One of the first things you learn in any data visualization course is that displaying lots of information isn’t always useful, the biggest impact you can have as a visualization expert is presenting it in a clear and usable way. Overat NTen, the Nonprofit Technology Network, they have an article from Larry Orman that gets specifically into the problems of Data Maps.
But, while some of us may “ooh” and “ahh” over a particularly cool-looking map, most people have a hard time actually reading and understanding maps. Some of this is a general cognitive truth, but a good part of that comes from poorly designed maps.
If our data is that important – and it is – we have to create visual design that delivers our messages to people.
Next time you need a map for your project, check out the d-maps.com website. With over 95,000 maps available, you can choose from thousands of unique locations and then download it in WMF, SVG, PDF, or other formats for your use. Completely free of charge, they’re even available for commercial use (provided you give them a link, it’s all in their T&C’s).
I went down to an individual US state and found over 40 different maps to choose from, each one available in 5 or 6 different formats. Including ocean and land, countries and states, historical and current, and even different map projections, it’s a pretty amazing collection.
IBM scientists have created the smallest 3D map of the earth – so small that 1,000 maps could fit on a grain of salt. The scientists accomplished this through a new, breakthrough technique that uses a tiny, silicon tip with a sharp apex — one million times smaller than an ant — to create patterns and structures as small as 15 nanometers at greatly reduced cost and complexity. This patterning technique opens new prospects for developing nanosized objects in fields such as electronics, future chip technology, medicine, life sciences, and opto-electronics.
The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has signed a deal to work with Google to jointly develop tools to visualize the various scientific datasets they have.
Under the agreement, the agency and Google plan to work together on research and development to join NOAA’s oceanographic, meteorological, biological and climatological data with Google’s software.
NOAA officials hope the wide availability of Google’s Internet tools will deliver visualizations of NOAA data to new audiences around the world. The agreement lists six topic areas in which the agency and Google may pursue cooperative research projects: (…)
Google has taken the initiative to reposition their imaging equipment for another higher-resolution pass of the damaged Haiti areas, resulting in a new near-15cm resolution scan now available online.
These images were gathered on Sunday (January 17). You can currently view the imagery in Google Maps in Satellite mode. It will also be available via the Google Maps API and in Google Map Maker. As of this morning, this high-resolution imagery is now available as the base imagery in Google Earth (all previous imagery of Haiti will be included in the Historical Imagery feature) and has been published in the Haiti Earthquake KML layer. We're also making this imagery directly available to relief organizations.
Just hit Google Maps Satellite mode to see the devastation.
A Google Earth KML overlay is available which contains GeoEye-1 satellite imagery captured on January 13th, the day after the magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit and caused severe destruction to Port-Au-Prince, Haiti and surrounding areas. The New York Times has created a very useful interactive map from this data, allowing the user to move a slider between before and after images of the capital city. Jonathon Crowe of The Map Room blog says that he has “never seen such innovative uses of a slider control outside [the New York Times's] online maps.” The Map Room is also a great place to get geospatial updates on this awful earthquake, apart from the interesting, unique maps showcased there almost daily.
This is a technology blog and we live in tough economic times, but I encourage our readers to donate what they can to Haiti. To maximize your money’s benefit to people on the ground, please check your chosen charity’s financial health using Charity Navigator before you give. Vive Haiti.
It’s that time of year again when we peruse the Best Of Technology lists and see what rated. This one stayed with me: CNN’s Top 10 Tech Trends of 2009. (Go read it and return; I’ll wait.) While one of the better tech pieces I’ve read this month, mostly because it mentions a lot of the tools that impacted us in 2009, it doesn’t delve into what truly makes or breaks that technology beyond the surface of the device itself. This bothers me given CNN’s huge readership and the things people take for granted.
Technology is not just gadgetry. It is also content. A smartphone is great hardware but what you see in there – email, mobile websites, maps, books, videos, games and numerous apps – works with the smartphone to make the gadget useful. Without this content, and millions of folks who work everyday to keep it accurate and accessible, your phone is a nice paperweight. An eReader with access control placed on content will one day make an expensive brick. In other words, what’s in the package, who put it there, how correct it is and how quickly and easily you can get it are as important, if not more, as the beauty and speed of the package itself. Pay attention to it and ask for it all.
Hello! Maps!
One of the most important aspects of smartphonery and search is geography. That integration of positioning technologies allows you to hold your phone up to a cellphone signal and a Google or Bing map shows you where you are. That advances in real-time 3D graphics give you 3D map navigation on any browser. Moreover, how many social applications – from Foursquare to Yelp and Flickr to Twitter – have you used that aren’t location-based?
360° View provides fantastic panoramic views (360° horizontally and 160° vertically) of any given image within the 360 View coverage area (initially 30 cities and 15 suburbs across the United States with more to come) … Best of all, MapQuest 360 View “just works” without requiring anynon-standard 3rd party player downloads.
All Points Blog notes that the source of the imagery is Immersive Media, makers of the Dodeca2360 we’ve discussed before. Microsoft’s new Bing Maps is pretty impressive with its accuracy and bird’s eye view all over the US, but as James Fee points out, 360° View does not require special installs like Silverlight to work:
Take that Bing Maps and your 3rd party player download. MapQuest works without any Silverlight player to get in your way… except of course it uses a 3rd party player called Flash. I suppose this plays into Adobe’s assertion that their 3rd party player download is included by default in many browsers by default.
Microsoft is trying hard to get feature-match with the many offerings of Google, and manages to check off a few with the introduction of Bing Maps3D, a Google-earth clone with surprising detail. After a small download you can browse fully textured cities, and integrate the data with other Microsoft Apps like the popular Photosynth. From Engadget:
Microsoft has done up a Street View-style canvassing of 56 US cities with cars that not only snap photos but include range-finding lasers to map out the architecture in 3D. The Silverlight-based viewer for this view (dubbed Streetside) is similar in interface to Google Maps, a tad slower, and rather visually impressive. In addition, Microsoft is leaning on its Photosynth technology to collect navigable panoramas of scenery and even building interiors. Finally, Microsoft has tacked on “apps” of sorts, little overlays that include traffic cameras, restaurants, a Twitter API and so forth.
The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency wants to update their aging satellite maps and it seems the Department of Defense has ordered that the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and other DoD Organizations must “play nice” and contribute to the efforts. Of course, not everything will be added as many of the maps are of such immense resolution as to be considered classified, but it seems they’ll be publishing content in the Global Content Delivery Server & Defense Enterprise Computing Center. The combined efforts will be rolling into the “Geospatial Visualization Shared Enterprise Service”.
Also, some of the information will be made available worldwide via the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications Systems.
Still gathering details on what exactly this means. Anyone know any more details about this?
One of the first things you learn in any data visualization course is that displaying lots of information isn’t always useful, the biggest impact you can have as a visualization expert is presenting it in a clear and usable way. Overat NTen, the Nonprofit Technology Network, they have an article from Larry Orman that gets specifically into the problems of Data Maps.
Next time you need a map for your project, check out the d-maps.com website. With over 95,000 maps available, you can choose from thousands of unique locations and then download it in WMF, SVG, PDF, or other formats for your use. Completely free of charge, they’re even available for commercial use (provided you give them a link, it’s all in 
The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has signed a deal to work with Google to jointly develop tools to visualize the various scientific datasets they have.
A 
Microsoft is trying hard to get feature-match with the many offerings of Google, and manages to check off a few with the introduction of Bing Maps3D, a Google-earth clone with surprising detail. After a small download you can browse fully textured cities, and integrate the data with other Microsoft Apps like the popular Photosynth. From 
The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency wants to update their aging satellite maps and it seems the Department of Defense has ordered that the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and other DoD Organizations must “play nice” and contribute to the efforts. Of course, not everything will be added as many of the maps are of such immense resolution as to be considered classified, but it seems they’ll be publishing content in the Global Content Delivery Server & Defense Enterprise Computing Center. The combined efforts will be rolling into the “Geospatial Visualization Shared Enterprise Service”.
VizWorld.com 
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