MAPPING IN THE CLOUDS

Sometimes it feels like being a cartographer is like playing god.  A change of the terrain colour here, an insertation of a road there - its all very much like the first few paragraphs of the bible.  But we're not truely gods however, we do have our off days - sometimes we get mappers block and cant decide on an appropriate colour scheme for a map.  Fortunately for us we can turn to cloudmade.com who offer the ability to try out a few complex colour schemes at the click of a button. [It may appear confusing at first, but all you need to do is click maps (in the upper left corner), zoom to an area of interest, then click change style (upper right) to try out some cool  palettes]

KINECT ME

So, you thought that it was really cool the way that Tom Cruise's character used hand gestures to navigate around the computer in the 2002 film Minority Report?! but ever since then you've lived in a sort of waking-dream, yearning for the day that you too could have that ability. Well my nerdy techo-dreamer, Microsoft has now released the xbox Kinect which will allow you to do just this!!  Kinect utilises LIDAR (laser) technology [that mappers already use to create contours & terrain] but it has now been developed to be able to interpret our flailing limbs into digital commands!  People, the future is finally here and its yours for just $100 (US) !!!  Have a look at how it can be used in mapping (or specifically in google maps)

PUZZLING MAPS

It feels like maps conceptualise our world so effortlessly that we seemingly lose any sense that maps do actually take time and dedication to create. Perhaps that's the way it should be, or perhaps we're missing something by only looking at the bigger picture? Does something new reveal itself when one ponders the individual components of a thing? I dont know for sure, but perhaps you can try zoning-out for awhile with these jigsaw puzzle maps created by National Geographic and see what you come up with.

MAP PRODIGY

The NAZIs' had the Hitler Youth, Nike have got their sweatshops, but it has now become clear that insidious map zealots are also using freakishly intelligent and impressionable children to spread their cartographic doctrine. As you read this, sleeper agents in every country are busy populating the earth with map obsessed offspring.  The geographic revolution is underway comrades, rise up!!!