Posts Tagged ‘cartography’

After The Missing Manual For OpenStreetMap, Here’s The Google Map Maker Version

The growth and uptake of today’s internet and web allows us to do a lot of things that were previously the preserve of the professional. You can see this in the rise of words which now have citizen prepended to them. We don’t just write blog posts, we’re citizen journalists. We don’t just take photographs, we’re citizen photographers. To this list, we can now add citizen cartographer as well.

With the help of OpenStreetMap, HERE’s Map Creator (which I work on) and Google’s Map Maker, anyone with a modern web browser and an internet connection can now help to make maps where previously there were none and to improve and keep maps up to date, which still remains one of the biggest challenges to map making.

There’s already been a book about OpenStreetMap, which I wrote about in April of 2011. As far as I know, no-one’s written about HERE’s Map Creator but for Google’s Map Maker there’s Limoke Oscar’s Instant Google Map Maker Starter.

When I wrote about OpenStreetMap; Using and Enhancing the Free Map of the World, one of the reasons I liked reading about making maps with OSM in a book was because …

OpenStreetMap is easy to use, graphical (on the website), comes with multiple discussion and documentation sites and well supported mailing lists; you can always find the answer to your question. But sometimes you don’t know what the question is. Sometimes you just want to read a book.

The same can be said of Instant Google Map Maker Starter. The e-book edition I’ve just finished reading doesn’t appear to have the physical weight and depth of the OSM tome, but that’s only to be expected of a book that clearly sets out to be a starter.

As a starter, the book describes itself on the cover as short, fast, focused and on all these counts it succeeds admirably. Making, creating and editing a digital map is now massively easier than it was 5 years ago, but it’s still not simplicity itself.

When you’re setting out, you need to have explained what the difference is between what’s in the map, the spatial data of the map itself, and what’s on the map, the places or points of interest. You need to know how to use your software tool of choice, be it OpenStreetMap, Map Creator or Map Maker. You need to be shown the shortcuts and how to avoid the inevitable pitfalls.

Limoke obviously knows how to use Google Map Maker and it shows in the clear, concise prose, which educates from the ground up and doesn’t once stray into making the reader feel patronised or being lectured.

Maybe I’ve been spoilt with the depth and coverage of this book’s OpenStreetMap counterpart and even though the book is clearly labelled and pitched as a high level starter guide, it left me wanting more. But that’s not the fault of the author. Most of what I wanted more of is information that only Google would be able to provide; about why Google Map Maker is open for editing in some countries and about why you have to ask Google to get the data you put in back out. But I would have liked to have seen the author touching on the why of map making as much as the how, which he’s admirably written about. Why do people make maps and what motivates them?

Maybe there’s a book to be written about this; maybe one day I might even do that.

Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344)

2013 – The Year Of The Tangible Map And Return Of The Map As Art

Looking back at the conference talks I gave and the posts I wrote in 2012, two themes are evident.

The first theme is that while there’s some utterly gorgeous digital maps being produced these days, such as Stamen’s Watercolor, the vast majority of digital maps can’t really be classified as art. Despite the ability to style our own maps with relative ease, such as with Carto and MapBox’s TileMill, today’s maps tend towards the data rich, factual end of the map spectrum. Compare and contrast a regular digital map, on your phone, on your tablet or on a web site in your laptop’s browser with a map such as Hemispheriu[m] ab aequinoctiali linea, ad circulu[m] Poli Arctici and you’ll see what I mean (and if you don’t browse the Norman. B. Leventhal Map Center’s Flickr stream you really should).

The second theme is that despite the abundance of maps that surround us these days, a digital map is almost by definition an intangible thing. It’s a view port, hand crafted by a digital cartographer, on a mass of hidden, underlying spatial data. It’s ephemeral. Switch off your phone, your tablet, your sat nav or your computer and the map … vanishes. Until the next time you hit the “on” button, the electrons flow again and the map re-appears. But it’s still intangible, despite the irony that a lot of maps these days are interacted with via a touch interface; we tap, poke, prod and swipe our maps, but they’re not really there.

But maybe 2013 will be both the year of the tangible map and the year of the map as art. It might be if the closing days of 2012 are anything to go by.

On December 8th, 2012, David Overton’s SplashMaps made their funding total on Kickstarter. A SplashMap is a real outdoor map, derived from (digital) open data, but rendered on a light and weatherproof fabric. It’s a tangible map in the truest sense of the word; one you can fold up or even crumple up and stick in your pocket, safe in the knowledge that it won’t fade away. There’s no “off” switch for this map. As one of the SplashMap funders, I’ll have a chance to get my hands on one in the literal sense of the word in a couple of months, once they hit production. So more about this map in a future post.

The other map that is both 100% tangible and 100% art is the awesomely talented Anna Butler’s Grand Map Of London. A modern day map of the UK’s capital city, digital in origin, lovingly hand drawn in the style of the 1800s and printed, yes, printed on canvas. It’s a map worthy of the phrase “the map as art” and when I first saw one and handled one in late November of 2012 I wanted one, right there and then.

And then, on Saturday, December 29th 2012, Mark Iliffe and I met Anna for a coffee in the Espresso Bar of the British Library on London’s Euston Road and out of the blue, Anna handed over a long cardboard tube containing my own, my very own, Grand Map Of London. People nearby looked on, slightly non-plussed as I crowed like a happy baby, promptly unrolled the map over the table and just looked and touched. The next half an hour or so pretty much vanished as I pored over and luxuriated in the map, lost in the details and revelling in the map under my hands. Truly this is a tangible map which is itself art.

I’ve often said, half in truth, half in jest, that I’d love a big, as big as I can get, map of London on my wall, probably one of Stamen’s Watercolor maps. But Anna’s Grand Map Of London will be getting a suitable frame and sitting on my wall, just as soon as my local framing shop opens after the New Year break.

Two maps to wrap up 2012. Both tangible, both digital in origin, both made for looking, touching and feeling. One clever, innovative and utterly practical and one a map you can keep coming back to and which reveals more artistic cleverness each time you look at it.

2013 is shaping up to be a “year of the map” in ways I’d never had hoped for at the start of 2012.

Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344)

Making PostgreSQL, PostGIS And A Mac Play Nicely Together

Most things in life are a journey and the destination of this particular journey was to try and create a custom map style that represented the unique features and challenges of Tandale.

Which meant I needed to download and install TileMill, an interactive map design tool.

Which meant I needed to learn Carto, the CSS-like language for map styling.

Which meant I looked for a template project so I didn’t have to start from scratch.

Which meant I found OSM Bright.

Which meant I needed to start small and find a map extract of Tanzania to work with.

Which meant I needed to install and configure PostgreSQL and PostGIS on my Mac.

Which brings me to the starting point of the journey and the reason for this post in the first place.

When I normally need to install UNIX-y command line and server tools I turn to Homebrew, the tool set that “installs the stuff you need that Apple didn’t”. Homebrew supports installing both PostgreSQL and PostGIS but a bit of background research showed that installing these on Lion and on Mountain Lion could be problematic. A bit of further research soon turned up Postgres.app, which claims to be “the easiest way to run PostgreSQL on the Mac”. Postgres.app is a single shot installer which wraps PostgreSQL and PostGIS into an easy to install and run self contained environment.

I’m a big fan of this approach to a software development environment. All of the stuff I’ve put up on GitHub and on WordPress.org has been written using MAMP, the single shot installer which wraps up Apache, MySQL and PHP on the Mac so Postgres.app gave instant appeal to me. So, download, install, start.

Next I found an OSM map extract of Tanzania courtesy of GeoFabrik, which I also downloaded. Now to load the map into PostgreSQL. I made sure my shell’s PATH pointed to the command line tools provided by Postgres.app by prepending /Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/MacOS/bin to the PATH defined in my .bash_profile, ran psql and created a database called tanzania. So far so good.

$ psql
psql (9.2.2)
Type "help" for help.

gary=# CREATE DATABASE tanzania;
CREATE DATABASE
gary=# \q

To load the map into the database I had a choice of two command line tools; Imposm or osm2pgsql. The latter of the two seemed to work out of the box according to the documentation so I used Homebrew to install this tool.

$ brew install osm2pgsql

Now to load the map …

$ osm2pgsql -c -G -U gary -d tanzania ~/Projects/maps/data/tanzania.osm.pbf 
osm2pgsql SVN version 0.81.0 (64bit id space)

Using projection SRS 900913 (Spherical Mercator)
Setting up table: planet_osm_point
NOTICE:  table "planet_osm_point" does not exist, skipping
NOTICE:  table "planet_osm_point_tmp" does not exist, skipping
SELECT AddGeometryColumn('planet_osm_point', 'way', 900913, 'POINT', 2 );
 failed: ERROR:  function addgeometrycolumn(unknown, unknown, integer, unknown, integer) does not exist
LINE 1: SELECT AddGeometryColumn('planet_osm_point', 'way', 900913, ...
               ^
HINT:  No function matches the given name and argument types. You might need to add explicit type casts.

Error occurred, cleaning up

The lack of the AddGeometryColumn function was the clue here. Whilst Postgres.app may come with PostGIS, my custom database was lacking all the PostGIS functionality. So I deleted my initial database and tried to recreate it with the template_postgis template, which also failed.

$ psql
psql (9.2.2)
Type "help" for help.

gary=# DROP DATABASE tanzania;
DROP DATABASE
gary=# CREATE DATABASE tanzania TEMPLATE=template_postgis;
ERROR:  template database "template_postgis" does not exist
gary=# \q

Updated 24.12.12

As Regina correctly pointed out in the comments, I didn’t really need to go through the manual process of loading the PostGIS template, the create extension postgis command in psql would have done this for me much quicker and elegantly, reducing the commands to setup my database to just two statements …

$ psql
psql (9.2.2)
Type "help" for help.

gary=# CREATE DATABASE tanzania;
CREATE DATABASE
gary=# \connect tanzania;
You are now connected to database "tanzania" as user "gary".
tanzania=# CREATE EXTENSION postgis;
CREATE EXTENSION
gary=# \q

… simple when you know how.

So I needed to create the template_postgis database from scratch, loading in the postgis.sql and spatial_ref_sys.sql SQL files and then recreate my custom database, based on the template contained in the template_postgis database. The PostGIS SQL files are supplied as part of Postgres.app, if you know where to look for them; you’ll find them inside the app’s container in /Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/MacOS/share/contrib/postgis-2.0.

$ createdb template_postgis
$ createlang plpgsql template_postgis
createlang: language "plpgsql" is already installed in database "template_postgis"
$ psql -d template_postgis -f /Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/MacOS/share/contrib/postgis-2.0/postgis.sql 
SET
BEGIN
CREATE FUNCTION
CREATE FUNCTION
CREATE TYPE
...
COMMIT

$ psql -d template_postgis -f /Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/MacOS/share/contrib/postgis-2.0/spatial_ref_sys.sql 
BEGIN
INSERT 0 1
...
COMMIT
ANALYZE

$ psql
psql (9.2.2)
Type "help" for help.

gary=# CREATE DATABASE tanzania TEMPLATE=template_postgis;
CREATE DATABASE
gary=# \q

Now, at last, I was able to load my Tanzanian map.

$ osm2pgsql -c -G -U gary -d tanzania ~/Projects/maps/data/tanzania.osm.pbf
osm2pgsql SVN version 0.81.0 (64bit id space)

Using projection SRS 900913 (Spherical Mercator)
Setting up table: planet_osm_point
NOTICE:  table "planet_osm_point" does not exist, skipping
NOTICE:  table "planet_osm_point_tmp" does not exist, skipping
Setting up table: planet_osm_line
NOTICE:  table "planet_osm_line" does not exist, skipping
NOTICE:  table "planet_osm_line_tmp" does not exist, skipping
Setting up table: planet_osm_polygon
NOTICE:  table "planet_osm_polygon" does not exist, skipping
NOTICE:  table "planet_osm_polygon_tmp" does not exist, skipping
Setting up table: planet_osm_roads
NOTICE:  table "planet_osm_roads" does not exist, skipping
NOTICE:  table "planet_osm_roads_tmp" does not exist, skipping
Allocating memory for dense node cache
Allocating dense node cache in one big chunk
Allocating memory for sparse node cache
Sharing dense sparse
Node-cache: cache=800MB, maxblocks=102401*8192, allocation method=3
Mid: Ram, scale=100

Reading in file: /Users/gary/Projects/maps/data/tanzania.osm.pbf
Processing: Node(6820k 682.0k/s) Way(980k 16.90k/s) Relation(23580 1122.86/s)  parse time: 89s

Node stats: total(6820388), max(1910954191) in 10s
Way stats: total(980191), max(180648305) in 58s
Relation stats: total(23580), max(2409445) in 21s
Committing transaction for planet_osm_point
Committing transaction for planet_osm_line
Committing transaction for planet_osm_polygon
Committing transaction for planet_osm_roads

Writing way (980k)
Committing transaction for planet_osm_point
Committing transaction for planet_osm_line
Committing transaction for planet_osm_polygon
Committing transaction for planet_osm_roads

Writing relation (23569)
Sorting data and creating indexes for planet_osm_point
Sorting data and creating indexes for planet_osm_line
Sorting data and creating indexes for planet_osm_polygon
node cache: stored: 6820388(100.00%), storage efficiency: 50.68% (dense blocks: 637, sparse nodes: 6403164), hit rate: 99.45%
Sorting data and creating indexes for planet_osm_roads
Analyzing planet_osm_point finished
Analyzing planet_osm_polygon finished
Analyzing planet_osm_roads finished
Analyzing planet_osm_line finished
Copying planet_osm_point to cluster by geometry finished
Copying planet_osm_roads to cluster by geometry finished
Creating indexes on  planet_osm_roads finished
All indexes on  planet_osm_roads created  in 12s
Completed planet_osm_roads
Copying planet_osm_polygon to cluster by geometry finished
Copying planet_osm_line to cluster by geometry finished
Creating indexes on  planet_osm_point finished
All indexes on  planet_osm_point created  in 21s
Completed planet_osm_point
Creating indexes on  planet_osm_polygon finished
All indexes on  planet_osm_polygon created  in 28s
Completed planet_osm_polygon
Creating indexes on  planet_osm_line finished
All indexes on  planet_osm_line created  in 30s
Completed planet_osm_line

Osm2pgsql took 218s overall

One final gotcha awaited though. Restarting Postgres.app later that day made psql fail with an error.

$ psql
psql: could not connect to server: No such file or directory
	Is the server running locally and accepting
	connections on Unix domain socket "/tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432"?

Although Postgres.app was running, it looked like the server wasn’t. Checking the system error logs via Console.app showed me that my newly populated database was running out of shared memory.

22/12/2012 11:05:44.319 com.heroku.postgres-service: FATAL:  could not create shared memory segment: Cannot allocate memory
22/12/2012 11:05:44.319 com.heroku.postgres-service: DETAIL:  Failed system call was shmget(key=5432001, size=3809280, 03600).
22/12/2012 11:05:44.319 com.heroku.postgres-service: HINT:  This error usually means that PostgreSQL's request for a shared memory segment exceeded available memory or swap space, or exceeded your kernel's SHMALL parameter.  You can either reduce the request size or reconfigure the kernel with larger SHMALL.  To reduce the request size (currently 3809280 bytes), reduce PostgreSQL's shared memory usage, perhaps by reducing shared_buffers or max_connections.
22/12/2012 11:05:44.319 com.heroku.postgres-service: 	The PostgreSQL documentation contains more information about shared memory configuration.
22/12/2012 11:20:40.584 com.heroku.postgres-service: server starting

Thankfully this is a known problem; PostgreSQL is really a server application, not a laptop application. The default Mac configuration isn’t enough to support a medium sized PostgreSQL database, but adding the following configuration settings to /etc/sysctl.conf, creating it via sudo if it doesn’t already exist and rebooting solved that final problem.

kern.sysv.shmmax=1610612736
kern.sysv.shmall=393216
kern.sysv.shmmin=1
kern.sysv.shmmni=32
kern.sysv.shmseg=8
kern.maxprocperuid=512
kern.maxproc=2048

TileMill - Tanzania

I now have a working PostgreSQL and PostGIS install, with a map loaded, which TileMill can access. Now all I need to do is learn Carto and actually make the map I originally set out to do … another learning journey has started.

Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344)

Maps, Maps And MOAR Maps At The Society Of Cartographers And Expedia

Updated September 13th. 2012 with embedded YouTube video.

Wednesday September 5th. 2012 was a day of maps. To be precise, it was a day of maps, maps and MOAR maps. Two events, two talks, back to back. Packed choc-a-bloc full of maps. I also cheated slightly.

Firstly there was the International Cartographical Association’s first session of the newly formed Commission on Neocartography. Cartography, neocartography, maps; what is there not to like? I’d previously spoken at the UK’s Society of Cartographer’s annual conference so it was great to be asked by Steve Chilton, SoC and Neocartography chair, to speak at the Neocartography Commission.

For a change, the talk title and abstract I gave Steve didn’t vary during the usual researching and writing of the talk.

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v1278) Subject: Re: Neocartography workshop X-Universally-Unique-Identifier: d1c70302-eaba-4132-80fb-f74eb1de2347 From: Gary Gale In-Reply-To: DEC2FCE18B20734CAFA668E438482963834F621862@WGFP-EXMBV1.uni.mdx.ac.uk Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2012 14:13:39 +0100 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Smtp-Server: mail.vicchi.org:redacted Message-Id: BEB576E2-3E8C-4136-803A-0CE5E5456C26@vicchi.org To: Steve Chilton


Actually, I'm going to change the title ... what I'd really like to see up on the web site is this ...
Title: History Repeats Itself And So Does The Map

Abstract: Steve Chilton says this just MIGHT be interesting; you'll have to take his word for this
... but that might not work. So try this for size instead
Title: History Repeats Itself And So Does The Map

Abstract: History has a habit of repeating itself and so does the map. From primitive scratchings, through ever more sumptuous pieces of art, through to authoritative geographical representations, the map changes throughout history. Maps speak of the hopes, dreams and prejudices of their creators and audience alike, and with the advent of neogeography and neocartography, maps are again as much art as they are geographical information.
... will that do?

G

But then, no sooner had I got one event for that Wednesday when fellow Yahoo! alumni and now Expedia developer and chief evangelist Steve Marshall asked me to team up with ex-Doppleran and ex-Nokian Matt Biddulph at Expedia’s EAN World of Data event which was cunningly masquerading as a BBQ that very Wednesday evening. So I cheated. One day. Loads of maps. Two events. But one talk. Only time will tell whether I got away with it or not.

My talk at the Neocartography workshop was filmed and you can watch it below, if you like that sort of thing. Personally I hate seeing myself on video, it’s even more excrutiating than hearing myself on audio.

As usual, the slide deck, plus notes are embedded below, also if you like that sort of thing.

View this document on Scribd

Read On…

The Missing Manual For OpenStreetMap?

The first computer I used at work was powerful for its day (though pitifully underpowered compared to the phone that’s sitting in my pocket at the moment) but was somewhat unfriendly by today’s standards. You sat down at a terminal (not a PC, they hadn’t been invented) and were presented with a command line prompt that said “Username:“, pass that barrier to entry and it said “Password:“. Armed with the right combination of username and password you would be rewarded with a flashing cursor preceded by a dollar sign as a prompt … $. If you wanted help you couldn’t browse the web (it hadn’t been invented) nor ask in a mailing list (the Internet was in its early days and you probably didn’t have access). Instead you consulted the big, heavy, ring bound, bright orange documentation set; these were the heady days of DEC and VAX/VMS.

The computer I’m writing this on still needs a username and password but is easy to use, graphical, intuitive and comes with multiple web sites, discussion and documentation sites and mailing lists to ask questions in. But to get the most of today’s computers you still need a book sometimes, which is why David Pogue’s Mac OS X: The Missing Manual is still one of the most well thumbed books I have, 8 years and multiple editions later. There’s a version for Windows too.

So what does this have to do with OpenStreetMap? Bear with me … there are parallels to be drawn.

OpenStreetMap is easy to use, graphical (on the website), comes with multiple discussion and documentation sites and well supported mailing lists; you can always find the answer to your question. But sometimes you don’t know what the question is. Sometimes you just want to read a book.

OpenStreetMap: Using and Enhancing The Free Map Of The World is that book … consider it the Missing Manual if you will.

Originally written in German by mailing list stalwarts Frederik Ramm and Jochen Topf in 2008 (names which will be familiar to anyone who’s spent any time on the OSM mailing lists), the book was translated into English with Steve Chilton (chair of the UK’s Society of Cartographers) towards the end of 2010. A translation would be impressive enough but the English version also comes with expanded sections and all of the content, examples and illustrations have been revisited, revised and updated.

Whether you’re an OSM expert or you just want to see how one of the largest voluntary, crowd sourced projects on the face of the Internet works this is a worthy and valuable addition to your bookshelf. While no OSM expert I considered myself fairly well versed in how to use OpenStreetMap. Reading the book was a salient lesson on just how much I didn’t know; the section on GPS was an education in itself.

The book also provides a well written and easy to understand explanation of what you can and what you can’t do with OSM’s wealth of geographic data and answers so many of the questions on data licensing that crop up again and again in conversations around OSM and on the mailing lists.

As a written work, the OpenStreetMap book works on multiple levels. You can dip into it, select the parts that interest you, get distracted by reading about stuff you didn’t think you’d want to know or you can read it from cover to cover.

If you want to contribute data to OpenStreetMap … this is the book for you
If you want to use OpenStreetMap data to create maps … this is the book for you
If you want to integrate OpenStreetMap data into a web site … this is the book for you
If you consider yourself as a fully paid up geo nerd who lives and breathes open data … this is the book for you. No … really

One final thought; the old adage about the Internet being an information hose pipe holds true where OpenStreetMap is concerned. The volume of information and data is simply staggering. You can find your way through all of this information by yourself. Or you can just read a well written, well thought out book instead. Even in today’s online world there’s still a place for the feeling you get from holding a book in your hands and leafing back and forwards through the pages. My copy of this book is still reasonably pristine, despite being hauled on and off planes and read from cover to cover. I can’t guarantee it’ll stay that way for long.

Written and posted from theRadisson Blu hotel, Berlin (52.519648, 13.40258)

After Neogeography, Here Comes Neocartography

First there was neogeography, a convenient label for the practice of geography outside of the formally accepted geographical disciplines. A convenient label, but one which caused some controversy and mud slinging with the aforementioned formally accepted disciplines being labelled paleogeography and with a strong emphasis on the pejorative.

So it seems almost inevitable that we now have a proposal from the International Cartographic Association to form a commission on neocartography, looking into the practise of making maps outside of the formally accepted cartography profession.

The proposed chair for the ICA Commision on Neocartography is the UK’s Steve Chilton and a worthy chairmanship it is too. In addition to his work contributing to OpenStreetMap, Steve is also one of the forces behind expanding the remit and reach of the UK’s Society of Cartographers, with last year’s Summer School having a strong emphasis on what could now be called neocartography.

You can read the proposal over at the SoC’s web site as well as Ed Parson’s commentary; sign up and add your voice to supporting this exciting and, to my mind, essential broadening of the world of all this cartographical.

Thankfully there’s been no mention of paleocartography yet; it’s to be hoped that with neocartography we look beyond the label to what is trying to be achieved rather than fixating on convenient labels and pigeon-holing concepts.

Photo Credits: nrivera on Flickr.

Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344)

Putting The Tube On The Grid; A Geeked Out Cartographical Recipe

Here’s a simple, cut-out-and-keep recipe for making a very geeked out update on a cartographical classic. First, take a classic and iconic map which appeals to both the map geek in you as well as the Tube geek in you. Harry Beck’s 1931 reworking of the map of the London Underground system will do nicely.

Next, take a classic, 1980′s movie which appeals to both the scifi fan and the computer nerd in you and classifies as a guilty pleasure as an added bonus. Disney’s 1981 Tron fits the bill here.

Add the ingredients, mix well and serve. The end results might just look like Kevin Flynn’s version of the London Underground network on The Grid.

To paraphrase Kevin Flynn (the Tron character not the artist) … “Who’s that guy?“, “That’s Tron. He fights for the Tube Users“.

Photo Credits: thehutch on Flickr and Kevin Flynn on Deviant Art.

Written and posted from the Nokia gate5 office in Schönhauser Allee, Berlin (52.5308072, 13.4108176)

Just Because You Can Put Something On A Map …

A quick review through last year’s posts shows a fairly consistent theme of mine; that despite the absence of the map in many of today’s location services sometimes the map is the best way of simply presenting information in a readily accessible and understandable form.

But a map is much more than just a visualisation for overlaying data upon, a map says as much about the fears, hopes, dreams and prejudices of its target audience as it does about the relationship of places on the surface of the Earth.

Sadly, as the background to the tragic and disturbing shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and 20 other people in Tucson, Arizona on January 8th unfolds, some commentators are linking a map to the shooting, with some going so far as to say that a map either directly or indirectly contributed to the motive behind the shooting.

The map in question is one that appeared on Sarah Palin’s Facebook page over a year ago and shows the 20 Democrat Representatives who had voted in favour of US health reforms. The key feature of the map was not that it showed the United States, nor that it showed the districts and their Representatives, but that each district was indicated not by the usual map push pin but by the cross-hairs of a rifle sight. Whether this was or wasn’t a contributory factor behind the shooting is open to interpretation and debate, a lot of people have interpreted the map as being a direct call to action which influenced the person or persons who perpetrated this act.

Sometimes the map is the best way of showing information, but sometimes just because you can put something on a map doesn’t mean you should.

Written and posted from the Nokia gate5 office in Schönhauser Allee, Berlin (52.5308072, 13.4108176)

Remapping The World By Population Size

From the department of cartographical curiosities comes this wonder; a map of the world but with the countries changed so that their population size corresponds to the size of each country. It’s a map of the world; but not as we know it and has cropped up in several places online, including Frank Jacob’s excellent Strange Maps blog.

In this new world order, the United Kingdom now sits, landlocked, in the middle of Africa, where the Republic of Niger is usually found and Germany has migrated in a South Easterly direction and now sits where you’d expect to find Saudi Arabia. The map also notes the interesting coincidences that the United States, Yemen, Brazil and Ireland don’t actually move and correspond precisely to their place in the population ranking.

Photo Credits: JPALMZ (original source unknown).

Written and posted from the Nokia gate5 office in Schönhauser Allee, Berlin (52.5308072, 13.4108176)

The Plains Of Awkward Public Family Interactions And The Bay Of Flames

Not content with pointing out the fun you can have with tracking your location, xkcd, the webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language has branched out into making maps. The updated map of online communities shows the volume of daily social activity across all of the online world, and not just the high profile ones that get the press coverage.

Click through for the full size versions and loose yourself in the plains of awkward public family interactions, the Bay Of Flames and other geographical wonders.

Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344)

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