Center of the World

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The Dutch website “Geologie van Nederland” offers many wonderful resources, including a great animation (the Netherlands on the Globe) of the shifting continents in which the little Dutch flag remains front and center. In case you didn’t know it, you can use Google Translate to read pretty-good translations of website… like this one for the website Geology of the Netherlands

Metro Bowls

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Perhaps a birthday present for me?  Anyone??  Order online from Dutch designer Frederik Roijé. I’ve seen them and they are amazing.

Update 3/9/2018: Nobody has given me one yet.

Mapping on This American Life

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This episode of This American Life is almost 13 years old, long before “MyMaps”. The theme of the episode is “Mapping” and there are five parts, one for each of the five senses. Part one, Sight, is an interview with Denis Wood a thought-provoking discussion about why maps are only meaningful because they do NOT show everything.  Being “selective” is the key to making a any map.  This is the only segment which is directly related to maps in the SweetMaps context. But the rest is pure fun:
Hearing — the sound of ordinary home and office background noises and how they can drive you nuts.  Smell — an attempt to understand (or map) the functioning of the Nose, and to construct a commercially-available electronic nose, including a replacement for canine drug-sniffers.  Touch — a woman obsessively maps her body, fearing cancer.  Taste — one man’s description of tastes on in the neighborhood of Pico Boulevard in LA.  Classic Ira Glass.

Making Maps – Looks Good

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The second edition to a “classic” for cartographers will soon be available. The authors are John Krygier, a geography prof at Ohio Weslyan and past-president of the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS), and the extraordinary mapmaker and designer, Denis Wood. Krygier has an interesting blog, now on my RSS list.

Update 3/9/2018: The Third Addition is now available.

Queensland Down Under

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We watch helplessly as Queensland went down under this week, and then gradually resurfaced wallowing in mud with at least 18 lost lives and billions in damages.  Examples of disaster maps produced in response to the crisis include:  1) Before and after photos by Nearmap.com, an Australian company offering areal photography services showing change over time in an Open Street Map environment.  2) Google’s crisis response map. 3) The Brisbane City Council situational awareness map created by  ESRI Australia using ArcGIS and Bing Maps.

 

 

FourSquare — I get it!

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Feeling rather elated, and I’ve just started! Went to the supermarket and checked in. There was one other person there (supposedly). That gave me a warm giddy feeling of small world-ness, friendship, mystery. Who was this person? Pondering this, I realized that if everyone in the store had FourSquare, it would be absolutely of no interest at all – unless they were my real friends. Anyway, this is a fascinating new-for-me technology. Gotta wonder what they do with all that data. I’d better read the small print.  Like why did it post this on FaceBook?

Mapmakers Extraordinaire!

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The jig is up. These are the pros: Axis Maps. Based in (I think) Madison Wisconsin, these guys combine all the technical skills with fantastic design. Much to be learned on their website, including many useful GIS resources, and links to their Indiemapper online map-making site. It appears they also worked with Fortiusone to develop the online map interface for Geocommons.

Update 3/9/2018:  Geocommons appears to be broken, but a description of the map service is here, at Duke.

Snow (almost) everywhere in the States

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Via GISUser blog:  “There’s snow in all the contiguous States except Florida – and in a good portion of Canada too! Via NOAA, Every state, with the exception of Florida, currently has snow on the ground. This includes Hawaii where about seven inches of snow is atop Mauna Kea. As of Jan. 11, 69.4 percent of the contiguous United States is covered by snow – this is more than double the snow cover from last month. This week’s snow storm in Southern states has allowed for this unusual occurrence.(Image credit: NOAA)”

Amsterdam Growth Map

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The Amsterdam Historical Museum has upgraded its Amsterdam “growth map” with a googlemaps-based version created by the Dutch multimedia firm Mapsplusmotion. These developers have done similar maps for Rotterdam and Manhattan.

A variation on these maps is a website with photos from the 1960s. It would be interesting to see a mashup with photos or drawings of buildings from the period, tied to the map.

Update 3/9/2018:  The Mapsplusmotion website  inactive.  The new website is: Mappinghistory.nl.  New maps for WestFries and the Hague are now available.

GIS Geeft Energie

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Getting energy from the annual ESRI Nederland GIS conference in Rotterdam.  Highlights for me:  1) Nice demo by Dutch-speaking American guy (who was that guy?) from Swiss firm  Procedural of an ArcGIS 3D application, including shadows cast by new construction in Rotterdam, with analysis of how much sunlight would be lost ( video ).  There was a droll suggestion that letters could be sent to people who would be living in the shadows… right!  2) Fascinating demo by Dirk Aalbers, at HORUS, Surround Vision, of little cars driving around making movies and capturing information using image recognition.  Infrared videos could also classify buildings according to heat loss.  3)  Presentation by Jack Verouden, Chief Surveyor at Shell.  Shell is looking at alternative energy sources, including worldwide studies of biomass potential.  Go for it, Shell!  4) Excellent presentation by Jan Willem VanEck, director of strategy at ESRI in the Netherlands, about GIS and Social Media. He showed a wonderful application developed together with his son, which allows you to map your LinkedIn connections (no longer available).  Now I am truly inspired!

Update 3/9/2018: : Mapmyconnections seems to be gone, but Jan Willem van Eck is still going strong.