For the Skiers

Being from Colorado originally, I always get asked if I ski. Well, yes and no. I used to downhill ski, but before I left I tried and really enjoyed cross country skiing. Either way, I still find these interactive maps pretty cool.






*Can't seem to get anything but the Park City map to load. Probably a conspiracy by Utah to steal Colorado's glory, but maybe you'll have more luck :).

Does everyone have an API?

Came across this last night when I couldn't sleep (yes I'm even looking at maps at 2am :)).

It started through a great blog called Kelso's Corner. It's a cartography/visualizations oriented blog/website, but he posts examples of some great (mostly interactive) cartography. A lot of them, not surprisingly, come from the New York Times. Newspapers don't always produce the greatest or most appropriate maps, but the NYTimes seems to make the extra effort at doing this (The Economist is another one that does a great job). Anyway, I "discovered" that they have an interactive visualization creator called Visualization lab. They have a number of visualization techniques available for the user to create their own interactive visualization. According to this, it is based on technology from IBM Research. I didn't explore too deeply, so I don't know if the NYTimes site allows you to load your own data, but the Many Eyes does. Honestly, I'm a bit wary of these types of "map your own data" neogeography things. But I think the NYTimes site has done a great job of restricting users so that they make an appropriate map (e.g. a choropleth using derived data instead of raw counts). They are even using a good map projection for their world map data! I'm not too keen on the bubble visualization, because when I see it I expect the countries to be in the right place, so I find it hard to read. I guess I couldn't really find any order to the arrangement (hey I'm a Geographer, I look for spatial patterns automatically). Either way, I thought it was pretty well done, and fast.

Naturally when I see something like the Visualization lab, I immediately think "How can I do that?" Well the NYTimes has made it easier for me to try and make my own. They didn't release the code or anything, but they now have their own data API. One of the first that they have released is the campaign finance api. I believe this would be the same data used for creating this interactive map.

Handy Information

Good demonstration on how to use Representations in ArcGIS to create the ED effect for building footprints...

http://blogs.esri.com/Support/blogs/mappingcenter/archive/2008/10/21/3d-effect-for-a-building-footprints.aspx

Flow Mapping

Getting a head start on a new project that is more cartographic. It will involve mapping migration/flows from Australia to the Northern Territory (probably smaller geographic units than states). I like making maps, and so I'm excited to do some cartography beyond standard ArcGIS layouts. There are different possibilities on how to map this. Initially, I think I will use something like this that creates a more trunk/branch flow map instead of the typical straight line between places (Tobler's Flowmapper). The project lead doesn't like this style too much, but thought the trunk/branch style might work. We might pursue other mapping techniques, which would be cool to try and apply different map techniques to this area...

The Flow Map Layout tool that comes with the article is actually pretty slick, at least when using the supplied examples. Instructions are lacking unfortunately, so I'm not sure how to use multiple root points. The output is nice, and allows for export to an eps file. That could be brought into Adobe Illustrator and edited. Ad ambitious as I can be, I'm thinking of creating something similar for ArcGIS but using a shapefile. This would give a lot of control over the final product. In their tool, you can move things around too...Anyway, there are limits and I'm a control freak.

Camel project finished up as much as that type of project can finish. It's one of those projects that you can keep adding to and making it more sophisticated. It was part of a larger part, but it sounds like this will also be produced as a separate GIS/Model report. See how that goes. It was an interesting and fun project to work on. Good people too.

Great Application

I've been traveling a broad, and two days after returning I caught a cold, so I haven't felt much like posting. But, this was too cool to pass up.

http://www.turningthepages.com/

You can look at Mercator's Atlas :).

More Anti-Geoweb Rhetoric

Ok, like I've said before - I don't see the Geoweb as GIS, but I do see it as part of the same spectrum. Here is more evidence that the Geoweb is not GIS. Just learned about the Google Visualizations API. Sounds pretty cool, and looks like a more advanced API than their Google Charts. Instead of using a URL you actually use Javascript. One of the first examples of a visualization in their gallery is a World Map of Population. Fist off, they call it an "Intensity" map which doesn't make much sense to me. In reality they are creating a choropleth map where color indicates a change in a range of values. For one, this is an inappropriate use of a choropleth map. The numbers should be derived not raw numbers. So instead of population, it should be population density or deaths per 1000 or something like that. Secondly, they do not divulge what type of classification scheme they are using (Jenk's Natural Breaks, Quartile, Equal Interval, etc..) That's particularly important when creating a map of this type, because the type of classification used can create very different maps. So I guess that is my problem with the Geoweb. Making this available to everyone is not necessarily a good thing. More often than not, there will be inappropriate uses. I guess this is probably the same complaint of specialists everywhere. I'm sure statisticians everywhere shudder when I use Excel for basic statistics. I think though, it is even worst when the creators of the GeoWeb like Google are giving inappropriate examples themselves. Its one thing when a user does it wrong, that's out of Google's hands, but when they do it wrong...

Anyway, that's my rant of the day...

Et Tu ESRI?

Sigh. I'm impressed to see the new effort ESRI is putting in trying to emphasize ArcGIS as a GIS that also can be used as a cartographic product. In the past, maps have seem to be an after thought. In the 1st edition of Getting to Know ArcGIS, one of the projects has the user create a series of beautiful, colorful, thematic maps...without a single legend. What good is that? So when I caught site of the recent MappingCenter Blog entry I was a little dismayed at what they are advertiseing with the photo they have up:

This is a terrible example that they are using. If I'm not mistaken, bodies of water are treated as a single elevation at the water surface (unless showing bathymetric contours), therefore showing contours cutting off at the edge of the water surface is totally inappropriate. These contours should go around the pond not through it!

On a side note. The Mapping center does have some useful information. I really like all the Historic Map symbols they created.