The Map Room

The Geospatial Web: How Geobrowsers, Social Software and the Web 2.0 are Shaping the Network Society is a collection of essays about new geospatial technology — Google Earth, georeferenced feeds, the usual stuff we’ve been talking about — and its implications. Scholarly in tone, based on the sample chapter and excerpts available on the book’s web site. Via Anything Geospatial.

• Buy The Geospatial Web at Amazon.com

From last year, a brief article on Google’s Librarian Central on the sources of Google Earth imagery.

We collect it via airplane and satellite, but also just about any way you can imagine getting a camera above the Earth’s surface: hot air balloons, model airplanes — even kites. The traditional aerial survey involves mounting a special gyroscopic, stabilized camera in the belly of an airplane and flying it at an elevation of between 15,000 feet and 30,000 feet, depending on the resolution of imagery you’re interested in. As the plane takes a predefined route over the desired area, it forms a series of parallel lines with about 40 percent overlap between lines and 60 percent overlap in the direction of flight. This overlap of images is what provides us with enough detail to remove distortions caused by the varying shape of the Earth’s surface.

Via The Earth Is Square and Slashdot.

We first heard about Christian Nold’s Bio Mapping project last November, when I blogged about the Greenwich Emotion Map. Now Nold is in San Francisco for a five-week stint, measuring the emotional responses to various locations in the city, the Associated Press reports. See also Gadling.

A collection of maps of Paris for an art history course, scanned from slides (so they could be a little sharper; 8-bit only). The maps date from 1716 to 1887. Via Plep.

Version 5.0 of the Virtual Earth API went live today; features include new and/or improved shape layer classes and customizable keyboard and mouse events. Mashups will need to upgrade to the new API to use the new features.

RenaLId, which I referred to earlier today, is a French blog by Renaud Euvrard; it’s been focusing mainly on online maps, with an understandable amount of recent coverage of the French presidential elections. (I can’t explain the caps in the title either.)

Virtual Earth imagery updates are apparently a monthly thing now: here’s news of the latest, which includes updates for Italy, France, Mexico, Canada and the U.S., including more U.S. bird’s-eye imagery.

Results of the first round of the French presidential elections are usually presented by département. The official results, from the French Interior Ministry, are available here as well as via a Google Earth layer, about which see RenaLId. (Change Layers to “All Layers” to see it, under Primary Database — as Frank and Stefan discovered, it’s not always available by default. Where’s a KML link?)

With so many candidates, mapping these results can be complicated: the map Catholicgauze presents shows who won each département, but when the frontrunner only receives 31 per cent of the vote, that approach omits a lot of underlying support and overstates the extent of each win. (François Bayrou won 18 per cent of the vote, but only one of 90-plus départements.) France has no electoral college: presidential races are strictly proportional. We need more data. Le Monde’s map breaks the results down by National Assembly constituencies, which gives a bit more granularity, but what I really want is choropleth maps, which would show us not only who won in a département or circonscription, but also where their relative strengths are. RFI provides such maps for the two frontrunners, Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal, but not for the rest of the field.

Any other maps of these results?

British map dealer Philip Burden — his company is Clive A. Burden Ltd., named for his late father — is in the U.S. on a book tour; the second volume of his massive (and expensive!) bibliographic reference, The Mapping of North America, is now out (volume one was published in 1996). The Raleigh News and Observer has the story; he’s in town to give a talk tomorrow.

• Buy The Mapping of North America, Vol. 1 (1511-1670) at Amazon.com

After posting the entry about the new Madrid Metro map, it occurred to me that familiarity may be as important as good design: a new map design will almost certainly encounter resistance from users of the current design if the new design departs too much from what is familiar. Concomitantly, those frustrated with or confused by the current design will not only rush to adopt a new, simpler map, they’re usually the impetus for that design.

New York has been a case in point: as I blogged last year, New Yorkers buck the Beck trend by expecting a certain amount of geographic realism in their subway maps: the 1972 subway map by Massimo Vignelli, which persisted until 1979, was, I think, a beacon of Beckian clarity, but it was resisted.

Now someone’s trying again, but unlike Vignelli and, in present-day Madrid, Rafa Sañudo, Eddie Jabbour is not working in an official capacity: his map of the New York subway system — about which there was an article in Sunday’s New York Times — draws heavily on Beck and Vignelli for inspiration and is grounded in his own sense of intimidation in using the 1979 subway map. Notably, the map shows multiple lines for trains running on the same line, a way of differentiating between express and local trains — a point of some confusion, apparently.

It’s taken Jabbour five years on evenings and weekends to produce it. He’s met with the MTA about it, but they weren’t that interested. Opinions are mixed. As you might expect, it seems to be a love it or hate it kind of thing, depending on whether you like the 1979 map.

For a really geographically accurate map of the New York subway system, see this map — and compare.

Via Kottke. See also 37signals’ not-to-be missed post on distortion and maps, using this map and the Beck Underground map as examples.

Reports from Google Maps Mania and Google Karten that city and road data for several more countries have been added to, or upgraded in, Google Maps. In Europe, which first got streets a year ago, Croatia, Slovenia, Estonia, Lithuania and Turkey seem to have detailed roads; Greece’s roads have apparently been upgraded, and Russia’s still seems limited to Moscow and St. Petersburg. In Asia, Taiwan and Thailand have been added.

Rafa Sañudo has designed a new map (3.1-MB PDF) of the rapidly expanding Madrid Metro (Wikipedia), but some residents, especially train enthusiasts, are upset with the new design, the Times reports. They much prefer the old map (123-KB PDF), the design of which has not changed since the 1980s and borrows cues from the Beck map of the London Underground. Sañudo’s map, on the other hand, avoids 45-degree angles altogether, and is proving hard to follow for regular metro users — a change of that nature would be disorienting by definition, I think. See also El Pais (in Spanish). Via Map History/History of Cartography.

Mapperz discovers that Yahoo India has maps (or possibly that Yahoo Maps has India). I am bemused to see that India’s borders are exactly where the Indian government says they ought to be. Street data does not extend beyond those borders. There is satellite imagery; I wonder whether that too has been cleared by Indian censors. Not Safari-compatible.

Previously: Maps Must Be Cleared by the Survey of India; Virtual India.

Update, 4/26 at 10:30 AM: All Points Blog has more on the data used.

London’s Kerning is a map of London done in type — you have to step back from the large (153 cm × 101.5 cm), limited-edition poster to recognize the city. Interesting. Via Kottke; more at Moon River.

Live, accessible satellite imagery is a pipe dream, but EarthNow is probably as close as we’ll ever get: it’s not live, but (updated; see below) it is real-time — just delayed a few hours. It’s essentially a Java applet that displays the feed from the Landsat-5 and Landsat-7 satellites as they make their passes overhead; the images I saw just now were from earlier this afternoon. Via All Points Blog and Free GeoTools.

At 250-metre resolution, they’re unlikely to raise any security or privacy concerns. (Remember, this is satellite imagery, not aerial photography.) The popular view of satellite and aerial imagery is more or less encapsulated by The Simpsons:

Via Google Karten and Valleywag.

Previously: Satellite Misconceptions.

Update, 5/2: E-mail from Rachel Kurz of the Landsat Project: “Just for clarification … When the EarthNow! viewer says that the pass you are watching is LIVE, it actually is the live downlink from the satellite to the Landsat Ground Station in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.”

J. B. Post’s page on U.S. map copyright litigation covers more than two centuries of case law. The earliest is Blunt v. Patten, an 1828 case involving a nautical survey; the latest is Alexandria Drafting Co. v. Amsterdam, a 1997 case involving “trap streets.” Exhaustive and, as Post disclaims, “written by a non-lawyer, to be read by other non-lawyers, and must not be considered in any way as an authoritative legal history.” Via MapHist.

Previously: Review: How to Lie with Maps; Copyright Traps.

Former Intergraph CTO Peter Batty now has a blog: GeoThought. Via All Points Blog and Anything Geospatial.

Security experts — who, to be fair, have an interest in crying wolf — warn that hackers can use off-the-shelf equipment to send messages to car navigation systems using the FM channel for traffic and weather data. Remember: if your satnav system says “Im in ur dashboard, cleanin mai harbl,” you’ve probably been hacked. Do not drive off the cliff. All Points Blog, Slashdot.

Who needs GPS? Boeing is leading a project to develop a “Robust Surface Navigation” system that draws upon various terrestrial signals — such as cell towers — to provide location information when the GPS signals are jammed. Engadget, Slashdot.

But what could jam GPS? How about a solar flare? Last December, solar flares were observed to put out a huge radio burst that caused GPS receivers on the sunlit side of the Earth to lose tracking. CNet News, GeoCarta.

Mapz: A GIS Librarian takes another look at Firefox mapping extensions — all 16 of them, ranging from geotagged photos to online map viewing.

Previously: Firefox Mapping Extensions.

Deutsche Post, the German post office, has issued a stamp in honour of the 500th anniversary of Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 map of the world — this is the map, you may remember, that first named the New World “America.” The stamp, which costs 2.20€ and is sold in sets of ten, went on sale on Tuesday. Via Maps-L.

Previously: Atlas of Canada Stamp; More on the Atlas of Canada Stamp.

For a map exhibition that doesn’t even open until November, the Field Museum’s Maps: Finding Our Place in the World is sure getting a lot of advance publicity — I first reported on it last September. But organizers believe the Chicago event is worth the hype, according to this Associated Press story on today’s official announcement of the exhibition: they’re calling it “the most ambitious cartography exhibit ever in North America.”

Pieces confirmed for display include a 3,500-year-old clay tablet detailing walls, gates and palaces in the town of Nippur in what is now Iraq; three drawings by Leonardo da Vinci rarely lent from the English royal collection; the map Charles Lindbergh carried with him on his history-making flight from New York to Paris; and drawings by author J. R. R. Tolkien of his fictional Middle-earth.

All told, the exhibition — which runs from November 2 to January 27 — will have more than 100 rare and significant maps. Sounds impressive. No mention is made in the article of the concurrent Festival of Maps in Chicago, but it’s definitetly part of the festivities.

This opinion piece in The Telegraph of Calcutta discusses the increasingly irrelevant requirement that the Survey of India — that bastion of government efficiency — clear all maps of India before they’re published in that country. Because someone might see the country with the wrong boundary or something. “If a Google map can zoom in and show you the location of your house, then the censuring [sic] of maps makes no sense any more. If the government wants to keep official maps within its preserve, does it make any sense to censure maps of non-government publications? Would ‘inaccurate, inauthentic’ publications make any difference to ‘strategic interests’? Or is this just a bureaucratic reluctance to let go?”

Previously: Google Earth, India and Security — Again.

The National Geographic Society sponsors several awards for cartography students through cartographic societies. 2007’s winner of the National Geographic Award in Mapping, awarded to undergraduate and Master’s-level students through the Association of American Geographers, is Cassie Hansen of the University of Nevada, Reno. She won for a striking map of the Mount Shasta area — and got written up by her home-town paper, the Mount Shasta Herald. Via GeoCarta.

Canadian newspapers are reporting that the collection of Canadiana up for auction this week (see previous entry) went for the equivalent of $1.5 million (Canadian) — the Atlantic Neptune itself selling for the equivalent of around $900,000. (The article gives the Canadian-dollar equivalents, not the U.S. dollars in which the auction was conducted.) Far more than expected in either case. Via Map the Universe.

Update, 4/24: PhiloBiblos has the auction details — the Neptune’s auction price was $779,200. Via Map History/History of Cartography.

The Book of Curiosities, an 11th-century Egyptian manuscript now scanned and available online at the Bodleian Library’s web site, contains, among other things, the first rectangular map of the world as well as many other maps of the region.

In June 2002, the Bodleian Library acquired a unique manuscript … of a hitherto unknown Arabic cosmographical treatise, the Kitāb Gharāʾib al-funūn wa-mulaḥ al-ʿuyūn, loosely translated as The Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels for the Eyes. The manuscript is a copy, probably made in Egypt in the late 12th or early 13th century, of an anonymous work compiled in Egypt during the first half of the 11th century. It is extraordinarily important for the history of science, especially for astronomy and cartography, and contains an unparalleled series of diagrams of the heavens and maps of the earth. No less importantly, both the illustrations and the text preserve material gathered from Muslim astronomers, historians, scholars, and travellers, of the 9th to 11th centuries, whose works are now either lost or preserved only in fragments.

See also the Oxford press release. Thanks to Tom and Paul for the link; see also BibliOdyssey.

This is a cartogram that shows from which countries Wal-Mart gets its products. China and the U.S. predominate; Europe and Africa, not so much. Via Kottke.

Tim likes the idea of aerial photography on a GPS unit, which is now starting to become available: it adds a layer of information that you might otherwise miss with topo maps — he cites vegetation as an example.

Via GeoCarta, an article about army mapmaking in Iraq, where it now takes a day for the team to create a customized, mission-specific map on a plotter; when it was done by hand, it could take as much as a month.

Previously: U.S. Army’s Field Manual on Map Reading and Navigation.

For your reference, the Washington Post’s map of the shootings at Virginia Tech. Via MetaFilter.

See also Virginia Tech’s campus maps.

Update, 4/17 at 9:30 AM: The Baltimore Sun’s map is a Google Maps mashup. Via Very Spatial.

Update #2, 4/17 at 12:15 PM: The School Violence Resource Center’s map of school shootings and stabbings in the U.S. from 1996 to 2006. Via Catholicgauze.

A couple of extensions that allow wiki developers to add Google Maps to their wiki installations — at least, insofar as I can figure it, if they’re using MediaWiki: Extension: Google Maps and Google Maps Widget. Oddly enough, I’ve been thinking about a wiki project idea (that may or may not see the light of day) and was wondering about this very thing. Via High Earth Orbit.

I’ve been spending some time reading through Matthew Edney’s annotated bibliography of scholarly literature on the history of cartography; a new revision went online at the Coordinates web site last week. The list is bigger than some of my comprehensive exam reading lists, and the annotations pull no punches. It’s giving me a few ideas for future reading, though I’d never have enough time to get through even the recommended stuff. Via MapHist and Map the Universe.

Time again to report that another thousand or so maps have been added to the David Rumsey map collection. Highlights include 19th-century U.S. statistical atlases and a magnificent 1929 Italian world atlas. Via MapHist.

The collection is usually updated like this once or twice a year, and was last updated in December.

Previously: More Maps Added to David Rumsey Collection; David Rumsey Site Updates.

The rare book collection of the late Frank Streeter goes up for auction next Monday at Christie’s in New York; among the significant early Canadiana highlighted by this Canadian wire-service article about the auction is a copy of the four-volume, eighteenth-century Atlantic Neptune by Des Barres. The atlas is expected to go for something like $700,000.

Previously: The Atlantic Neptune.

Building outlines for some U.S. cities arrived in Google Maps a couple of months ago; now Stefan reports that the 3D buildings layer from Google Earth has been repurposed for Google Maps, as semi-transparent, oblique building shapes at the highest zoom levels. Something incremental is happening here, but I’m not sure what the final result will be.

Previously: A Google Maps Roundup.

Why does Microsoft’s online mapping service get so little attention compared with Google’s?

Peter Laudati thinks it’s because it’s gone through so many name changes, from Virtual Earth to Windows Live Local to whatever they’re calling it now — he counts at least eight web addresses that resolve to the service. (Dare Obasanjo: “This product has now officially gone through more names than I’ve had ex-girlfriends. … It’s sad that we are intent on screwing one of the coolest products we are shipping these days in this way.”)

Scoble thinks it comes down to ease of use: Google’s typically simple, uncluttered, non-redundant user interface.

Me, I suspect that cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility might play a factor: a lot of the people who write the stories that generate the buzz use Macs. (Live Maps doesn’t work at all on Safari, and it’s apparently not feature-complete on Firefox.)

Plus, I think Microsoft simply doesn’t have much goodwill left: if you say that Microsoft has produced something truly amazing, many of us will simply conclude that you’re a shill on their payroll.

This Hungarian site has a large collection of maps from the Third Military Mapping Survey of Austria-Hungary. The maps, which were published around 1910, are at 1:200,000 scale; they cover much of central and eastern Europe, not just the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There are 267 sheets, each scanned in high resolution and running at around four and a half megabytes per file.

Matt Fox, whose work we’ve seen before, has started a new blog about Google Earth content — Google Earth Library — which already has a ferocious amount of material posted. Via Google Earth Blog.

I’ve run across several methods to provide maps for the visually impaired, and each is completely different from the other. The latest, Scientific American reports, is a virtual, three-dimensional map that is navigated using force-feedback gloves; the twist is that this new system requires only an ordinary video camera to create the maps.

Architects sometimes create three-dimensional models for the blind, but these replicas can only be used by one person at a time. Paper maps with ridges signifying roads are not ideal either, because they cannot convey enough information. With Moustakas’ system, a digital version of a diorama can be accessed simultaneously by people around the world. Extra information is presented in audio clips.

To build the virtual dioramas, the researchers first shoot video of an architectural model. The video is then processed frame by frame using software developed by Moustakas’ team. As the camera angle changes, the software tracks each structure and determines its shape and location. That data is used to create a three-dimensional grid of force fields for each structure. “Each point on the grid has an associated force value,” Moustakas says.

Two common-touch interfaces simulate the force fields by applying pressure to the user’s hand: the CyberGrasp glove, which pulls on individual fingers, and the Phantom Desktop, which applies a single force to the hand via a wand. Moustakas said the process is somewhat like trying to identify an object by running a finger or wand along its surface.

Via Engadget.

Previously: Maps for the Visually Impaired; Maps and Directions for the Blind; Online Maps for the Visually Impaired.

In a workshop paper called How We Watch the City: Popularity and Online Maps (PDF), Danyel Fisher of Microsoft Research describes how he generated a heat map based on the server logs for Virtual Earth’s image tiles. The brighter the point on the map, the more that tile was accessed — a rough guide to what people were looking for. At least on Virtual Earth, and at least for eight months in 2006. Via Geobloggers.

O’Reilly Radar notes the fact that the maps are not only shareable, but searchable.

Free GeoTools tests the accuracy of position markers generated in My Maps when they’re imported, as KML, into Google Earth: the test location was off by about 10 metres.

There’s been a bit of consternation, apparently, about the impact of My Maps on the “social mapping” sites built on the Google Maps platform — viz., that the ease of use of My Maps will make Frappr, Platial et al. redundant. Donna Bogatin sums up, and dismisses, this reaction, as does Dare Obasanjo (via Scoble).

All Points Blog draws a comparison between these mashup sites and the “vertical” (specialized, niche) third-party add-ons to ESRI applications:

Many of the mashups that are being (potentially) disrupted by My Maps are horizontal. At some level, and I apologize in advance is this is too simplistic) they are “put dots on the map” (for one reason or another) apps. Horizontal features will in time migrate to the core of software. Someone with an MBA can tell us why, I’m sure. And, those in this space, developers and their funders, had to see this coming, didn’t they? Especially since Microsoft and Ask had offered such tools for some time?

Platial, for one, is not fazed by the new challenge. This sort of thing has shown up in other software fields — for example, when a feature gets folded into the main OS. Most of the outrage is generated by people other than the developers affected. Generally speaking, they know the drill.

Something about Google’s My Maps thing that they don’t mention in the user guide: the fact that these maps are available in KML means not only that they can be viewed in Google Earth, but also that they can also be accessed via the Google Maps API, now that the API supports KML and GeoRSS.

Google’s My Maps, in other words, can be a mashup-making tool, not just a mapmaking tool. I used it this morning to good effect, on a mashup on that has been languishing, incomplete for months, on my personal site. I’d already set up the embedded map — the location, the map layer, the zoom level — but was procrastinating adding the data for fear that it was about to get more complicated. All it took to complete the mashup — at least functionally; I’ve still got more data to add — was a little dinking around in My Maps and two lines of code on the page to import it.

Previously: Google Maps Adds My Maps Feature.

At Princeton University Library’s Department of Rare Books and Special Collections from April 15 to October 21, an exhibition of African maps called To the Mountains of the Moon: Mapping African Exploration, 1541-1880:

The library exhibition will feature some of the most historically significant maps of Africa by major cartographers such as Sebastian Müenster, Abraham Ortelius, Willem Janszoon Blaeu and Vincenzo Coronelli. The show will have a particular focus on the journeys of missionary David Livingstone, adventurer Sir Richard Francis Burton and journalist Henry Morton Stanley. Exhibition cases also will cover the expeditions of two dozen of the other most noted European explorers in Africa, including Sir Samuel White Baker, Heinrich Barth, James Bruce, René Caillié, Mungo Park and John Hanning Speke.

Via Map History/History of Cartography.

Clearly I go to bed too early. Late last night, Google Maps added a new feature called “My Maps,” which seems to be Google’s response to the collections feature in Microsoft’s Virtual Earth/Windows Live Local/Live Maps. In a nutshell, it’s a dead-easy way to create maps using an in-map click-and-drag interface: pushpins (with HTML in the info boxes), lines and areas are all possible. Maps can be saved, shared, and, because the data format is KML, viewed in Google Earth.

Blog coverage: Google Maps Mania; Mapperz; Free GeoTools; Hablandodesigs. Frank’s got a detailed rundown on Google Earth Blog; Stefan compares it to Microsoft’s collections and to a third-party map-builder based on Google Maps, Tagzania.

The bottom line seems to be that you can do a lot more with the Google Maps API directly, or with something like Tagzania, than you can with this new thing, but that this is a very simple way of building simple maps atop the Google Maps engine.

Update, 10:30 AM: Google’s announcement.

Update, 8:10 PM: User guide.

Further to the previous report that the government of Canada would make digital topographic data available for free: here is the official announcement and here is the site where you can download that data. It’s called GeoGratis — cute. Via Maps-L; thanks also to Drew for the tip.

Previously: Government of Canada Frees Topo Data.

A new iteration of Live Maps — which appears to be the latest name of Virtual Earth or Windows Live Local or whatever Microsoft comes up with next; this’ll be the third name in as many years — was announced this afternoon. New features include RSS/GeoRSS support for collections, user reviews of business listings, Firefox support for 3D mapping (in Windows), address-only geocoding, and a bunch of other enhancements.

This didn’t turn up on MapHist until April 2, but I think there’s an even chance that you’ll enjoy it all the same. It’s a riff on Peter Trickett’s claim that the Portuguese discovered Australia, and it apparently comes to us from Imago Mundi picture editor Damien Bove:

Revelations Stun Map Historians (Again)

Previously only known about by a handful of map historians, the so-called “London Underground Map” has never attracted much attention. Although in the past it has been the subject of speculation among academics, its obscure origins and purpose have remained a mystery.

Among the more outlandish theories, there have been suggestions that it is a map of Atlantis, or of the passages inside one of the pyramids. In fact, many of the theories assume the coloured lines represent some sort of tunnel network (possibly in London), but no one has been able to provide any supporting evidence. Academics dismiss wilder speculation, and accuse the authors of these works of “just trying to sell books” [something most academics would never dream of!].

Evidence has emerged, however, which has shaken the foundations of the cartographical history world-and rattled not a few feathers! Professor Bovlomov from www.Quals_4_Less_University.com has unearthed evidence which sheds new light on the real purpose of the “London Underground Map”. The Professor claims that he stumbled upon what may be an early version of the map, astonishingly, while “searching for coins down the back of a bus seat”. After literally minutes of research, followed by some painstaking computer modelling (five minutes in Photoshop), he can now reveal that the map must have been made by Columbus after his discovery of Australia.

By rotating the “LU” map by 180 degrees from its previously accepted North/South Axis, and then stretching some parts while squashing some others, it becomes obvious that the “LU” map perfectly “fits” [a technical term!] the outline of Australia.

Captain Columbus set sail from Whitby in the ‘Beagle’ soon after he had routed the Armada at Trafalgar, in 1215, and reached Australia a few months later. It is thought that he had the map drawn for him, by one Harry Beck, to remind him where he had buried the treasure. Not wanting the map to lead other explorers to find the loot, should the map have fallen into the wrong hands, he instructed Beck to insert all kinds of fictitious roads and placenames — even airports!

In Beck’s hands, Port Philip is renamed Watford — presumably in an attempt to deter would-be looters — Botany Bay is renamed Uxbridge, Perth: Upminster and Albany: Epping. Mystery still remains about the purpose of the zonal markings, but Professor Bovlomov speculates that they might indicate the friendliness — or hostility — of the natives. The Professor believes that Beck may have included a coded message within the map to identify the location of the treasure. ‘Bank’ is dismissed as “too obvious”, and is probably intended to lead the unauthorised holder of the map to a certain death. West Finchley, though, may prove to be the site of the hidden treasure because, as the professor says: “It is obviously a made up name, and was probably invented by Beck as a kind of joke. No one would ever think of going to such a place, let alone living there!” When asked to comment, other experts said it was Barking.

The London Pedestrian Routemap is a work in progress the aim of which “is to encourage walking in London. It does this by providing a simple, memorable picture of key walking routes in the Capital. At present there is no such map. The Routemap shows how key places connect by straightforward routes of varying character.”

According to the project page, the routes are based on research rather than arbitrary, but Hana Loftus has some objections to the routes chosen:

These routes are indeed the most direct, and currently most people do walk along main roads, but that doesn’t always make these the best routes. For a start, they aren’t quicker, because they are so crowded, and if you are elderly, disabled, or with a pushchair, they are virtually unnavigable. You would be better to duck up and along Wigmore Street than go along Oxford St, for example. Secondly, the air pollution of all those cars isn’t great, either. Thirdly, by only highlighting what are essentially the very simplest routes around town, the map isn’t showing what you really want to know on foot — how to go diagonally from, say, Kings Cross to the British Museum. Sticking to the main roads is not the most time-efficient route for this.

Via Things Magazine.

Google has updated its New Orleans imagery in response to the outcry over its decision — made last September — to update that imagery with higher-quality images that were unfortunately, and impolitically, before Hurricane Katrina. The Official Google Blog:

[I]n September 2006, the storm imagery was replaced with pre-Katrina aerial photography of much higher resolution as part of a regular series of global data enhancements. We continued to make available the Katrina imagery, and associated overlays such as damage assessments and Red Cross shelters, on a dedicated site (earth.google.com/katrina.html). Our goal throughout has been to produce a global earth database of the best quality — accounting for timeliness, resolution, cloud cover, light conditions, and color balancing.

Given that the changes that affected New Orleans happened many months ago, we were a bit surprised by some of these recent comments. Nevertheless, we recognize the increasingly important role that imagery is coming to play in the public discourse, and so we’re happy to say that we have been able to expedite the processing of recent (2006) aerial photography for the Gulf Coast area (already in process for an upcoming release) that is equal in resolution to the data it is replacing. That new data was published in Google Earth and Google Maps on Sunday evening.

Via Ogle Earth; see Google Earth Blog and Ogle Earth for announcements of the new imagery.

Previously: Google Reverts to Pre-Katrina New Orleans Imagery.

A major feature on Google Earth from yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle, on the front page of the opinion section. Quotes Frank from Google Earth Blog and everything. Covers all the usual bases, from privacy implications to the way it empowers people.