May

26th 2008

You need a map to figure out GPS, Google Maps

Filed Under Essays, GPS, Map Servers | Leave a Comment

Steve Dahl, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune opines on the beauty of simply unfolding a map over the latest GPS and online mapping technology.

Apr

08th 2008

Foreclosures Mapping

Filed Under Current Events, Map Servers | Leave a Comment

Hotpads.com has mapped out foreclosures based on property data from RealtyTrac. House icons mark the locations of foreclosures with an underlying “heat map” layer showing the intensity of foreclosures over a given area. The Heat Map layer can be shown for a range of density types including population density, median income and median rent.

Mar

24th 2008

Tellings Stories Geographically

Filed Under Books, Google Maps | Leave a Comment

Penguin Books has launched a new feature entitled “We Tell Stories.“  With the tagline “Six Authors.  Six Stories.  Six Weeks”, the site uses Google Maps to take the reader through the geography of each short stories.  The first week’s offering is a short story called “21 Steps” by Charles Cumming (inspired by the book “39 Steps” by John Buchan.  Each week there will be a new short story played out over Google Maps. 

Seen via Google’s Lat Long Blog

Jan

23rd 2008

Google in hot water with South Korea

Filed Under Google Earth, Google Maps | Leave a Comment

Apparently Google has upset South Korea again with its choice of annotation that mistakenly attributes certain locations in South Korea as being part of North Korea. According to Digital Chosunilbo, a daily news site about Korea:

The controversial areas include Ongjin County under the jurisdiction of the city of Incheon, and some islands in Ongjin County such as Baegryeong-do, Daecheong-do, and Socheong-do.

While close to North Korea, all of these locations are in South Korea. Yet all of them are described in detail by Google Earth as belonging to North Korea. Even Yeonpyeong-do, in whose adjacent waters the 1999 West Sea battle was waged, is described as belonging to the North.

There have been several incidents in the past with Google referring to Seoul (the capital of South Korea) as “under Japanese rule” and labeling some locales with the Japanese name instead of the Korean name.

Read more: Google Under Fire for Flawed Korea Maps - Digital Chosunilbo

Nov

16th 2007

Geo World Bank

Filed Under Google Maps, World | Leave a Comment

The World Bank has teamed up with Google to offer an interactive mapping application that displays financial and demographic statistics by country.  Visitors can either select a country via the drop down list presented or click on one of the markers on the map.  Countries are color coded by markers showing low, middle and high income.  Clicking each country opens up a tabbed window that provides detailed statistics, news items and project information.

geobank.jpg

Sep

24th 2007

Graduation Rates Map

Filed Under Education, Map Servers | Leave a Comment

The Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) Research Center recently announced a new mapping web site showing high school graduation rates across the United States by state and by district.  Along with panning and zooming, graduation statistics can also be searched for by place or by school district.  When you zoom in, place holders for each school district can be clicked on which results in a popup with summary information about the school district, number of schools, students and the percentage of students graduating.  Click on the report link to access a more detailed report about that particular school district. 

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Sep

15th 2007

Energy Conservation Through Peer Pressure

Filed Under Europe, Map Servers, Urban Geography | Leave a Comment

Haringey Council (located in London, England), is using heat mapping to highlight energy inefficient homes within their jurisdiction. The city council hired an aircraft fitted with a thermal imager to fly over all the homes in the jurisdiction to capture heat loss. The houses were then color coded based on a heat loss scale with bright red for the highest level of heat loss and bright blue indicating the lowest loss of heat. All of the data is available online for the public to see. Any visitor to the Haringey Interactive Heat Loss Map can hover their mouse over individual homes to get the address. The hope of the council is that a public display will shame some homeowners into insulating their homes to bring down heat loss. The original thermal mapping was down back in 2000 but new flights were taken this past March and now a 2000 and 2007 version of the heat loss map are available from the Home Heat Loss page of the Haringey Council web site. If the side by side comparison (see below) is any indicator, the heat loss map is making a difference in the reduction of energy loss in at least some of the homes. The mapping and processing was done by www.hotmapping.co.uk.

Year 2000:

heatloss2000.png


Year 2007:

heatloss2007.png

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