We hope you all enjoyed GIS Day 2005, and look forward to more enjoying it in 2006. Hopefully for 2006, our list will be bigger (and a bit earlier in getting out).

Today is GIS Day! When you look around at the information around you, take stock in what has been put together through GIS systems, and imagine how much more there could be if we processed more with them. Articles like It's about so much more than just maps in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel show that the world is starting to take notice. Even noting that it's an editorial written by a Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (William E. Huxhold), it's still interesting to notice that it was selected to be printed.

AA New Zealand has now launched a service called AA Smartmaps which provides an online mapping service for the far away nation. The service is provided by New Zealand company GeoSmart, that makes a wide range of digital map data services, including GIS data, driving data, and satellite images for New Zealand.

An enterprising developer has used Google Maps as the basis for an implementation of Risk (a game originally from Hasbro). Play right now is limited to person vs. computer, but the author is working on a PvP version (person versus person).

With all of the talk about Google Maps, you'd think they were the only game in town. On the contrary, Yahoo! on Wednesday, put into beta a new version of Yahoo! Maps that has some new and nifty features for users, especially in the area of viewing. More after the Jump. Since Google's made a name for itself with cool satellite data, the folks at Yahoo! are betting that you'll enjoy more up-to-the minute information on their maps. As with their previous mapping solution, they will provide overlays of restaurants, ATM's, schools, and what-have-you from their "yellow pages" database. They …

Akamai, one of the largest traffic pushers on the net (they push traffic locally for web sites that want to get the word out but don't want to have to put servers in every hosting center just to be fast), has a very cool page which displays the Net Usage Index, an indicator of how many people are using the internet for news information based on the sites that they serve for new organizations. The relevance is that the information is displayed geographically (since Akamai is a geographically distributed organization, both in the physical and network senses). Plus, to be …

UIUC has a Gangland Map on the UIUC Library website that was done in 1931 and shows the various gangs involved in the famous gang wars, their respective territories. More about the library's online offerings after the Jump. The UIUC site contains a large array of maps, mostly historical and with detailed descriptions, very well suited for searching. For a list of maps available try the search term maps in the library search engine. It appears that MrSID versions were or will be available of some of the offerings, although when I tried to access them, the web server gave …

The New York Public Library is hosting an exhibition entitled Treasured Maps, which runs from September 9, 2005 through April 9, 2006 and features 80 fine maps dating from the 1600s to the present. Although I haven't been, it looks like another great excuse to go to New York. More details after the jump. The exhibition is pulled from some 400,000 maps in the collection of the Library and represents a fascinating cross-section of the holdings, according to the press material. The collection's home is being renovated (to reopen in December 2005) and this exhibition is to serve as …

In a flurry of announcements yesterday, venerable GPS manufacturer Garmin announced the StreetPilot 2730, the StreetPilot 7200, and the StreetPilot 7500, each with XM Satellite radio, weather, and traffic capabilities. More details after the jump. Add a subscription to XM and you have weather, traffic, and music along with your navigation. So, why 3 new models you may ask? Well, it's simple (more or less), the 7XXX series uses a monstrous 7" LCD display that's designed for "larger vehicles such as RVs, semi-trucks, and buses". They're a bit huge for a little car, but look gorgeous. As you would expect …

MapAbility.com has a nice set of information about VMAP0 and VMAP1, data sets created by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (a branch of the US Government) to provide a basic world-level dataset. The data sets are large and quite detailed, with VMAP0 being at 1:1,000,000 and VMAP1 being at 1:250,000. Although the NGA has a data portal with navigation, the site at MapAbility.com provides points for direct access to the data files, which is a bit nicer if you want to collect the whole set.

An article on MobileVillage describes a program in North Carolina, partially funded by a grant from the CDC to provide Rapid Needs Assessment in times of health crisis in the state. The program will use handheld computers, networking, and GIS to pinpoint problem areas, establish routing of emergency services, and maintain up-to-date information. Although it is unclear how this kind of coordination would happen if this kind of emergency was coupled with massive power and infrastructure loss (such as what we saw in September with Katrina), it is definitely of interest in situations of major health crisis, or in the …

An article from Auntie Spam entitled Rental Car GPS Leads to Nightmare Vacation, details the story of a family that rented a vehicle in New Zealand and ended up on a harrowing bit of single track road. Sometimes, there's no substitute for a good map. And, although a GPS is a fine device, they can have optimistic views of what the road network actually looks like. It's unclear from the story if the problem is pre-dated road upgrade information or settings on the GPS that indicated they would be happy with single track. Either way, it's a good reminder to …

Continuing my recent fascination with the National Geodetic Survey, here's a pointer to their FAQ list, which covers all sorts of great questions about GPS, NGS, Datums, and positions. Even more interesting are the links to ask your scientific questions of real scientists.

The National Geodetic Survey has a web service for providing geodetic reference data in shapefile format, suitable for use in GIS software. For those unfamiliar with the US NGS, they are a part of NOAA (go figure, they're not part of the USGS) that "defines and manages the national coordinate system." They're also the people who maintain the little metal "points" in the ground. The National Spatial Reference System is a central part of the maintenance of a successful national coordinate system. For those interested in more information on geodesy (the study of the shape of the Earth), there's a …

Just in case all of this discussion about governmental censorship of maps has you down, you should take a look at this map of Champaign, Illinois. The national map has some data at resolutions of 1m per pixel, which is unbelievably detailed. And if you thought that was close up, try clicking the zoom and you'll find that you can get even closer. By the way, for those unfamiliar with Champaign, the spaceship-looking thing is the UIUC basketball stadium. For personal grins, check out Forbes Hall (the upper-left of the 6 rectangular buildings in the middle of the frame), where …

We've been hearing a lot (and writing a lot here) about Google Maps, but how does the service actually work? In particular, how does additional data get added in to a Google map? There have been a lot of maps on the Internet over the years, and many of them have been highly popular (such as Yahoo! Maps and (years ago) maps from folks like DeLorme). However, none of these location and driving maps have had the caché of Google Maps. The most obvious reason is that none of them allowed you to add your own content to the map …

Another in a long string of recent Google Maps hacks, Rising Concepts has created a service called Frapper! that provides groups of people with similar interests a way to share their general location. The collaborative map site is basically a database that stores course map information (zip codes and international city names) along with an annotation (such as your name, picture, and a "shoutout"). When you bring up their map page, it overlays the points onto Google Maps and now you have a map of your group, or your interest. The purposes of the maps range from just communities of …

The BBC News has an article (China angry at Google map change) about a row between China and Google over changes in Google Maps (now Google Local) because of a recent change in the way Taiwan is labeled. China was angered because (under pressure from users in Taiwan) Google removed the phrase "a province of the People's Republic of China" from around Google's map of Taiwan. China has now countered claiming that there is outrage on Chinese chat rooms and talk about boycotting Google China's services.

The National Atlas is a US government site that provides access to government mapping data in an interactive form. With oodles of background data, you can create maps representing everything from crime to crops.

OK, maybe it isn't your name, but it is the name of your town, and the names of millions of towns and places throughout the world. The USGS's Geonames (or GNIS) site contains downloadable datasets with names of cities, towns and other places. A companion site from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) contains foreign place names.