Spatial Miscellany » Geography

Here and There – a horizonless projection in Manhattan

Rob — Fri, 22 May 2009 22:27:47 +0000

It’s probably closer to art, than the maths of geodesy, but wouldn’t it look great on an iPhone navigating the streets of New York?

Here and There – a horizonless projection in Manhattan – the work of Schulze & Webb, a creative design agency based in London.

Going Local with a Crowd…

Rob — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:55:10 +0000

One thing that often frustrates me when working with a map is the absence of meaningful neighbourhoods. For example, try finding ‘Marchmont’ in Edinburgh, Scotland using Google Maps. You might find ‘Marchmont Road’ but that only gives an indication as to the area that the people of Edinburgh consider to be ‘Marchmont’ the neighbourhood.

A novel approach has been taken to resolve this and similar problems using Flickr’s 90 million geotagged photographs: The Shape of Alpha.

A handy demonstration of the API has been developed by Tom Talyor. A good example of the power of crowd sourced datasets.

It’s the Geography, Stupid…

Rob — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 08:54:42 +0000

Today America votes; drawing to a close another epic, media fuelled, billion dollar US presidential race. As always geography has played its role…

Earlier in the summer Ed Parsons noted the recruitment of a GIS analyst for the Obama campaign…

On the campaign trial John McCain struggled with the Iraq-Pakistan border…

A slip of tongue, or a clue to future foreign policy? Kevin Burke has noted similar geography hiccups from Barack Obama.

Of course long before November 4th, geography and GIS are at work carving the outcome of the election, the folks over at WhyTuesday have posted a clip to YouTube raising awareness of ReDistricting and the dark art of Gerrymandering…