Fun and Useful App Roundup for the Holidays

Ever wonder what maps or graphics will look like to the color impaired? There's an app for that! The Chromatic Vision Simulator is available free for iOS and Android.

- via @sarahbourne 

P-Track displays near real-time Satellite position, track, health, and coverage information on a 3-D interactive globe. You can zoom and rotate the globe to view all available Satellites. The App allows you to see ground tracks as well as coverage footprints for a selected satellite. The App also displays a SkyView Plot of all satellites in view of your iPhone - it displays Azimuth and Elevation angles of each Satellite your phone can see. You can even view the Ephemeris, current Cartesian XYZ coordinates (Earth Centered Earth Fixed (ECEF) and Earth Centered Inertial(ECI)), and Latitude, Longitude, and Altitude of any chosen satellite. 

P-Track is available on iOS.

- via @ptrackapp

Need to drop more pins on iPhone's map app? How about Pin Drop, which simplifies the dropping offered by Apple or Foursqare. API coming soon.

- GoMoNews

Free PDFs of two Volumes of the History of Cartography

On this site the University of Chicago Press is pleased to present the first two volumes of the History of Cartography in PDF format. Navigate to the PDFs from the left column. Each chapter of each book is a single PDF. The search box on the left allows searching across the content of all the PDFs that make up the first four books.

via @Wiscmapper

British Telecom Sues Google and other Google Geo News

British Telecommunications has filed a civil suit in a Delaware court alleging that some Google products and services including Android, and its search, music, map, and location-based advertising infringe on one or more of six of its patents.

- PC World

In the wake of the devastation from tropical storm Sendong in central and southern Philippines, Google's Crisis Response Team has deployed a Crisis Map to help users find evacuation centers, donation drop-off points, and official updates from relief agencies. 

There's a People Finder tool, too.

- GMA News

Share a Carol with Google Maps Street View lets you create and send a virtual Christmas card with some Christmas carollers singing on top of your own Street View scene.

- Google Maps Mania

China’s New Maps and other International GIS News

China map data stores are up, as is use of those data stores.

Access to and usage of Chinese geographic data have both improved with the establishment of three key platforms, according to a conference held by the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation (NASMG) on Monday.

 

The three platforms include an online city management network, a public map database and geographic condition monitoring used by the country's decision-makers.

Members of Musanze District Disaster Management Committee (DDMC) should clearly identify zones that are highly prone to disasters.

A project to map the [olive] trees [of Puglia, Italy] with satellite photographs is under way. Each tree will be individually cataloged and form part of a database. Puglia’s environmental official, Lorenzo Nicastro, said the census would cost € 250,000 and it would be a valuable tool for the agency tasked with protecting the trees, as well as granting or denying permission for the transplantation of trees.

The first pan-Indian satellite mapping of sugarcane has revealed that the estimated area under the crop has gone up by 5 per cent to 51.82 lakh hectare in the current sugar season, industry body ISMA said today. ...

 

The satellite survey was jointly undertaken by ISMA and the National Federation of Cooperative Sugar Factories Ltd (NFCSF) through a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) based agency, which procured images from National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) Hyderabad, the body said.

Quote of the Week - 12/22/11

“That’s an artifact of GIS,” he said. “We have no intention of going through the natural area. John (Stokes) asked it to be moved, and I said I would.”

- Aaron Million describes how a map in his proposal to FERC, showing that his pipeline routed through Soapstone Prairie and Meadow Springs Ranch, was an error. The Regional Watershed Supply Project, also known as the Flaming Gorge Pipeline, was covered in the Coloradoan.