For those with a penchant for maps, cartography, and/or travel, I have a great suggestion for you, passed on by Ordnance Survey's CTO Ed Parsons and my brother, Derek, independently: Stanfords in London. Billed as the world's largest map store, it's the kind of place that you can wonder around in for hours. On a recent trip to London, Carol and I stopped by Stanfords to browse their wares and found ourselves captivated by the huge selection of maps, travel books, CD/DVD packages for mapping, software, GPS devices, globes, and other memorabilia. Although we didn't see everything in …

National Geographic has an article today about blogs and maps, highlighting—once again—the growing prominence of maps on the webs and the movement towards more map output. However, we're still stuck here wondering when people will become less interested in maps and more interested in having access to the underlying data. Although it's nice that you can create a map easily, there are few sites whose stated objectives are to actually share the data for analysis and further study. It is interesting that the map craze spawned by the availability of raw data and free mapping services may well …

Just in case people in the US were feeling left out due to the article last night about Ordnance Survey in the UK providing GPS differential data, people with readings in the USA can go to CORS, the Continuously Operating Reference Station site from the National Geodetic Survey. As with the Ordnance Survey systems, this is really only useful to dual-frequency users, although it is planned to have OPUS (see below) available for L1-only users in the future. CORS provides data in RINEX format for GPS point referencing and covers over 650 stations in the US and its territories. There …

Thanks to a pointer from Ed Parsons' blog, we know of a new set of services offered by Ordnance Survey (the UK's master map maker and Mr. Parsons' employer) aimed at improved accuracy of GPS information in the UK. The services center around mapping GPS information to the UK national coordinate systems, specifically ETRS89, OSGB36, and ODN from WGS84, the primary GPS coordinate system. The key benefit is that the resultant coordinates match exactly what you would expect to find on ground-surveyed maps and take into account all of the peculiarities of the GPS network. For example, the RINEX data …

When browsing the OpenStreetMap Wiki, I ran across a page called Maps That Lye, which contains information about anti-copying provisions in maps. In particular, there are a number of locations on many maps that are intentionally wrong or misleading in an attempt to make it obvious (to the copyright holder) when maps or map data are copied. (Of course, if all map data were accurate, it would be almost impossible to tell that you had copied the map).

As part of the OpenStreetMap program, volunteers will be gathering in Manchester, UK on the 13th and 14th of May to try and generate map data for the city for use on OpenSteetMap. The site is a clearinghouse for open source geospatial data for public use. The gather, dubbed Mapchester was pointed out in a post by Ed Parsons on his site.

The London Times has an article describing a phenomenon that you almost can't believe. Apparently, a few people a day have been needing a tow out of a ford in Luckington, UK due to paying more attention to their GPS Nav systems instead of road signs and conditions.

Ed Parsons (CTO of Ordnance Survey in the UK, the premier provider of GIS data there) has an article in his blog commenting about a story in the Guardian about the price of data. Ed argues that if you don't pay directly for your GIS data, you're going to get the out-of-date data that is our (the US) national GIS database, with roads and satellite imagery that is has led to a significant amount of amusement (such as the "where is Apple?" comments that he references). Of course, comparing data (especially satellite imagery between a country that measures 241,590 …

ClueTrust, the company that owns and runs Cartographica.com, has announced immediate availability of LoadMyTracks, a program for the Apple Macintosh that reads track, waypoint, and route data from selected GPS devices and converts them to GPX or KML formats. The software is available in beta form immediately and we encourage any interested users to give it a try. We're looking for feedback, especially on GPS compatibility and output file compatibility for both KML (Google Earth and Google Maps) and GPX (widely used GPS XML format). Programs such as PhotoLinker for the Mac can be used to add GPS data …

Thanks to a pointer from VerySpatial, we hear about the announcement that the USGS is providing a portal website for LIDAR data. LIDAR (wikipedia) stands for LIght Detection and Ranging and uses lasers for determining things such as elevation data. CLICK, the Center for Lidar Information Coordination and Knowledge is the USGS clearinghouse for such data and includes browsing and downloading.

DartMaps is a mashup with Google Maps that plots real-time data from Irish Rail and overlays it onto a Map of the area, with the use of some ancillary files. Nice job by the mashup artist and a good example of the type of stuff that Google's really looking for. Consider the revenue model of Google being able to place whatever they want on all of these Mashups. Good advertising space, but free service to the web server customers.

According to a press release (formatted in an extremely ugly fashion due to the lame web site) from the Open Geospatial Consortium, the OGC has approved proposals for putting GML inside of JPEG2000. The specification (PDF) gives details on how this data is to be inserted into the image files.

The foundation created when Autodesk decided to push out it's version of MapServer Enterprise into the Open Source world now has a new name. According to an article from GIS Café, there was an organizational meeting the past week in Chicago where the name was decided upon and the new domain name, OSGEO.org, was laid out. The organization will focus on (surprise!) Open Source Geospatial libraries and packages. Their home page now has links for Grass, MapServer, GDAL, and a number of other well-known packages, although I'm a bit unclear as to what the relationship with each will be …

VerySpatial has a story about research papers from Ordnance Survey being available online now. The link comes from EdParsons.com, blog of the CTO at Ordnance Survey.

A press release on Friday from Volkswagen talks about a plan between the car maker, nVidia, and Google Earth to produce a new navigational system prototype that shows terrain in 3D with mapped orthophotos such that drivers can see from their point of view what things should look like. Interesting plan from a technological proof of concept, but I'm not sure how useful it will be for drivers in real-world situations. I understand the idea that seeing exactly what's in front of you might be beneficial, but if it's going to be low resolution or distorted, I think a less …

SiRF, the company that makes what is likely the most popular GPS chipset available today, has announced the acquisition of Impulsesoft Pvt. Ltd.(Word file), a Bluetooth-enabled software company in India, and has combined this announcement with the introduction of the SiRFLinkI (Word file) (a chipset with Bluetooth and GPS built in). According to the company's press releases, Impulsesoft has a series of embedded software products that address features such as streaming music from phones to Bluetooth headsets. The product data sheets for the SiRFLinkI are not yet available, but it is another step towards smaller and more capable GPS …

The Geological Society of America (GSA) as announced a new geologic map of North America. The map is the first one to be produced since the theory of plate tectonics and was a joint project between the USGS, WHOI, and the Geological Survey of Canada.. The map is available from the Geological Society of America bookstore.

Although probably not created using any form of GIS, this map, called The Prejudice Map, was created by doing google searches for the phrase " are known for *" and applying that information to a map. Created by the site Google Blogoscoped, the map is an amusing read, even if it isn't "true". However, looking at the top responses, some of the results are pretty interesting: United Kingdom - fair play, aristocratic kitchens, extremely unclean, rarely complaining Norway - thriftiness, openness and humor, love of fish Sweden - austerity, drinking coffee, carving Viking longboats Brasil - informality, partying, bikinis Canada - cultural diversity, humility and kindness, liking …

I personally met with people from Garmin today at MacWorld (Yes, they were there) and was told that by the end of the year they would be fully supporting the Macintosh. Details after the link. Here's their plan (or read their press release): Support for Macintosh uploading of data to their recently-purchased MotionBased web site through a plug-in for Safari. I saw a demo version of Training Center software the the Macintosh, showing data uploaded from a Forerunner 305 (which I also got to see and touch... very cool-Carol thinks it's too big). By the end of 2005 they will …

Autodesk, makers of AutoCad, have announced a partnership with the University of Minnesota to develop and enhance web mapping servers and service platforms and release them as Open Source. The new effort, hosted at www.mapserverfoundation.org, is called the MapServer foundation (after the University of Minnesota's MapServer project, presumedly, where the Enterprise version was born). Among the things that the enterprise version appears to support is the ability to modify feature data objects on the server, which would be a great step for open-source offerings.