The Map Room

Microsoft has renamed its map service again; it’s now called Bing Maps (the bing.com URL isn’t resolving in my browser right now; I may have to check back later).

Interesting that “Virtual Earth” was what they called their enterprise mapping platform and “Live Search Maps” was what they called their consumer mapping platform prior to this change; I don’t ever recall having seen that distinction before.

While it’s good to have a single name to avoid confusion — I never could tell when to call it Virtual Earth and when to call it Live Local or whatever — “Bing” is just a little too precious, I think.

Previously: The Low Profile of Microsoft’s Mapping Effort; New Version of Live Maps.

Update: To be clear, “Bing” seems to be the brand name for Microsoft’s search properties, of which the maps are a constituent part. So when we talk about the maps, we have to call them Bing Maps, not just Bing.

The European Space Agency has released maps showing European shipping routes, based on seven years’ worth of radar tracking. The ESA also correlates these routes with NO₂ emissions; marine engines apparently burn rather dirty fuel. Via La Cartoteca.

“Early Views of Hong Kong, 1842-1946” is an exhibition of maps of pictures and maps of Hong Kong from Wattis Fine Art in Hong Kong, including this 1866 bilingual (English-Chinese) map of Hong Kong (pictured at right), which sold for HK$360,000 just before the exhibit opened on May 8. The exhibition runs until June 8; the New York Times’s Globespotters blog has more. Via GeoCarta.

An exhibition at Jonathan Potter Limited in London, running until June 19: Atlas Art — An Exhibition of Decorative Atlas Titlepages:

Decorative titlepages appeared at the beginning of many atlases and geographical works from the mid-sixteenth century onwards as a means of enticing the reader (and indeed the purchaser, as such publications would have been expensive, luxury items) in to the volume. They were intended to offer an encapsulating glimpse of the world depicted on the pages of the atlas beyond, a world that was often new and exciting to the reader during the great periods of exploration and discovery. The pages frequently combine the practical publication details of the volume with allegorical illustration and political commentary.

The exhibition coincides with the release of Rodney Shirley’s book, Courtiers and Cannibals, Angels and Amazons: The Art of the Decorative Cartographic Titlepage, also available (coincidentally enough) from Jonathan Potter. Via MapHist.

Update, 5/26: This page covers the opening of the exhibition and includes an article by Tom Harper about the art of atlas title pages. Via jpmaps.

The Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names is an interesting resource: it catalogues more than a million place names and their relationships (such as equivalence, or different names for the same place, including which is preferred; and hierarchy, such as the county to a town, or a province to a county). There are no maps, and the geographic coordinates are there largely for reference purposes, but useful, I think, for anyone with an interest in place names. Via MapHist.

Yahoo announced its new Placemaker web service at Where 2.0 last week. Placemaker takes unstructured data, extracts references to places, and returns geographic metadata — take a reference to Chicago in a block of text, for example, and it gives you the city’s coordinates and WOEID (see previous entry). Here’s some documentation; see Om Malik on the usefulness of location services, which puts Placemaker in some context.

In case you haven’t already seen this: a map showing where sitcoms were set, from, I believe, folks at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Not that most of them weren’t filmed in a Hollywood studio regardless of their putative location. Via Macleans.

The Geological Survey of Canada has produced a geological map of the Arctic; the map is available in several formats online and will be published in print next year. Agence France-Press reports that the map is the result of data collected by several countries at a cost of a billion dollars, and shows not only potential natural resources (risible line in the article: “They do not reveal unknown deposits.”), but also may buttress competing territorial claims in the Arctic. Via GeoCarta.

Speaking of which, The Economist’s piece on various countries’ scramble to claim vast parts of the seabed, in the Arctic and elsewhere, has a good map of the potentially competing claims in the Arctic. Via Catholicgauze.

And finally, Natural Resources Canada discusses its new automated method for processing satellite images of Canada’s north: “The Landsat 7 Mosaic technology essentially creates an image map from hundreds of cloud-free, summer images taken by satellite between 1999 and 2002. The images are then merged to create single, seamless image bases of selected areas. For example, one image covers the entire area between the west Mackenzie Valley in the Northwest Territories to the eastern edge of Baffin Island in Nunavut, including the many islands in Canada’s northern Arctic.” Want technical details? Here they are. Via Vector One.

Apropos of the whole OMG-GPS-is-going-to-fail thing, the Grauniad’s Tim Dowling has some advice for drivers who might suddenly have to do without their in-car navigation systems, in the form of a FAQ for paper maps. Some examples:

I need to get to Redditch. What do I press? Locate “Redditch” on your map and press it with one finger. Find your current location and press it with your other finger. Now find an unbroken line that connects the two fingers. That is your “route.” You are ready to begin your journey.

I’ve been driving for 40 minutes and it still hasn’t said anything. Should I just keep going straight? The map will not issue instructions. It is up to you to compare the route on the map with information gleaned from your surroundings, and drive accordingly.

Via GeoCarta.

Following up on this post: the Air Force says that even if the GPS network drops below 24 satellites, GPS will still work, albeit with degraded performance. On Twitter, Air Force Space Command says that “[t]he issue is not whether GPS will stop working. There’s only a small risk we will not continue to exceed our performance standard.” And that appears to be the worst-case scenario. See PC World’s coverage. Via Gizmodo.

Previously: Is GPS Accuracy at Risk?

Catholicgauze points — not for the first time — to a map game on the NATO website with an appalling number of cartographic errors: China has apparently annexed a sizeable chunk of Pakistan, and Cambodia, the Korean peninsula and Japan are under water!

I should mention that I’m on another contract for the next few months, so I will probably not be able to post new entries to this blog as often or as regularly as I would like. I’ll do what I can with whatever time and energy I have available, though.

Via Platial, a do-it-yourself guide to creating a purse out of a map. Some craftiness (and a sewing machine) required.

An interesting post on the Collins Maps blog that deals with the following question: when preparing a map or atlas, do you use local names (e.g., Moskva, München, Torino) or the translated names used in the language of your map or atlas (e.g., in English, Moscow, Munich, Turin). Examples given are from the various non-English-language editions of the Times line of atlases, which Collins Maps publishes; it turns out that the answer is different for every edition.

Take the constant availability of accurate GPS signals for granted on your own risk. TidBITS’ Adam Engst reports that there are concerns that the current constellation of GPS satellites will drop below the 24-satellite minimum within the next few years, with the likelihood of that happening growing over time.

The problem is that, at the end of April 2009, the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report expressing concern about the Air Force’s modernization and maintenance of the GPS system. Constant replacement and upgrading of satellites is necessary, especially with hardware that’s been operating in space for almost two decades. …

Delays in launching new satellites — the next one is scheduled for a November 2009 launch, almost 3 years late — could be problematic if the older hardware starts failing. The GAO has calculated — using reliability curves for each operational satellite — that the probability of keeping a 24-satellite constellation in orbit drops below 95 percent in 2010, and could drop as low as 80 percent in 2011 and 2012. And if the Air Force doesn’t meet its goals for the next-generation GPS III satellites, the probability drops to around 10 percent in 2017.

Do we then have to run out and buy Galileo, GLONASS or Beidou receivers? Via Slashdot.

I’m fascinated by Kate MccGwire’s Insular (2008): 50 layers of paper, burned to form the shapes of the American continents; the layers are reminiscent of topo map contours. Via Platial.

I’m always sorry to hear when a map store closes; Wisconsin’s U.S./Canadian Map Service is closing after a quarter-century of operation; WLUK-TV reports. Owner Alice Woelffer says that sales dried up over the past five years due to the proliferation of GPS navigation devices. Via GeoCarta.

Good Magazine’s map of the death penalty around the world is interesting not only for its information, but for its design: look closely and you’ll see that it’s superimposed on the pattern of a chain-link fence replete with barbed wire. Via Andrew Sullivan.

• Booklist reviews the 12th edition of the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World — “a recommended source for any library or individual who can afford it.” Via Collins Maps.
• Glenn points to the upcoming Manual of Geographic Information Systems, edited by Marguerite Madden, coming this summer from ASPRS.
• Newsday reviews The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet, which the reviewer calls “a very good book — too good, in fact, to be dismissed as gimmicky or pretentious. … This is a book to be read slowly, savored for its digressions and offbeat characters. … For T. S., mapping is ‘not an act of forgery but of translation and transcendence.’ He documents everything and everyone in order to have a sense of purpose and to beat back profound loneliness.”

Previously: Times Atlases; The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet; More on T. S. Spivet.

• Buy The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet at Amazon.com
• Buy Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, 12th Edition at Amazon.com

Both the first- and second-prize winners of this year’s National Geographic Award in Mapping are graduate students from the University of Wisconsin, Madison — a fact that the university’s geography department trumpets. Rising Skyline: The Tallest Buildings in Europe, 1875-2007 (680 KB PNG) by Daniel Huffman, which maps “the location of each of the 118 buildings ranked among the thirty tallest buildings in Europe at some point between 1875 and 2007,” came first; Ben Coakley’s map, Scheduled Service on Small Airlines in Canada, Summer 2008 (2.2 MB PDF), came second. Third prize went to Gregg Verutes of San Diego State University for his interactive map of Accra, Ghana (10 MB flash). Via AnyGeo.

Previously: National Geographic Cartography Award Winner.

Kidlandia is an interactive map builder that allows you to create custom fantasy maps for children; you choose from one of four maps (which seems rather limited to me), which you customize with your own place names. Prices for giclée posters range from $40 to $180, but it’s free to use online. Via Cartophilia.

Allison M. Whittington covers cartography and maps in her blog, The Explorer’s Notebook; prominently featured is her own artwork, which includes maps of imaginary lands and treasure maps and which she sells via Etsy.

Jonathan Roberts is a freelance cartographer who creates maps for roleplaying games as well as private commissions; here’s a gallery of his work.

A little lower, please. Despite having taken photos in 12 Japanese cities already, Google has agreed to reshoot its Japanese Street View imagery from a slightly lower vantage point — 16 inches (400 mm) lower, to be exact — to avoid looking over too many fences. Via Mapperz.

Briefly noted:

• Mike Parker’s Map Addict (see previous entry) is reviewed on the Collins Maps blog.
• GIS Pathway reviews Gretchen N. Peterson’s GIS Cartography: A Guide to Effective Map Design.
• James Fee notes the upcoming publication of PostGIS in Action by Regina Obe and Leo Hsu.

• Buy GIS Cartography at Amazon.com
• Buy Map Addict at Amazon.com

Kevin Brown of Geographicus writes, “I am a generalist antique map dealer specializing in rare maps from the 15th through the 19th centuries. As a sideline I have also started a map blog on cartographic anomalies, current map-related events, and the antique map trade. … We also sponsor the Geographicus Archive, a free resource for scholars and researchers.” The blog looks interesting: it features a number of antique maps, for one thing; and there’s this interesting post on how antique map prices are determined.

Further to this morning’s post: it’s called Sky Map, and it’s for mobile phones running Google’s Android operating system.

The Sunday Times reports on an upcoming (“as early as this week”) astronomy application for mobile phones: “The Google software, called Star Droid, uses GPS technology found in most new handsets to identify the position of the user and then compares this with existing maps of space. It automatically attaches name tags to the stars and planets that can be seen through the phone’s viewfinder.” Sounds like a mobile version of Google Sky with the locate-and-identify features of a personal planetarium. No word on which platforms, though Android is a safe bet. Via Gizmodo.

Previously: Moon Maps and Star Charts for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Update: The Times got the name wrong; It’s called Sky Map for Android.

Via Boing Boing, a cross-stitch version of the London Underground map.

Greece’s data protection agency has asked Google to stop collecting images for Street View on its streets and to provide details on how long it keeps images and how it informs those whose photographs are being taken of their rights (Brietbart, CNet). Via Slashgeo.

More coverage and reviews of Reif Larsen’s breakout novel about a precocious 12-year-old cartographer, The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet: The Age and the Boston Globe cover the author and the phenomenon as much as the book itself; the National Post has a review (update: and a story about Larsen).

Previously: The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet.

• Buy The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet at Amazon.com

“Entropa,” the controversial piece poking fun at European stereotypes that was installed earlier this year in the European Council building, will be removed two months ahead of schedule, but not because of any controversy. The artist, David Černý, is pulling it down himself to protest the recent collapse of the government of his native Czech Republic. Via GeoCarta.

Previously: Czech President Blasts “Entropa”; David Černý Defends “Entropa”; European Stereotypes in EU Installation Piece.

National Geographic’s interactive map of Native American names in the United States (click and drag to magnify) gives the best modern translation of names derived from aboriginal languages. Details at NGM Blog Central. Via MapHist.

Previously: The Atlas of True Names; The Atlas of True Names Interview.

Google Earth apparently isn’t enough for the military. Defence contractor DRS Technologies was demonstrating this military-grade touchscreen geospatial interface — the correct term is apparently “global situational awareness” — at a recent Navy League conference; this video features engineer Michael Bridges giving a demo. Defense Tech describes it: “[I]t’s a geospatial information system that also allows sharing of data from almost any source — UAV videos, schematics, photos, SAR, IR etc. — on a pretty simple touchscreen. The imported data can be overlaid on the geospatial data and used for mission planning and a host of other applications. … [Y]ou can call up a region and slap on it overlay after overlay, showing you topography, elevation, streets and highways. If you don’t like a bird’s eye view, he’ll flip the image on its side, any side.” Via Gizmodo.

Mario Freese writes to pimp his Air Lines art project. “Every single scheduled flight on any given day is represented by a fine line from its point of origin to it’s port of destination, thereby forming a net of thousands of lines. Hubs like JFK, FRA or DXB turn into dark knots where lines meet, lesser served local services are only are a subtle hint.” He’s selling posters in three different versions. Interesting to see the curves of great circle routes on a Mercator projection.

Previously: One Day, 205,000 Aircraft; Global Air Traffic Simulator; Flight Patterns.

Google has added a couple of applications to Latitude, allowing users to embed their location data on a Web page or in their Google Talk status update; KML and GeoJSON feeds are also available for hackers and developers who want more.

MSNBC political commentator Rachel Maddow has a map room (no relation), the purpose of which is to provide maps and infographics in support of The Rachel Maddow Show. Via Cartophilia.

A report to be published in the June 2009 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine maps the responses to a telephone survey asking about respondents’ mental health, National Geographic News reports. “This county-by-county map shows the percentages of residents who reported ‘frequent mental distress’ (FMD) — defined as 14 or more days of emotional discomfort, including ‘stress, depression and problems with emotion,’ during the previous month. Three days of mental distress is considered average, the researchers say.” Kentucky reported the most mental distress, Hawaii (for some reason) the least. Via GeoCarta and The Map Scroll.

The Adversity Index, developed by Moody’s and MSNBC, maps the impact of the recession on 381 U.S. metropolitan areas as well as each of the 50 states. “The index shows that the recession reached 367 of the nation’s 381 metro areas, and 47 out of 50 states, by the end of February.” Maps include the now-ubiquitous time slider map charting the onset of the recession and a pushpin-style map showing which cities have largely avoided the recession. Via Map Hawk.

Old maps of Japan from David Rumsey’s collection that are viewable as a layer in Google Earth have gotten Google into a bit of hot water in Japan, the AP’s Jay Alabaster reports (Huffington Post, Japan Times, Washington Post). The maps show the locations of buraku villages, marked with a term now considered derogatory. Descendants of the burakumin, who were considered an outcast community because their work was associated with death (whether animal or human: gravediggers, leatherworkers, butchers), still face discrimination in Japan, and buraku rights activists were angry that the maps lacked the explanation of historical context that normally accompanies such maps in Japan. Japan’s justice ministry is investigating, and Rumsey has since edited the maps to remove the references to buraku villages. Via MapHist and Map History/History of Cartography.

A lot of maps of the lower 48 lately. The New York times maps organic farms in the United States, which aren’t distributed the same way as farms in general; they’re clustered in a few areas. “Areas in the Northeast and Northwest have many small organic farms that sell produce directly to consumers. Large organic farms, which some critics call organic agribusiness, have flourished in California.” Thanks to Andy Anderson for the link.

Jim Gimpel has a map that shows that Americans without health insurance are not evenly distributed across the country:

Clearly the South and Southwest stand out on this map as areas where the uninsured are highly concentrated. In the Deep South states, across counties, the percentage uninsured runs 5.5 percent higher, on average, than everywhere else in the nation. In Texas and Oklahoma, the percentage uninsured runs 10 percentage points higher than elsewhere.

In the Southwest and Western U.S. the percentage of uninsured residents is also very high, partly due to large uninsured immigrant populations (both legal and illegal). Immigrants are about 2.5 times more likely to be uninsured than natives. An estimated one-third of Latinos are without health insurance, the highest rate for any ethnic group.

The map is based on 2005 census results, and shows uninsured Americans under age 65 (those older than 65 have government coverage). Via Andrew Sullivan.

Less than two years after entering the North American personal navigation device market, Navigon is calling it quits — they were undercut, says GPS Business News, by competitors selling at less-than-premium prices. Via GPS Tracklog, where Rich has some thoughts about the remaining players in the North American GPS market.

Changes afoot in the map blogging world:

• Using Google Earth is being folded into Google LatLong.
• After four years at Flickr, doing (and posting about) a lot of Flickr’s map- and geotagging-related stuff, Rev Dan Catt is moving on.

Briefly noted:

• Twelve Mile Circle will be dedicated to the many unusual places that can be found on maps that just don’t seem to make sense. State highpoints, non-contiguous boundaries, latitude/longitude confluences, and other trivial geographic facts are all fair game here.” Via Catholicgauze.
• Blog IDEE, the blog of the Infraestructura de Datos Esaciales de España; in Spanish.
• The GeoChristian, whose objective “is to increase science literacy among Evangelical Christians, especially in the areas of the Earth and environmental sciences.”
• Le technoblog du LAC, by a Belgian high school teacher in Conakry, Guinea, with a number of map-related posts; in French.

Yanko Tsvektov’s sharp-tongued map of Europe, Where I Live, was created in response to last winter’s gas shortages triggered by the spat between Russia and Ukraine. Via Boing Boing.

The design consultancy firm Schulze and Webb have produced a pair of maps of Manhattan called “Here and There”: each map starts at street level and curls upwards, like a bird’s-eye view without a horizon that melds into a top-down map. Astonishing. Limited edition prints are available. Via Kottke.

An earthquake hazard map of Ottawa developed by scientists at the Geological Survey of Canada and Carleton University shows which parts of the city are more at risk from seismic shaking. “Those areas with thick pockets of Leda clay under them, including parts of Carp and Orléans, are likely to experience more shaking, and as a result, more damage in a major quake,” says the Ottawa Citizen. “Those parts of the city built on bedrock, such as Kanata, are expected to suffer fewer effects.” The Citizen got first dibs on the map; I haven’t found it yet on the Earthquakes Canada site.

Also of interest: Natural Resources Canada’s map of recent earthquakes and the Atlas of Canada’s Significant Earthquakes and Seismic Hazard map.

First-time novelists don’t usually get profiled in Vanity Fair, but Reif Larsen’s first novel, The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet, has been generating that kind of advance buzz for the 29-year-old writer. (I hate him already.) It’s a book about an eccentric 12-year-old genius cartographer named Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet, who makes maps and diagrams of absolutely everything he encounters. Ed Caesar reviews Larsen’s novel in the Times:

[Spivet] draws diagrams of everything he sees: his sister shucking corn, a cross section of the local water table, the frequency of a stranger’s footfall on the pavement. All these drawings are included in sidebars alongside the text (a technique one might think would be irritating, but is actually wonderful). The drawings also provide the narrative thrust. T. S. has been submitting diagrams to the Smithsonian for years, without telling them his real age. When the Smithsonian honours him with a special award, he sets out on a journey cross-country to make his acceptance speech.

What strikes you most about the novel is its tone — redolent of Mark Twain’s Roughing It in the rhythms of its humour and the picaresque deviations of its storytelling.

I don’t think I have any choice: I’m going to have to read this one.

• Buy The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet at Amazon.com