Blogging about maps since 2003
A New Yorker piece by Shayla Love looks at the consequences of our increasing dependence on GPS. It’s nominally about Katherine Dunn’s new book, Little Blue Dot (previously), but it’s one of those pieces that More
Antonio Antoine also has something to say about generative AI in cartography. As I did in my piece about generative AI, he takes as his starting point the question of gatekeeping; unlike me, he’s coming More
Lee Schwartz, current CEO of the American Geographical Society and former Geographer at the U.S. State Department, has some words about the U.S. government map that messed up Africa at a conference last month (previously). More
In 2024 I blogged about a study that found the lowest incidence of Alzheimer’s-related mortality among ambulance and taxi drivers. At the time I noted that the study had a bunch of caveats and was More
Bill Dollins has been thinking about how to future-proof geospatial data infrastructure. When we design systems expected to last for years or decades, we tend to ask which technologies will still be around. Will PostGIS More
AFP fact-checks fake AI-generated maps of the Canadian wildfires that have been circulating on social media, many of which overstate the severity and spread of the fires, including hallucinating wildfires in places they don’t exist, More
An exhibition at the David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford University, You Are Here: Transit Cartography and Spatial Identity, explores the evolving design language of transit maps and the relationship of that design language with More
Reading Maps plots fictional journeys on the map. Creator Aires Loutsaris explains: Reading Maps came out of a nagging thought that every story has happened somewhere. Odysseus crossed a real sea. The Pequod sailed real More
AP: “The Pacific Island country of Nauru has changed its name to the Republic of Naoero, its president said, matching the spelling and pronunciation in the national language.” See also RNZ coverage. This follows other countries’ name More
It makes sense that a mapping app for the Apple Vision Pro would evoke Boston’s Mapparium. Using that virtual space to display cartograms, which is what Worldmapper VR does, is not something I would have More
Ed Parsons, who used to work at Google, has some words about the Google Earth AI image generation debacle. “Veterans of the Geo organization understood an unwritten rule that took decades to build: Geospatial trust is More
It’s been possible to use 3D models in Google Earth for decades. But Google’s announcement yesterday its AI image generation model, Nano Banana 2, can be used to create custom images and 3D rendering inside More
The Guardian: “A US government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a state department presentation at a global conference in Brazil this week, causing a stir among attenders who took screenshots and posted them online.” Not More
NASA has released a new 3D model of the Earth’s gravitational field. “The geoid is an equipotential surface that can be thought of as the shape an ocean surface would take due to the Earth s More
Google Maps users in New Zealand will get a voice that “speaks English with a Kiwi accent while accurately pronouncing te reo Māori (the Māori language) place names.” Street View imagery has been refreshed in More
Ars Technica on plans by Xona Space Systems to launch a constellation of low-Earth-orbit navigation satellites. Compared with GPS, the satellites would be much more resistent to interference because their signals would be 100 times More
A members-only exhibition at the Royal Geographic Society, Skin Maps: Semi-Permeable Cartography, features “collages and reworkings of historic maps” by artist Steph Morris. From Morris’s website: The new collages by Steph on display arose from More
I’m opposed to generative AI and all its works. According to some leading names in the cartographic community, that makes me a gatekeeper, a Luddite, and an irrational AI hater. So, generative AI has come More
A new interactive map predicts the density and extent of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks, which exist in symbiosis with land plants. The estimate is based on soil samples and data from previous studies, fed through More
I recently fell down the mechanical watch rabbit hole, and in doing so inadvertently discovered that maps and watches have a long history with each other. It’s a relationship that started long before smart watches More