One effect of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans was to render existing bike maps of the city obsolete and incomplete. The NOLA Cycle Bike Map Project is a grassroots effort to create a comprehensive, freely-available bicycle map for New Orleans (like those that already exist for Chicago, Portland, and other cities). Because the project is driven by DIY maps produced by individuals and by volunteer social events organized around mapping different locations that can then be added to the project's database, it's been described as "Wiki-style involvement in the real world." (Here's some video of the project.) [more inside]
posted by liketitanic on Oct 29, 2009 - 4 comments

Women are finally putting Rio's favelas on the map. They're competing for a journalism scholarship by loading the most data from their GPS-enabled phones to Wikimapa (a name easily confused with Wikimapia). The data, including addresses, photos, and business details are not likely to be collected by Navteq's and Google's high-tech vans anytime soon due to the notorious danger. [more inside]
posted by ATXile on Oct 19, 2009 - 9 comments

Tomorrow, Monopoly City Streets begins, introducing a world-wide game combining google maps and the classic family fight-starter. Buy any street in the world, build houses, hotels and more. Remember, property always goes up, and your siblings always cheat.
posted by pompomtom on Sep 7, 2009 - 25 comments

Atlas of Historical County Boundaries. The Newberry Library has an online atlas of U.S. States and how their county boundaries have changed over time. Once you have your state on the screen, type in a date and you will see the historical county borders over the current borders. [more inside]
posted by marxchivist on Aug 31, 2009 - 11 comments

The Road to Moloch. A short film. Will the genre of rag-tag band of (battle-hardened soldiers/sex-crazy students/escaped convicts) stumbles upon (cave in the desert/cabin in the woods/house on the hill) and unearths (unspeakable zombie terror/undead apocalypse/soul stealing demons) ever get old?
posted by jadayne on Aug 18, 2009 - 13 comments

The Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Holy Land is a comprehensive spatially-referenced database of current archaeological knowledge of all periods of Levantine history and prehistory. Spatial search is a good entry point, as are the Palestine Exploration Fund historic maps. You can also search by time period or dig into the many ancient Empires of the area. Or just look at everything in the database. The site is a work in progress, but a cool one powered by a consortium of over 30 professional archaeologists. May require Google Maps. via
posted by Rumple on Mar 3, 2009 - 4 comments

"We can have all the applications and Internet connectivity [...] but that still won't get at issues of lack of electricity and cartographic literacy and suppression of geospatial information by the state and their complicit corporations" reads a recent post on Geowanking, a mailing list for GIS nerds. [SLMLP] [more inside]
posted by finite on Oct 9, 2008 - 13 comments

New maps show US fossil fuel emissions aren't where we thought they were. The Vulcan Project collects more accurate data at a higher resolution than previous studies. Explanatory video. via [more inside]
posted by desjardins on Apr 7, 2008 - 28 comments

Rents are up in San Francisco. CraigStatsSF can tell you by how much over the last year. (coming soon: NYC, Chicago, Toronto, Boston, and more. What neighborhoods are hot? (Heatmaps are cool). Firefox is your friend.
posted by rtha on Sep 14, 2007 - 45 comments

Is a "virtual" Philly even better than the real thing? Well, GeoSim Systems thinks so. Except for the aroma of freshly-grilled cheesesteak, at least. Their "Virtual Philadelphia" is the most detailed urban imaging system I've seen yet, and you can read about the monumental process of turning photographic images (taken from both aircraft and street-level) into this incredible rendering in a February 17 NY Times article (reg req). And - as expected - Google wants to get in on the action and do the same thing in San Francisco. via BB
posted by luriete on Jun 10, 2005 - 29 comments

The before and after tsunami photos have been synced-up and they highlight even more (if that's possible) the power of the sea. Saomeone has geo-aligned the various before and after aerial and satellite photos and adjusted the scale to provide a very accurate then/now comparison.
posted by mmahaffie on Jan 7, 2005 - 41 comments

The Official Web Site of the Zipcode Man will help us clear our mental palates.
posted by mmahaffie on Sep 4, 2004 - 9 comments

The Peace Parks Foundation is an international, neutral body that coordinates the creation of "Peace Parks" -- a more foundation friendly name for "Transfrontier Conservation Areas." Peace Parks are defined as "relatively large protected areas, which straddle international frontiers between two or more countries and cover large-scale natural systems encompassing one or more protected areas."

Executive Vice-Chairman Willem van Riet of South Africa, in San Diego, California, this month to receive the Presidential Award from GIS software giant ESRI, is that Peace Parks remove the fences of international frontiers -- the "scars of history" -- to let elephants resume their natural migratory paths. An early success of this idea was profiled in full and stunning color by the National Geographic in 2001.
posted by mmahaffie on Aug 22, 2004 - 6 comments

"They swept across Iraq and conquered it in 21 days. They stand guard on streets pot-holed with skepticism and rancor. They caught Saddam Hussein. They are the face of America, its might and good will, in a region unused to democracy. The U.S. G.I. is Time's Person of the Year." [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha on Dec 21, 2003 - 67 comments

A bunch of very beautiful Old Japanese Maps has been put online. Java application Insight(tm) required to view and includes a nifty GIS application to overlay old maps on current maps with 3-D animated fly-throughs. State of the art in online map presentation "The digital images are even better than the originals because you can amplify them, rotate them to look at them from different angles," Mr. Zhou said. "In practical terms, this is a better way of using the material than actually coming here to see the pieces."
posted by stbalbach on Apr 13, 2003 - 5 comments

Map enthusiasts might enjoy The Geography Network, a new venture from ESRI, vendor of the most used GIS system. The site includes an in-browser viewer, so you don't need to own any ESRI products to see the free data. If you do, though, the data's yours for the downloading. They've already got the latest TIGER census maps as well as a ton of maps and information from around the globe. They hope to create a central location for GIS data sharing, and they're off to a good start.
posted by ewagoner on May 10, 2001 - 4 comments