The Map Room https://www.maproomblog.com Blogging about maps since 2003 Sun, 06 Oct 2024 20:58:51 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://www.maproomblog.com/xq/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/cropped-logo-2017-04-32x32.jpg The Map Room https://www.maproomblog.com 32 32 116787204 Satellite Imagery Before Landsat https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/10/satellite-imagery-before-landsat/ Sun, 06 Oct 2024 20:58:49 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1834397 More]]> Speaking of historical satellite imagery, Bill Morris went digging for satellite imagery of what preceded Manicouagan Reservoir before it was created in the 1960s by Quebec’s massive hydro dam projects. But since Landsat first launched in 1973, after the dam was completed, what imagery was there? Answer: CIA spy satellite imagery from 1965—when satellites took pictures on film that was then sent back to Earth—that was declassified in 1996. Read more.

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The Truth About Harry Beck: A Play About the Tube Map’s Creator https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/10/the-truth-about-harry-beck-a-play-about-the-tube-maps-creator/ Thu, 03 Oct 2024 22:38:15 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1834360 More]]> Cover image from The Truth About Harry Beck, a play now on at the London Transport Museum. It’s an outline cutout image of Beck with the London Underground map in the back.

The Truth About Harry Beck, a play about the designer of London’s iconic Tube map, is at the London Transport Museum’s Cubic Theatre through January. Writer and director Andy Burden spent years working on the play. So far reviews have been mostly positive: Theatre Vibe’s Lizzie Loveridge found it “charming,” Everything Theatre “warm,” and Broadway World calls it “as reassuring as a comfy pair of slippers,” whereas The Arts Desk’s take is more mixed and The Standard dismisses it as “chock-full of mugging, direct address and chuntering dimwittery.” BBC News coverage.

Not coincidentally, it’s the 50th anniversary of Beck’s death. London map dealer The Map House has an exhibition to mark the anniversary: Mapping the Tube: 1863-2023. They’re a map dealer so the displays are for sale, including a draft copy of the map and one of only five remaining first-edition Tube map posters. Runs from 25 October to 30 November, free admission.

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Some Google Maps Updates https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/10/some-google-maps-updates/ Thu, 03 Oct 2024 21:17:58 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1834354 More]]> Google Maps imagery updates include improved satellite imagery thanks to an AI model that removes clouds, shadows and haze, plus “one of the biggest updates to Street View yet, with new imagery in almost 80 countries—some of which will have Street View imagery for the very first time.” The web version of Google Earth will be updated with access to more historical imagery and better project and file organization, plus a new abstract basemap layer. [PetaPixel]

Meanwhile, The Verge reports that Google Maps is cracking down on business pages that violate its policy against fake ratings and reviews.

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NASA’s More Accurate Eclipse Maps https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/09/nasas-more-accurate-eclipse-maps/ Thu, 26 Sep 2024 22:33:56 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1834268 More]]> A map showing the umbra (the Moon’s central shadow) as it passes over Cleveland at 3:15 p.m. local time during the April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse. (NASA SVS/Ernie Wright and Michaela Garrison)
NASA SVS/Ernie Wright and Michaela Garrison

For the 2017 solar eclipse, NASA published eclipse maps that took the irregular umbral shadow of the moon into account: the umbra is neither circular nor oval but irregular—more polygonal—thanks to the uneven topography and elevation of both the moon and the earth. Not accounting for that introduces errors into the map that could make the difference between observing a partial rather than a total eclipse. The process behind those more accurate eclipse maps, which involves computer processing of both lunar and terrestrial elevation models, has now been published in The Astrophysical Journal. [Bad Astronomy]

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New Gravity Map of Mars Reveals Subsurface Variations https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/09/new-gravity-map-of-mars-reveals-subsurface-variations/ Wed, 25 Sep 2024 01:40:00 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1834248 More]]> Gravity map of Mars. The red circles show prominent volcanoes on Mars and the black circles show impact crates with a diameter larger than a few 100 km. A gravity high signal is located in the volcanic Tharsis Region (the red area in the centre right of the image), which is surrounded by a ring of negative gravity anomaly (shown in blue).
Gravity map of Mars, from Root et al.

A study presented earlier this month at the Europlanet Science Congress maps the variations in Mars’s gravitational field.

Dr Root and colleagues from TU Delft and Utrecht University used tiny deviations in the orbits of satellites to investigate the gravity field of Mars and find clues about the planet’s internal mass distribution. This data was fed into models that use new observations from NASA’s Insight mission on the thickness and flexibility of the martian crust, as well as the dynamics of the planet’s mantle and deep interior, to create a global density map of Mars.

The density map shows that the northern polar features are approximately 300-400 kg/m3 denser than their surroundings. However, the study also revealed new insights into the structures underlying the huge volcanic region of Tharsis Rise, which includes the colossal volcano, Olympus Mons.

Abstract, press release, Universe Today.

Previously: New Gravity Map of Mars.

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China’s GPS Shift and Online Maps https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/09/chinas-gps-shift-and-online-maps/ Wed, 25 Sep 2024 01:24:00 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1834237 More]]> If the road grid in online maps of China doesn’t line up with the aerial/satellite imagery layer, Anastasia Bizyayeva explains in a Medium post earlier this year, it’s because China’s map data uses a different geodetic datum, GCJ-02, rather than WGS-84. “GCJ-02 is based on WGS-84, but with a deliberate obfuscation algorithm applied to it. The effect of this is that there are random offsets added to both latitude and longitude, ranging from as little as 50m to as much as 500m.” Chinese map companies are obliged to use GCJ-02 so their maps and imagery line up; outside China, companies can choose to use Chinese data and imagery and have alignment artifacts at the Chinese border, or use Chinese data with images aligned with WGS-84 and have the roads appear offset from the imagery. [Kottke]

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Review: Atlas of Iowa https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/09/review-atlas-of-iowa/ Fri, 20 Sep 2024 14:59:14 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1834161 More]]> Most of the maps in the Atlas of Iowa, which came out last month from University of Iowa Press, are thematic maps: mainly graduated symbol maps and (to a lesser extent) choropleth maps, that show data at the county or (to a lesser extent) census district or precinct level. These are functional maps, means to an end rather than impressive examples of cartography in their own right. They do the job they were designed to do, which is to present the history, demographics and economics of America’s 29th state in cartographic form. And by and large they succeed: I’ve never so much as set foot in Iowa, but the Atlas of Iowa taught me a great deal about it.

For example, the importance of wind. The opening chapter on physical geography includes a map of the average annual wind speed, maps showing the growth in wind turbine installations, and maps of tornado tracks and derecho intensities. It’s one thing to know, vaguely, that Iowa is in the Great Plains tornado belt, something else to see the implications of wind of all kinds in map form. The second chapter looks at Iowa’s history, and from a cartographic perspective is the most interesting, including several historical maps and maps showing the shifting territorial and state boundaries.

If Iowa is associated with anything, it’s agriculture, especially corn; and yes, agriculture gets its chapter, showing the rise and fall of various products—the rise in corn, soybean and hogs, the decline in horses, sheep, oats and wheat. But the following chapter looks at the urban and industrial side of Iowa, and the shift away from agriculture to other sectors. Between the chapters on demographics and political, religious and social patterns, a portrait emerges of a state whose population is aging, urbanizing, less and less foreign-born (once the first wave of settlement passed)—at least insofar as a series of county-level graduated symbol maps can depict it.

In the end, the Atlas of Iowa is a case study in how an interesting story can emerge from fairly ordinary maps. That said, it does seem like this atlas relies a bit too much on symbol and choropleth maps to tell that story, especially past the first couple of chapters, when we get into the demographic and economic nitty-gritty. The quintiles used in the ancestry maps, which are census-district-level choropleths, vary so much from map to map (the top quintile for French ancestry tops out at 8.32 percent and for German at 62.9 percent) that comparison is impossible—could other thematic methods have done the trick? Could the cultural maps have benefited from a more pictorial approach? And the political section is surprisingly limited to voting patterns for presidential elections and the change in congressional district boundaries: no state-level politics or congressional voting patterns.

To be fair, I’m not the target audience for this book. Its choices need to make sense to Iowans, not necessarily me. And no doubt there were space and time constraints on this project: at roughly 200 pages this is not a big book. Wishing it had been even larger or more ambitious—taking up even more time and resources to produce—is not normally the most useful feedback. Being left wanting more is not always a bad thing.

I received an electronic review copy from the publisher.

Atlas of Iowa
by Robert C. Shepard, Patrick Bitterman, J. Clark Archer and Fred M. Shelley. University of Iowa Press, 30 Aug 2024. $40.
Amazon (CanadaUK) | Bookshop

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Atlas of Ungulate Migration https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/09/atlas-of-ungulate-migration/ Thu, 19 Sep 2024 22:13:38 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1834158 More]]> Screenshot of the Atlas of Ungulate Migration, showing the migration paths of mule deer in Wyoming.
Screenshot

The U.N. has launched an online Atlas of Ungulate Migration. “Driven by tracking data on ungulate migrations, the Atlas of Ungulate Migration serves as a repository for up-to-date migration maps that can inform conservation planning, infrastructure development and policy making. The maps detail high, medium and low-use migration corridors for a diversity of species, ranging from the iconic Serengeti wildebeest and African elephant, to the saiga of the Central Asian steppe. Most importantly, the maps illustrate where critical migration routes intersect with linear barriers like roads or railways. This atlas represents the best available science for extant migrations, with downloadable maps each accompanied by a factsheet describing the migration in detail, the data analysis, and its specific threats. The atlas is living, and continually updated.” News release.

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Two Map Books from the Bodleian https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/09/two-map-books-from-the-bodleian/ Wed, 18 Sep 2024 20:24:29 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1834120 More]]> Images of two books showing their jacket covers: Kris Butler's Drink Maps in Victorian Britain (left) and Debbie Hall's Adventures in Maps (right).

Some coverage of two map books published earlier this year by Bodleian Library. First, Atlas Obscura interviews Kris Butler, whose Drink Maps in Victorian Britain looks at how the temperance movement used maps to fight excessive alcohol consumption. They were, apparently, directly inspired by John Snow’s cholera map. From the interview:

Drink maps were specific to targeting the U.K. magistrates, to try to get these lawmakers to stop granting licenses. So it had a really specific legislative, regulatory goal. […] In one case [in 1882, in the borough of Over Darwen in Lancashire, England], after looking at a drink map, the magistrates decided to close half of the places to buy alcohol. Their rationale was, even if we close half of these, you still don’t have to walk more than two minutes to buy another beer, which I just think is the most beautiful rationale I’ve ever read. It was challenged, and it held up on appeal.

Meanwhile, the Bodleian’s own Map Room Blog (no relation) points to Debbie Hall’s Adventures in Maps, a book about maps and travel and exploration. From the book listing: “The twenty intriguing journeys and routes featured in this book range from distances of a few miles to great adventures across land, sea, air and space. Some describe the route that a traveller followed, some are the results of exploration and others were made to show future travellers the way to go, accompanied by useful and sometimes very beautiful maps.” I reviewed Debbie Hall’s Treasures from the Map Room (also no relation) in 2016.

Adventures in Maps by Debbie Hall: Amazon (CanadaUK) | Bookshop
Drink Maps in Victorian Britain by Kris Butler: Amazon (CanadaUK) | Bookshop

See also: Map Books of 2024.

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New Leventhal Exhibition: Processing Place https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/09/new-leventhal-exhibition-processing-place/ Mon, 16 Sep 2024 13:18:14 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1834078 More]]> An exhibition exploring the history of computerized mapping, GIS and remote sensing opened at the Boston Public Library’s Leventhal Map Center last Friday. Processing Place: How Computers and Cartographers Redrew our World runs until March 2025.

In the long history of mapmaking, computers are a relatively new development. In some ways, computers have fundamentally changed how cartographers create, interpret, and share spatial data; in others, they simply mark a new chapter in how people have always processed the world. This exhibition features objects from the Leventhal Center’s unique collections in the history of digital mapping to explore how computers and cartographers changed one another, particularly since the 1960s. By comparing maps made with computers to those made before and without them, the exhibition invites us to recognize the impacts of digital mapping for environmental management, law and policy, navigation, national defense, social change, and much more. Visitors will be encouraged to consider how their own understanding of geography might be translated into the encodings and digital representations that are essential to processing place with a computer.

The online version of the exhibition is here.

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Thematic Mapping and the 2024 U.K. Election https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/09/thematic-mapping-and-the-2024-u-k-election/ Fri, 06 Sep 2024 14:15:22 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1833924 More]]>
John Nelson, Esri

There’s more than one way to depict data on a map. At the last Esri user conference, Sarah Bell, Kenneth Field and John Nelson demonstrated different ways to map the results of the last U.K. parliamentary election, and how they changed from the previous election. The video of their presentation is attendee-only, but Ken and John have posted about how they each went about their tasks: here’s Ken’s post and here’s John’s; plus, as is his wont, John has posted a video.

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A Look Back at the SRTM https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/09/a-look-back-at-the-srtm/ Thu, 05 Sep 2024 00:16:50 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1833902 More]]> Last month NASA Earth Observatory ran a two-part series about the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, which produced a high-resolution digital elevation model of the Earth based on radar data collected by the shuttle Endeavour in 2000. The first part looks at how Endeavour gathered the data, the second part at how it’s been used.

Nearly a quarter century after the mission to map the world, the SRTM’s data still yields results. Just this year, it aided in wildfire forecasting for Iran’s Zagros Mountains, tracking soil erosion in South Africa, assessing flood risk on the coast of Brazil, and even determining how the locations of power-generating wind turbines affect real estate values. Tens of thousands of research papers are published every year that rely on SRTM maps for these and other environmental, economic, agricultural, and public safety studies.

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The Map Men on Gerrymandering https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/08/the-map-men-on-gerrymandering/ Sun, 01 Sep 2024 00:57:07 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1833848 More]]>

The Map Men look at gerrymandering on U.S. electoral district maps. A reasonably comprehensive primer on the subject even if comes from a couple of Brits baffled by the subject. And they finish with a surprisingly sharp point: gerrymanderers wouldn’t know how to draw maps like these if voting intentions weren’t predictable.

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Online Maps Roundup: August 2024 https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/08/online-maps-roundup-august-2024/ Fri, 30 Aug 2024 13:49:15 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1833822 More]]> Apple Maps has launched real-time transit information for Tokyo. Meanwhile, MacRumors takes a look at what’s coming to Apple Maps in iOS 18, with an additional look at the upcoming “search here” function. Google and Waze updates announced at the end of the last month: Google Maps gets easier incident reporting and destination guidance (the building you’re heading to is highlighted on the map); Waze upgrades include new camera alerts, event-based (e.g. concerts and sporting events) traffic notification and reporting, and locked-screen navigation. Also, the Google Maps app now has a simplified tab bar. And they’ve changed the pin design too. What can I say: updates are a little less earth-shattering than they used to be.

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A History of the Harvard University Institute of Geographical Exploration https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/08/a-history-of-the-harvard-university-institute-of-geographical-exploration/ Tue, 27 Aug 2024 17:44:21 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1833776 More]]> “The Harvard University Institute of Geographical Exploration was one of the first and most well-wrought private institutions in aerial photography in the first half of the 20th century. Its short institutional life at Harvard was replete with materials, stories and scandal, and its pieces remain scattered today throughout the Harvard Archives and Libraries system and beyond.” Ana Luiza Nicolae tracks down what records, photos and other materials can still be found on the Harvard campus that once belonged to Alexander H. Rice’s HUIGE, which was not closely affiliated with Harvard’s geography department but was shut down at roughly the same time.

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Multispectral Analysis Reveals Lost Details on a 16th-Century Portolan Chart https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/08/multispectral-analysis-reveals-lost-details-on-a-16th-century-portolan-chart/ Tue, 27 Aug 2024 17:30:15 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1833772 More]]>
Excerpt from an enhanced version of Bartolomeu Velho’s portolan chart of the east coast of North America, ca. 1560. Compare with the original. Library of Congress.

The Library of Congress reports on how its Preservation Research and Testing Division used multispectral imaging to bring out previously illegible place names on a 16th-century portolan chart of the east coast of North America. Initially the PRTD was brought in to confirm that the chart was legit before the Library purchased it (which it did last fall), but the faded iron gall ink in some areas of the map suggested obscured details that further analysis could draw out and place names that could be made legible again. According to the article, this represents the first time the Library has posted an enhanced image of one of their holdings.

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‘An Impossibly Heavy, Large Silver Globe’ https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/08/an-impossibly-heavy-large-silver-globe/ Fri, 16 Aug 2024 15:20:56 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1833599 More]]> “Of all the globes in the Geography & Map Division’s collections, there is one that has always caught my eye: an impossibly heavy, large silver globe tucked away in our stacks, that stands without any depiction of the earth’s physical features at all. The large silver orb instead displays only a coordinate system grid composed of unlabeled latitude and longitude lines.” Meagan Snow writes about the unlikeliest of globes in the Library of Congress’s collection: a precisely machined 34-inch blank metal globe. What on earth it was it used for? Answer unclear: “The intended use of the globe is described as ‘for earth study.’”

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Geofence Warrants Found Unconstitutional by One U.S. Federal Court https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/08/geofence-warrants-found-unconstitutional-by-one-u-s-federal-court/ Thu, 15 Aug 2024 19:29:01 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1833582 More]]> A U.S. federal court has held that geofence warrants are unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, finding that they fit the definition of general warrants that are “categorically prohibited” by that Amendment. EFF, TechCrunch. Geofence warrants, you may recall, require a data provider (usually Google) to identify all users in a given area during a given time period. While ruling them unconstitutional, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal nonetheless allowed evidence collected under a geofence warrant in the case under consideration, citing the good-faith exception, given the novelty of such warrants at the time and the lack of legal guidance available to law enforcement: see the court’s decision.

Geofence warrants are now in something of a grey area: the Fourth Circuit upheld geofence warrants’ legality, at least under certain circumstances, only last month. The two cases may not be an apples-to-apples comparison, but even so the constitutionality of location data searches may take a while (and the Supreme Court, eventually) to sort out.

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OpenStreetMap Is 20 Years Old https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/08/openstreetmap-is-20-years-old/ Fri, 09 Aug 2024 20:27:08 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1833522 More]]> OpenStreetMap is celebrating its 20th anniversary today. It was originally created in response to restrictive Ordnance Survey licensing in the U.K., in a context that seems unrecognizable today. Founder Steve Coast writes about the anniversary (mirror link). “Allowing volunteers to edit a map in 2004 was simply anathema and bordering on unthinkable. Map data was supposed to be controlled, authorized and carefully managed by a priesthood of managers.”

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Tim Walz Is a Huge GIS Nerd https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/08/tim-walz-is-a-huge-gis-nerd/ Wed, 07 Aug 2024 12:19:18 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1833466 More]]>

Yesterday, U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris announced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. Among other things, Walz is a former social studies teacher and early adopter of GIS as a teaching tool, and has nerded out on geography and GIS throughout his political career, both in the U.S. House of Representatives and as governor. Walz even spoke at the 2024 Esri User Conference in San Diego last month (as someone married to a high school teacher, I can say this: he totally talks like a high school teacher). See also this summary of the talk, and Walz’s map nerdery in general, in the Minnesota Reformer.

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The Babylonian Map of the World https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/08/the-babylonian-map-of-the-world/ Sat, 03 Aug 2024 20:53:44 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1833408 More]]>

The British Museum has posted this video about the Babylonian Map of the World, a nearly 3,000-year-old clay tablet inscribed with Akkadian script and a schematic map that is often called the oldest map in the world. The video, part of the Museum’s Curator’s Corner series, focuses on the discovery in 1995 of a missing section of the tablet, and what the inscriptions mean. Here’s the Museum’s collection listing for the tablet.

Previously: An Ancient Map of the Mesopotamian World.

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Null Island as Easter Egg https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/08/null-island-as-easter-egg/ Fri, 02 Aug 2024 16:40:25 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1833379 More]]>
Stamen Maps

Null Island is an inside joke among cartographers: an imagined island situated at 0° latitude, 0° longitude, where maps suffering from data glitches point themselves. If your map is centred on Null Island, something has gone wrong. So of course mapmakers have been having some fun with it—after all, it’s not something you could stumble across by accident. In a blog post, Alan McConchie of Stamen Maps delves into the lore and history of Null Island and its status as an Easter egg on the Stamen Maps platform, where it takes the shape of the island from the Myst game.

(As an update to my 2016 post on Null Island: Alan reports that the buoy at 0°, 0° has ceased to be. Also, the Null Island website, complete with flag, has moved here.)

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The Useless Grandeur of Coronelli’s Great Globes https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/08/the-useless-grandeur-of-coronellis-great-globes/ Thu, 01 Aug 2024 18:55:50 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1833349 More]]>

Constructed in the 1680s for Louis XIV, and measuring nearly four metres in diameter and weighing a couple of tons apiece, Vincenzo Coronelli’s great globes “are a simply amazing celestial and terrestrial pair,” writes Matthew Edney, who saw them at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in 2019. But, he goes on to say,

[T]he globes were effectively useless. Their imposing grandeur made them completely the wrong size to be used effectively. Smaller globes—made with diameters between 0.075–1.7m (3–67″)—could be easily turned to show specific parts of their convex surface. Or, people could enter within much larger globes, called georamas, turning themselves around as necessary to see all parts of the earth on the concave interior surface. Coronelli’s globes were far too large for the former, and far too small for the latter.

This unavoidable reality inverted the usual physical relationship between viewers and globes, undermining the viewer’s usual sense of intellectual domination and converting the globe-viewing experience to one of awe and amazement. As a result, no-one really knew quite what to do with them[.]

Their difficult size and limited utility is why they’ve spent most of their 340-year existence hidden from view, though they’ve been on display since 2005 at the BNF’s François-Mitterrand site (see the above BNF video, in French).

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A Map of Wildfire Damage in Jasper, Alberta https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/07/a-map-of-wildfire-damage-in-jasper-alberta/ Sun, 28 Jul 2024 01:55:50 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1833268 More]]>
Municipality of Jasper

Fire forced the closure and evacuation of Jasper National Park this week, and the Jasper townsite itself was directly hit by flames on Wednesday. Parks Canada estimates about a third of the town’s structures have been destroyed. Municipal officials released a preliminary map today showing the damaged and destroyed buildings in the town. They stress that the information “is based on the damage that is visible from the street. We have not been inside buildings or seen the backside of properties. There may be additional damage to homes and businesses that isn’t visible from the street. Buildings marked as ‘not damaged’ on the map could also have internal damage caused by smoke and water. Consider this a preliminary description of properties affected in Jasper.” CBC News coverage.

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Remembering MapQuest https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/07/remembering-mapquest/ Fri, 26 Jul 2024 01:22:50 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1833230 More]]> The tenth installment of James Killick’s “12 Map Happenings that Rocked our World” series focuses on a company James actually worked at: MapQuest, which grew very, very rapidly between its launch in 1996 (James outlines its antecedents) to its IPO and acquisition by AOL a few years later. And then:

The new management seemed to have very little interest in anything to do with MapQuest, particularly as it related to product road map and strategy. And with the layoffs and hiring freeze there weren’t enough resources to do anything substantial even if there was a good plan.

I tried to make matters clear and pleaded with the powers that be: MapQuest was a site built on map data but it didn’t make maps. In fact 98% of the map data was licensed from third parties. I knew MapQuest had to build a moat around the product otherwise someone else could swoop in, license the same data and build a better product.

And you won’t win any prizes for guessing who did.

Previously: Remember MapQuest?

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Terse Directions https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/07/terse-directions/ Thu, 25 Jul 2024 19:04:51 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1833226 More]]> Adding to the discussion as to whether online maps’ directions are too exhausting, Tim Bray argues for terse directions: “When I’m navigating an area I already know about, don’t give me turn-by-turn, just give me a short list of the streets to take.”

Right now, Google Maps insists on turn-by turn, with three warnings for each turn. It’s dumb and annoying and interrupts whatever music or show I’m listening to.

What I want is to get in the car and say “Short directions to New Brighton Park” and have it say “Take Main to 12th to Nanaimo to 1st to Renfrew to McGill.” Then when I’m driving, I’d get one vocal warning a block out from each turn, like “Next left on Nanaimo” or some such.

Previously: ‘Map-Splaining’.

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Apple Maps on the Web https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/07/apple-maps-on-the-web/ Thu, 25 Jul 2024 14:52:59 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1833220 More]]> Apple announced yesterday that Apple Maps is now available on the web as a public beta. Prior to this it was mostly available through its iOS, iPad and Mac apps, except that developers have been able to embed Apple’s maps on their websites through the MapKit JS API for several years now. Those embedded maps can now point to the web version, “so their users can get driving directions, see detailed place information, and more.” Limited browser and language support for the time being.

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Historical Maps of London https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/07/historical-maps-of-london/ Fri, 19 Jul 2024 14:49:00 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1833060 More]]>
Tudor London: The City and Southwark in 1520. Historic Towns Trust.

Londonist does a good job introducing us to two maps of old London published by the Historic Towns Trust a few years ago—a map of medieval London (1270-1300) published in 2019, and a map of Tudor London (1520) published in 2018 (and updated in 2022). The Historic Towns Trust publishes many maps of British towns and cities—historical maps, not reproductions of old maps (in fact, Londonist points out that no maps of London prior to about 1550 currently exist). The Trust’s London maps are also available as overlays on the Layers of London online map: Tudor, medieval. Some maps from the Trust’s British Historic Towns Atlas, which began publishing in 1969 and the earliest volumes of which are out of print, are also available as PDF downloads; here’s the page for London.

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On Bluesky https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/07/on-bluesky/ Thu, 18 Jul 2024 18:29:33 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1833038 More]]> The Map Room now has, for some reason, a Bluesky account. I haven’t seen much in the way of cartographic activity on that platform, but maybe the massive onslaught of followers that will inevitably result from this post will change that.

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Google Maps Navigation Updates https://www.maproomblog.com/2024/07/google-maps-navigation-updates/ Thu, 18 Jul 2024 15:35:52 +0000 https://www.maproomblog.com/?p=1833029 More]]> Google Maps is introducing a speedometer and speed limits to iOS and Carplay; the feature has been on Android since 2019. Meanwhile, Google has pushed back on the claim from one user that pop-up ads were turning up while navigating with Google Maps; rather, they say it was an instance of “promoted pins” that (should) only pop up if tapped on. 9to5Google: “we were able to replicate the exact same UI by tapping on a location on the map, so it seems the screen was either touched by accident or a glitch was at play.”

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