the Art of Geography weblog

“Young adults in the United States fail to understand the world and their place in it, according to a survey-based report on geographic literacy released today.

…
Sizeable percentages do not know that Sudan and Rwanda are in Africa (54%
and 40% answer incorrectly, respectively). In fact, 20% place Sudan in Asia and
10% put it in Europe.”

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/0502_060502_geography.html

Ben Macintyre writes in the Times Online:

“The paper map will soon die, and with it something central to human experience. There is a joy is not knowing exactly where you are. The electronic gizmo takes you from A to Z, but it does not show you the place you never knew about, off at the side of the map, the road less travelled. The joy of exploration lies in not knowing exactly where you are, or where you are going, in trying to match the visual world outside with the one-dimensional world represented by the map. Wherever you go now, the machine has got there first.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2187303,00.html

Freehand/Illustrator Switcher Guide from Adobe: “Adobe recently added a Freehand to Illustrator Migration Guide to its Web site, adding to speculation that there is no future for Freehand”

(Via The Mac Observer.)

Researchers at Microsoft are working on technology that they hope will someday enable people to browse online maps for up-to-the-minute information about local gas prices, traffic flows, restaurant wait times, and more. Eventually, says Suman Nath, a Microsoft researcher who works on the project, which is called SenseWeb, they would like to incorporate the technology into Windows Live Local (formerly Microsoft Virtual Earth), the company’s online mapping platform.

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16781&ch=infotech

Risk lurks in Sierra waters: “…hikers heading to the Sierra Nevada this summer should be extra careful about where they find their drinking water, particularly if cows are nearby.

That’s the upshot of a new study that found cattle-grazing in national forests between Lake Tahoe and Mount Whitney is the leading source of E. coli contamination in Sierra streams and lakes.”

(Via Mercury News: California.)

Bernhard Jenny and Nathaniel Vaughn announced the availability of Color Oracle
(http://colororacle.cartography.ch/) for Mac OS 10.3.9 and above (freeware). Links are provided at the site for Windows compatable tools too.

Color Oracle takes the guesswork out of designing for color blindness by
showing you in real time how people with common color vision deficiencies
will see your maps and graphics. Color Oracle applies a full screen color
filter to art you are designing ˆ independently of the software that you
are using.

Seeing is believing! Instantaneously identify and correct problem colors
in your art using Color Oracle’s system-wide menu and keyboard shortcuts
accessible in any program.

More bucks for nature’s beauty: “Entrance fees are going up at 17 National Park Service sites, most for the first time since 1997. Some also raised prices for annual passes. Many increases are $5 or less, but at California’s Death Valley and Sequoia & Kings Canyon parks, entrance fees have doubled.”

(Via LA Times: Travel.)

Now the galleries are hyperlinked, so if you view the map from within Acrobat or your browser, you can click on a gallery icon to open that gallery’s webpage, which might be handy if you want to preview what they are showing. Some galleries appear not to have websites, so I left them unlinked. If you find a gallery I missed, or know the website for a gallery that has no link, let me know!

Note: Acrobat 6 is the oldest version which can take advantage of some of the map features such as user-controlled layers.

The art of hacking: opening really old Illustrator files: “Sandee Cohen was kind of enough to forward to me a conversation she had with Steven Gordon with regard to opening Illustrator 1.1 files in Illustrator CS2. Back in Illustrator CS, Adobe disabled the ability to open Illustrator 1.1 files believing that the format wasn’t used anymore. …”

(Via Real World Illustrator.)