The Map Room: Latest Comments

Comment on 'Obama's Map'

Kevin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:46:32 -0500

It’s actually a special map cabinet. National Geographic has a tradition of building one for each president.

Comment on 'Determining a Map's Age'

Jerod Poore — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:25:49 -0500

Globes and atlases from 1977 through 1988 are really difficult to date. There wasn’t much change in the way of borders, names or statuses. Various small Caribbean and Pacific islands became independent (Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, St. Lucia to name a few). There was never a standard on Cambodia’s short-lived name change to Kampuchea, so that doesn’t necessarily help. The nebulous status of Western Sarah keeps changing to this day, beginning with its independence in 1977. The equally unclear division of Cyprus started in 1983.

There are a few noticeable clues for anything from that period, but nothing you’ll see pictured in an eBay listing.

Rhodesia was still a British colony until April 1980, after which Zimbabwe was an independent country. Belize became independent in Sept. 1981. Brunei on December 31st 1983. In 1984 Upper Volta changed its name to Burkina Fasso. At least that one stuck.

As a collector of obsolete globes, maps and atlases eBay frustrated me to no end. I can understand if someone doesn’t know how old an item is, but why do they show only North America? Unless the thing is older than 1949 and there’s something visible to indicate that Newfoundland isn’t part of Canada there’s no telling when in most of the 20th century an item is from. Some of their guesses are pretty pathetic. The most egregious was someone selling a globe they claimed was pre-War, based upon a unified Germany and the existence of the Soviet Union. The item was from early 1991. It was being sold in 2000.

Comment on 'Determining a Map's Age'

IanR — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:35:08 -0500

My school library had an Atlas I just loved - it was printed in 1919 or 1920, and the borders in eastern Europe were not yet finalised. It was such an amazing snapshot in time.

Comment on 'Geolocation and the iPhone's Web Browser'

Chris Lawrence — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:44:29 -0500

The example given works on the Firefox 3.5 release candidate, so the answer to your question is “yes!”

Comment on 'GIS Web Maps to Critique Web Mapping Applications'

GeoWebGuru.com — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:33:08 -0500

I’ve been trying to post some links to interesting / different maps in the discussion area on my forums, but so far I’ve mainly avoided commenting on bad maps (the H1N1 thread being the exception). There are a LOT of bad maps out there. Many are from enthusiastic “mashup amateurs” (‘Look at my cool Google Map of some pushpins’), but many are from people who should know better, eg. maps produced by companies and government agencies. Some good critical overviews will be good.

I hope GIS Web Maps can also take some criticism, though! For a start he/she needs a better proof-reader. There are some nasty typos/ splel checker errors in the first few blog entries!

Comment on 'Geologic Atlas of Texas'

GeoWebGuru.com — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:40:26 -0500

Although the user interface is a bit clunky, that’s pretty handy. I already own the Dallas paper sheet and use it quite a bit for reference (living in the area and occasionally giving guest lectures at a local university). So far I haven’t needed to buy the others although it is useful to know what outcrops where and this gives more detail than the AAPG Texas sheet.

Comment on 'xkcd on Google Latitude'

Roger_Hart — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 15:09:55 -0500

On the contrary, I think Location Based Services will continue to grow in popularity, especially among young people. Having lived with computers and the internet all their lives, young people don’t have the same “Big Brother” fears their parents do.

Most young people post some of the most intimate details of their lives on their Facebook page. They don’t have the same privacy concerns as the rest of us.

Comment on 'Cartography Snafus in NATO Map Game'

LH2004 — Mon, 25 May 2009 12:54:31 -0500

The details of the shapes of the countries aren’t important for a game like this (though there are some oddities that affect game play: Kaliningrad is correctly highlighted with Russia, but clicking there for Russia is a wrong answer; Long Island is on the map but not part of the U.S.A.). The only mistake was using a map that was mostly correct in most places: if they had used a hand-drawn, cartoonish-looking map, nobody would be complaining.

Comment on 'Maps of Manhattan that Bend Upwards'

CraigD — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:15:41 -0500

Inspired by these maps, an interactive “bend upwards” map using Virtual Earth (requires Silverlight 3 beta) or you can watch a screencast.

Comment on 'Location Privacy'

natef — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:32:43 -0500

You write, “adjustable accuracy”, but you mean “adjustable precision”

Comment on 'Texas Divided'

Roger_Hart — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:48:40 -0500

Actually, this has been mentioned here in Texas long before our current governor brought up talk of succession. Proponents of the idea generally cited the increased number of Senators the region would receive. However, as Mr. Silver points out, it would not be automatic that all those new Senators would vote the “right” way.

In any event there is little chance of it happening. The reason I say that is that if Texas were to split up, it would no longer be the biggest state in the U.S. In Texas, bragging rights will trump political considerations every time.

Comment on 'So What If Four Corners Is a Little Off?'

David Overton — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:28:53 -0500

There was a similar error when the border between South Australia and Victoria was surveyed in the 1840s. It was supposed to be the 141st meridian, but was actually about 3.6km west. After a court challenge by SA, the surveyed border was upheld. My photo of a sign explaining this in more detail: http://www.flickr.com/photos/overton/3465760840/

Comment on 'So What If Four Corners Is a Little Off?'

Jonathan Crowe — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:43:06 -0500

That was my understanding; thanks for explaining it.

Comment on 'So What If Four Corners Is a Little Off?'

aplett — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:01:39 -0500

It’s a established principle in Boundary Surveying that monuments from an original survey, i.e. the first survey in an area to establish a certain boundary line, always hold, regardless of whether they are in the location that they survey plat says it is or not. It is assumed that the surveyor set the monument in what he determined to be the correct position by the standards and equipment of his time. All kinds of problems ensue when modern surveyors with their highly accurate equipment try to ‘correct’ errors in an old survey.

Comment on 'Unfinishtstan'

Colin tha easter bun — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:49:02 -0500

Hey Rodger Pountain’s son; I like the way you mix the names of real-world countries and words associating with with stuff in your life. That is a way creative way to spend some free time.

Comment on 'Unfinishtstan'

Jonathan Crowe — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:49:24 -0500

(Changed to attribute the Unfinishtstan story properly: it’s by Roger Pountain.)

Comment on 'The United Countries of Baseball'

Jonathan Crowe — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:25:48 -0500

Fixed.

Comment on 'The United Countries of Baseball'

Noel — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:36:34 -0500

Your link for “The United Countries of Baseball” is broken, it has extra quotes in it.

Comment on 'April Foolery'

Andy Anderson — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 12:20:51 -0500

I saw this one referenced on CNET:

http://www.google.com.au/intl/en/gball/

The gBall, with built-in GPS!

Comment on 'Still Another Nikon GP-1 Review'

Bzzzt — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:10:07 -0500

Thanks for the link! I see your points, maybe I should have mentioned cost. The GP-1 is about USD/EUR 220 (so: we Europeans are paying quite a bit more), and not exactly cheap. Still, if I save 15-30 minutes of extra work every time I empty the CF cards, I think it is worth it.

Comment on 'April Foolery'

Yvette Hoitink — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:01:55 -0500

I wrote an article on my (Dutch) history of cartography today, informing the readers how the Dutch ordinance survey will start using quadrangulation instead of triangulation. Quadrangulation has the following benefits:
* each point forms a triangle with it’s neighbors forming a triangle with a 90 degree angle. This makes the calculations much easier (Pythagoras)
* a square consists of 4 triangles, making quadrangulation 4 times more accurate than triangulation.
* Because the points lie in a square, they can easily be mapped to GIS and GPS coordinates.

Comment on 'Sixth Anniversary'

Satri — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:53:45 -0500

Congrats! Hope we’ll be reading you for at least another 6 years :-)

Comment on 'Sixth Anniversary'

gpsmapper — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:09:16 -0500

Happy B-day!

Comment on 'Sixth Anniversary'

Cartophiliac — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:54:12 -0500

Congratulations! Here’s to many more!

Comment on 'Redesign'

Roger_Hart — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:58:25 -0500

I like the new design; very clean and easier to use than the old one.

I especially like the larger font. I don’t why it is, but I’ve noticed that as I get older the fonts seem to get smaller.