An update to the weekly movements. Another 1,200 kilometres, mostly taken up in commuting to and from work.
Strange Maps is a blog that focuses on odd maps, many that look on the world with redrawn boundaries or strange ideas. Some have been posted about in this blog already (the redrawn map of the Middle East, for instance); others I haven’t seen before, including Imperial Texas, Greater Albania or what Europe might have looked like (in French eyes) if the Germans had won the war. Also included is on example of an island shared by Finland and Sweden with a very odd boundary. Worth keeping an eye on.
Ron Blakely’s amazing paleogeographic maps, mentioned in a previous post, have migrated, not surprisingly, to Google Earth. With GE latest version supporting animation, it only makes sense to use it as a vehicle to display changes in the earth’s surface. GE community member Valery Hronusov has ported the images into a downloadable GE file. This does much to make the ladforms in paleogeography more understandable.
The USGS, of course, has its own earthquake map - a map that tracks the latest earthquakes, their locations and magnitude, but the map has limited zoomability. Ask.com has a zoomable map of the world on which earthquake activity is displayed. Ask.com’s map is limited when compared to other maps provided by interactive mapping sites but does have a physical feature view, something the others don’t have. It appears that the issue of flooded land mentioned earlier in this blog has been cleared up.
DeGraeve.com has an interesting and useful little tool - not a cartographic tool for one that cartographers might find useful when completing a map layout. The Color Palette Generator takes any photo on the web and provides two palettes - one dull, one vibrant - of Pantone colors that match the colors in the image provided.
Note the scale of the map has changed compared to last week’s entry. (See below - for some reason links to individual posts do not seem to be working.)
I plan on tracking my future movements, at least for the month. It should get a little more interesting than a daily commute. Travels to Chicago and Los Angeles are planned for later in the month. But we are all creatures of habit: the challenge would be take a different route to the office and back each day. In now time I would have many of the area’s road mapped (sort of a single handed effort to bring OpenStreetMaps to Canada.
Enjoy England, the department tasked with promoting England as a tourist destination, has created a site called StorybookEngland that plots the locations of children’s books and stories on a map of England. When a story or book on the lsit is clicked on, the locations upon which the story is based (however loosely) appear on the map. Clicking on a location leads to a more detailed more where a number of further links lead to details about the story. There hotlinks direct users to tourist pages for the actual physical locations. Enough to make one think that England’s major export are good children’s stories. A paper copy of the map can also be ordered (but the link to the pdf version currently is unavailable).
The Center for International Earth Science Information Network has released an atlas entitled Where the Poor Are: An Atlas of Poverty. The atlas, available as a pdf download, covers a number of aspects of poverty including infnat mortality, hunger, poverty gaps and inequality and looks at these factors on both a global, regional and national scale, the latter being broken down by subnational jurisdictions to varying degrees of refinement. The maps are mostly choropleth maps. The atlas can also be requested in hard copy format.
Now you can complete that National Geographic map collection that is missing the one elusive map. National Geographic has partnered with Maps.com, the self-proclaimed world’s largest map store (previously mentioned in this blog), to make its catalog of maps available for purchase. Customers can browse through the extensive National Geographic map collection, select one and have it printed and/or laminated by Maps.com. Costs vary, of course, depending on size but are generally in the area of $50 - $60 US. This doesn’t include shipping. Old musty smells of maps and magazines long packed away in someone’s attic not included.
Mark Harrower of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has worked with Cindy Brewer on the popular ColorBrewer tool. He is currently working on another cartographic tool called MapShaper that will simplify shapefiles according to one of 3 algorithms. The Flash tool allows the user to upload a shapefile, set the simplification parameters, and view and compare the results with the original file. The result can be savedas a shapefile. The tool is currently in beta mode. Check the MapShaper blog for updates.
Wondering what’s playing on the radio in your neighbourhood? Or on the other side of the country? Yes.com has put together a simple real-time Flash map of 150 radio stations that shows what songs each station is playing. (Currently only U. S. stations)
NYCSubway.org has a number of maps of New York City bus lines and subway lines. These maps include scans of route maps dating back to 1888 and come in various sizes, mostly in jpeg format. Also included are maps of track locations that would probably be more of interest to the railroad aficionado.
The Boston Public Library’s Norman B. Leventhal Map Center has a collection of over 200,000 maps and 5,000 atlas, some of which are available online at a splashy new site. There is much to explore here, including a couple of beautifully put together online tours (Faces and Places and Journeys of the Imagination - blogged about here earlier), a map of the month ( this month it is a map of Boston from 1777), a focus on maps in the news (currently it is an indepth look at Iraq using maps), and, of course, various maps from the collections. All maps are in Zoomify format and the highest resolution is quite impressive. Many maps are available online; the search tool is perhaps the best way to make your way through this collection. Happily this collection also includes recently produced maps.
The Broer Map Library is a cooperative endeavour that seeks to provide libraries and other organizations with online access to a large map collection. Founded in 2002 and housed in Ellington, Connecticut, the map collection has grown through donations of unused maps to its current size of 40,000. The collection has a wide variety of street maps, roads maps, historical and military maps from the past 300 years. The goal of the collection is to expand to include over 100,000 maps in the next five years.
In the map creation process, a sizable amount of time can be devoted to making the right symbols. It is always worthwihle, then, to be able to draw on the work of others when possible. The U. S. National Park Service has a number of symbols and patterns available in Adobe Illustrator and PDF formats.
Breathing Earth is a Flash map of the world that displays the carbon dioxide emission levels, birth and death rates of each country in “real-time.” Mousing over a country brings up population, emission levels and birth and death rates for that country. An effective and interesting map, complete with sound effects.
The UK’s Ordnance Survey has had a program in place for a few years in which they provide 11 year olds with a free map. For the past five years, the OS has handed out, on request by teachers, a 1:25,000 Explorer Map to students for their own keeping. The program has had a desired effect on map reading skills and geography knowledge, according to a number of studies. “Altogether, 17 separate studies have been carried out into the progress of the initiative, showing that it has significantly fostered the teaching and learning of geography and extended pupils' understanding and enthusiasm for using maps. The research found that since the launch of the initiative: