In policy conversations, ISP lobbyists lean heavily on the FCC’s flawed data to falsely suggest that American broadband is dirt cheap and ultra competitive, despite real-world evidence to the contrary. ISPs also use this false reality to imply meaningful consumer protections aren’t necessary because the market is healthy (as we saw during the fight over net neutrality).
Geography vs. Stereotypes
Alphadesigner is trying to put a finger on it with his Mapping Stereotypes series. Others, including how Americans see Europe and the world according to America, are not nearly as well designed. We’d be fools, however, to think we invented the idea of mapping our prejudices. This Flickr set of maps from 1870 through 1915 is good evidence of that. » about 100 words
Google MyMaps and GeoRSS
O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 Conference isn’t until the end of May, but Google just released two sweet new map-related features: GeoRSS support and MyMaps. The GeoRSS support means that any application that can output it’s geocoding — as simple as <georss:point>45.256 -71.92</georss:point> — can now be linked to a live map with no more effort than […] » about 300 words
BeerMapping.com
In yet more geolocation news, beermapping.com‘s maps to breweries will make my travel planning easier, and my travels boozier. Hey, it’s casual Friday, take off early and go find a new brewpub for lunch. beermapping.com, brew maps, breweries, brewery, brewpub, casual friday, geolocation, mapping, maps » about 100 words
bsuite_geocode Plugin For WordPress
I’m a big fan of the WP Geo plugin, but I want more. My biggest complaint is that I want to insert coordinates using Google Maps or MultiMap URLs, rather than insert them in the modified story editor. So I wrote a bit of code that reads through the URLs in a post, finds the […] » about 400 words
Google Maps Gets All The Attention
It would reasonably appear that here in the US, there’s only one map site: good ol’ Google. But until Google adds maps for countries other than the US, Canada, and UK, the rest of the world will have to look elsewhere. Enter the UK competitor: Multimap.com has been serving the world outside the bubble since 1996. From their self description:
Key features include street-level maps of the United Kingdom, Europe, and the US; road maps of the world; door-to-door travel directions; aerial photographs; and local information.
In short, it’s probably the best place to point any random set of coordinates. Example: my story about the Chernobyl tour should probably have included this street map of the region. (Yes, Google will now give me a low resolution satellite photo of the reactor, but photos and maps offer different value for different uses.)
My only complaint is that the service lacks the AJAX features that make Google Maps so great. But that might be changing. A post at The Map Room tells of a new feature for UK regions: a map overlay follows the mouse on aerial photos. Take a look at this example. Nice trick, eh?
When You Don’t Have A GPS…
Geolocation by GPS my be the most straightforward approach, but we mustn’t forget the other ways to get lat/lon coordinates. All current cell phones support aGPS positioning to comply with federal E-911 mandates, but not all phones make it easy for the user to get that information out of them. Still, some do and GPS-enabled […] » about 400 words