Metacarta today announced at the Where 2.0 conference that they have made available through Metacarta Labs a set of APIs that provide approximation of location from blocks of text. The APIs are pretty straightforward and interesting. If you just want to play around, check out Trinity and try typing in some search keywords that will then be search on and then will be represented on the map to the right. Applications are mostly in keyword location or search result location, so it could be used as a mapping element in a web site news feed or for location of …

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 …

Right as Carol and I were readying for a flight yesterday, Google made two announcements just ahead of Where 2.0, a new version of Google Earth (4.0—beta, of course) and the availability of Sketchup for the Mac. The latest Google Earth is quite a bit slicker than the 3.x version, and for Macintosh users, it hosts a series of nice new additions including: Intel native performance Ability to sign-up for the Plus (and possibly Pro versions) It appears that some of the GPS features have been activated (although my USB cable is bent, so I won't …

Although things have been a little slow on the web site for the past few weeks (development, end of the school year for "the professor", etc.), both Derek and I are out doing interesting things this week, so you can look forward to reports from Where 2.0 (where Gaige and Carol will be for the next few days) and India (where Derek will be for the next few days). Stay tuned!

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.

ClueTrust (owner of this site and creator of LoadMyTracks) is proud to announce that the latest version (031) supports sending data to Garmin and Magellan (Thales) GPS devices. If you're a Macintosh user and looking for a way to get information into and out of your Macintosh from Garmin, Magellan, Lowrance, or Timex devices, you should check it out. Exportable file types are GPX and KML (for use with Google Earth).

As a life long soccer player (football for those of you not in the U.S.) and reader of National Geographic, I was pleasantly surprised to see some very interesting maps of an actual soccer game. As an avid reader of National Geographic and major fan of the monthly supplements they include in the magazine, this was one of the more unique maps I have seen in a long time. More after the jump. Leave it to National Geographic to provide a totally unique, and spatially based, way to look at "the beautiful game". The June edition of National Geographic …

Apparently TV isn't the soul sucking waste of time that my mother always told me it was. Redwood City, CA based Rosum Corporation has developed a TV-GPS chip that triangulates TV signals to provide location information indoors and is working with Trimble to bring it to the consumer. While this isn't in any way "new" news, it is the first time that I have seen or heard about it. Popular Science has a good overview article about the technology. If this works as stated and can be produced cheaply and in a small enough package, this seems like a great …

Ed Parsons (CTO of Ordnance Survey in the UK) has the first of a series of articles on his personal site entitled "Building Ordnance Survey 2.0" that goes into his ideas about serving up OS data as more of a service model instead of a data sales (licensing) model. It could get interesting if the organization follows-through on his ideas, especially the idea of a try-before-you-buy model.

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 …

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 …

The results of the annual National Geographic Society survey of geo-literacy are in and we are once get a country that is largely "geo-illiterate". The results indicate that despite fighting a war in Iraq for several years, 63% of 18-24 year olds can't locate Iraq on a map. Other major news also failed to have an impact on our geographical knowledge as 3/4 of all respondents couldn't locate Indonesia (Tsunami) on a world map and that 1/3 couldn't find Louisiana and 48% couldn't locate Mississippi on a map. For more depressing news about our country read the article …

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 …

Although I live in a very landlocked area of the U.S. I am fascinated by the ocean and sailing upon it. Now my fascination has a new place to manifest itself in the form of Sailwf.info. This site provides a live tracking map of ships locations around the world, powered by the World Meterological Organization's Voluntary Observing Ship service. The site allows users to select different areas of the world as well as different classes of ships (Tall Ships, Cruise Ships, Research Vessels, etc ..) for viewing. In addition, users can query for specific ships as well and chart …

For those of you who spent too much time reading comics in their youth, or still do, there is a new map project being undertaken to map all of the Marvel Comic world. Entitled the Marvel Atlas Project (MAP), the project is the work of Sean Kleefeld and it currently encompasses quite a few maps from around the world of Marvel Comics. While the navigation is a little clunky at times (you can't click on the maps to view other maps) it is nonetheless an interesting site. In addition to maps there is a lot of interesting information relating to …

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.