Date archive for August, 2008
August 21, 2008Women and Motherhood Changing in the U.S.GeographyA new U.S. Census Bureau report shows that fewer women are opting for motherhood and those that do tend to have fewer children than those in the 1970s. One in five women aged 40 to 44 have no children and the average number of children for women in their 40s is 1.9 compared with 3.1 ... read more August 20, 2008Google Investigating Photoshopped Area on Google MapsWeb MappingAn area in the Netherlands showing cloned trees that was the subject of speculation for some bloggers last week is being investigated by Google Maps. Where there are areas that Google Maps won’t show due to security or sensitivity reasons, these areas are blurred out or pixelated and no attempt is made to camouflage them. ... read more August 19, 2008 GeobroadcastingGPSSeero.comis reenacting famous car scenes from movies by overlaying the route of the car scene onto Google maps: I’m a huge fan of ‘the king of cool’ and of all movie car-chase scenes. I thought it would be great to mashup famous chases with their GPS tracks. Keep in mind some of the chases cut ... read more  Personalizing Tourist MapsCartography, FeaturesFloraine Grable presented her work on automating tourists maps at last week’s SIGGRAPH conference. While street level imagery as Google’s Street View and Microsoft’s Pictometry data are popular, Grable found that providing too much information isn’t helpful for tourist maps, stating, “When the maps show every building, every street, it’s very difficult to find specific ... read more Lonely Planet Guides Available on NokiaLocation Based ServicesNow that Nokia has aquired Navteq, the phone maker will be selling maps and travel guides for download. Nokia Maps 2.0 provides vector data supplied by Navteq and TeleAtlas. Geographic data for over 200 countries are available, 70 of those countries have navigable data. Travel data will be supplied by Lonely Planet and will give ... read more August 17, 2008Fighting snowmelt with a windshieldGeographyGeographer Hans-Joachim Fuchs is convinced that the use of windscreens to funnel kabatic winds (cold winds that blow downhill) to keep them on top of the mountains will help prevent glacier melt. The German professor is testing out his theory using the Rhone glacier in Switzerland as a testing site. Together with 27 of his ... read more August 15, 2008All About GeorgiaGeographyWith the conflict in Georgia dominating international news, this is a good opportunity to learn about this small country that sits between Europe and Asia. Matt Rosenberg over on About Geography has listed the 10 Most Important Things to Know About the County of Georgia. A good site to visit for comprehensive statistics about the ... read more August 14, 2008 Georgia OnlineFeatures, Issues in GISThe recent conflict in the country of Georgia has led to the question of “where’s Georgia?” on Google Maps. Some sources claimed that Google removed its data for Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia soon after the fighting began in South Ossetia. Currently there are only outlines of the countries with no roads, city locations or any ... read more MAPPS Members Prefer Senator McCainIssues in GISMAPPS, a United States non-profit group comprised of GIS commercial interests, posted the results of their recent poll which surveyed the political preference of their members. Polling restricted to the members of MAPPS showed a preference for Senator John McCain over Senator Barack Obama by 76% to 24. The polling was conducted during the MAPPS ... read more August 13, 2008Flickr goes with OpenStreetMapGIS NewsFlickr has announced the ability to display geotagged photos using OpenStreetMap as the base map with the goal of providing better street level geographic data than what was previously available. To kick off the change, Flickr posted before and after pictures of street level data for Beijing in honor of the 2008 Olympics: Thanks to ... read more |
