The Map Room

• Facebook app whereyougonnabe? gets an upgrade focusing on integration with other platforms (previously).
• Diana Eid takes a look at map art, focusing on three artists we’ve seen before: Matthew Cusick, Elisabeth Lecourt and Susan Stockwell (via GeoCarta).
• On the Google Earth Blog, Frank has a roundup of innovative computer interfaces being used with Google Earth, which seems to be a favourite test-bed for such interfaces.
• NAVTEQ staff are blogging, but they haven’t quite figured out the difference between a blog and a blog entry (via AnyGeo).
• Strange Maps was profiled by Yahoo Picks last September, but alas, I was distracted by paying work at the time (via MapHist).
• Sean Gillies’s blog, formerly Import Cartography, gets a new name and address and a broader focus.
• U.S. court cases have rendered trap streets obsolete — you can’t copyright a fact — but here’s some more confirmation, if a bit redundant.
• A short excerpt from a deadly rough 1947 educational film on map projections (via Contours).

Off camping for a few days; here are a few links to tide you over:

• Roger Hart’s very good blog, GeoCarta, has moved to a new address and a new platform.
• The Sandusky Library Archives Research Center’s map collection is moving to new map cabinets; I’d be interested in seeing more posts about the Sandusky Library’s map collection in the future (that’s a hint, folks).
• MapQuest Platform 5.3 updates three of MapQuest’s client-side APIs.
• Coming this fall: GIS for Dummies; it was only a matter of time (via APB).
• The European Commission has, in the end, approved Nokia’s takeover of NAVTEQ (press release; via APB and Engadget; previously).

A few quick map and map-related gems to share with you:

• Claire showcases another collection of map tattoos.
• Indiana Jones and the Fonts on the Maps: Mark Simonson notes that the maps used in the Indiana Jones movies are anachronistic.
• Presenting the annoying (and quite likely offensive) Sat Nag: “Press the button on the front and a very well-recorded, patronising woman’s voice will come out with one of a host of hysterical Sat Nav-type commands.” Oh dear. Via Gizmodo.
• Modern Mechanix: Blind Get Fair Map Printed in Braille, from the October 1939 issue of Popular Science.
• Boing Boing has a hand-drawn 1955 map of New Jersey’s prisons.
• A replica of Paris built from refuse. Also via Boing Boing.
• A 150-year-old map of New York’s Central Park was on display last week. Maybe I should have told you sooner. Via MapHist and GeoCarta.

• Jeff Thurston’s contribution to the debate over free geodata looks at the question of scale: if you want geospatial data to be free and updated regularly, consider the huge amount of territory that has to be mapped.
• Wired’s piece, Map Mashups Get Personal, looks at Platial, a service that touts personal Google Maps mashups. An awful lot of services built on that single API, methinks.
• Glenn Letham is wondering whether he should flip the switch and move to another blog he’s got on another service — Anything Geospatial.
• A pro-Iranian-government web site has a review of Cyrus Alai’s General Maps of Persia, 1477-1925 (see previous entry).
• A tutorial on how to make GPS-enabled trail maps using a handheld GPS unit and Topofusion. Via MAKE: Blog.

• An article about GPS and geocaching in South Africa points out the extreme markup for GPS devices in that country: they cost twice as much as they do in the U.S..
• The proposed INSPIRE directive, which would ostensibly standardize the sharing of geographical data among European countries, is raising concerns that it would restrict public access to that data. More at and via Boing Boing.
• Of interest to Movable Type users: the MTGoogleMaps plugin is now at version 3.0. Via Movable Type News. See previous entry.

Boing Boing reports that the archive of silly Tube maps (previously mentioned here) has gotten into a spot of legal trouble and has been taken offline. As a followup on this question, have a look at Stefan’s post about…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Batch Geocoding Blog has a comparison of the Google, MapQuest and Yahoo! mapping APIs; it’s a quick outline of what the author sees as the pros and cons of each. Via Very Spatial. Alex Stengel says MapMemo 2.5…  •  Continue reading this entry.

(I’m going to try calling these link roundups “Triangulations” and see how that goes.) Via GPS Tracklog, the difference between Garmin’s and Magellan’s topo maps. The National Geographic Society is planning a “mega-map” of the Sonoran Desert region. “It will…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Yes, I’m still alive. Should be back to normal on Monday. Meanwhile: The centre of Google Maps’s universe is apparently Coffeyville, Kansas. And you thought talking on the phone while driving is bad. You’d think that consulting a map while…  •  Continue reading this entry.

I’m still up to my neck in Olympics nonsense, but I’ve got a few links to share with you that have been accumulating in my “post these soon” file. For all you tube map fanatics, a London Underground Map where…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Significant Blogspot outages rendered several favourite mapping blogs unavailable for portions of last weekend, including Cartography and GeoCarta. The city of North Platte, Nebraska, its police department, and surrounding Lincoln County all use different GIS and CAD software to generate…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Now that it’s available for the Mac, Macworld reviews Google Earth. Robert Gelb reviews Chandu Thota’s Programming MapPoint in .NET: “The bottom line is that if you are developing anything mapping related with Microsoft components, you gotta buy this book….  •  Continue reading this entry.