Peacay of BibliOdyessey highlights some stunning examples of Victorian Infographics from the Rumsey Map Collection(previously). (Direct Flickr link)
posted by The Whelk on Dec 22, 2009 - 18 comments

NASA's MESSENGER team (previously: 1, 2, 3), with help from the U.S. Geological Survey, released yesterday the first global map of the planet Mercury. [more inside]
posted by SpringAquifer on Dec 16, 2009 - 15 comments

The New York City Open Accessible Space Information System Cooperative (OASIS) is an online, interactive mapping and data analysis application that gives an incredibly detailed view of New York City's open spaces and how they are used. The map enables overlays of information like: transit; parks, playgrounds and open space; zoning and landmarks; current and historical land use; social services; demographics; and environmental characteristics.(via The Ministry of Type, who like OASIS mainly for its pretty map possibilities.) [more inside]
posted by ocherdraco on Dec 15, 2009 - 5 comments

ASCII art of 12 April 1888. A map of Michigan's dry counties. "We found this part troublesome enough to set, and if any printer thinks it a simple job, he may try it for two or three days."
posted by jjray on Dec 9, 2009 - 28 comments

The Decline: The Geography of a Recession Flash animated map showing county unemployment rates from Jan 2007 until Sept 2009
posted by hippybear on Nov 25, 2009 - 48 comments

“Some squirrel nibbled the continent of South America on one of my pumpkins. It’s freaking me out.” A collection of accidental geographies. The phenomenon is known as "cartocacoethes," and may explain why some old maps are not maps at all. via StrangeMaps [more inside]
posted by cubby on Nov 24, 2009 - 29 comments

Route from the 1969 Movie Easy Rider. Last April MrZip66 rode his motorcycle along the route Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper rode in Easy Rider. His blog entry has a map of the route and then-and-now photos. This week Slate's doing the same thing, except in a PT Cruiser (and flying over part of the route).
posted by kirkaracha on Nov 19, 2009 - 32 comments

We love our maps here, so how about a map quiz thanks to our friends at The Morning News. Warning: the answer underneath each map is a simple link, and the URL sometimes gives away the answer.
posted by shothotbot on Nov 10, 2009 - 10 comments

"Less than 10% of the world's land is more than 48 hours of ground-based travel from the nearest city." In August, archeologists discovered what may be the oldest map in the world. Years ago, MetaFilter introduced us to the concept of the "upside-down map". But a new map released Friday attempts to illustrate how our improved transportation network has managed to consolidate distances on earth.
posted by jefficator on Oct 26, 2009 - 48 comments

I Just Made Love shows on the map of the world places where people just made love.
posted by nam3d on Oct 8, 2009 - 60 comments

At 145 miles away by car, this spot between Glad Valley and Meadow, South Dakota, is the farthest spot from a McDonald's in the contiguous USA. This fact and a lovely image of the contiguous United States visualized by distance to the nearest McDonald's come from Stephen Von Worley. (via Strange Maps)
posted by twoleftfeet on Oct 1, 2009 - 63 comments

Ever wanted a visual tally of the computers, personal data, and other property lost by or stolen from the US federal government? Presenting the Government Lost & Found Map, via OhMyGov!.
posted by the littlest brussels sprout on Aug 30, 2009 - 3 comments

The World's Best Alternative Subway Maps, including Eddie Jabbour's NYC Kick Map.
posted by nickyskye on Aug 7, 2009 - 48 comments

A zoomable, isometric map of Hong Kong
posted by juv3nal on Jul 13, 2009 - 33 comments

The most complete terrain map of the Earth's surface has been published. It covers 99% of the planet using ASTER satellite imagery. You can download the map and some cool images from NASA's page.
posted by atmosphere on Jun 30, 2009 - 23 comments

Preserved in the cave excavations of Mogao and listing 1,339 stars the Dunhuang Star Chart is the oldest graphical star atlas known to exist. Dated to between 649 and 684 AD, it features two sections. The first consists of 26 diagrams of asterisms (including a recognizable Big Dipper and Orion) and the second contains 12 star maps each showing a 30 degree east-west section of sky in cylindrical projection plus an azimuthal projection circumpolar map. Star positions are accurate to within 1.5 degrees and it includes some stars in the southern sky. [more inside]
posted by Mitheral on Jun 28, 2009 - 10 comments

For baseball fans and/or map geeks: The United Countries of Baseball. [more inside]
posted by zardoz on Jun 9, 2009 - 51 comments

Travels of a Boy Reporter - Track Tintin's travels across the globe. Click on the map to find out more about the locations or books they appear in.
posted by Artw on May 22, 2009 - 23 comments

Triptrop NYC: Subway Time Maps — Plug in an address in New York City, and Triptrop generates a super slick looking map of how long it takes to get anywhere on the subway. And maybe you're moving? Then plug not one but two addresses into the comparison version and see which one gets you where you want to go. [via mefi projects]
posted by netbros on May 19, 2009 - 15 comments

Following Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's expenses claim for pornographic films watched by her husband, which came hot on the heels of an investigation into expenses claims for MPs' second homes, the Guardian has published data on each MPs' claims. Now, it's been combined with data from They Work For You to create a map showing MPs' expenses claims, revealing interesting anomalies.
An investigation into MPs' expenses is forthcoming. [Previously]
posted by djgh on Apr 3, 2009 - 25 comments

A map of the top 50 craft breweries in America by volume. State map of per capita beer consumption. [more inside]
posted by baphomet on Mar 29, 2009 - 119 comments

Antipode Map. Find where the other side of the planet is instantly. Note that if you if you actually do manage to dig a tunnel through to the other side and jump in it will take you 42 minutes to get there.
posted by loquacious on Mar 24, 2009 - 64 comments

Knowledge, in Real Time. "A new picture of science — and possibly future innovation — comes into focus with the mapping of scientists’ online research behavior."
posted by homunculus on Mar 21, 2009 - 14 comments

Sitcom Maps from DanMeth.com
posted by blue_beetle on Mar 18, 2009 - 45 comments

Powhatan's Mantle was the emblem of kingship worn by Wahunsenacawh, also known as Chief Powhatan, father of Pocahontas. A deerskin cloak ornamented with shell beadwork, it may at first appear to be only clothing but in fact it is also a map of the Powhatan Confederacy, which ruled most of eastern Virginia when the English first settled there. The mantle was acquired by one of the John Tradescants whose collection was the foundation of Oxford University's Ashmolean Collection and the mantle resides there still today. The first linked article is a fascination article about the mantle as well as a gallery of images of and related to Powhatan's Mantle.
posted by Kattullus on Feb 12, 2009 - 5 comments

Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest. There are now nearly 600 maps.

The Atlas of Early Printing. A visualization of fifteenth-century printing presses in Europe. Click around, look at the book-learnin' blossom!
posted by Greg Nog on Sep 19, 2008 - 15 comments

World Names Profiler is a pretty amazing Flash tool, that allows you to see where other people with your last name are distributed across the world, in frequency per million, right down to the city and regional level. Fun to pair with the NameVoyager.
posted by dgaicun on Sep 10, 2008 - 93 comments

Album atlas - mapping the locations of album cover photographs. Feel free to contribute.
posted by davebush on Sep 7, 2008 - 10 comments

National Geographic Map of the Day. Previously featuring maps that run the gamut from automotive discovery and exploration; through literary, witchhunts and imaginary; to historical and Olympic.
posted by Mitheral on Aug 15, 2008 - 9 comments

Satirical maps of Europe from 1914-15.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Aug 6, 2008 - 25 comments

Humorist and candidate for the US Senate for Minnesota Al Franken draws a map of the United States from memory.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Aug 5, 2008 - 83 comments

Fantasy cartography collects scans of maps and charts from video games, comics, and novels. Take a look at the doll-house like maps of the Fantastic Four's Baxter Building from various comics (a Trophy Room and a "TV Sending Room"!), the Legend of Zelda's Hyrule, Asimov's Foundation galaxy, lots of Lovecraft locations, the lands of the Princess Bride, the Discworld, and lots of Star Trek maps and ship schematics. Also, some thoughts on how "serious fiction" writers often start with maps, from Joyce's use of the ordinance maps of Dublin to Pychon's use of aerial photographs. More fantasy maps (many in German) are available from the Fantasy Atlas. Also, from my previous post on the subject of maps of fantasy worlds, see the extensive listings in the Dictionary of Imaginary Places.
posted by blahblahblah on Jul 25, 2008 - 20 comments

The Bullitt chase entirely geocoded. (Previously.)
posted by miss lynnster on Jun 30, 2008 - 38 comments

The Spertus Museum/Spertus Institute for Jewish Studies has just canceled Imaginary Coordinates due to complaints that some of the artwork (NSFW: nudity, disturbing imagery) in the exhibit had an anti-Israeli slant. [more inside]
posted by hydrophonic on Jun 22, 2008 - 45 comments

HotPads has one of the cooler interfaces to the real estate world. Especially worth looking at are the heat maps that show you scary, scary foreclosure rates across the country and the rent ratios that tell you whether it is worth buying in a particular area, among lots of other data.
posted by blahblahblah on Jun 16, 2008 - 24 comments

Maps: Finding our place in the world is an exhibit at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, and it runs until this Sunday June 8. That page contains images of a few of the maps. One of the many great things included is an animated map of the US Civil War in 4 minutes (one week per second, timeline noted at bottom, casualty counter rolling in bottom right corner - info about this animation) The exhibition book was previously linked here; that site includes higher-resolution versions of some more of the maps. I was floored by all the stuff they have; in terms of the rarity of the stuff in it, and the geek-delight factor, I think it's probably the best gallery show I've ever seen. [more inside]
posted by LobsterMitten on Jun 4, 2008 - 24 comments

Polyhedral Maps is a website that explores unconventional methods of mapping the surface of the earth. The most famous of these unusual maps was Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion map, which used the net of an icosahedron. Da Vinci had experimented with this technique in his “Octant” map of 1514, which used Reuleaux triangles as map elements. This process is now being used by photographers and artists in manipulating panoramic images. A good example is Tom Lechner’s The Wild Highways of the Elongated Pentagonal Orthobicupola.
posted by Tube on Jun 1, 2008 - 23 comments

Two visualization projects: All of the streets in the lower 48 United States: an image of 26 million individual road segments. No other features (such as outlines or geographic features) have been added to this image. And zipdecode, a unique map of US zipcodes.
posted by desjardins on May 2, 2008 - 23 comments

The Brooklyn Elite Checkers Club [flash] is just one of the stories on the recently released site, City of Memory - 'a public map that generates social interaction, personal expression, and collaborative storytelling'. [more inside]
posted by tellurian on Apr 22, 2008 - 3 comments

274 Atolls. [more inside]
posted by bigmusic on Apr 6, 2008 - 20 comments

Native Names Projects by the Coeur d'Alene Tribe GIS Program and the Hawaii Board on Geographic Names are adding audio pronunciation guides to geospatial place-name datasets in several on-line mapping formats. [more inside]
posted by mmahaffie on Apr 3, 2008 - 5 comments

A cool map of lightning frequency over time across the globe. And a live version for the U.S. Heck, a zoomed-in version on the Northeast for the past 60 minutes. It turns out that you can even buy a small Lightning Detector to map local lightning strikes on your PC. It listens for the signature static crashes from lightning, sometimes called sferics (short for atmospheric noise), much like you can hear on an AM radio during a storm. You can even listen to streaming audio from NASA's (Alabama) VLF receiver.
posted by fogster on Apr 1, 2008 - 22 comments

Google Sky we'll help us find our way, someday.
posted by plexi on Mar 14, 2008 - 32 comments

The ever-wonderful Strange Maps blog comes up with the goods again: Area codes in which Ludacris claims to have 'hoes'. "I’m a female and a feminist. I dislike the usage of the word ‘ho’. However, as a geography major, I find this song hilarious, and had to map it,” says Stephanie Gray, referring to Area Codes [NSFW] by the rap artist Ludacris... In this song, Ludacris brags about the area codes where he knows women, whom he refers to as ‘hoes’,” says Ms Gray, who plotted out all the area codes mentioned in this song on a map of the United States. She arrived at some interesting conclusions as to the locations of this rapper’s preferred female companionship."
posted by patricio on Mar 9, 2008 - 83 comments

New Jersey is drowning , or rather it would if the the future as predicted by David Spratty & Philip Sutton in climate code red comes true. Philip Sutton said in an interview that "within five years the Arctic ice in the summertime will be all gone.". With all the ice melting, the waterlevels rise - will your house be under water?
posted by dabitch on Feb 22, 2008 - 66 comments

A Global Map of Human Impacts to Marine Ecosystems "What happens in the vast stretches of the world's oceans - both wondrous and worrisome - has too often been out of sight, out of mind. The goal of the research presented here is to estimate and visualize, for the first time, the global impact humans are having on the ocean's ecosystems."
posted by dhruva on Feb 14, 2008 - 20 comments

The Gough, or Bodleian map is surprisingly accurate considering it dates from the 14th century. The Map is considered the first true map of Britain. Some say the red lines cris-crossing the map are roads, however, some disagree. You be the judge, because the map is available for interractive viewing at Queens University Belfast.
posted by mattoxic on Jan 31, 2008 - 8 comments

Web Trend Map 2008 Beta.
posted by signal on Jan 30, 2008 - 18 comments

Landsat Image Mosaic Of Antarctica UK and US researchers peice together the most detailed map of Antarctica yet, searching through years of data to find cloud free images.
posted by Artw on Nov 27, 2007 - 17 comments