Not A Map On The Internet But A Map Of The Internet
We're all used to seeing maps on the internet, but what about how the internet gets to each and every one of us so that we can see those maps?
Posts tagged as "map"
Re-imagining The London Tube Map With Curves And Circles
Another day, another map and another #mapgasm post. Actually another 2 maps, both of which are by Max Roberts and both of which have appeared on Annie Mole's Going Underground blog.
Continuing my fascination with the map of the London Underground, which I may have posted about before, Max has been wondering what the Tube Map would look like if it was all curved.
Or maybe, just maybe what it would be like if the Tube Map was circular, in the most literal of fashions.
I wonder what Harry Beck would think of these re-imaginings of his iconic map; I think he'd probably approve.
The Greenland Problem And Playing With Mercator's Map
It seems that writing about map projections is a little bit like waiting for one of London's iconic red buses; you write one and immediately another one comes along. As I mentioned in my last post, rightly or wrongly, the most commonly used map projection is the Mercator projection. It's not without it's problems or detractors.
A Mercator map gets more distorted the further north or south of the Equator you move. This is often referred to as The Greenland Problem. Greenland has an area of roughly 0.8 million square miles. Africa on the other hand has an area of roughly 11.6 million square miles. So on the map Africa should be roughly ten times the size of Greenland. Right?
But on a Mercator map it doesn't appear so; both Greenland and Africa look to be approximately the same size; and don't even get me started on how Antarctica is now smeared across the bottom of the map.
Not Your Average User Contributed Map
Today I contributed to a map. I did this yesterday as well. I even did this last week. In fact I've been doing this since the end of July 2009. As of right now I've done this 11,880 times. I'll probably end up contributing to this map again later on today and will almost definitely do it again tomorrow.
But this isn't your average user contributed or crowd sourced map. It's not one of the usual suspects; it's not OpenStreetMap, or Google MapMaker or Nokia MapCreator. It's none of these, but it's a map nonetheless and it looks like this.
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 London Tube Map Made (Too) Simple
This is post number six in the ongoing #mapgasm series of posts on maps found on the interwebs that I like. Yes, it's another map. Yes, it's another Tube map. I make no apologies for this.
A simple map is often a good map. Cutting away cartographical clutter can reveal the heart of what a map is trying to show. But sometimes you can maybe take the map pruning just a little bit too far. Take the map of the London Underground; surely one of the simplest and more effective maps there is. Surely there's not much scope for making it any simpler?
The Map Of The World According To The London Underground
Yes, it's another map. Yes, it's another map of the London Tube system. But wait ... something's not quite right.
Surely the Piccadilly Line ends at Uxbridge, Heathrow Airport and Cockfosters and not at Seattle, Buenos Aires and St. Petersburg? Doesn't the Northern Line run from Edgeware and High Barnet to Morden and not from Helsinki to Mumbai?
Maybe if the London Underground did take over the world, including 3 tunnels across the Atlantic Ocean, this is what the Tube Map might look like.
Photo Credits: Annie Mole on Flickr.
London Mapped By People's Surnames
The rather geotastic James Cheshire and Ollie O'Brien from London's UCL have produced a map of London which is certainly not your average map. The Thames is shown winding through the capital but what really grabs the attention is the fact that the rest of the map shows the population's surnames.
The Olympic Tube Map
Not all maps are created equal. I've always had a soft spot for maps of the London Underground network ever since I saw one on the back of an old London A-Z street map far too many years ago.
In case you hadn't noticed, London hosted the 2012 Olympic Games a few weeks ago so what could be more natural than a map of the Tube with famous Olympic athletes in the place of the more familiar and geographically correct station names. Maybe Chris Boardman instead of Swiss Cottage, Victoria Pendleton instead of St. John's Wood or Daley Thompson in place of Baker Street?
Hop over to the Transport for London web site and for between £3.99 and £49.00, the Olympic Legends Tube Map can be yours. I certainly want one. Huge amounts of kudos go to my darling wife for spotting this in the first place.
The English Map Of Berlin
Apropos of nothing in particular, this is the first of an occasional series of posts which contain nothing more than maps that I like as I peruse the Interwebs.
First up is a map of Berlin. In English. So now I can say to myself so that's what Prenzlauer Berg, Tiergarten and Kreuzberg mean; in a literal translation so of way.
Map Credits: Willy Karma on Facebook, via Emmanuel Decitre.
