Designers at data visualization house Stamen have created a very cool compromise for digital maps. It’s a watercolor-like skin for any OpenStreetMap project, and it’s totally remarkable. Streets have an organic, analog roundness to their edges, and bodies of water aren’t a solid blue, but a mix of hues and color densities, as if the map is actual, textured paper slathered with a casual mix of water and paint. (In fact, the digital render is pretty much indistinguishable from any actual scanned map.)
It's iicensed under Creative Commons.
- FastCo Design
The NextWeb delves into Apple, Google and OSM. One big quesiton: Does Bing use OSM. In the end we learn: no, it does not. Oh, and there's some conspiracy theory in there, too.
- The Next Web
The OpenStreetMap Foundation Japan (OSMFJ) and TheOpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF) announce the release of a new OpenStreetMap layer for Yahoo!JAPAN map services. The new OSM layer is available on Yahoo! JAPAN Local.
This follows the March 6 donation of data by Yahoo!Japan. And, there's a mobile layer, too, for Japan.
- OSM Foundation
by Adena Schutzberg on 03/29 at 04:18 AM |
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A Canadian paper now offers a map where readers can post details of where they see debris from the Japanese earthquake of 2011.
Now, The Province is offering an interactive map on its web-site where readers can post the sites where they find Japanese debris. Simply log on to theprovince.com/debris and follow the instructions.
- The Province
In the Horn of Africa, Somalia makes headlines, but often only because of drought, famine, crisis and insecurity. Al Jazeera launched Somalia Speaks to help amplify stories from people and their everyday lives in the region -- all via SMS.
Somalia Speaks is a collaboration between Souktel, a Palestinian-based organization providing SMS messaging services, Ushahidi, Al Jazeera, Crowdflower, and the African Diaspora Institute. "We wanted to find out the perspective of normal Somali citizens to tell us how the crisis has affected them and the Somali diaspora," Al Jazeera's Soud Hyder said in an interview.
It's great to see crowdsourced, geotagged news in one of the world's most challenged places.
- MediaShift Blog
Want to thank our troops? How about letting them know from where the greetings come? How about a crowdourced Thank You map? That's what the USO created.
- South Brunswick Patch
by Adena Schutzberg on 01/09 at 03:07 AM |
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Jakarta’s Ciliwung River will be on the map if activists from the Green Map Jakarta community have their way.
Nirwono Joga, the coordinator of the nongovernmental organization, said on Sunday that the community was working on a map that would identify places along the banks of the river to create a picture of life along the city’s longest waterway. ...
“That means that the information for the map will come from the people themselves, those who best know the area and their needs,” he said.
The city already has several successful Green Map projects completed including busways.
- Jakarta Globe
A group of Penn Medicine researchers is set to save lives with cell phone cameras -- and they're challenging the public to help. The MyHeartMap Challenge, a month-long contest slated to take place beginning in mid January, will send thousands of Philadelphians to the streets and to social media sites to locate as many automated external defibrillators (AEDs) as they can. The contest is just a first step in what the Penn team hopes will grow to become a nationwide, crowd-sourced AED registry project that will put the lifesaving devices in the hands of anyone, anywhere, anytime.Armed with a free app installed on their mobile phones, contest participants will snap pictures of the lifesaving devices -- which are used to restore cardiac arrest victims' hearts to their normal rhythm – wherever they find them in public places around the city.
- press release via AnyGeo
Wild monkeys have been enlisted by Japanese researchers to obtain detailed readings of radiation levels in forests near the troubled Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Plant.
Professor Takayuki Takahashi and his team of scientists at Fukushima University are fitting nearly 1000 animals with radiation meters and GPS transmitters in order to track the spread of radiation leaked from March’s nuclear accident, the worst in Japan’s history.
I guess that's VGI, though it's hard to argue the monkey's are volunteering.
- ABC News Blog
by Adena Schutzberg on 12/13 at 06:02 AM |
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An interactive map of Copenhagen has been launched to aid the City Council’s efforts in tackling marginalised areas of the city.
The map gives users the opportunity to view the city according to a variety of social and economic factors such as education, income and average living space.
- Copenhagen Post
Looking for a place of worship in Birmingham [UK]? The
Birmingham Faith Map, a unique website, will guide you to every church, chapel, mosque, temple, synagogue,and other religious meeting place in the city. The site was launched during Interfaith Week, at Birmingham Anglican Cathedral, by Birmingham City Councillor Alan Rudge, Cabinet Member for Equalities and Human Resources.
Pasco Corp., Japan’s largest provider of digital maps [and authorized distributor of ESRI and ERDAS products in Japan] , plans to buy companies overseas because of the near-record high yen and surging demand in emerging markets caused by construction booms.
Growth is planned in South America and Africa.
by Adena Schutzberg on 11/30 at 02:35 AM |
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The Guardian is spearheaing a mapping project, worldwide to map ghost bikes. Ghost bikes commemorate a lost cyclist. The project is Flickr based and will use the geocoded images to create the map.
- The Guardian
Eight months after a tsunami caused a nuclear accident in Japan, ordinary people are using new technology and the power of crowdsourcing to find radiation hotspots.
- PBS Newshour
It turns out zebra patterns are unique for each zebra...so
that makes it possible to be scanned like a bar code. McDermott reports that scientists and citizen scientists can use an app called Stripe Spotter created by the University of Illinois at Chicago and Princeton University to upload the zebra’s identity into a database.
- Very Spatial
by Adena Schutzberg on 11/14 at 05:04 AM |
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