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March 11, 2008Map of the path not taken
I came of age before Gary Gygax's (PBUH) Dungeons & Dragons fell onto my radar. And I escaped the fad unscathed. My first and only experience with D&D was in intelligence school (I needed remedial, you see) in the Navy, where the Dungeon Master and I rapidly came to collision ("Man, I don't need no 10-sided dice to decide if the fuckin' dwarf dies, just kill him"). I was soon booted from the Dungeon, but the DM was soon booted from the Navy on morals charges, so I call it even. Since then, I have been utterly sure that I was never infected by the D&D virus. But I can see from the map below... and I have traveled a good bit of it... that I must be carrying antibodies. Posted by Allan Jenkins at 10:39pm in Career management, Cartography, History, Humor | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0) January 09, 2008Language map of Toronto
Now that you've digested the Ratchester Dawg, enjoy Toronto's Language Quilt, a cartographic-language illustration of a lovely city. I need one for New York, London and Greenville, SC. via the Map Room. Posted by Allan Jenkins at 10:36pm in Cartography, Language & Linguistics | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0) July 22, 2007Driving across America... like taking the subway!
Driving across the US is as easy as taking the subway! Well, it would seem so if you reduce the Interstate Highway map to diagram form. Posted by Allan Jenkins at 02:02pm in Cartography, Travel | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) April 10, 2007Now this will be handy for that next trip to Miami
I love Miami Beach (yes, for all the wrong reasons). Unfortunately, getting there from Copenhagen usually means spending time in the incapable hands of British Airways or Air France (though, that is far better than being in the hands of United or American). Always aiming to make life easy, the kids at Mountain View have added a natatory alternative to aviation. Yes, type "Copenhagen to Miami" in Google Map's routemaking function, and you will be guided through Germany, the Low Countries, and part of France. So far so good. But then the instruction: Swim across the Atlantic Ocean. The entire trip is estimated to take 30 days and 13 hours. I am not sure why it's necessary to come ashore in downtown Boston, though. Via The Map Room, of course. Posted by Allan Jenkins at 10:58pm in Cartography, Travel | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) December 05, 2006Ask City is like your dotty old aunt
“Amsterdam? Isn’t that somewhere north of the Hampshires?” And goes on to quote Scoble: New AskCity doesn’t find Amsterdam
Hmmm, wonder why Google’s brand in my brain is going up and not down? You have to look no further than the new “AskCity” which is all the rage this morning over on TechMeme. First, a little aside. Why can Google do maps with one input box while Microsoft, Yahoo, and Ask need two? That’s lame. Major kudos to Google. It simply is easier to use. And, yes, this is a major reason why I use Google instead of the others. Why? Cause I’ve done hundreds of map searches and invariably I put the wrong thing in the wrong box. Hey, I’m a “stupid Americun.” But Google makes me feel smart ALWAYS. But, then, I ask Live.com, Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, and AskCity to find me Amsterdam on a map. Just type “Amsterdam” into any of these and see what it does. Google, Yahoo, and Live do just fine, but AskCity takes me someplace in the United States. Lame. Strike two. The bar has gotten higher for local services. If you aren’t international you won’t beat Google. Even for a “stupid Americun.” I tried AskCity this morning with an open mind. I've decided it's like your dotty old aunt. It wants to do good, but it's too dopey to rely on. Yes, "Amsterdam" seems to flummox it; it finds an obscure community in New York (though, I hasten to say, I am sure it's a very nice place with very nice people). Enter "Paris" and you end up in Kentucky. Enter "London", and you end up in Pennsylvania... just down the road, it turns out, from a community named Amsterdam. "Copenhagen"
lands you in North Carolina (who would have thought?). However, assuming you did mean "Copenhagen, NC", your dotty old aunt is fairly OK at finding local restaurants, events, etc. She's terrible at putting pins in the right location, though -- I tried some searches for my hometown of Greenville, SC, and she put pins in all the wrong places -- so you cannot rely on AskCity for driving instructions. But you can't rely on your dotty old aunt, either, can you? And, of course, she's never been abroad except for that
pinochle club cruise on Lake Erie that time. Om Malik and Michael Arrington are quasi-orgasmic over AskCity, but either they don't have dotty old aunts, or AskCity is paying them a bunch to shill it. Posted by Allan Jenkins at 09:22am in Cartography | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (3) August 03, 2006Geography lessons... don't we need them?
Here in Denmark, we pretty much shut down for most of July. The Government decamps, the Royals go away (not that they are ever entirely present, but that's another thing), many factories close entirely and, even if you are an office worker, you can enjoy a glass of wine at a sidewalk café without worrying about being a slacker. Reporters and editors also leave town. And that is why Danish newspapers are so entertaining during the dog days: the editors and reporters leave journalism students and junior editors in charge of the shop. Now, don't for a moment think I don't fully approve: young tyros punch a resumé ticket, readers can comfortably assume nothing in their morning paper will disturb them (though the obligatory Heatwave! story accompanied by an interview with a topless girl at the beach may excite a "Hmmm...." here and there... as it has, yearly, since 1968), and the senior journalists and editors get a much needed rest so they can start gunning for the Government and the Royals in September. If you are in the PR business, of course, you have spotted the opportunity. Journalism students? Junior editors? Hell, they'll print anything -- Katy, bar the door! (I know. I once was a college newspaper reporter. I did, indeed, print anything). Yes, July is the Happy Time for small Danish businesses, because the papers will print just about any press release sent to them. Which is why I came to read this little snippet in Berlingske Tidende the other day: Advertising on homepages and search engines is becoming more widespread. And now the Danish online advertising agency [in fact, they sell SEO advice, nothing more] Addvisors has decided to open an office in Las Vegas, USA. When you are done puzzling over how that lead connects, let me direct you to why Addvisors chose Las Vegas: "It's centrally located in the USA," says owner Kim Frederiksen. When the Danish Government gets back from Nice and Tuscany and the Maldives, I suppose I should urge them to look at this initiative from the UK. If only so future Danish businessfolks don't grow up thinking Las Vegas is somewhere near Kansas City. Thousands of people have a real passion for
Geography, a subject that has never been more relevant to the
six billion people now living on our planet. In schools across the UK and
beyond, teachers who are passionate about the role of Geography
use the subject to engage young people in debates about issues that are
constantly headlining the media - drought, floods, hazards, globalisation,
famine, sustainable energy, transport policy, employment, crime, urban
deprivation, global warming. The list is almost endless. Who else, if not the
Geographers, will deal with these issues in our schools and
colleges so that young people can learn, understand and give a reasoned opinion
on things which will impact on all their lives in the 21st Century. Sadly, the media, in spite of pumping these topics into our
homes 24/7 seem to have forgotten that much of what they ask people to think
about is actually Geography. We are, therefore, asking - where
is the label? Art, history, literature, technology all get their recognition in
the media but Geography has yet to be recognised in this
important way. If you spent a whole year reading or listening carefully to a
wide range of media in the UK, you would probably still have fingers to spare as
you sat and counted the number of times that the word
'Geography' was actually mentioned....... at long last
Geographers are voicing their frustration at this situation. Amen to that! Katy, bar the door! Technorati Tags:
addvisors, amateur journalism, denmark, summer dog days, las vegas
Posted by Allan Jenkins at 08:57pm in Business, Cartography, Denmark, Education, Journalism | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (1) May 08, 2006Playfair to Powerpoint... doesn't look like progress
One of the seminars I hold for clients is entitled Make Data Come Alive. It's a afternoon's course in which participants learn the basics of turning reams of data into well-designed charts that instantly convey an unmistakable message. For many of the participants, who are used to creating graphs by highlighting some spreadsheet numbers and pressing "make graph", it can be an eye-opener. A typical page of corporate accounting data can contain several thousand possible charts. So 99% of the job is identifying the critical data and identifying the underlying message. It's never easy. One of the first thinkers to make data come alive was William Playfair (1759-1823), the inventor of statistical graphs, who realized graphmaking was little more than cartography applied to numbers. This insight allowed him to invent the pie chart. American Scientist brings us the welcome news that Playfair's two main works, The Commercial and Political Atlas and The Statistical Breviary have been republished in one volume for the heart-stoppingly low price of $39.99 ($32.31 from Amazon). Rosalind Reid reviews the reprint and Playfair's life in her book review at the American Scientist. Here's an excerpt: "Playfair's most intriguing arguments are those in which he anticipates the findings of experiments on cognition and perception that
were not carried out until two centuries later. Graphical representation, he argues in the Breviary, can "facilitate the attainment of information, and aid the memory in retaining it." He had already proved the point in the 1786 edition of the Atlas, with the first published bar chart, which illuminated Scotland's 1781 trade surplus with America and its simultaneous trade deficit with Russia. It conveys its message to the eye in an instant. Like Playfair's other graphs, it has grid lines,
axis labels and hatching, designed with a thoughtfulness that
makers of graphing software would do well to emulate." Reid notes Playfair might have been more successful in getting his thinking to catch on had he not been so playful with other people's money. He died penniless in Covent Garden. Technorati Tags:
data, graphs, charts, William Playfair, cartography, communication through images, American Scientist Posted by Allan Jenkins at 04:53pm in Cartography, Communication Skills, History | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) April 09, 2006Cartographic Joy
Long time readers of Desirable Roasted Coffee will know this already, but I am a map fetishist. There's no map, anywhere, that I won't stop and look at, even if I know the city with my eyes closed. I used to buy US government geodesic survey maps with my allowance money. I'm sure psychologists have a word for it, and when I see one next, I'll ask what it is. What I find fascinating is the amount of information stuffed into a two-dimensional, low-tech piece of paper. Think of the information stuffed into an ordinary highway map, and compare it to the average handout at a conference.
Via The Map Room, one of my favorite blogs, comes a link to Worldmapper: the world as you've never seen it before blog. Worldmapper is a collection of cartograms, which are maps that combine numerical information with geography. Here's the one for net dairy exports:
Technorati Tags: cartography, cartograms, worldmapper Posted by Allan Jenkins at 11:53am in Cartography | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (2) March 06, 2006GChart: Semi-educational GoogleMaps mashup
Gchart is a semi-cool, semi-useful GoogleMaps mashup. Hit a place on the map, and up pops a list of local blogs, flickr photos, and the local time. It's not foolproof. If you hit South Carolina, Columbia seems to be the only "place". And the flickr photos include photos from the Columbia River Gorge (in the Pacific Northwest), British Columbia, the space shuttle Columbia, and the Columbia Law School (New York) graduation. More fun than scientific. Technorati: Gchart, GoogleMaps mashup Posted by Allan Jenkins at 09:01am in Cartography, Expatriate Life | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) November 18, 2005Useful information from Kayak Buzz
A couple of days ago, I gave the Kayak Buzz Flight Search site a once-over and found it sorely lacking. Kayak's chief architect, Bill O'Donnell, has since responded: first in a comment to my original post, and later in email. While Kayak Buzz Flight Search may still be in the "more fun than useful" stage, you have to give them points for taking up the conversation: You're
absolutely right, the location of the Oslo airport was wrong: as any
good student of geography knows, "off the coast of west africa" is zero
degrees latitude and zero degrees longitude. Any geographical feature
in our database that is missing it's latitude and longitude ends up
there. We found the problem yesterday and fixed it. We
think Kayak Buzz is a fun toy, even if it's utility is, um, open to
debate. But, we feel it does present an accurate view of what people
are finding for low fares, and where they are traveling. More
importantly, it demonstrates the real bargains that real people find
using our search tool. We released a new version of Buzz today, by the way. It lets you be
much more specific about where you want to search. Come back and give
us another chance! Well, I'll do just that over the next few weeks and, if the kinks are worked out, be happy to re-review! Bill later wrote me that non-North American coverage is not as deep as they want it to be, which probably accounts for the results I've been getting. True enough, when I plug in queries from US cities I'm familiar with, the results are better. Let's keep an eye on Kayak Buzz Flight Search.
Technorati Tags:
Kayak Buzz Flight Search, Kayak Buzz, Google Maps, cheap flights Posted by Allan Jenkins at 11:05pm in Business, Cartography, Communication, Gadgets & Toys, Travel | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0) November 15, 2005Kayak Buzz is a useless toy: wrong fares, bad geography
Sometimes an idea comes along that looks so good at first glance that even the mighty Scoble posts about it. So much the worse when the idea falls to pieces at the first poke. Kayak Buzz Flight Searches is one of these. The idea is simple enough: let people buzz about cheap fares they are finding, then mashup the findings on a Google map. Excellent idea? Sure... and living proof that even garbage can be made to look good if you pretty it up. Let's have a look, shall we? I looked for fares from my home city, Copenhagen, in the under $200 range. Here's what Kayak Buzz found: Now, right away we have problems. I'll pass on commenting about the uselessness of a program that doesn't recognize domestic flights, and go right to the burning question: Where's Oslo? Well, in fact, it's where it always is, at the end of Oslo Fjord -- but you wouldn't know it from this map. So where does Kayak Buzz think Oslo is? Why, just off the Nigerian coast (and here I'll just note that I am sure there's no connection between Kayak Buzz and Now, bad geography is a surmountable fault. After all, anyone aiming for Oslo presumably knows where it is, and will not be misled. But the prices are as bogus as the geography. Below I reproduce a chart from the Scandinavian Airlines website, showing current fares out of Copenhagen. They are in Danish kroner, but DKK 650 = US$100, DKK 1300 = US$ 200, etc. The astute reader (have I any other kind?) will immediately note there's no earthly relationship between Kayak Buzz's findings and SAS prices. Bad toy! Baaaaad toy! Via Rubel (who should know better!)
Technorati tags: Posted by Allan Jenkins at 06:15am in Business, Cartography, Gadgets & Toys, Travel | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (1) | TrackBack (0) November 06, 2005More Cartographic Joy!
As I've written before, I love maps so much that I pretty much cannot pass a map on a wall -- any map, any wall -- without stopping to look at it. So John Wagner made my day by passing along this gem: a GoogleMaps/Census Bureau mashup that calculates residential demographics within 1 mile, 3 miles, and 5 miles of any spot in the US. John got the tip from Dave Gray, at Communication Nation... a blog that on first glance looks headed for a spot on my daily reading list. Here's the map from where I lived as kid:
Technorati tags: Posted by Allan Jenkins at 08:54pm in Cartography, Time-Sinks | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0) October 05, 2005Governments Freak Over Google Earth
"Staying with Cartography, for 200, Alex... " Last cartography post of the day, then I'll turn to something noble and uplifting like PR. It's no secret some governments never want you to have an accurate map of anything. The highway maps issued by the US State of Tennessee often have little grounding in fact, for example. But when the Australian, Dutch, UK, Korean and Borough of Queens governments start going after GoogleEarth, cartographobia is going too far. Oh, it's in the name of preventing terrorism, of course -- it always is. But it's rooted in a belief that ordinary people can't be trusted with maps. Here's an excerpt from The Map Room, but I urge you to read the whole Google Earth Privacy and Security post. On a related note, Ogle Earth had a look at the new USGS guidelines
on disseminating aerial photography: apparently access was sometimes
restricted without actually assessing the security risk — they were
restricting things by default, in other words, which is exactly how not
to do things in a democracy. One key point that Stefan noted was that
secrecy was not justified if the data was available from other sources. As it stands, Google doesn’t alter the images it receives from government or other sources, according to this article (via Very Spatial). That article also notes the following: A
2004 Rand study of publicly accessible geospatial information concluded
that terrorists would need more detailed data than is available via
satellite images. The report also said they are more likely to turn to
“direct observations” or “individuals familiar with the operations of a
particular facility” to conduct attacks. In other words, everybody is overreacting. We’re seeing two things: one, the political need to be seen to be doing something about terrorism, no matter how ineffectual, so long as it’s visible;
and two, the bureaucratic impulse to keep things secret as a solution
to a problem. For them, it’s easier to suppress information than to
improve security. See previous entries: Maps as Security Threat; Maps as State Secrets. Posted by Allan Jenkins at 12:41pm in Bizarre but Expected, Cartography, Is Tedious in the House?, Politics | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0) The New Orleans Diaspora
So where did everyone go in the wake of Hurricane Katrina? Here's a map, based on 40,000 entries to various "I'm safe!" Katrina websites. The map at the EPodunk website is interactive. Via The Map Room. Posted by Allan Jenkins at 11:57am in Cartography, Current Affairs, Katrina, South | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0) July 20, 2005Google Should Jump (Joyfully) on this Story
Edwin Soto at Gear Live uses Google Maps to get out of a traffic ticket: "...So it came time for my testimony and I stated that I was in mid-turn when an
oncoming vehicle was coming toward me very quickly and I had decided not to make
the turn until that SUV passed me. The Judge stopped and asked me how could
there be an oncoming vehicle if the street was only one way. I stated that it
was indeed a two way street. The officer reiterated that it was only a one
way. So who was the judge to believe? I was desperate for proof so I did the
unthinkable: I whipped out my notebook. I was very lucky to find an extremely bad
connection via Wi-Fi. I pulled up Firefox and when to
maps.google.com. I typed up the intersection and zoomed in as close as
possible..." Fun story! Via The Map Room. Posted by Allan Jenkins at 11:27am in Cartography, Law | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0) July 06, 2005Undaunted Courage: the Satellite View
One of the great histories of the past few years is Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage, the story of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. With great verve, yet attention to detail, Ambrose gives us a story that, every time I turned a page, made me ask, "WTF were they thinking? Not a chance in hell you'd have gotten me to go." But they went. So imagine my delight when I discovered this gem of a map showing the Lewis & Clark route through satellite imagery. Posted by Allan Jenkins at 03:00pm in Cartography, History | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0) May 06, 2005Cartographic Joy
New Update from Greg the Cartographer: "Allan,
I like maps, so much that it's sometimes necessary to physically drag me away from large wallmaps of even cities I know well. When working on projects requiring a lot of desk space, I may remove the photos of my children, but never my late-1940s globe. So you can imagine my coos of joy when I discovered the Google-Yahoo Traffic Map. This nifty application overlays Google's maps with Yahoo's traffic data (and links to Google's sat maps) with results bound to please the cartographer in anyone. Posted by Allan Jenkins at 03:36pm in Cartography, Gadgets & Toys | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0) |
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