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Note: links (over 500) are not maintained and may not work.
1 to 8 January, 2006
Gallery of
Map Projections
These are mostly just outline maps in PDF format,
and the documentation is a little limited, but if you're looking for a
specific projection, or wonder about an easy way to compare two
projections, you will probably find what you want here.
8 to 15 January, 2006
Airline Route Maps
A very interesting site. Airline In-Flight
magazines usually have maps to show the airline's various routes; here's a
collection of many of these maps. They range from the factual, clear, and
straightforward to the strangely folksy and imponderable. You may do
better for a particular airline's routes to go to that airline's web site,
but for general comparisons, and fun with route maps, this is a good place
to visit.
15 to 22 January, 2006
U.S. Geocoder
Very simple; enter any US address into their small
interface, and the program uses US Census Bureau TIGER/Line data to find
the latitude and longitude of that US address -- for free. You can also
download their web-services API and program your own website to do
geocoding.
22 to 29 January, 2006
Earthtools
A number of geographic tools, using Google Maps
and various databases. "Place Finder" uses a database of 5.5 million
records to produce a map showing the location you enter; "Location Finder"
gives Lat/Long for any place you select in the Google Map interface.
Others include "Time Zone and Local Time Finder", "Height Finder",
"Sunrise/Sunset Time Finder" and "Distance Finder", which calculates the
straight-line distance between two points using a Google Maps interface.
29 January to 5 February, 2006
Alaska Native Knowledge Network
From the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, a rich
and interesting site full of information and links about Alaska Native
knowledge systems and "ways of knowing". Deeply embedded are some
wonderful maps, for example this one, which is a clickable map of
Tlingit Tribes, Clans, and Clan Houses.
5 to 12 February, 2006
Utah
Atlas of Panoramic Images
Dr. William Bowen at Cal State Northridge has a
new project; it is "photorealistic mathematical simulations" of the Utah
landscape, created from satellite imagery by computer calculations".
Very vivid, and a fascinating look at a complex landscape.
12 to 19 February, 2006
The
Year in Geography
Ben Keene, the editor of Oxford University Press's
Atlas Program, takes a look at some of the geographical changes in the
world during 2005. This page is found in the OUP blog, which is itself
worth exploring deeply.
19 to 26 February, 2006
Canada
Election Map, 2006
On the Canadian Cartographic Association's Blog, one user complained that
there were plenty of maps of the US elections, but none of the recent
Canadian elections. Another user took up the challenge and produced a
couple of maps, showing the winning parties and the percentage of the vote
the winners garnered. For comparison sake, there's a similar map for the
2004 election. The political landscape appears to be changing in Canada.
26 February to 5 March, 2006
Olivo
Barbieri's Model World
Metropolis Magazine examines modern life through
design; this link on their website takes you to images created by Olivo
Barbieri -- aerial images of populated cities that look unreal because
they are so detailed and so clean and appear to be models. He achieves
the distinctive look by photographing from a helicopter using a tilt-shift
lens. Worth spending some time here, and thinking about his passion and
his mission.
5 to 12 March, 2006
Humane Borders
Between Oct. 1, 1999 and Sept. 30, 2004, more than
650 migrants died in the deserts of southern Arizona. Humane Borders
provides maps showing water stations, U.S. Border Patrol emergency
beacons, and the locations of migrant deaths, in the hope of reducing the
number of deaths. They say they offer only humanitarian assistance to
those in need, and are not encouraging illegal immigration but just trying
to reduce the death toll of those who do try to migrate. In any case, the
maps are fascinating.
12 to 19 March, 2006
Globalis
From the United Nations University. This
interactive map shows the impact of human society on the ecosystems of the
world. Select a region, select a data set (population, agriculture,
climate, economy, etc.) or select a prepared thematic map (biomes, human
impact, land cover, etc.). Very powerful views of human impact on the
Earth.
19 to 26 March, 2006
UNEP/GRID-A Maps and Graphics
An on-going project to collect and catalogue maps
and graphics that have been published over the last 15 years on the
subject of environment and sustainability. There are over 300 graphics
available, and the offerings on this page change daily, though you can
search the library and see what the possibilities are. Pass your cursor
along "latest graphics" and you get a thumbnail of each one. Very
well-organized and user-friendly archive of maps and graphics.
26 March to 2 April, 2006
The Nuclear
World
A series of interactive maps. The focus here is on
the world and the nuclear weapons and energy production by country. The
maps are not very impressive, but they are certainly readable. By
contrast, the Nuclear Map of
Canada also combines nuclear energy and weaponry, but does so with
great style.
2 to 9 April, 2006
Social
Explorer
A project of Queens College at City University of
New York, and sponsored by the National Science DIgital Library, the New
York Times, and others, "Social Explorer" is a Flash mapping tool that
explores U. S. census data from 1990 and 2000, and is gradually building
its way back to 1790. The interactive map is well laid out and clear but
the real power is in the ability to take snapshots of maps that you
create, then have them played back in a slideshow. Though this might be of
limited use when looking at just one year's census data, it is
illuminating when looking at changes over time.
9 to 16 April, 2006
The
Changing Shape of Ontario
The political entity we now know as Ontario was
originally created in 1791 when it was called Upper Canada. Since that
time, in response to population growth and administrative needs, there
have been numerous changes to its boundaries, both external and internal.
In addition, townships, villages, towns and cities have frequently merged,
and counties and districts have re-organized to meet changing needs. The
exhibit focuses on the evolution of the province's boundaries and
administrative regions as it is depicted through maps. Most of the maps
are in jpeg format and are large enough to be easily legible.
16 to 23 April, 2006
American
Memory
Panoramic maps were popular in the 19th century in
Canada and the United States. The maps were usually of a town or city and
drawn at low oblique angles. Most were published independently, not as
plates in an atlas or in a descriptive geographical book. Preparation and
sale of nineteenth-century panoramas were motivated by civic pride and the
desire of the city fathers to encourage commercial growth. Many views were
prepared for and endorsed by chambers of commerce and other civic
organizations and were used as advertisements of a city's commercial and
residential potential. The U.S. Library of Congress's American Memory
collection has a number of these panoramic images available for viewing
online, most of cities and town in the United States but also some from
Canada.
23 to 30 April, 2006
Ski Resort Maps
Commercial artist James Niehues is responsible
for a large number of panoramic ski resort maps -- those bird's-eye-view
illustrations showing all the runs. A lot of them are available on his web
site: there are galleries for eastern U.S., western U.S. and international
resorts, as well as regional views and summer resorts. Fun, colorful, and
interesting.
30 April to 7 May, 2006
The Cartography of
Brazil
From the collection of the National Library of
Portugal comes this collection of more than 300 maps of Brazil and South
America, dated from 1700 to 1822. The original object was just an
inventory of these maps; it's now a fascinating online collection.
7 to 14 May, 2006
Country Population, Density,
and Area
The Hive Group, manufacturer of visual interfaces
for websites, has posted a tool to help people compare population, area,
and density, sortable by country and continent and numerous other aspects.
A fascinating javascript application that allows users to specify how
countries are grouped, and how they are represented. Very powerful tool
for understanding difficult concepts.
14 to 21 May, 2006
Paleogeography and
Geologic Evolution of North America
From Dr. Ron Blakely of Northern Arizona Univ., a
collection of brilliant maps showing the appearance of North America at
different stages over the past half billion years. Light reference lines
show present state and provincial borders. Also see his Global Views in
different projections.
21 to 28 May, 2006
Linguistics Survey Maps
Ever wondered about all the different regional
variations in the U.S. for the names of different things -- long
sandwiches with layers of meat, cheese, etc., or the generic word for
fizzy drinks? Colleen Mullin has posted a number of maps that try to show
the extent of different regional names for different things. One map,
sandwiches, plots Bomber, Grinder, Hero, Hoagie, Sub, and "other"; another
plots "you", "yous", and "y'all" among others. Each map has a small
amount of anaylsis.
28 May to 4 June, 2006
Milestones in the History of Cartogaphy
"An illustrated chronology of innovations" by
Michael Friendly and Daniel Denis at York University in Toronto; maps
begin at 6200 B. C. and run to 2000. Included are links to images and
descriptive text. There are links to both well-known and not so
well-known data visualization examples. The written descriptions /
historical narrative is also available in a pdf format, complete with
active links to the images being discussed.
4 to 11 June, 2006
On-Line Aeronautical Charts
Select an airport, VOR, or fix, and you are shown
that airport on a currect aeronautical chart; you can drag the map to
scroll around the area, zoom way out or way in using a slider,
double-click on a new location to re-center. You can use IATA/FAA or ICAO
codes (KSBA or SBA for Santa Barbara, for example); you can use all the
FAA variants -- 2-letter-2-number (IA01 for Ridge, Iowa),
1-letter-2-number (M31 shows Arnold, TN), etc. Mainland US airports
only.
11 to 18 June, 2006
Between Friends
In an effort to let Americans know how much we
mean to them and how much they mean to us, the Canadian embassy in the
Washington, D. C. has built a website to "give American citizens a better
sense of Canada's role in North American and Global Security. But the
site is also about friendship; the embassy has published two 30 x 22.75
inch maps showing the inter-relationship of the two countries. It is
available in two separate pdfs - one showing Canada (4.18 MB), the other showing the United
States (6.39 MB). Both maps are filled with little snippets of
information (Canada was the Peach State's largest trading parnter in 2004
or "Over half of the oil and gas produced in Alberta is exported to the
U.S.), attractive and worth a read.
18 to 25 June, 2006
Views Of The Earth
Christoph Hormann, a German mapmaker, has taken
satellite images of various interesting parts of the world and reprocessed
them. The results are breathtaking -- you view a feature from a height,
on a cloudless day, with the Earth's curvature and other factors visible.
Very beautiful, worth spending a lot of time exploring.
25 June to 2 July, 2006
National Atlas
Reference and Outline Maps
The National Atlas has prepared reference and
outline maps of the United States that you can print or use online. The
reference maps display general reference features such as boundaries,
cities, capitals, major highways, rivers and lakes, and terrain. Outline
maps showing county boundaries, state boundaries, capitals, or other basic
features are also available. Maps without labels are included for students
and teachers of American geography. The maps are in color, but will also
print or copy well in black and white. A great resource.
2 to 9 July, 2006
Old London Maps
A brilliant collection of maps and views of London
from the 16th to the 19th century. There are also hundreds of pages of
articles and information about the maps, and about old London. Easy to
navigate, and absolutely fascinating.
9 to 16 July, 2006
Folk Songs for
the Five Points
Part of New York's Lower East Side Tenement
Museum, a Flash map of the "Five Points" area of Manhattan, allows
users to access sound files tied to specific locations. The map lets users
control which sounds to listen to and the balance and volume of each.
Sounds include songs, conversations and every day street noise. The idea
is to create your own "folk songs" by remixing and overlaying a range of
sounds taken from New Yor's Lower East Side.
16 to 23 July, 2006
WeatherMole
A fun little mashup, using the Google Maps API and
weather data from NOAA. Enter a US zip code or City and State, and the
map moves to the designated place, and shows you a week's forecast. You
can also use the map as a Google Map, zooming in, combining the street map
with satellite imagery, and so on.
23 to 30 July, 2006
Housing Maps
A really useful mashup of the geography of Google Maps and the "properties for
sale/rent" sections of Craig's
List. The result is a very useful and friendly map that shows
properties all over the U.S., in price ranges and in various categories.
You can also filter the results in various ways, to show, for example,
only those rental properties in Austin that allow cats and that cost under
$1500 per month.
30 July to 6 August, 2006
NewsMap
One of the many, many "News Map" mashups, this one
uses the Google Maps API and mashes it up with the Yahoo! News Search API.
The resulting application is really quite simple, and fun to buzz around
on. If you're a news junkie, this is likely the quickest way to read news,
by country. Click on the continent and then click on a country from the
Google Map, and recent news stories display in the right hand panel
instantly.
6 to 13 August, 2006
World Language
Mapping
Dr. Steve Huffman has classified languages into
broad categories, and has produced a series of colorful and informative
maps; these are very high-definition maps of the world, showing language
distribution around the world. The maps are available for review on-line,
and also as pdf documents, designed to be printed in large formats.
13 to 20 August, 2006
North Carolina Colony and State Maps
From the State Archives of North Carolina, a large
collection of North Carolina Colony and State Maps. For each map, there
is a thumbnail, and then a full-size jpg image, and an ExpressView image,
which is a .sid file viewable in ArcView with the correct plugin, or using
a MrSid viewer, available here.
20 to 27 August, 2006
Barnard's
Photographic Atlas of Regions of the Milky Way
This remarkable 1927 collection of images of the
Milky Way has been fully digitized and mounted on a Georgia Tech web site.
You can browse by region, or search for a specific plate within ranges.
27 August to 3 September, 2006
Merging Internet Map Sites
Idelix has created a web application that takes
Live Local, Google Maps, and Yahoo!Maps and merges them on a single map.
Enter an address, and you get all three maps of that location, in
different layers. With a click, you can switch between maps, while
keeping the location; you can also switch to photo imagery. There is also
a "magnifying glass" function -- you can move it around the map to enlarge
whatever is underneath, or you can turn it off.
3 to 10 September, 2006
Lightning
Strikes
Lightning causes thousands of fires and millions
of dollars in damage to buildings, communication systems, power lines and
electrical systems. A map showing it's distribution across the earth
should be of significant interest. That is why NASA has prepared this map
of Lightning Strikes around the world. You can also read NASA's primer on
Lightning by clicking
here
10 to 17 September, 2006
The Journey of Mankind: The Peopling of the World
An animated map that displays the movement of the
human race from its beginnings in the heart of Africa 160,000 years ago.
From the website:"We are the descendants of a few small groups of tropical
Africans who united in the face of adversity, not only to the point of
survival but to the development of a sophisticated social interaction and
culture expressed through many forms. Based on a synthesis of the mtDNA
and Y chromosome evidence with archaeology, climatology and fossil study,
Stephen Oppenheimer has tracked the routes and timing of migration,
placing it in context with ancient rock art around the world."
17 to 24 September, 2006
ESA Gallery of Satellite
Imagery
This is the European Space Agency's collection of
satellite imagery; higher resolution images are now available online
(previously, available images from ESA were scaled down and of a low
resolution). More than 1,000 are currently online. The coverage is quite
hit and miss, but there are some wonderful images here. Some of the
images are enormous, and even on a robust connection can take a little
while to load, but it's definitely worth a visit.
24 September to 1 October, 2006
Fuzzy
Gazetteer
A featured page from the European Commission's
Joint Research Center's Digital Atlas. The "Fuzzy Gazetteer" allows you
to locate a geographic feature without knowing exactly how to spell it.
Type in a name, and you get a list of similarly spelled (or misspelled)
names, with latitude and longitude. The database is global and has over 7
million names. Each result is linked to a map.
1 to 8 October, 2006
Caught
Mapping
From archive.org, the Internet Archive, comes this
1940 movie short on how the road maps of the time were made and updated.
It runs just under 9 minutes, and can be streamed or downloaded in a
variety of formats. It's views of automobiles and highways of 1940 are
wonderful, and do stay for the end, where you'll see pictures of the "new,
modern Pennsylvania Turnpike", with its original concrete roadbed and
virtually no traffic. Valuable as a historical as well as a cartographic
document.
8 to 15 October, 2006
The Impossible Map
From the National Film Board of Canada comes this
remarkable animation, made in 1947, that tries to show how maps are
misleading, no matter what projection may be used. Experiments with a
grapefruit illustrate the difficulty of presenting a true picture of the
world on a flat surface and it concludes that the globe is the most
accurate way of representing the earth. The animation and narration are
both remarkably dated for 2006, but they were remarkable in 1947.
15 to 22 October, 2006
London Underground Maps
One of the best-known and most readily
identifiable maps, the London Underground map has an extensive history and
lots of look-alikes. This site presents a collection of maps from 1889 to
the present; even if you don't know London, the differences are
fascinating.
22 to 29 October, 2006
ArcWeb Explorer
A very nice mapping tool from ESRI. It has all
the usual features -- change from a road map to satellite imagery, for
example -- but there are a couple of interesting features I haven't seen
elsewhere. You can map a location by its telephone number; you can
locate your computer (scary!); you can also upload your own Excel
spreadsheet of coordinates or addresses or telephone numbers, and the tool
will locate them all. There is also a "data view"; you can look at U.S.
Census Bureau data for any location you've already placed on the map.
There is also a good help page.
29 October to 5 November, 2006
The Trainspotters of Google Earth
The Trainspotters of Google Earth is a slideshow
from Slate on the phenomenon of Google Earth users finding all sorts of
arcane locations and caught images: "As a simulacrum of the Earth, Google
Earth provides a safe space for unlimited voyeurism. You have instant
access to forbidden or dangerous places. But mostly it's fun to hop
around. Freed from physical constraints, the Google Earther perceives the
planet as small, manageable, knowable, and interconnected. This bonhomie
can be exhilarating."
5 to 12 November, 2006
Zoom Into Maps
A sampling of the Library of Congress's Geography
and Map Division's 4/5 million maps -- digitized and available online.
These are historical maps from their "American Memory" collections, and
well worth spending time exploring. There really is something here for
everybody. It's an extensive and impressive sampling.
12 to 19 November, 2006
USGS
Earthquake Map
The USGS has an Earthquake Hazards Program that
includes this interesting map -- the latest earthquakes in the world,
those recorded within the last 7 days. It's not the most user-friendly
map, but there is a limited zoom capacity, a color=time code and a
size=magnitude code symbol system, and some interesting ways to play with
it, including viewing regional maps and animations.
19 to 26 November, 2006
Storybook England
StorybookEngland plots the locations of
children's books and stories. When a story is clicked, the locations in
the story appear on the map. Clicking on a location leads to more detailed
pages, and and hotlinks direct users to tourist pages for the
different locations. Fun. Beware -- turn your sound off before opening,
unless you're in a location where it won't matter: the site has pleasant
but surprisingly loud music.
26 November to 3 December, 2006
The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center
One of Boston's legendary map collectors, Norman
Leventhal, has partnered with the Boston Public Library to create the Map
Center, aiming to preserve Leventhal's maps, and provide free public
access to the collection of 200,000 maps and 5,000 atlases. Many of the
maps are online, either individually or as part of online exhibitions.
All maps are in Zoomify format; the free viewer is downloadable from zoomify.com.
3 to 10 December, 2006
Atlantic Neptune Charts
The Atlantic Neptune is a magnificent four-volume
atlas of sea charts and views of the east coast of North America,
published during the American Revolutionary War by Joseph Frederick Wallet
Des Barres (1722-1824). It has been scanned and posted online by the UK's
National Maritime Museum. The atlas spans from the St. Lawrence River and
Nova Scotia, to Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.
10 to 17 December, 2006
Map Fold-outs
Carlos Furuti, at Progonos Consulting in Sao
Paulo, has created an amazing set of "cut out and assemble" globes, based
on nine different polygons, from relatively simple tetrahedron to complex
and beautiful Rhombicuboctahedron. Select the fold-out you want to use to
create your globe, print it, cut it, fold it, and glue it up to create
your own "pseudoglobe" -- not quite a globe, but great fun.
17 to 24 December, 2006
Maps of War
A very interesting collection of moving maps; the
creator doesn't give his name or any affiliation, but says he's a history
buff and non-political. Maybe so. Featured maps include the Imperial
History of the Middle East (5,000 years of history in 90 seconds), the
casualties of US Wars and which presidents "led the United States into its
deadliest wars", a little animation on CIA Secret Prisons, and more.
24 to 31 December, 2006
London: A Life In Maps
To accompany the British Library's new featured
show, "London: A Life in Maps", the library has posted an online gallery
called "London: A Life in Google Maps". You can explore London's history
and geography across hundreds of years, and across all seven of the show's
themes. Very powerful mash-up of google maps and cartographic content.
31 December, 2006 to 6 January, 2007
Acme Mapper
ACME Mapper mashes up Google Maps with TerraServer
Data, including the USGS topo map series and Weather Radar, and presents
very detailed and fascinating views. Many of the layers are limited to
U.S. views -- even Vancouver, B.C. comes up empty when you ask for the
Weather Radar layer -- but the domestic U.S. detail is imposing and
surprising.
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