has added road data for Brazil — no address search yet, though — and updated the map tiles for Japan, allowing (apparently) hybrid mode. See also Google Maps Mania, Google Karten.
The theme for the fifth biennial Virginia Garrett Lectures on the History of Cartography is “Mapping the Sacred: Belief and Religion in the History of Cartography.” They take place on October 7 (lecture program) at the University of Texas at Arlington’s Central Library, the day before the fall meeting of the Texas Map Society (lecture program). Via First Printing.
Cartography reports an upcoming conference on cartographic design by the British Cartographic Society, to be held November 17 in Glasgow. It’s called The Map Designers: “this seminar will bring together cartographic designers, and designers from the world of media and GIS, to discuss how to make maps effective, exciting, irresistible and … readable.”
Free GIS Data GeoBlog points to GIS data available for free online; it’s another project by Glenn Letham, whom we’ve heard of before: he’s also behind Anything Geospatial and GISUser.com, among other things. Via Cartography and GPS Tracklog.
Steve Coast’s Where 2.0 talk on OpenStreetMap is now available in MP3 format from ITConversations. Via OpenGeoData.
See previous entries on OpenStreetMap: OpenStreetMap Animations; Ed Parsons on OpenStreetMap; OpenStreetMap: Manchester’s Next; OpenStreetMap to Map Isle of Wight; OpenStreetMap London Poster as Fundraiser; OpenStreetMap; London Free Map.
See previous entries on the Where 2.0 2006 conference, which took place last June: Where 2.0 Begins Today; Where 2.0: Day One; Where 2.0: Day Two; Where 2.0 Final Roundup.
• Blogs
GeoPress “is a WordPress plugin that allows users to quickly and easily embed location information in blog posts.” Via O’Reilly Radar, which covers it in some detail.
See previous entry: Google Maps WordPress Plugins.
Yahoo! has updated its AJAX mapping API to version 3.4; among other things, it now includes polylines and a traffic data layer.
Learning at the British Library has a section on maps — not a comprehensive archive, but a selection that illustrates key themes for educative purposes using examples from the Library’s collection. Four sections: ideas, lies and deception, war, and wealth and poverty. Via Things Magazine.
Attorneys for the British Library and Forbes Smiley have made their submissions regarding Smiley’s upcoming sentencing; now it’s the prosecution’s turn. In their sentencing brief today, prosecutors explained Smiley’s motives for stealing nearly 100 maps, the Associated Press’s John Christoffersen reports:
“He explained that his initial thefts were acting out of resentment toward persons at certain institutions that he believed had wronged him, individuals who he believed had slighted him or used certain of his research without accreditation,” prosecutors wrote. “Other thefts he explained resulted from some misguided sense of entitlement to the maps because he had, through collectors, provided better versions of the same map to the institution. He also acknowledged that stealing maps was profitable and he had mounting debts.”
Smiley’s sentencing is now scheduled for October 13 (Update: Or maybe the federal part is still next Wednesday; see this comment).
See previous entries: Forbes Smiley’s Sentencing Memorandum; Forbes Smiley Asks for Leniency; British Library/Forbes Smiley Update; Forbes Smiley Case: More on the British Library’s Brief; British Library Demands Harsher Sentence for Smiley.
Update, 10:10 PM: Tomorrow’s edition of the Vineyard Gazette covers both the prosecution’s and defence’s submissions.
• Cities
Tinselman, aka Myst co-creator Robyn Miller, has compiled an archive of photos of scale models of cities on his blog. Most of the photos are from Flickr, such as this one, at right, of the Shanghai model by Andrew Currie. Via MetaFilter.
See previous entries: The Living Map; There’s Always Room for San Francisco.
Last year it was announced that MapQuest was moving into print maps. Wise commenters on that entry noted that it was not the first time that MapQuest had moved into paper, and in fact they had earlier laid off their workers on the print side of the business during the dot-com bubble (the company started with printed maps in 1967). Now it seems that, a bit more than a year later, they’re dropping the print side of their business, shedding 40 jobs and selling its publishing arm to former employees, to focus on their all-digital efforts. Again. It’s never a good sign when a company keeps changing direction, 180 degrees at a time. Via Cartography.
See previous entries: MapQuest’s Mobile Strategy; What’s MapQuest Up To?; MapQuest Goes Paper.
Via Map the Universe, an introductory article about map collecting from today’s edition — I guess by now it’d be yesterday’s edition — of the Sydney Morning Herald, using the local Antique Print Room as its backdrop and the earliest maps of Australia as examples.
The UN Environment Programme’s atlas, One Planet, Many People: Atlas of Our Changing Environment, was announced in June 2005 and has been available as a free download since at least last February. (You can always buy the book, of course.) Now it’s available in online, with a Google Maps-based interface that will still take you to the complete text, before and after images, and Google Earth links. Via Here Be Dragons.
See previous entries: One Planet, Many People Redux; One Planet, Many People.
The 39-page sentencing memorandum written by Forbes Smiley’s defence attorney, Richard Reeve, is available online (PDF) from the Hartford Courant (see also the attached exhibits). The document responds to the memorandum submitted last week by the British Library, partially on legally technical grounds (a lot of stuff about the arcane details of sentencing guidelines), partially by refuting some of the Library’s arguments. It emphasizes the libraries’ faulty cataloguing, not only challenging their accusation that Smiley took more maps, but also highlighting a peculiar situation about Smiley’s cooperation:
Indeed, the F.B.I. investigation established that the relevant institutions were unaware that 40 of these 80 these maps were even missing before Mr. Smiley admitted their thefts, despite lengthy internal investigations by the institutions themselves.
It also argues that the British Library takes no note of the fact that Smiley is cooperating and that maps are in fact being returned: “[T]he British Library’s rhetoric neglects an important and fundamental truth: the Appian World Map [cited in Goldman’s brief with great flourish] will soon be back in its collection.”
Worth reading in its entirety; the Hartford Courant’s Kim Martineau has a story (to which the above documents were attached) that covers the bases very well, naturally.
See previous entry: Forbes Smiley Asks for Leniency.
Forbes Smiley’s sentencing has been postponed until October 13. No reasons as yet for the delay; the hearing had already been pushed back to accomodate libraries’ sentencing memoranda.
Update, Sept. 27: This applies only to Smiley’s sentencing in state court for three larceny charges; he was sentenced in federal court today as scheduled. See David Cobb’s comment.
In the wake of the British Library’s submission calling for a stiffer sentence than called for by the guidelines, Forbes Smiley’s attorney is asking for leniency, the Associated Press reports. Specifically, he’s asking for three years, rather than the five to six years suggested by the guidelines and the up-to-eight years asked for by the British Library.
“It is our view that he has cooperated honestly, openly and thoroughly,” Smiley’s attorney, Richard Reeve, wrote. “He made a decision almost immediately to assist in the investigation and attempted throughout to aid the government in whatever way possible and to help retrieve as many of the maps as possible. To reach that goal, he had to admit to conduct that would have never been uncovered.”
But here’s the kicker:
Smiley admitted to taking two more maps only a few weeks ago, Reeve said. The court papers do not provide any details about those maps.
Hmm. That he was not previously forthcoming about those two extra maps hurts the credibility of his argument that he’s been cooperative; it also lends credence to the British Library’s accusation, yet to be supported by hard evidence, that he stole more maps than he’s admitting to.
See previous entries: British Library/Forbes Smiley Update; Forbes Smiley Case: More on the British Library’s Brief; British Library Demands Harsher Sentence for Smiley.
Update, Sept. 24: Harvard Crimson coverage.
News coverage of the British Library’s submission regarding Forbes Smiley’s upcoming sentencing continues to trickle in: here are stories from the Library Journal, the Vineyard Gazette and the Yale Daily News — the last covering libraries’ stepped-up security following Smiley’s arrest.
See previous entries: Forbes Smiley Case: More on the British Library’s Brief; British Library Demands Harsher Sentence for Smiley.
The Broer Map Library is a digital archive of scanned maps with heady ambitions — “to provide its collection of maps and atlases online in order to allow libraries and researchers who would not otherwise have access to such a large collection, have them available.” Founded in 2002, they claim a collection of 40,000 maps, with scanning apparently in progress and with plans to expand further. The ostensibly registration-only members’ section seems to be completely accessible; maps are in Zoomify format. Via Cartography.
Brady Forrest, covering FOSS4G2006 for O’Reilly Radar, links to some fascinating animations from the OpenStreetMap project.
This one tracks two days’ worth of courier activity in London:
There are also videos that track the growth in GPS traces for OpenStreetMap in London and the UK.
The blog associated with OpenStreetMap is OpenGeoData.
See previous entries: Ed Parsons on OpenStreetMap; OpenStreetMap: Manchester’s Next; OpenStreetMap to Map Isle of Wight; OpenStreetMap London Poster as Fundraiser; OpenStreetMap; London Free Map.
The Guardian adds to the coverage of the British Library’s brief asking for a harsher penalty for Forbes Smiley (see previous entry).
I must confess to some misgivings about the ferociousness of the libraries’ response to Mr. Smiley. He’s already facing five to six years in jail, on top of $1.8 million in restitution and 97 maps returned — and that’s with him cooperating. Adding two to three years, as the brief asks for, seems insufficiently meaningful — we’re not talking about 60 days vs. two years, for example. The penalty is qualitatively severe: there are people committing serious and violent crimes who face less. And I worry that harsher penalties, while satisfying the desire for exemplary punishment, will deter cooperation, and the point, I think, is to get as many maps back as possible.
If he’s not cooperating enough, then the libraries must prove it; they can hardly convict him on the basis of their suspicions, and cannot put the question (in the ancien régime sense) to confirm those suspicions. Fortunately, Goldman’s brief does not go down this route — it’s the public utterances that I find problematic.
I appreciate the frustration, but, you know, he was caught. He is going to jail. He has returned maps. He is paying restitution. The rest is quibbling over details. Important details, when each missing map is of immense value, but details nonetheless.
Le petit blog cartographique points to an archive of maps from Le Dessous des cartes, a shortly weekly program broadcast on the German-French arts and education network, Arte. The maps are from episodes from 1998 to 2001.
Today’s edition of the Lawrence Journal-World has a feature on orienteering, with a look at local clubs. For you young whippersnappers with your fancy GPS doohickeys, that’s like geocaching, but with only a compass and topo map.
• Blogs
An upcoming employment change is forcing Paul to scale back from blogging at Cartography, the Canadian Cartographic Association’s blog, so he’s looking for one or more people to share in the blogging duties. Bloggers should be CCA members — this has always ostensibly been the CCA’s blog even though in practice it’s been a one-man operation so far. I, for one, want to see that blog thrive.
Maps.com has launched a print-on-demand map marketplace called, naturally enough, Map Marketplace, which allows independent cartographers to submit and list their maps for sale on Maps.com’s site. The press release describes the venture as “a Cafepress.com for the mapping industry” — but, unlike CafePress, this does not appear to be for nonprofessionals, but for cartographers seeking a distribution channel for a product that might not otherwise be economically feasible to publish. There is a review process, after which Maps.com prints and distributes the map and keeps 70 per cent of the sale price. It will be interesting to see whether this enables any new maps to be published. Via Very Spatial.
On the Google Maps API Blog, an explanation of recent performance and imagery upgrades to the API. The improved imagery was noticed on Google Maps proper last week; this post includes a list of the areas that got those imagery upgrades.
• GPS, Geotagging
Richard has managed to lay hands on a new Sony GPS-CS1, the small gadget that records time and location data and comes with software that allows you to add that location data to the photos you took at that time. His review is excellent and thorough: he runs it through its paces, shows how it works (apparently it does work with non-Sony cameras, sort of) and the results. In a nutshell: he likes the hardware, finds the software “pretty weak.” (Sounds like Sony.)
See previous entry: Geotagging Indirectly: ZoneTag, Sony.
CBC News: “An incorrect map and communications failure led to an Israeli air strike on a UN observer post that killed four peacekeepers. … According to [the IDF’s] confidential report, Israeli artillery were using a hand-drawn map that identified the clearly marked UN post in the Khiyam area of southern Lebanon as a base for the militant organization Hezbollah.”
(Artillery units use hand-drawn maps? What’s UTM for, then?)
The Boston Public Library’s Norman B. Leventhal Map Center launched its web site this week, map curator Ronald E. Grim announced on MapHist:
This initial version of the website includes digital images of approximately 200 maps from the Library’s collections. Our plans are to add more maps as they are scanned. These digital files are accessible through “zoomify.” The site also includes virtual tours of two past exhibitions, and a Map of the Month and a Maps in the News feature. The former will be updated monthly, while the second will be updated quarterly. The virtual tours and Maps in the News include educational suggestions for teachers at the K-12 levels.
In October 2003, I mentioned the BPL’s efforts to do something with their 350,000-map collection that had previously been more or less gathering dust. Much has happened since: the Leventhal Center was launched in July 2004 and hired Grim as its curator in January 2005. However, the collection was also frequently visited by Forbes Smiley: 10 maps were reported missing at the BPL after his arrest, but, according to court documents, he admitted to taking a total of 34 maps from the Library.
• GPS
The Guardian looks at the privacy implications of location-based and GPS tracking services. “‘People are very willing to give up their privacy,’ [Tim Hibbard, who has a site pinpointing his current location,] says. ‘You just have to give them a good reason to do so. If you can assist a person in their everyday life, they will be more than happy to divulge their current location.” Via Kartentisch.
Concomitant with yesterday’s update of Google Earth’s layers, a new beta of Google Earth 4 has been released. New features include Japanese-language and timestamp support, but what caught my eye was a new UTM grid overlay (I’m big on UTM). Google Earth Blog, Ogle Earth, Cartography.
The British Library has unleashed its hired gun (see previous entry). In a court filing yesterday, the Library’s attorney, Robert Goldman, asks that Smiley be sentenced to up to eight years, rather than the five to six years agreed to by both the prosecution and defence.
The Hartford Courant and New York Times have the story; for the AP wire story, see, for example, the Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune, the Belleville News Democrat, Newsday, the Stamford Advocate and WTNH. See also Map the Universe.
Alternating between the lyrical and the legally arcane in his 16-page brief, Goldman argues for a departure from the sentencing guidelines, citing two cases where sentencing guidelines were thrown away; in one, the subject of Travis McDade’s upcoming book, The Book Thief (see previous entry), a thief who stole $1.3 million in rare books and maps from Columbia had his sentenced doubled. He also argues for a departure from the guidelines because there were seven victims, rather than one, because the thefts involved cultural resources, because some of the returned maps were damaged by the process, because of the impact on access to material and library security, and because of the damage to the libraries’ reputations.
Goldman writes that “[t]he harm caused by Smiley transcends monetary loss”:
Like a drop of oil on a still pond, the number of his victims spreads with time. Smiley’s victims include students, scholars, academics, the general public and individuals yet to be born who will not have the opportunity to sit at a desk, open a leather bound volume, and see the world as Archbishop Cranmer and others saw it in the 16th Century. No one can predict with certainty what book or image will spark the curiosity of a reader to learn, to dream, to explore, to accomplish.
The brief is available on the Hartford Courant’s web site — in Word format. Tsk. I’ve converted it to PDF and uploaded it here.
Smiley’s attorney dismisses Goldman’s brief, arguing that 80 maps would not have been returned without his client’s cooperation.
Smiley’s sentencing has been moved back to September 27 to accomodate other libraries’ submissions.
See previous entries: The British Library’s Hired Gun; Stolen Maps Meeting Kept Private; Forbes Smiley Case: Another Missing Maps Update; Missing Map Overlap; Yale Issues Statement About Smiley Investigation; Boston Globe on Libraries’ Suspicions About Smiley; Libraries Suspect Smiley in More Map Thefts; Is Forbes Smiley Getting Off Easy?; Three Missing British Maps Still Missing.
Following on last week’s imagery update, Google Earth today saw a major update to its layers, including new “featured content” layers such as, I was delighted to learn, trail data for U.S. national parks. Also, 3D buildings for Japanese cities. (See also All Points Blog, Ogle Earth, Slashgeo, ZDNet.)
Update, Sept. 15: The relevant Google Blog entry.
Earth Wallpapers is a collection of desktop backgrounds created from Google Maps satellite images. Each image comes in several sizes; the back end is powered by Flickr (the images are available through Flickr here). Copyright issues notwithstanding, these are some very pretty pictures. Via Kottke.
• Cities
The Dubai tourism department has launched an online map of the emirate, AME Info reports. The map is available in a not-very-interactive Java-based interactive map and a copy-protected PDF. Nevertheless an interesting map of an, um, interesting place — the palm-, crescent- and world map-shaped artificial islands are on display here.
See previous entries: The World Islands; Dubai Aerial Photography.
MapCruncher, the Virtual Earth tool that allows you to integrate your map or image into their mapping system, is now natively supported by the API, the developers report.
See previous entries: Live Local/Virtual Earth Update; MapCruncher.
Breathing Earth is a Flash-based simulation that “displays the carbon dioxide emission levels of every country in the world, as well as their birth and death rates — all in real time.” Hover over each country for specific data. Via Cartography.
Symbols and map patterns from National Park Service maps are available for download, in PDF and Adobe Illustrator formats. Potentially useful for anyone making maps. Via Kottke.
• Globes
The Blue Planet Globe, encased in a smoked acrylic box, simulates the earth’s rotation and seasonal changes in sunlight — for a mere $850. But on the Science Source catalogue page, there is a less-glamourous manual version for only $75. Via Very Spatial.
More features have been added to Windows Live Local, the eponymous blog reports, including people search, the ability to send address details to your mobile phone, and enhanced drawing tools that include the ability to draw shapes — i.e., enclosed polygons, not just points and lines, which is something I’ve been looking for. Virtual Earth has also added bird’s-eye imagery for more imagery, including, they say, thanks to James Fee’s complaint, Tempe, Arizona. Does this mean I can get somewhere complaining about the low-res imagery in rural western Quebec? No? Drat.
See previous entry: Major Windows Live Local Update.
Last month, Tony Campbell wrote on MapHist, “I do hope somebody will be tempted … to take on the task of compiling a listing of map forgeries/fakes and the references to them.” John Woram has now answered Tony’s challenge and has begun working on a fakes and forgeries page; it’s still in the very early stages of development, with more information to come later.
• Nautical
NOAA’s nautical charts are available for free download as raster images in BSB format, GPS Tracklog reports. Rich mentions that the files can be used in OziExplorer; NOAA has a list of software and an online viewer.
Map historian Peter van der Krogt has compiled a database of articles on the history of cartography from scholarly journals. “Originally that was intended for private use as an list of the articles in my own library. Later I started to use it for the section ‘contents of historic-cartographic journals’ in Caert-Thresoor. There are now almost 2600 articles in this database.” He’s outputted the database to the web as a simple list of articles, sorted by author. Searchable via your browser’s “find” function. Via MapHist.
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 45 minutes at that point), but it’s possible that we’ll continue to have issues until then.
While this site is still up, I will remind you that I post downtime reports and pathetic whinges at mcwetboy.wordpress.com. See also dreamhoststatus.com.
See previous entry: Status/Outage Updates.
There are reports here and there that Google has updated its satellite imagery. The images are certainly loading differently for me: lower-resolution photos are being used at wider zoom levels, and they seem to be cached differently. More as more reports come in.
Update: Frank’s list of updated locations is the one everyone seems to be linking to.
The National Agricultural Imagery Program collects aerial photographs of farmers’ fields during the growing season. According to an NPR story, one of NAIP’s purposes is to check on what farmers are planting — to make sure that they qualify for their subsidies. The story also has a bit on the technology behind the program. Via WorldChanging.
Jeff Thurston got his hands on what sounds like an interesting book: State Security and Mapping in the German Democratic Republic is a collection of papers on East Germany’s deliberate distortion of its topographical maps. From the publisher’s catalogue page: “Maps used by anyone else [other than the defence, security or interior ministries] were to be recalled and replaced by an Edition for the National Economy (AV), from which the uniform sheet line, geodetic grids, trigonometric points, and quality and quantity details as well as other ‘confidential information’ had to be removed. Moreover, maps for the general public were to feature distortions of direction and scale, and inaccuracies of up to ±3 km.”
• Books, Map Thefts
Travis McDade writes, “I have a book coming out in October about a man who stole books and maps from Columbia University some years ago. The book deals a little with his theft and capture but largely with the unique federal sentence he got for his crime. (This is particularly timely considering the Forbes Smiley case about to be resolved by a sentencing judge.)” The book is called The Book Thief: The True Crimes of Daniel Spiegelman and it’s being published by Praeger; more details at the publisher’s catalogue page.
Cartography points to the Ordnance Survey’s Free Maps for 11 Year Olds program, which, according to a recent news release, has doubled the number of students who feel confident using maps and tripled the number who enjoy using them. The program, now in its fifth year, has distributed 700,000 maps — 1:25,000-scale maps of an area relevant to the school — to schoolchildren in England, Wales and Scotland. The maps are theirs to keep, not the school’s. The Survey’s Teaching Resources page has PDF downloads of some of the materials. See also MapZone, the Survey’s kids’ site.
• GPS
GPS Tracklog: 10 Ways to Get Lost with a GPS. Number 10: “Think that you can’t get lost because you have a GPS.”
The August issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction had a damn fine short story by Christopher Rowe where mapping plays a central role. In “Another Word for Map Is Faith,” an alternate America is ruled by a topsy-turvy theocracy where Cartographers survey the land, comparing it with old maps, looking for error. But the old maps are considered holy books, and infallible; the error is in the landscape:
“Christians, there is error here. There is error right before our eyes!” Her own students weren’t a difficult congregation to hook, but she was gratified nonetheless by the gleam she caught in most of their eyes, the calls, louder now, of “Yes!” and “I see it! I see the lie!”
“I laid down my protractor, friends, I know exactly how far off north Jesus mapped this ridge line to lay,” she said, sweeping her arm in a great arc, taking in the whole horizon, “And that ridge line sins by two degrees!”
“May as well be two hundred!” said Carmen, righteous.
Sandy raised her hand, stopped them at the cusp of celebration instead of loosing them. “Not yet,” she said. “It’s tonight. It’s tonight we’ll sing down the glory, tonight we’ll make this world the way it was mapped.”
Geocoding has arrived for two more countries in Google Maps: Google Maps Mania reports that it’s now possible to search for addresses in Australia and New Zealand.
See previous entry: Google Maps Adds Streets for Australia and New Zealand.
A four-year study of Hudson Canyon, a feature of the continental shelf off the coast of New York, “has produced maps that will allow scientists to study many things, including whether methane gas trapped in frozen sediment below the sea floor is escaping and exacerbating global warming,” the Associated Press reports (multiple sources: Globe and Mail, International Herald Tribune, MSNBC; Google News). Maps are available at the study’s web site as PDF files. Also via Cartography (from whom I’m stealing atrociously today).
Despite the success of Beck’s London Underground diagram, New Yorkers have historically resisted diagrammatic subway maps, preferring instead maps that are a bit more geographically accurate and take into account surface features like parks, bodies of water and neighbourhoods. Sunday’s New York Times has a story about John Tauranac, the former map designer for the MTA who in the late 1970s led a committee that redesigned New York’s subway map. The 1979 map replaced a previous map designed by Massimo Vignelli in 1972 — a schematic that encountered staunch resistance. New Yorkers, it seems, have and want a sense of distance between points on a subway map. Via Cartography, which has links to other New York subway maps. Anyone know any others?
Update, Sept. 7: Anil Dash writes, “There are, it seems, at least two distinct systems of belief about what constitutes the proper set of assumptions for the New York City subway map. … Should the Metropolitan Transit Authority strive for an idealized conceptual diagram that helps people understand the system at the expense of literal accuracy? Or should the map reflect the true environment that the subway system lives in, providing necessary context even at the expense of superficial clarity?”
Mapping the Medieval Urban Landscape was a two-year project to study the design and planning of towns in the Middle Ages for which historical records no longer exist. The project, which focused on a dozen of Edward I’s “new towns” (built in England and Wales between 1277 and 1303), sought to reconstruct the towns’ plans based on what’s left today. The results can be examined in a new online atlas: maps of the towns can be accessed through a GIS interface or downloaded as static files. Via Urban Cartography; see also Cartography.
The Daily Mail and British Conservatives have their knickers in a twist over maps from Interreg III, an EU initiative designed to foster “cross-border, transnational and interregional cooperation.” The Interreg maps — available here as PDF files — overlap one another and indicate regional, trans-border affinities, but that doesn’t stop the Mail and the Tories from fulminating against European attempts to wipe out national borders (lumping Kent with France and east England with Scandinavia) and create a European property tax. Via MapHist.
One drawback to Google Maps — and presumably to the other mapping services — is that while it’s easy to map points and lines (“polylines”), mapping regions (“polygons”) is something altogether different. And that makes it rather difficult to do species range maps or choropleth maps in a map mashup (though it occurs to me that you could import certain shapes as overlays). Beginning Google Maps (see previous entry) examines this question by showing how to process shapefile data into XML.
An article by Ralph Peters in the June 2006 issue of the Armed Forces Journal imagines a redrawn map of the Middle East, where borders are shifted and new states are created to address local — and, thanks to the attention given to the Israel-Palestine situation, less well-known — injustices: ethnic groups separated by international borders are united, stateless minorities are given homelands (e.g. Kurdistan). No more than a thought experiment, but one bound to generate controversy. Via MapHist (where it already has).
For similar thought experiments, see previous entries: Pearcy’s 38 States; Question: What-If Political Boundaries?
• Blogs
Google Karten is a German-language blog about Google Maps and its ecosystem. Via Kartentisch.
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 could accomodate advertising and sidebar information (previously contained in the footer) without being overwhelmingly cluttered. The clutter was starting to be a problem in the previous design.
I’ve also taken this opportunity to shuffle the ads. I’ve dropped the non-performing AdBrite section and added an eBay affiliate ad that links to antique map auctions. At the moment, all ads are either Google AdSense or affiliate programs, and the advertising content is mostly (except for the choice of affiliate programs, and the choice of books linked to) out of my hands. Other than the Google ads, I receive no compensation unless signups or purchases are made through the ads.
The new design is wider than 800×600 screens. I have no idea how many of you are still using that resolution. I may try and code up a fix, but in the meantime, all it cuts off are the ads on the right column. And, for a change, I’ve tested it against Internet Explorer for Windows, so there shouldn’t be any surprises for you if you persist in using that browser, though there are a couple of minor quirks.
Let me know if you experience any problems. I’ll try to squash any remaining bugs in the design over the next couple of days.
Between November 2 and January 27, there will be a maps exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago. Not many details yet, except that it’s called “Maps! The History of Cartography” and it’s co-sponsored by the Newberry Library — and that three maps from the Tolkien collection at Milwaukee’s Marquette University, which houses the author’s papers, will be a part of it.
Update, Sept. 4: This is November 2, 2007 to January 27, 2008. No wonder the details are sparse. The Tribune report is apparently in error. Thanks to Tony for pointing out what I missed.
The story of Canada Post’s stamp honouring geographer James White, creator of the Atlas of Canada, issued at the end of June to commemorate the atlas’s centennial, has been picked up by the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel’s stamp columnist. (Contemplate for a moment the fact that the Sun-Sentinel has a stamp columnist.)
See previous entry: Atlas of Canada Stamp.
Third-party geotagging services are adopting the new Flickr API geo extensions, the Flickr blog reports, so they’re not in danger of extinction quite yet.
See previous entries: Flickr Geotagging Roundup; Flickr Adds Geotagging.
The Map Room is a blog about maps by Jonathan Crowe. It covers everything from collecting to the latest in geospatial technology from a generalist’s perspective.
The Map Room ran from March 2003 to June 2010 and is presently inactive.
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Between March 2003 and June 2010, I posted a total of 4,055 entries. You can explore them by visiting the archives index, or by choosing one of the monthly or category archives below: