Choices – On the Grid or Off?

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Just finished this excellent book by Scott Huler, “On the Grid“.  This is Everyman’s guide to infrastructure in America.  The author points out both the miracles and the mind-boggling failings of the US systems from storm water management in Raleigh NC, to the bridges across the Hudson in New York.  He writes”No matter how often someone reminds us that these systems are important and need our attention, we don’t change.  China spends 9 percent of its gross domestic product on infrastructure; Europe spends 5 percent, the United States spends about 2.4 percent, and that’s down from 3 percent 50 years ago.”  His advice: “Get out your wallet.”  (And buy his book, for starters.)

Meanwhile, “Off the Grid“, written by Nick Rosen, champions an alternative lifestyle chosen by a handful of Americans who attempt to live their lives on their own steam, as it were.  As he says in a great NPR interview with both authors, “living off-grid doesn’t mean doing without electricity and water–it means providing your own electricity and water.”

Update 3/9/2018: .

Where in the World is the World Cup?

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This priceless image from WGN News in Chicago on June 16 was noted by the Huffington Post Comedy.   It is being circulated (outside the US) with the title “No wonder they can’t find Bin Laden.”  Ouch.

Update 3/9/2018: The Huffington Post link is gone, but the picture says it all.

Oil spill maps

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Three ways to view the spill’s progress:   1)  Google Crisis center, with map data from NOAA  and PBS live news feed showing the gushing oil, and 2) Paul Rademakers Google Earth representation of the (no longer works), showing how it compares in size to Manhattan, London, Paris, etc, 3) New York Times”Tracking the Oil Spill in the Gulf“,map updated daily.

Update 3/9/2018: The Times site is still available. Wikipedia’s report is a good way to look back at the crisis and aftermath.

Geocoded Art

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At this beautiful new site, Geocoded Art, landscape paintings are geocoded and can be searched with a map interface.  Or you can look up a favorite work by artist or title, and find out where in the world it was painted.  All works are in the public domain.  This is already a rich database which hopefully will continue to grow.  This will surely be a favorite for art-history courses, giving context to paintings.  However the stated goal is also “to use fine art to illuminate geography”.  Found this via Google Maps Mania.

Update 6/7/2018: Geocoded Art seems a bit neglected, but works.  Google Maps Mania still going strong!  Amazing mashups, so many to investigate.  Wandered over to David Rumsey collection site.  Must return soon.  

Amsterdam op z’n kop

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Amsterdam standing on its head?  New features for Google Maps (click on a little green vial in top right corner), provide some interesting options, including a rotate button so we can view of the world as the Aussie’s see it.  Zoomed in locally, Amsterdam looks more like the city depicted by 16th century cartographers starting with Cornelis Anthonisz.

The new features also include a handy zoom box tool (draw a box around your destination),  and a tool tip for plotting the latitude and longitude.   Google announced last Friday that Google Maps will be getting more new gadgets, with its own “Maps Lab.”

Update 6/7/2018:  Nowadays (Graduating from the Lab), Google Maps in satellite view, CTRL+ mouse drag for full 360 views.   

Route You and Me

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Just found this fantastic route-planning website for bikers and hikers.  I found a nice map of Maastricht which will give me some ammunition for touring around with visiting friends.   Judging by the content, it has been around for a while (since 2005) but appears to be gaining momentum. It seems like a very nice interface, and the company also re-sells the web-components so people can customize routing on their own websites. They also do hard-core GIS processing, creating route-networks for GPS systems. RouteYou is a Belgian company, and they seem to be just expanding into global markets. So far they show over 80,000 public routes in Europe, but only a few hundred in the States, and a handful in Australia. This business may be fun to watch.

Update 6/7/2018:  TouteYou still going strong… try walking maps of Venice, for example

Mannahatta

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Planning a trip to New York?  The Museum of the City of New York has three exhibitions of special interest to Nederlanders.  This one is for map-people, too.  Written-about in an Arts section review in the New York Times, the exhibition sounds a delight, and there is a book by the exhibition designer, Eric W. Sanderson and a clever Google maps mashup website about the Mannahatta Project sponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Fund.   Time to travel.

Update 5/7/2018: In 2010, and until 2013, the Mannahatta Project became the Welikia Project. In 2017 an entry in Jason King’s blog Hidden Hydrology explains recent project developments. 

Red Lines in Queens

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The exhibition, Red Lines Housing Crisis Learning Center  at the Queens Museum of Art (through Sept 23) is a large scale installation by Damon Rich, founder of the Center for Urban Pedagogy.  The New York times reported  on the exhibition’s extraordinary centerpiece, an intricate conversion of the museum’s most famous work, the Panorama of the City of New York , to depict the location of foreclosures in the five-borough area.  The Panorama is a 9335 sq. foot scale model (1 inch = 100 ft) of Manhattan and all five boroughs made in 1964 for the World’s Fair, and updated in 1992.  On top of this 3-D “map”, Damon and his young helpers placed bright pink plastic triangles representing blocks where 3 or more foreclosures have taken place.  The result shows the concentration of foreclosures in areas where the non-white population is highest.

According to the Times:  ”Hundreds of these pink stigmata cover Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, East New York and Canarsie in Brooklyn like an invading army. In Queens most markers are camped out in Ozone Park and Cambria Heights, as well as in parts of Jamaica and Corona. As for Manhattan, there are precisely two.”

The neighborhoods with high foreclosures, according to the Times, are the same areas where the disastrous practice of “redlining” denied credit to African-American and Latino families until it was made illegal in the 1970′s.  The data used in creating the exhibition was also used by NY Times staff to create a great interactive map which allows you to see the growth of foreclosures across the area, and at the block level, since 2005.  Frightening!

Update 5/7/2018:   New Forclosure Maps from PropertyShark

Sailing Up

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The Henry Hudson 400 website has a dazzling new map mash-up.  Using a “layering system” thirty-two historical maps and Henry’s four routes can be displayed on top of Google Maps, with variable transparency.  Places and events related to this year’s celebration can be “turned in” revealing a wealth of historical information.  There is even an opportunity for the public to add information to the map.  The clever and rich map application was created by Cartosoft , a Portland-based neo-geo company with some great applications for new age mapmakers.   The Hudson 400-year celebration is picking up steam (has wind in its sails).  In September a fleet of traditional Dutch flat bottom boats (botters) will sail up the Hudson from New York to Albany.  I’m going to try to hitch a ride.

Update 5/7/2018: Such a a pity.  None of the original links work properly any more.  Henry Hudson 400 site is there, but the map no longer functions, and Cartosoft has disappeared.  It was fun while it lasted.

Sixth Sense

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Sixth Sense  is a multi-component wearable multi-function device invented by Pranav Mistry, a researcher at MIT’s Fluid Interfaces Group.  It was demonstrated at the TED conference in February this year by Belgian Patty Maes, leader of the MIT lab, and this fabulous video describes the various features, and potential applications.  Since one of the demonstrated applications is a map interface, I’m including it here, but the coolest thing (to me), is a watch created by drawing a circle on your wrist.  As I perpetually lose watches, this would be the perfect solution.

Update 4/7/2018: Pranav Mistry is now head of research for Samsung.