For those of you who have ever been in London (England not KY) and ridden the Tube you realize it is the best subway system in the world. The tube is great not only because it runs on time, is fairly clean, and friendly, but because the tube is well organized and has great pocket ride maps. Well for those of you who are fans of those maps you can now go to "A History of the London Tube Maps" and view the evolution of these maps. In addition to nice scans of old tube maps there are short descriptions …

Is there anything you cannot find on Flickr? There is a new group on Flickr that has lots of scans of old maps from all over the U.S. I looked through several the maps and they are indeed quite interesting. In particular there is an image from "mdoeff" that compares San Francisco in 1849 and present day. Keep the maps coming.

When they said they were entering the already saturated luxury SUV market many thought Porsche was crazy. Thus, when you read this post and think that Porsche is crazy for entering the already saturated GPS navigation market remember they have succeeded before. For the record, the unit features a 520 Mhz Xscale processor, 4.3 inch screen with 480 x 272 pixel display, built in traffic update support, built in Bluetooth car kit and routing and map software from Navigon. Details are still a bit sketchy, but the price is expected to be in the $950- $1000 range. Finally, as …

Apparently everyone has already seen this clever little map depicting the country wide level of happiness, but I just saw it this weekend. Methodological issues aside (can you really empirically measure happiness cross-culturally) the map has some interesting findings. Specifically, the complaining, over-worked US actually shows up ranking pretty high on happiness (Prozac is a wonderful drug) while the perpetually happy seeming country of India (honestly I've been there they all act happy) actually ranks fairly low. Produced by Adrian White at the University of Leicester, the map seems to favor wealthy countries of the west in terms of happiness …

As a small child visiting Disney World with my parents I was fascinated by the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride. Ever since I have been fascinated by the books and movies of Jules Verne (including newer versions of Verne's characters such as in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). Anyway, as a fan of the master of early sci-fi writing I was excited to find this page that has images of the maps included in the original editions of Verne's novels. While some of the page is in French the maps are nonetheless pretty interesting to look at.

If you have ever traveled to London you'll know that it is not exactly a quiet place to go. On more than one occasion I have tried to have a conversation while walking down the sidewalk only to give up because of the noise. Well apparently I am not the only one with this problem. The UK government collects data on noise levels throughout the city of London and using this data Simon Elvins has produced a map of silence within London. As near as I can tell, the areas colored white on the map are noisy areas and the …

A cool use of Adobe Flash technology showed up on BoatingSF.com (not surprisingly, a site about boating in San Francisco). The Current Ship Positions page (mislabeled, since it's actually time-lapse and not "current" as it indicates) provides a nice overhead view, complete with roll-over ship information. Thanks to Very Spatial for the pointer. So, now you're wondering how its done? I know I was. A nice technical details page provides the beginning information about the AIS (Automatic Identification System), which provides ships with pre-collision-detection and identification information. The receivers output NMEA-standard sentences (just like those you get in …

Apple rumor site AppleInsider has an article speculating about some of the possible new features in Leopard, or Mac OS X 10.5, including a possible built in mapping feature similar to Google Maps. According to the article the feature will "presumably allow Leopard users to scour the globe through satellite imagery and whisk up driving directions on the drop of a dime." I am not really sure what this feature would provide that Google Maps or some other easily accessible service doesn't already provide, but who am I to doubt the genius of Steve Jobs. Then again, this is …

I'll be the first to admit that I am not an expert in the area of business plans or taking innovative ideas and turning them into profitable companies. However, I felt a surge of vindication today when reading my latest version of Fast Company and I came across the article Map Quest. Specifically, the article raises the question of how internet map services will change as they strive to become profitable. More after the jump. While I have been just as impressed as the next guy with the cool looking maps and mashup functionality of Google Earth and its competitors …

As an academic and researcher I am used to reading about all manner of social phenomena. However, one that has intrigued me more than most others is the idea of social capital. In a nutshell, social capital is the level of trust, connectedness, and mutual reciprocity within a community. Theoretically, social capital is important to a host of social issues such as child rearing and economic development in a community. Anyway, the website "The Oil Drum: New York City" has an interesting map of social capital scores by state as well as an interesting article on social capital cribbed from …

We'll be posting a bunch more information about the Where 2.0 conference soon, but as a teaser, here's a really cool project that was just demonstrated at the conference, a non-Google mashup of maps and Project Gutenberg hosted classic literature called GutenKarte. If you look at just one cool web site today, go to Gutenkarte and check out any classic, but especially ones like Around the World in 80 Days. The AJAX-based map is based on OpenLayers that is available under the BSD license (that's real free, not gnu-speak for free) and will talk to any OGC compliant map …

As an individual who is not a fan of Wal-mart and its destruction of independent stores across the U.S. I can only describe this map animation as an example of a viral epidemic spreading across the country. Melodramatic introduction aside, this map animation is a wonderful example of how to visualize spatial-temporal dispersion. The map animation was created by Dr. Thomas Holmes of the University of Minnesota department of economics. In order to view the map animation in its "everyday low prices" goodness you will need WMV. Enjoy.

Although there has been a lot of press and discussion about Google Maps and the various follow-ons (such as Microsoft's Windows Live Local) and predecessors (such as Yahoo! Maps), the Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article showing recent uses of maps by museums to enhance the web experience of patrons. In particular, the article talks about Folk Songs for the Five Points from The Tenement Museum in New York City (a "soundmap" with five different soundtracks and a clickable map showing what is where), and Curating The City, put on by the Los Angeles Conservancy to show off architectural …

MySociety.org has an article, with examples, about travel-time maps and their uses. The page is the result of work funded by the UK Department of Transport and shows a number of final maps created for showing travel times. Of the more interesting tidbits is the comment that some of the maps consumed up to 10 hours of computer time to create, which makes them something you won't be doing as part of a Google mash-up anytime soon. However, the maps shown are very interesting and potentially useful for travelers who are trying to decide whether to use rail or …

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 …

IN what could be the beginning of a great new set of partnerships in the GPS world, Tom Tom has partnered with Dunkin Donuts to place each and every one of the companies 4,400 store locations on Tom Tom maps. Moreover, supposedly the deal calls for them to add all 2,700 Baskin Robbins locations as well in the future in case your sweet tooth is more ice cream then custard and dough. Of course those of us who are bigger fans of Krispy Kreme dounts and Graeters Ice Cream we are hoping that Garmin will partner with …

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.

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 …

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.