Tuesday, January 12. 2010

USGS Maps of 7.0 Haitian Earthquake

The USGS has provided maps and other details of the devasting 7.0 magnitude earthquake 10 miles SW of Port au Prince, Haiti.

Posted by Joe Francica in USGS at 22:10 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0) |

Monday, January 11. 2010

USGS Gives and Takes Earthquake Info Via Twitter

The account is unofficial, but @SFUSGS is tweeting geolocated tweets each time there activity in the San Francisco area. USGS is also looking at ways to collect user generated geotagged tweets noting activity (announcement).

- TechCrunch via @bobfine

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in USGS, Social Networking at 06:00 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Tuesday, December 8. 2009

Podcast: Hands on with the New National Map Viewer and US Topos

The USGS rolled out two new products as part of its celebration of 125 years in the topographic mapping business: a new National Map Viewer

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in USGS, Directions on the News Podcast at 01:00 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |

Friday, December 4. 2009

Free Map Wrap from USGS for the Holidays

In the spirit of removing clutter and recycling USGS again offers up old paper topos for use as wrapping paper for holiday gifts. It's free. Details:

The free “map wrap” is available now through Christmas. The maps are rolled in bundles of 10, with a limit of two rolls per person, and are only available at the store.

To pick up the free wrapping paper, visit The Map Store @ USGS in Building 810 at the Denver Federal Center. Enter through Gate 1, located on Kipling, just north of Alameda, then follow the signs west to Building 810. Visitors will need to show a valid ID at the gate. Store hours are 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in USGS at 07:53 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |

Thursday, December 3. 2009

USGS Celebrates 125 Years of Topos; Offers Digital US Topos with Hydro/Contours

Today, Dec 3, USGS celebrates 125 Years of Topographic Mapping. You may have seen or heard about an exhibit by that name at this year's ESRI User Conference (press release). The actual party occurs from 1-3 EST today in Reston.

Besides the "looking back" there are announcements of new products (press release). The long awaited digital topo program, initially launched in beta in June as "Digital Maps–Beta" (APB coverage), is now called simply US Topo. The big difference is that the US Topos include the hydro and contour layers. These join the previously delivered layers available in the beta maps: NAIP imagery layers, Census transportation layers, geographic names, and collar info.

US Topo maps in the USGS store now number more than 748; they are all in Kansas, the first US Topo state. They join the 14,116 "Digital Maps–Beta" maps from 17 states (without hydro/contour, though in time the "betas" will be replaced with US Topo versions). Both the betas and the US Topos are now available from the USGS Store for free download in GeoPDF format. Detailed coverage and planned production details are available on the status page.

The navigation to the map you want continues to be a rather clumsy Google Maps implementation. I do appreciate a "show US Topo and Digital Maps - Beta" button which allows visitors to quickly determine which form is available for which areas. After zooming in to an area of interest, you place a marker within the area of interest. Then you click on the marker to learn which maps are available that cover the area (including name, data, coverage[7.5x7.5, 1x2, 30x60] and file size). I downloaded a US Topo of Beeler Kansas (17 Mb). It looked fine in Apple's Preview but I could not manipulate layers without the extra GeoPDF tools from TerraGo. So, I went to find out if those are yet available for Macs. (Short answer: no.)

Long answer: The USGS points visitors to download additional tools aka TerraGo Desktop, from TerraGo. That software was previously known as the GeoPDF Toolbar. Per TerraGo: "this free solution enables users to view, manipulate and update maps and images within an Adobe Reader environment. Users can measure length and area, change coordinate displays, search for attributes and view layers."

I'm not sure why USGS sends visitors to this general page of TerraGo products from the About GeoPDF Maps pdf instead of to the TerraGo desktop page. The TerraGo Desktop page, confusingly, has a graphic of another TerraGo product, "Collaboration Suite." Also confusing: there are references to the old GeoPDF Toolbar in the text describing TerraGo Desktop. And, to add to the confusion: there's a link on the page for "Purchase" which generates an e-mail to sales@terrago.com. Where is the download the free add-on the USGS suggests?

Perhaps what I need is the TerraGo Toolbar. USGS has an "ad" for that on the "locator" map page. That's similarly "advertised" on the TerraGo solutions page as a free download. That link leads me to a form into which I am asked for name and e-mail (Why? So TerraGo can contact me? So the USGS can contact me? I'd really like to know!) where I can download, that's right, TerraGo Desktop - which is Windows only.

I do hope USGS and TerraGo decide on the final name of this Windows-only "toolbar" and make it easier to find and download.

Today also marks the official launch of the new National Map viewer (the Palentara based Beta I noted last month - which USGS soft-launched). It's available from The National Map website viewer page.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in USGS at 14:44 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |

Wednesday, December 2. 2009

USGS Launches Social Media Site

Here's the site. I appreciate that it notes which Twitter feeds are human powered and which are auto-fed.

- via @jeffharrison

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in USGS at 06:00 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |