In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

Slate magazine has an article on the "Best of Show" at the 38th annual competition of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society. David Imus spent two years drawing a wall map of the United States, placing special emphasis on relief shading and type placement. The article describes the lengthy design and production process and compares the winning map to the standard National Geographic wall map, illustrated by a few specific examples from each map.

The author, Seth Stevenson, also discusses the advantages of a full national map on paper versus a zoomed-in section of a virtual web map on a screen, stating that children's geographic knowledge is not improving even with easy access to digital maps.

Via O'Reilly I learned about this open source jQuery Plugin for creating subway-style map visualizations directly in HTML5. Now at version 0.5.0, the subwayMap Plugin already creates nice maps.

The intro of the provided step-by-step guide: "Here is a guide to using the Subway Map Visualization jQuery Plugin. Before you get started, there’s one thing you’ll want to keep in mind — beautiful subway maps are never automatic; they are almost always the result of care in design and placement to ensure that the resulting map is functional, legible and beautiful. This plugin is just a tool…you will still need to plan and design your map in order to produce a good result."

A lot of interesting geonews in this 'batch mode' edition.

On the Google front:

• Unsurprisingly, you can track Santa Claus again this year in Google Earth, thanks to NORAD
• As SA points out, Garmin went back to Google Maps in addition to Bing, due to popular demand 
• Google Maps improved its handling of the display of multiple stores in a shopping mall or doctors in hospital  
• Here's the official entry on last week's imagery update

On the Esri front:

• Esri is phasing out their Certified Trainer Program

In the miscellaneous category:

• In this press release, it was the first time I heard about MapInfo Stratus, a web based mapping application, related, PBBI also recently launched Geosk, their data as a service platform
• The GEB mentions access to seamless topographic USGS maps
• This O'Reilly entry details the GreenGoose stickers that are used as sensors
• LAS, the Lidar exchange format, has been updated to version 1.4
• Via O'Reilly, here's a new data structure for spatial search, named VP Tree, "Vantage Point Trees"
• Mapperz mentions qrd.by, a Geottager for QR Codes
• APB mentions the size of the Chinese GIS market
• Slashdot is discussing a 3D display we can touch, using cold fog and lasers
• DM shares an article named What are the Latest Developments in the Mobile LBS Market in Europe?
• James Fee reviews the Wacom Inkling digitizer for GIS work
• These five disruptions from Autodesk's CTO are interesting
• Here's a perspective from SS named Is it inevitable for BIM and GIS to force different pathways?

In the maps category:

• APB links to the new Wikileaks Spyfiles interactive map
• SS shares an entry named Himalayan Glacier Reductions Mapped
• Here's every death on every road in Great Britain 1999-2010 mapped

And as a bonus for reading this, see this wonderful time-lapse movie from the International Space Station around the world in 90 minutes

Bloggage update: further exploiting the free 3D GIS dataset from US DOE, I revived a previous ArcGIS Spatial Analyst extension model to plan a pipeline route according to slope, elevation and cultural data. Again this is not meant to displace complete modeling packages. It is to show how GIS can be used out-of-the-box to perform complete yet simple tasks on desktops you already own! Note however that Model Builder is the single key differentiator with other desktop GIS, and you can load models on ArcGIS Server as Geoprocessing services.

I first heard about it from Mapperz, Nokia introduced Map Creator. You can head to maps.nokia.com/mapcreator to try it yourself.

From the Nokia announcement: "We’ve just launched Nokia Map Creator, a fun tool on maps.nokia.com that literally lets YOU map out your local neighbourhood! You can also use Map Creator to make small edits and additions to existing maps. The tool is super simple to use. The best thing about it is that your work will be visible to all maps.nokia.com users—immediately! Your Map Creator content will also be shared via regular map-data updates for Nokia Maps on mobile and web, after NAVTEQ validation checks. [...] Map Creator already lets you draw streets and footpaths. You can also name new streets and add key information such as driving directions, vehicle type characteristics or paving type. But that’s just the start! You will soon also be able to add even more types of map content such as parks, forests, lakes and rivers. In short, all the types of content you are familiar with seeing in Nokia Maps!"

We mentioned Nokia quite several times in the past, especially since they bought NAVTEQ a few years ago. This Nokia announcement is reminiscent of TomTom MapShare announced in 2007 and of Google Map Maker that appeared in 2008. Like many others have adviced, if you want to have full access to the street data you contribute, there's really only one OpenStreetMap.org.

Here's the recent geonews that we haven't mentioned yet, in batch mode.

On the open source front:

• You can now animate your maps with the GeoServer WMS Animator Tool
• Here I found out about oculu-Z, an open source, open data platform for collaborative Computer Vision technology
• Want to know where OpenStreetMap is heading? Read this entry on the 2012 OpenStreetMap Foundation Board. Related to OSM, TripAdvisor now uses OpenStreetMap
• DM shared the first of a series of articles on open source geospatial software in the classroom, called Open Source Desktop GIS: Let’s Get Started
• APB mentions the Ushahidi2ArcGIS prototype, which imports Ushahidi data into ArcGIS
• I could only smile when I learned about the PostGIS Day, a day after 'GIS Day'
• gvSIG shares 60 new case studies

In the everything-else category:

• APB reports about an estimation of Esri's worldwide market share at 40.7% in 2010
• MapQuest wants to make certain we know that they don't have preset limits on their free Map API transactions
• DM shares an article named Effective Offshore GIS Data Management Services
• SS informs us that Trimble launched custom printed maps with MyTopo.com, for the U.S. and Canada
• The Map Room shares lists of Map Books of 2011 to help us with our Christmas gifts, TMR also reviews Maphead by Ken Jennings
• V1 discuss a EU Geographical Indications (GI) Scheme report, what ? "The aim of this program is to geographically assign product names, for example, champagne can only come from the Champagne region of France."

In the maps category:

• O'Reilly shares what they call A better U.S. migration [interactive] map
• The popular xkcd cartoon share a funny and geeky cartoon on what your favorite map projection says about you

Via O'Reilly two days ago and yesterday with an article, I learned about the 1.0 release of the ThinkUp App.

O'Reilly describes it as a tool that "enables users to archive, search and export their Twitter, Facebook and Google+ history — both posts and post replies. It also allows users to see their network activity, including new followers, and to map that information. Originally created by Gina Trapani, ThinkUp is free and open source, and will run on a user's own web server."

​Here's how it's introduced on the official ThinkUp site: "ThinkUp is a free, open source web application that captures all your activity on social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google+. With ThinkUp, you can store your social activity in a database that you control, making it easy to search, sort, analyze, publish and display activity from your network. All you need is a web server that can run a PHP application."

Installation and configuration will probably require at least 30 minutes and you need minimal knowledge to configure the web server. In other words, it's not a tool that anyone can set up. But it's certainly valuable to anyone interested in understanding, mining the data, and mapping your social network activities. In bonus, you get an archive of your data. For a version 1.0, ThinkUp already does a lot. Here's the 5-minutes video that explains what is ThinkUp.

Here's the latest geonews in batch mode. But first, as a media partner of the Geomatique 2011 event, if you participated to the conference, we invite you to fill this survey and get a chance to win an iPad 2.

On the Google front:

• The GEB introduces the free Maxwell Render Suite to make your SketchUp models more realistic, the screenshots are impressive 
• You can now Share biking and walking directions with Custom Maps
• We told you before that Street View is available inside businesses now, and here's a Slashdot discussion about it
• The 2012 Google Model Your Town Competition has begun
• Google requests feedback for their map news channels, if you fill that survey, you can tell them you're reading Slashgeo ;-)
• And there was new imagery released yesterday for Google Maps and Earth

On the Microsoft front:

• Microsoft announced several updates and new features in the Bing Maps REST web services and the Bing Spatial Data Service
• In another entry, Microsoft informs us that the improved map sharing and Bing Maps route modifications

On the Esri front:

• Mandown mentions that the ArcGIS API for iOS 2.1 is now available

On the open source front that wasn't mentioned yesterday:

• Via O'Reilly, I learned about an jQuery open source Country Selector that has autocomplete
• I also forgot to share this DM article named Experiences Teaching Free and Open Source GIS at the Community College Level

In the miscellaneous category:

• APB reports that Yahoo Maps is now powered by Nokia
• The U.S. Geoplatform.gov launched based on Esri's Portal for ArcGIS, here's the direct link
• V1 has an interesting perspective named What Do You Think GIS in the Cloud Will Be Like? and on the same topic, DM shares an informative article named Is Geospatial Cloud Computing a Commodity?
• SS mentions a iOnRoad, free Android app that includes colision avoidance
• MapQuest Vibe is now available for the iPhone
• O'Reilly tells us about Dark Sky's app Kickstater project for "hyperlocal hyper-realtime" weather prediction, with similarities to NowCasting
• If you're into podcasts, VerySpatial mentions another geospatial-related podcast now in English, Geografree
• APB informs us of a OGC survey of the business value of geospatial standards
• V1 lists what he thinks are the Hottest Jobs In The Geospatial Sector Today
• APB has excellent coverage of the SimpleGeo acquisition by Urban Airship
• Remember we told you about Atanas Entchev? There's now a petition to help him

In the maps category:

• StrangeMaps shares an informative map of electric sockets of the World
• Here's a Google Maps mashup on disease risk and migration
• O'Reilly shares an animated map of how dance music travels
• APB share their disappointment at the map of the American Jobs Act

With 3D GIS in the news, here's an ongoing series working though a public 3D subsurface petrodata set from desktop modelling to web broadcasting. While BIM and geodesign have been grabbing the 3D GIS headlines, subsurface datasets for fluid flow are explore here. They will become increasingly important not only in petroleum but also in, say, water resources and underground contamination monitoring, or underground  fault and earthquake tracking.

Via Slashdot, I learned about the Globaia education organization which offers a series of world maps of human activity. Several maps have javascript rollovers, and there's one short video.

From the page: "Behind the [Anthropocene] name lie the challenges of our time. This concept illustrates and groups together the main agents that shape our planet, who literally engrave its surface—it is the anthroposphere, the human layer that grows inside the biosphere. This page is dedicated to the impressionist mapping of the artifacts from this singular moment in Earth's history. Impressionist because these maps are unlabelled and silent, giving free rein to contemplation and imagination; impressionist also because they do not follow the canons of cartography, where scales and legend are mandatory. By locating the structures and hotspots of human activity, by acknowledging the extent of our footprints and our facilities, perhaps we will glimpse the limits of our world and the importance of redefining what it means to live in and on it."