StateTable: US/Canada states, provinces, territories and minor possessions as CSV, SQL, HTML form elements, PHP arrays, and more.
All the countries in the world, as a text list,
CSV and API (from the very handy and open
Factual).
Also:
FreeMapTools, including
“how far can I travel from any point on the Earth in a certain time, using a form of ground transportation?”, and “
If I dug a tunnel straight through the planet, where should I emerge?”
(previously)
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul
on Jan 27, 2012 -
11 comments
Jo Guldi writes
a fascinating entry about social engineering and geography in the 1970's. "The geographers located answers in American zones of isolation and hopelessness. Bill Bunge organized his fellow professors into the Detroit Geographical Expedition, leading frequent trips to document the slums of Detroit and later Toronto. Their findings were equally provocative. In 1968, the Society published a map entitled “
Where Commuters Run Over Black Children on the Pointes-Downtown Track.” Life and death, they argued, were not merely the commodities available to any hard-working American, but hung upon the thread of a special kind of privilege, the privilege of safe territory."
Guldi is a historian at the Harvard Society of Fellows.
[more inside]
posted by cashman
on Feb 12, 2010 -
10 comments
Biblemap.org is an interactive map system for the bible, which is great for visualising where certain biblical events are said to have occured. It's also great for people who don't subscribe to any kind of organised religion but do like looking at maps (like me!).
posted by Effigy2000
on Jun 14, 2009 -
24 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
Place Spotting ― Try to solve this Google map quiz. In the upper part of the page you see a satellite picture. Drag and zoom the map in the lower part of the page until it shows the same location as the upper map.
Here's how.
posted by netbros
on Aug 16, 2008 -
32 comments
John Henry Wilbrandt Stuckenberg emigrated from Germany to the United States, where he was eventually a Chaplain in the American Civil War. He also really liked maps; in the course of traveling over his lifetime, he collected
hundreds of maps, some dating back to the 16th century.
[Most maps in Latin]
posted by Rykey
on Jul 26, 2008 -
6 comments
Discoveries made using satellite imagery,
particularly via Google Earth, have made
headlines in the
blue and
green before. Increasingly high-resolution photos, combined with obsessive
interest, have lead inevitably to the next step: interpretation
and analysis of spots on the Earth's surface for which information is
restricted, censored, or classified, such as the preparedness of military defenses in
North Korea and
Iran, or the viability of Saudi Arabia's
next big oil play. Of course, not all mapping is
benevolent.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul
on Mar 13, 2008 -
9 comments
Do you know where you are? With
Google Maps and
Google Earth so commonplace now, GPS everywhere, and with websites such as our own Metafilter making use of latitude and longitude did you ever stop to think about how all this latitude, longitude and height above sea level works? The UK's
Ordnance Survey explains it all in
A Guide to Coordinate Systems in Great Britain. Discover that different coordinate systems might differ by as much as 200m, and that your house may be moving as much as 1m up and down each day relative to the centre of the Earth, and many other bits of geographical interest.
[more inside]
posted by edd
on Sep 6, 2006 -
4 comments
Fool's World Map: "This is a project visualizing the world map which many fools in the world imagine. If you can see this map comfortably, you are definitely a fool." The creator
updates and reformats the malleable map based completely on capricious, erroneous geographical inconsistencies found within oblvious statements from his comment logs. Examples: (
095. Upper right side of Germany became Australia due to a posting by another stupid American thinking "Australia is beside Germany.") and
(001. Due to a Texan who thinks "Japan is accessible from Texas by car", Japan and Texas is land-attached."). He also has a
page of user-submitted maps, where he encourages you to create your own global eyesore and send it to him.
posted by naxosaxur
on Aug 3, 2004 -
26 comments
If Mapquest just isn't cutting the mustard, or you feel compelled over the holidays to take your geekery to new and mysterious depths, the
National Map Viewer from the U.S. Geological Survey is your new best friend. The dynamic interface lets you layer roads, topos, and satellite imagery on top of one another at your whim. And if you're really hardcore, make your own app by downloading and mining the Census Bureau's
TIGER database.
Note: Map viewer and interface may not be friendly to all browsers; this is a common limitation of government websites.
posted by PrinceValium
on Dec 24, 2003 -
7 comments
"My name is John Johnson, I come from Wisconsin..." Find out the historical distribution of
your last name throughout the U.S. (This will not, alas, be useful for Mr.
Johnson, or the
Smiths, Joneses, Williamses, and Browns of the world.)
Brits, we haven't forgotten you! Of course, if you're doing genealogical research, you can turn to specific resources, like the
US Census or the massive
Familysearch.
posted by snarkout
on Sep 10, 2001 -
15 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
These aerial photos must have the security services worried.
The Millenium Map company has taken high-quality, detailed photographs of the entire UK, and from Jan 31st anyone can visit
www.getmapping.com and view photos of their house at a scale of 1:1000, or more interestingly, zoom in on GCHQ and US National Security bases, such as the one at Menwith Hill, Yorkshire, which supposedly is a key part of the worldwide surveillance network codenamed Echelon.
posted by echelon
on Jan 27, 2000 -
0 comments
