TED is a small non-profit organization that sponsors an annual
conference bringing together people from the worlds of Technology, Entertainment, and
Design. There are other conferences as well, and all sorts of interesting information
and ideas on their website. Many of their speakers are available in clips on the
website; this one is Parag Khanna, described as a "geopolitical expert", talking about
borders and the future of threats, power, and influence in the future. After you've
watched this clip, explore the site. There is lots here.
14 to 21 February, 2010
David Rumsey Map Collection
Blog
The David Rumsey Map Collection has more than 21,000 maps and
map images available online; it is divided into really useful categories, and it would
be easy to spend a lot of time just browsing and reading and enjoying the content. But
click on 'blog' on the top Navigation Bar, and then within the blog, click on "All
Categories" and you'll find even more; one featured section right now has 19th centry
maps made by children; eye-opening.
21 to 28 February, 2010
HiRISE
The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment is part of the
Lunar and Planetary Lab at the University of Arizona in Tucson. They use data files
from the NASA Ames archives and create amazing Hi-Res imagery. This week's link takes
you to the images from September of 2009, containing more than 1500 images of the
Martian surface. Spend time exploring. You'll discover new things with every click.
28 February to 7 March, 2010
UK Data Portal
The Public, beta launch of the long-awaited online point of
access to UK "government-held non-personal data". It's purpose is to provide a pathway
into the huge collection of government data held by UK governments and agencies. To see
the richness of what's here, click on "Data" and then "List all datasets". On the first
day the site was online there were 3000 datasets, including road injuries, disease
occurence and disease-related deaths, a dataset called "waiting times", and much, much
more.
7 to 14 March, 2010
Maps-In-Time
A very cool "moving map" from the UK National Archives. In
their words, "This unique resource reveals geo-political change in the 20th century.
Move between points on the timeline for a world overview. A particular time or region
can be viewed in more detail by choosing the zoom view. Hotspots also appear on the
maps - click on these for more information about each region and to download further
resources."
14 to 21 March, 2010
Newseum
Select a map -- USA, North America, Asia, Caribbean, Europe,
Middle East, Oceania, or South America. On the map, little yellow dots appear. Mouse
over any of those dots, and you see the front page of one of today's newspapers from
that city. The image is readable as is, but is also zoomable. Even better, you can
show the newspapers in a list instead of a map, or in a "gallery" of front pages, shown
alphabetically. Powerful and fun. All daily general-interest newspapers are invited to
participate; the only ones shown are those that voluntarily submit their front pages for
the newseum.
21 to 28 March, 2010
The Known Universe -- American Museum of Natural History
In 1957, Kees Boeke created "Cosmic View", a series of drawings
illustrating what it would be like to travel further and further out into space, keeping
our planet in the middle; in 1977, Charles and Ray Eames made this into a video entitled
"Powers of Ten", because it moves out from the center ten times further at each step --
1 meter, then 10 meters, then 100, and so on. On January 20, the NASA Astronomy Picture
of the Day is this amazing movie from The American Museum of Natural History, showing
their visualization of what it would be like to zoom out from the Earth, across the
known universe, to the limits of our present knowledge and understanding. Very powerful
and fun.
28 March to 4 April, 2010
The Falkirk Wheel
An amazing feat of engineering, a work of art, and about as
elegant as something mechanical can be. The Falkirk Wheel is a Rotating Boat
Elevator that moves boats, up to 8 at a time, between two canals. The location is
Falkirk, Scotland, about midway between Edinburgh and Glasgow. In fact, the wheel was
built as part of a plan to resurrect boat traffic between Glasgow and Edinburgh. There
is also a good article in wikipedia
4 to 11 April, 2010
Detailed World Map
This site offers a free map of the world, with
"three-dimensional" landforms, nice natural colors, and an amazing number of labels. You
can play with the map online -- it's interactive and thoughtfully designed for web use
-- or you can download it to print as a desk or wall map. It's huge -- 43 MB. There
are links to other versions.
11 to 18 April, 2010
NWS Info by
Airport
The National Weather Service's Central Weather Service Unit
maintains the links on these maps. The first map is the conterminous 48 United States;
a pull-down menu lets you select other maps. For each map, airports are shown. Locate
the airport whose weather you wish to know about, mouse over it, and you get the full
aviation weather observation the last time it was taken -- usually on the hour. The
color of the dot gives you immediate information on conditions -- a simple + sign, for
example, means clear, no ceiling, VFR flying conditions (the key is below the map). A
wealth of information; a glossare helps interpret some of the aviation shorthand.
("METAR" is aviation shorthand for "aviation routine weather observation report".)
18 to 25 April, 2010
V-PIKE
Vpike provides an easy and intuitive way into google's street
views, driving directions, traffic conditions, etc. You can simulate a drive-by of a
place you're headed, to see what it will look like when you get there. Street views are
available for US Metro Areas, US Airports, and lots of other places.
25 April to 2 May, 2010
Cities At Night From Space
From NASA's Earth Observatory: "Astronauts circling the Earth
have the wonderful vantage point of observing the nighttime Earth from 350-400
kilometers above the surface, taking in whole regions at once. Onboard cameras and a bit
of experimentation allow astronauts to take highly detailed images of our cities at
night and share them with the rest of us."
2 to 9 May, 2010
Cities at Night World Tour
Following on from last week's hotlink, here is a video shot from
the Space Station, showing the station's progress over notable Earth cities at night.
The narrator names the cities, and adds interesting comments about colors and shapes and
sizes. NOTE that this video is a 126 MB mpeg movie that will open easily in quicktime,
but even on a robust internet connection will take a few minutes to load, but it is well
worth the time and effort.
9 to 16 May, 2010
Twelve Mile Circle
A Blog about strange, interesting, or just quirky aspects of
geography and maps. The author goes in several different directions, not all of them
exactly geography related, but all, somehow, related to maps and his interest in maps.
The link above takes you to the index page; good titles for each entry help in the
decision about where to browse. Worth a look.
16 to 23 May, 2010
The Breakup of Antarctic Ice Shelves
From NASA's Earth Observatory. The six images here document the
collapse of the Larsen-B Ice Shelf in 2002, with long and detailed annotation. There
are also links to information and views of the collapse of other Ice Shelves, and under
the heading "World Of Change" there are links to all kinds of other significant change
-- from the evaporation of the Aral Sea to Water Level in Lake Powell.
23 to 30 May, 2010
Gulf of Mexico Oil Well Leak
Starting from 21 April, NASA's Earth Observatory has been
documenting with satellite imagery the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil well, and
the spread of oil since then. NOAA has also been tracking the oil, particularly from
the point of view of its effects on boating and fishing. The NOAA site is here
30 May to 6 June, 2010
California Fault Activity Map 2010
Two new maps of California from the California Geological
Survey. One is a new Geologic Map of California, the other the new Fault Activity Map,
showing all kinds of new data since the previous version. These are all-digital, and
can be viewed online, or ordered through links on this page.
6 to 13 June, 2010
Stop
Disasters
The United Nations' International Strategy for Disaster
Reduction recently put this interesting "stop disaster" game on the web. The basic idea
is to develop strategies for reducing the number of dead and injured following disasters
triggered by natural events and hazards, such as floods, earthquakes, and volcanoes.
Even if you don't play the game, there are many, many resources, especially for teachers
and parents but not limited to that audience, as well a video clips and all kinds of
information.
13 to 20 June, 2010
Demographics of Fast Food in the US
Lexicalist is a really interesting site about words. Their
servers scan the web "to learn who's talking about what. The result is a demographic
picture of language in actual use". This page shows regional strengths of various Fast
Food restaurants; a click on any map brings you more demographic information about that
particular fast food chain.
20 to 27 June, 2010
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Demographics Page
This is just one example of the powerful demographic data
available online in various government websites. This one happens to be the U.S. Bureau
of Labor Statistics, and includes all kinds of profiles and data. The U.S. Government's
official web portal is USA.GOV.
27 June to July 4, 2010
Bing Maps Watch
An interesting blog by Joshua Peterson, tracking new and
thoughtful uses of Bing Maps. Always a few good ones here; worth checking regularly.
July 4 to 11, 2010
BBC -- Mapping the Oil Slick
Many different agencies are mapping the extent of the Gulf of
Mexico oil slick. The BBC has a thoughtful (and scary) map that shows the extent of the
slick at different points in time. The Deepwater Horizon Unified Command has a much
more sophisticated interactive map, with many layers, which you can view by clicking here.
July 11 to 18, 2010
Early
Urban Rail Transit Maps
From the University of Chicago's Map Collection, this page
presents links to some late 19th-century and early 20th-century maps of Urban Rail
Transit systems. Read the introductory paragraphs to understand some of the content
issues and biases of these maps. Great browsing, especially for any city you happen to
know.
July 18 to 25, 2010
Airline Schedule Changes And Available Seats
From USA Today, an interactive map that will confirm for you
your suspiciaon that airlines serving US cities do not offer the same capacity from
Point A to Point B as there used to be. Airlines can change flying capacity two ways.
One is to change the number of daily flights on a route or at an airport, and the other
way is to change the size of planes. Both affect the number of seats. USA TODAY chose to
examine changes in the number of seats because that method takes into account both kinds
of capacity changes.
July 25 to August 1, 2010
US Senate Races -- Solid Seats and Seats in Play
From the NY Times, a fascinating interactive map attempting to
quantify the Senate seats that are up for grabs, and to predict possible outcomes. This
map shows 35 seats that are solidly Republican and will continue to be so, 48 that are
solidly Democratic and will continue that way, and 17 that are "in play", leaning one
way or another or just tossups. Another map, showing the same kind of data but for this
year's House races, is available here.
August 1 to 8, 2010
Find a Human To Talk To
Not geography exactly, but so useful... Have you ever called
"Customer Service", found a robo-voice telling you how valuable your call is, and ended
up saying to yourself, "not another voice prompt; how do I get to a real live human
being?" Turn here. This is really useful website that gives phone numbers and
shortcuts to real human beings for a growing list of nearly 2000 companies.
August 8 to 15, 2010
Global Temperature Anomalies, May 2010
From NASA's Earth Observatory. The Goddard Institute for Space
Studies assembled temperatures for May, 2010, and created this map comparing
temperatures in May this year against average temperatures for the same month from 1951
to 1980. You can quickly see areas that are well above normal (particularly the Arctic,
areas that are well below normal (western North America and central South America as
well as the Pacific side of Antarctica). A really helpful page of text explains the
map, and links to a couple of references.
August 15 to 22, 2010
The Most Dangerous Roads in the World
From the Dark Roasted Blend blog, this amazing series about the
world's most dangerous roads. There are 7 sections of this series; looking at these
routes and the vehicles on them will take your breath away -- tiny mountain roads, on
the edge of a precipice, badly-maintained, and with large transport trucks trying to
pass each other.
August 22 to 29, 2010
Google Maps Mania
There are so many remarkable things that can be done with Google
Maps that it's really challenging to stay up-to-date with all the options and tools and
services. Google Maps Mania is one of the better websites that tracks Google Maps news,
mashups that are being developed, and the new tools and options being released. Worth
bookmarking.
August 29 to 5 September, 2010
Light
Pollution Maps
Maps of the 48 contiguous states and the very most southern
parts of Canada, showing the brightness created by artificial light at night. The data
is from 1996-7, with some new data added from the Fall of 2001. Taken into account is
the extra reflectivity added when there is snow on the ground. These are all based on
The
Night Sky in the World from the Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologia in Padua.
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