The Map Room: Latest Comments

Comment on 'Live Marine Traffic Maps'

ourLongBeachIsland — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:24:46 -0500

Yes this is a great idea for all commercial boats. Piracy is a big problem out there, I would want the transponder regardless of my size.

Comment on 'Live Marine Traffic Maps'

ventifact — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:37:30 -0500

Our nephew in the Merchant Marine said some ship positions are censored in sensitive locations; pirates etc.

Comment on 'Paris Underground'

Scott W — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:23:08 -0500

The book is definitely worth getting; I got my copy earlier this year, and it’s as beautifully written and composed as the author’s Metro Maps of the World. There are pages of detail just on the cover designs for the various line diagrams.

Comment on 'China Maps Antarctica'

NickMcW — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:43:28 -0500

“When did China start getting interested in Antarctica?” By 1983 anyway, when China became a signatory to the Antarctic treaty (http://www.scar.org/treaty/signatories.html).

The Landsat mapping component sounds broadly similar to the Landsat Image Mosaic Of Antarctica (http://lima.usgs.gov/), while the existing Antarctic Digital Database contains the features listed as GIS vector data (http://www.add.scar.org:8080/add/).

Comment on 'Google Stops Using Tele Atlas in the U.S.'

Jonathan Crowe — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:37:04 -0500

Interesting: while poking around maps of Canada the other day on Google Maps, I found that Winnipeg didn’t have error reporting. Winnipeg doesn’t have Street View either. A connection, methinks.

Comment on 'Google Maps Argentina'

John Lush — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:31:31 -0500

Actually, Argentina maps have been available on maps.google.com for alsmost a year. It’s the site maps.google.com.ar that’s new - the main difference being the Spanish language interface.

Comment on 'Interactive Map Shows the Impact of Global Warming'

Tamas Balazs — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 18:08:49 -0500

There are other layers on that map showing various environmental resources such as crops, water availability and so on. The scariest results come from the permafrost layer. According to that layer folks from Mongolia, Alaska and Northern Canada will need to consider moving southwards in the future.

Altogether, I like this apps, yet it does not show much positive forecast for us Europeans. Nevermind…:)

Comment on 'Google Maps Adds Error Reporting'

Jonathan Crowe — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 17:09:20 -0500

I haven’t heard anything back yet either, but we’re still a long way from the month they said they hoped to respond within. (Which is still better than the error-reporting systems from the mapping data providers.) I’d also imagine that the launch of this service has unleashed an onslaught of error reports, creating quite the backlog.

Comment on 'Google Maps Adds Error Reporting'

mugwump — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 16:00:55 -0500

I have tried to use this “new” error reporting tool a few times, but have never gotten a response or a fix. Is there a “secret”? ;^) I live in a townhouse complex, and my street name is not on the map - which makes it very hard to create directions that start from a non-existent location. ;^) I have printed out both the map view and the satellite view, corrected the map, and scanned it into my system. But there’s no way to add a .jpg or .pdf to the reporting tool form.

Assuming the info on a Google map was provided by a city agency somewhere along the way, am I better off to go to the city and get them to correct their data? Them hopefully, one of these years, Google will re-collect the data and this will get fixed.

Comment on ''A Valuable Tool for Burglars and Thieves''

ENTCHEV GIS — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:10:58 -0500

Nervous Nellies never rest. I have been writing about GIS and privacy since 2005. Summary here: http://blog.entchev.com/2008/02/06/gis-and-privacy.aspx

Comment on 'The Globe and Mail's Awful Canadian Unemployment Map'

boater — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:37:56 -0500

I just read your post today and clicked over to the Globe and Mail’s website. They reversed the colors! Now red is bad. The other disappointing aspects of the map remain.

Comment on 'Sheepfilms on GPS'

MtnBiker — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 10:53:18 -0500

Thanks for this. Love it. Imaginative.

Comment on 'Attaching a Garmin nüvi to Bike Handlebars'

gpsmapper — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 11:35:18 -0500

RAM mounts are great, but this kind of rail attachment will give you a much lower profile…
http://gpstracklog.com/2008/05/garmin-colorado-4.html

Comment on 'The OpenStreetMap Alternative'

Stefan Knecht — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:29:44 -0500

Try to route on OSM data and you might encounter surprises. This is why professional data has a price tag. If you don’t care for topologies or comprehensiveness, OSM is a sure shot.

Comment on 'Twitter Working on Adding Location'

Jeff Carroll — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 17:30:48 -0500

iPhone Tweetie has been geotagging posts all along, with a 20-character bit.ly URL.

Comment on 'Fluid Forms: Stuff Made from Custom Topography'

Andreas Jaritz — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 09:21:05 -0500

Hi!

Thanks for the nice coverage!

cheers,

Andy
Fluid Forms

Comment on 'My Third GPS'

gpsmapper — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 11:12:15 -0500

Ack, you’ve gone to the dark side!

Seriously, the 255W is a good choice, albeit as you say, it is a rather basic device. You can find some free topos to load at http://gpsfiledepot.com. That could be fun. A handheld should open up more possibilities too. Oh, and the nuvi will give you a bad route sooner or later. They all seem to be capable of that. Enjoy!

Comment on 'Engraved Rock Is 14,000-Year-Old Map: Researchers'

Juan Kerr — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 13:42:19 -0500

Looks like more of the same wishful thinking. Have you ever seen rivers crossing one another and continuing on their separate paths?

Comment on 'Map Shower Curtain and Bikini'

John Ridener — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 10:59:39 -0500

I have this shower curtain. It’s great! You can buy it online from Target (of all places).

Comment on 'Nearest Subway Augmented Reality App for iPhone'

mgyarmati — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:06:27 -0500

The link for the New York Nearest Subway iPhone app changed to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps49T0iJwVg

acrossair

Comment on 'Georeferenced Old Maps on the iPhone'

jdmoney — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 03:33:13 -0500

Sounds like a very cool app. may i have a download code for it?

Comment on 'Obama's Map'

Kevin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:46:32 -0500

It’s actually a special map cabinet. National Geographic has a tradition of building one for each president.

Comment on 'Determining a Map's Age'

Jerod Poore — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:25:49 -0500

Globes and atlases from 1977 through 1988 are really difficult to date. There wasn’t much change in the way of borders, names or statuses. Various small Caribbean and Pacific islands became independent (Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, St. Lucia to name a few). There was never a standard on Cambodia’s short-lived name change to Kampuchea, so that doesn’t necessarily help. The nebulous status of Western Sarah keeps changing to this day, beginning with its independence in 1977. The equally unclear division of Cyprus started in 1983.

There are a few noticeable clues for anything from that period, but nothing you’ll see pictured in an eBay listing.

Rhodesia was still a British colony until April 1980, after which Zimbabwe was an independent country. Belize became independent in Sept. 1981. Brunei on December 31st 1983. In 1984 Upper Volta changed its name to Burkina Fasso. At least that one stuck.

As a collector of obsolete globes, maps and atlases eBay frustrated me to no end. I can understand if someone doesn’t know how old an item is, but why do they show only North America? Unless the thing is older than 1949 and there’s something visible to indicate that Newfoundland isn’t part of Canada there’s no telling when in most of the 20th century an item is from. Some of their guesses are pretty pathetic. The most egregious was someone selling a globe they claimed was pre-War, based upon a unified Germany and the existence of the Soviet Union. The item was from early 1991. It was being sold in 2000.

Comment on 'Determining a Map's Age'

IanR — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:35:08 -0500

My school library had an Atlas I just loved - it was printed in 1919 or 1920, and the borders in eastern Europe were not yet finalised. It was such an amazing snapshot in time.

Comment on 'Geolocation and the iPhone's Web Browser'

Chris Lawrence — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:44:29 -0500

The example given works on the Firefox 3.5 release candidate, so the answer to your question is “yes!”