This week I received the newest issue of Wired in the mail. Believe it or not it’s a pretty good rag relating to technology and other cool stuff, but in the December issue they review a new book of compiled maps plainly called “The Map Book.” Editied by Peter Barber, the head of the British Library’s map collection, the book has 175 items highlighting 3,500 years of cartographic progress. Wired gave it 5 out of 5 bars.
From my observations, the Wired team likes maps. Of course, who doesn’t?
Just dawned on me that I have this GISCafe.com news scroller-thing on the PLANET. If the world was right, wouldn’t they be paying me for ad space?
I now have the FANTOM PLANET Defense Force on high alert. All lawyers have been banished.
URL: http://www.top20geography.com/
I came across this site looking for the top U.S. college geography programs for a friend. Of course, my buddy told me that they couldn’t hold a candle against the Canadian programs.
[Scoff!?!] That’s not for me to decide, but t’is for Lumberjacks.
Being the interactive chap that I am, I want to survey all y’all to see which GIS/geography-related acronyms are most important to you. So, please participate by leaving your comments.
I’ll start…
GIS: Geographic Information System. Then try to link your comments to something like the Wikipedia, or… something?
In response to recent comments about a particular conference I point you all to a post by Seth Godin.
Then there are Ubikcan’s comments about certificates.
That should start some lively conversation… Or, at least generate a lot of hate mail at the FANTOM PLANET post office.
I was at a meeting today with some colleages who, finally, were not obcessed with technology when discussing geography. It was rather refreshing to touch on african migration into Europe, political geography, and culture. Almost national geographic.
Ahh.
I think with user applications moving into the mainstream I think there has become a disconnect from the geography discipline where even though there is geoinformatics behind apps the user really doesn’t care about what it took to bring that “killa app” online. Plus, what even more disturbing is that some geographers have slipped into a state of denial.
“Oh, even though Google isn’t geography, it has brought up awareness of geography.”
Yeah; at what price?
It’s too early to tell. All I can say is that there needs to be some time for reflection about what is happening to the discipline before the word geographer becomes similiar to the phrase, “dropout communications major who isn’t really an IT guy or librarian.”
If you’re into watching the “Slippy Map” Wars, here’s a shot across the bow that’s been around for a while. The Naval Research Lab’s DMAP.
It has thick, thin, and PDA clients that rely on OGC and proprietary web mapping services. Pretty neat. I saw a Google Maps implementation today, so I thought I would toss it out for you all to take a look at and review/use.
Of note, should be that the DMAP team claims that they have compiled the largest collection of geospatial data on the Internet to date.
I wonder if they have seen Mapdex.org?
I was just toolin’ around with Google Print today and realized, “Wow. This is neat.”
Of course, I geeked out and searched on “geography.”
Mostly textbooks, but I found a real gem. “Harper’s Introductory Geography” from 1896.
I just wish Google Print would also give me the metadata/card catalog record for the publication. Also, how about scanning hardcopy map libraries too, or providing their metadata?
Oh! Or, using something like Metacarta to read the books and maps to geolocate pages or chapters of the books in Google Earth?!? That would be cool.
