The Map Room

Google has announced a new plug-in and API that will allow Google Earth to be run from within a browser, once the plug-in has been downloaded. Windows-only so far (but most browsers on Windows), so I can’t add to what others have said about it: Google Earth Blog, O’Reilly Radar, Google Maps Mania, Ogle Earth.

Here’s Google’s demonstration video:

This is, essentially, of interest to developers building map applications on top of the Google Maps API, who may want this as another option. Though the fact that a plug-in must be downloaded and installed will probably limit uptake.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the California State Automobile Association, one of only two regional auto associations still producing their own paper maps, is getting out of paper map publishing by the end of the year. Maps of northern California, Nevada and Utah will instead come out of the AAA head office. The usual reason: competition from digital maps.

Previously: Why Paper Maps Are Still Produced; The Decline of the Paper Map.

The City of Ottawa has announced a map (PDF) of its upcoming road, bridge and sewer construction projects (around here, we call construction “infrastructure” for whatever reason). The map’s a bit unwieldy: several years’ worth of construction, indicated by year and type, on a single sheet.

Cassini’s imaging team has released an atlas of Saturn’s moon Dione. The atlas is available as a set of 15 PDF files at a scale of 1:1,000,000. Via Bad Astronomy and Universe Today.

This is the third atlas of a Saturnian moon that has been released by the Cassini project; similar atlases exist for Enceladus and Phoebe.

Previously: A Map of Dione and a Planetary Gazetteer.

The Daily News of Longview, Washington, has a piece about another Longview, Washington that is causing some confusion online: “It may be a field rather than a city, but that other Longview has established its place on the Internet, often on equal footing with the real Longview, and sometimes even serving as the first option when someone is looking for information on Longview, Wash.” Residents near the second Longview have never heard of the place. The article tries to solve the mystery, with interesting and surprising results.

BibliOdyssey provides another example of what I suppose is called a caricature map: these are maps where representative caricatures are twisted into the shapes of the countries they are meant to represent. This one comes from Japan circa 1914.

In this entry, peacay also provides links to earlier posts of his that deal with these maps, and there turn out to be quite a few of them (such as this one). Checking my own archives, I note that I have a few as well: Streets of London; The Illustrated Enemy; Angling in Troubled Waters. This certainly appears to have been a popular form of illustration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Hilarity ensues when road painters marking no-parking areas on a road in Waltham Abbey, Essex, paint the wrong side of the road because they read the map upside down. (This is not the upside-down map the Australians had in mind.) Via All Points Blog.

ScapeToad is software for making cartograms. André Ourednik, its development supervisor, writes: “ScapeToad is a cross-platform, open-source application written in Java, designed and using the ESRI Shapefile format for input and output. It also exports maps in SVG format and is provided with a user-friendly cartogram creation wizard which guides the user throughout the map creation process.”

Previously: The History of the Cartogram; Cartograms from Worldmapper; Question: Software for Cartograms?

Map thief Peter Bellwood was sentenced by a British court to four and a half years in prison in 2004; now Denmark has had its crack at him: he was sentenced last Wednesday to a year in prison, plus a 324,000-kroner fine, for the theft of 11 maps from the Danish Royal Library in 2001. The theft was caught on video; the maps have never been recovered. Via MapHist.

Previously: Map Thief Jailed.

Opening today at Cincinnati’s Contemporary Art Center and running until August 17: Uncoordinated: Mapping Cartography in Contemporary Art. See also ArtDaily. Announced last year; see previous entry (the description is unchanged; the dates are not).

A Publishers Weekly article on the impact of online references like Wikipedia on reference publishing — multi-volume encyclopedias are essentially toast — has the following passage about maps and atlases:

Encyclopedias aren’t the only place publishers are feeling pain, though. At the National Geographic Society, head of book publishing Nina Hoffman says cartography is another category hit hard by the Internet. “Maps and pocket atlases have been severely hurt,” she says.

But Hoffman emphasizes that more in-depth offerings still do well. “Big atlases haven’t been dramatically affected in the same way,” she says. In fact, National Geographic will release its first $100 atlas, The National Geographic Visual Atlas of the World, in October.

Coverage of Baltimore’s Festival of Maps continues to trickle in: last month, The Johns Hopkins Newsletter had a review; a brief review appeared earlier this week on My Wonderful World. The exhibition closes June 8: if you haven’t seen it yet, you’re running out of time.

Update, May 18: Her Majesty links to student reviews of the Walthers exhibit.

Ogle Earth’s Stefan Geens, normally a (fellow) Mac user, borrows a Windows machine for his in-depth review of WorldWide Telescope: “My initial impression stands: WWT is a wonderful piece of software that excels at rendering Earth’s view of the universe onto the screen in a beautiful and compelling way. But it also has a set of more advanced features that should make amateur astronomers very happy.”

Every review must, it seems, compare it with Google Sky, and not just Stefan’s: see, for example, Business Week and the New York Times (via Slashdot and MetaFilter, respectively). It’s a fair comparison, but the mainstream media is probably too interested in the Microsoft-Google horse race.

Update: Just after posting this entry, I noticed Chad’s review of WorldWide Telescope, which has lots of wonky detail.

Yahoo announces upgraded real-time traffic coverage: more cities, more detail, more roads.

The Google Maps API now has a Flash version, alongside its regular JavaScript and static versions. On the Google Maps API blog, Mike Jones writes:

So, what do I like about the API for Flash? Smoothness and speed are a big part of it. We’ve designed it so that Flash graphics can be used for each tile layer, marker and info window — opening up possibilities like dynamic shading, shadowing, animation, and video. When the user zooms the map, magnification changes happen smoothly and place names fade in. After the user drags a marker, it gently bounces to a halt. Generally, Flash allows for much greater embellishment, and, well … “flashiness.” I get excited just thinking about the creative ways developers might take advantage of having a Flash API for Google Maps.

See also Google LatLong. Apparently the idea is to embed this in Flash-based applications.

TomTom has received the go-ahead from the European Commission for its takeover of Tele Atlas: AP, Bloomberg, Reuters. In a nutshell, the existence of a competitor, Navteq/Nokia, would remove any incentive on the part of the merged TomTom/Tele Atlas to pull any anti-competitive shenanigans. Via All Points Blog and Engadget.

Previously: TomTom-Tele Atlas Update.

On Daily Kos (don’t start), Meng Bomin has a series of maps illustrating the county-by-county results (so far) of the presidential primaries and caucuses of the Democratic primary. On these maps, Obama support is coloured blue, Clinton red, and Edwards green — but as usual, the map is mostly purple. In addition to the main map (above), there are also a number of variant maps: maps that highlight primary results from a given period, monochrome maps for each candidate, and more. The map images themselves are on Flickr. Via The Electoral Map.

Yahoo’s announcement of its Internet Location Platform will be of great interest to web developers and programmers interested in geolocating data, but completely abstruse to everyone else. The platform uses something called Where on Earth ID (WOEID), a numerical tag that is associated with a given location; it can be used to obtain geographic coordinates but also spatial relationships (e.g., a city is inside a country, has a postal code, is next to another city). Better (but more technical) explanations elsewhere: Dan Catt’s is the one everyone is pointing to (for good reason); see also James Fee, Ed Parsons, All Points Blog and CNet for how it works and/or what it all means.

Beyond the conference blog, several geobloggers are filing reports from Where 2.0. Here’s a sampling:

• All Points Blog: Getting Warmed Up for Where 2.0; Where 2.0 Monday.
• Google Earth Blog: Day One.
• RenaLId: Day 1, Day 2 — Morning Sessions (en français malgré les titres).

Video from the conference is also available.

I’ve just discovered that my spam filters have been a bit too aggressive lately. I’ve now approved some comments from the past month or so that were sitting in the junk comment queue. Honestly, I didn’t realize they were there. (Must tweak my notification settings again.) I actually want readers’ comments, so I really should make sure they get through.

Apparently, “by the end of the month” means something a little sooner — i.e., right now: WorldWide Telescope is now available for download. See coverage from Astronomy, Sky and Telescope and Virtual Earth, an Evangelist’s Blog.

It’s a beta (probably permanently so, according to S&T), and the installation process looks complicated. The system requirements also look ferocious. No computer more than two years old will run this machine: it requires a Core 2 Duo processor. (Google Earth is not as demanding.) I have nothing that can run this thing.

Stefan has taken it for a spin on underpowered hardware: “[I]t left a truly stunning impression. This is an amazing tool. If you have a well-specced Windows machine (not Parallels or VMWare on the Mac like me) then drop everything and lose yourself in this for the next few hours.”

Previously: WorldWide Telescope This Month?

Update, 5:40 PM: Reactions from Digital Earth Blog and Uncle Rod’s Astro Blog.

Middle Savagery has a post about tactile maps, particularly as practiced by the Inuit:

The Inuit made songs, but they also made maps. These were often sketched in snow or sand, but some of them were sketched on paper with pencil for European explorers, and were intelligible to these Westerners. These are interesting in comparable abstractions of space (thus directly addressing Whitridge’s question about the space/place binary) but I am more interested in the 3D wood carvings of the East Greenland coastline, with the details of inlets and islands in sculptural relief. These could be employed by at night in conjunction with the stars, feeling your way along the coastline, navigating at an intimate scale.

Via La Cartoteca.

Previously: Driftwood Map.

The Chinese government’s crackdown on doubleplus-ungood online maps that perpetrate crimethink progresses; now the investigation is naming names. Agence France-Presse: “China has launched an investigation into online mapping services by Internet giants including Google and Sohu in an effort to protect state secrets and territorial integrity, state press said. … The People’s Daily named U.S. Internet giant Google, as well as China’s Sohu and Baidu, as being under investigation. The report was seen as the first time the government media had named specific companies as possible offenders.” Via Ogle Earth.

Previously: Chinese Government Goes After Mapping Sites.

Urbanrail.net is a fan site about the world’s urban rail networks; it features an extensive collection of rail network maps that are produced by the site’s author and are original to the site, though (and this is to be expected) not in the same league as the official network maps. An impressive display of obsessiveness. Via Vector One.

Previously: Subway Maps; Massive Gallery of Subway Maps; Transit Maps of the World; Transit Maps of the World (Again); Review: Transit Maps of the World.

Links to Cyclone Nargis-related data viewable in Google Earth are available at Google Earth Blog, Google LatLong and humanitarian.info. Via Ogle Earth.

Previously: Cyclone Nargis; More on Cyclone Nargis and Burma.

Digital Earth Blog notes reports that Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope may be released by the end of this month — or at least Bill Gates has been quoted saying that it will. I’ll be very interested to know the system requirements.

Previously: Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope; WorldWide Telescope Announced; Reactions to WorldWide Telescope.

At the Amrose Sable Gallery in Albany, New York until May 25, an exhibition of Erik Laffer’s Cartography Series. The Albany Times Union has a review: “[T]he frenetic undercurrents of Laffer’s abstractions seem to strike a chord with our primitive nature, connecting with humankind’s eternal sense of searching. Paintings like ‘Digital Globe’ and ‘Texture’ employ basic forms, but are not superficial. They are primitive, yet fully imbued with the mid-20th century modernist style. If you’re looking for directions from his ‘maps,’ you won’t find any. Instead, you get wonderfully lost.” At right: “Longitude & Latitude,” 2007.

Like many large map installations, the Electric Map of the Battle of Gettysburg has gone the way of the dodo. The 30×30-foot map has been illustrating troop movements during the battle using more than 600 light bulbs since it opened 45 years ago, but there’s no room for it in the new museum opening in Gettysburg National Military Park; it closed, apparently for good, last month, and will be put into storage when the old museum building is demolished next year. In response, a campaign has sprung up to save the Electric Map. News coverage: Baltimore Sun, CNN, Penn Live, York Daily Record.

I have mixed feelings about this. It’s sad to see any large map installation go, but park officials are basically correct: the map has become a bit of a relic of a former time. The campaign has posted videos of the Electric Map presentation, which is nearly 30 minutes long. Let’s be honest: nowadays, that’s a bit much to sit through in a darkened room, watching blinking lights and listening to a recorded narration, especially when you pay for a ticket to do so. It’s a victim of more sophisticated presentation technology; no one, after all, watches film strips any more either. But I’m sure a place can be found for it somewhere.

Via Earth Is Square and Gadling.

The 2008 iteration of the Where 2.0 conference gets under way tomorrow; O’Reilly Radar rounds up the week’s activities.

Previously: Where 2.0 2007.

Astronomers have produced the first map of a planet outside the solar system. The resolution is admittedly low — all we know is that there’s a “hot spot” offset from the planetary noon by some thirty degrees — but what do you expect from a planet orbiting a star 63 light years away? Via Catholicgauze.

More on the devastation wrought on Burma (Myanmar) by Cyclone Nargis:

• UNOSAT has maps of the affected regions (as PDF files); the maps show the extent of flooding and the villages that have been completely submerged or flooded. Via Glenn.
• Google LatLong has two posts on using Google Earth in response to this disaster: one on importing the imagery and one on plotting local health facilities.

An interesting thread on MapHist about painting on maps — i.e., using a map like a canvas — yielded links to the following artists.

Suzanne Howe-Stevens: “Using maps as a background or frame allows her to emphasize the borders that exist between water and land. Those spaces that we love so much are disappearing; this is often reflected in the water scene’s drift into the map area.” Her works are subtle; you can’t really see the map backgrounds unless you examine them in close detail.

Brenda Schwartz-Yeager “paints both conventional watercolors and watercolor images on preserved navigational charts, adding personality to those images, each chart telling its own story.” Much more traditional work, with nautical themes on nautical charts, for example. Sample at right.

Satellite images from before and after Cyclone Nargis struck the Burmese (Myanmarese?) coast.

Microsoft Pro Photo Tools support geotagging, which is interesting, but it’s a bit hubristic to say that geotagging is going mainstream as a result of that, as the title of the article describing Pro Photo Tools’ geotagging features does. Which is not to say that that article isn’t worth a look, especially if you’re interested in geotagging your photos and you’re using a PC. Via Dan Catt.

Alan Taylor: “I set out to find the longest distance for which Google Maps would give Driving Directions. Now that they’ve shut down the fun ‘swim the Atlantic’ feature, things have changed a bit. It turns out there are multiple ‘longest drives,’ because the Google Maps World is partitioned (many countries don’t support driving directions), and sometimes ferries are included, and sometimes they are not.” Via Kottke.

Previously: Trans-Atlantic Driving Directions.

At the Discovery Center of Idaho in Boise until June 8, an exhibition called Mapping:

The goal of Mapping is to put mapping tools, from sextants to software, in the hands of visitors and let them explore the science and technology of mapping. From compasses to Google Earth, Mapping will show the developments in map making and the diversity of data that can be incorporated. Mapping will showcase a myriad of maps, such as; digital, printed, relief, overlays, topographical and many others. It will also explore the tools and techniques associated with mapping spanning from surveying to satellite. Ultimately, this exhibition will enable visitors to develop a deeper insight of how multifaceted the science of mapping is. Mapping is designed to be hands-on, encouraging engagement from our visitors and enabling them to experience the thrill of making discoveries.

The exhibiton has more than 20 interactive and hands-on exhibits. The Idaho Statesman has more; there’s also a press release (PDF) from last December (the show has been open since January).

A sale of the largest private collection of Cook memorabilia includes, as one of its highlights, the Banks Map, depicting Australia and New Zealand. Printed in 1772 in a run of only 100 copies, the map was privately done while the British Admiralty took its time reporting on Cook’s discoveries. The Sydney Morning Herald:

The so-called “Banks map” was engraved in 1772 on the orders of Sir Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, the scientists on the Endeavour, soon after Cook returned triumphantly to London. Only one other copy has survived — a version printed on inferior paper held by the British Library.

“The Banks map shows, for the first time, the whole of Australia,” a director of Hordern House, Derek McDonnell, said.

“It is the first chart of the east coast of Australia to be published. It is the first identification of Australia as a continental entity. And it is the first full map of New Zealand. It is this map which sorts out [the geography of] the South Pacific.”

It’s scheduled for completion in 2010, but already the Atlas of Yellowstone, tantalizing bits of which that have already been completed are already available for preview, looks more than promising. It goes beyond maps of just the park, although those will certainly be included, to place the park in a wider context, both in place and time. I’m looking forward to it. Via AnyGeo.

This is lovely: All Streets by Ben Fry, a data visualization of “[a]ll of the streets in the lower 48 United States: an image of 26 million individual road segments. No other features (such as outlines or geographic features) have been added to this image, however they emerge as roads avoid mountains, and sparse areas convey low population. The pace of progress is seen in the midwest where suburban areas are punctuated by square blocks of area that are still farm land.”

Created in 2006; Ben describes how it was done in this blog entry: “Nothing particularly genius about this piece—it’s mostly just a matter of collecting the data and creating the image. But it’s one of those cases where even in a (relatively) raw format, the data itself is quite striking.” No kidding. Also via Kottke.

The U.S. Geological Survey is running a number of projects in Afghanistan, including the Afghanistan Airborne Geophysical and Remote Sensing Survey, for the Afghan government: “Data collected during this survey will provide basic information for mineral and petroleum exploration studies, which are important for the economic development of Afghanistan. Additionally, use of this data is broadly applicable in the assessment of water resources and natural hazards, the inventory and planning of civil infrastructure and agricultural resources, and the construction of detailed maps.” Press release.

NASA’s Earth Observatory has a page of photos of cities at night taken from space; at right, Tokyo. “Astronauts circling the Earth have the wonderful vantage point of observing the nighttime Earth from 350-400 kilometers above the surface, taking in whole regions at once. Onboard cameras and a bit of experimentation allow astronauts to take highly detailed images of our cities at night and share them with the rest of us.” In addition to photos, an explanation of how it’s done. Via Kottke.