The practical impact of the BitPass announcement is that we will not be able to sell maps online anymore unless another similar payment system can be found.

This news is certainly a surprise. Apologies to anyone who is inconvenienced.

Received this from BitPass today:

“We want to thank you for your past business, however due to circumstances beyond our
control, we are discontinuing our operations.

We have partnered with Digital River to provide operational support during the
period prior to shut down. As of today, January 19, 2007, all Bitpass Buyers with
US dollar denominated accounts are being notified that they will have seven (7) days
to spend any amounts that currently exist in their Bitpass Account.

During this seven day period, US Buyers will not be able to further fund their account.

On January 26, all US Bitpass Buyer accounts will be closed and Digital River will
begin the process of refunding all unspent monies to the accountholder.

All account records and materials will be retained for 60 days and available upon
request. ”

I hadn’t heard that there was a special version of Canvas with GIS capabilities (or that Canvas is no longer a Deneba product):

http://www.acdamerica.com/arcnews/default.html

Does anyone know if this software allows you to import a set of vectors from Illustrator CS2 and geo-reference them? Then convert to another projection? Then export back to Illustrator? The site mentions georectifying imagery, but nothing about vectors.

erik

USGS to Release TerraLook: “The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced today the upcoming release of the TerraLook data product. TerraLook consists of a collection of JPEG images created from ASTER images from the Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center and Landsat Orthorectified images from the USGS Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science archive.

Users of the images will be able to select and order their own images through the USGS Global Visualization Viewer (GloVIS), The images are geo-registered, simulate natural color, and are bundled with footprints of the images as well as standards-compliant metadata. The data will come as a single zipped file. The images are expected to available later this month.
“

(Via GeoCarta.)

Hardly anyone has used the octant map/projection since 1514 or so. At least it is hard to find examples.

So I put it to use in the Art of Geography logo.

Many people have commented on the logo… I thought it would be interesting to delve into this unusual projection/map. The following article explains more about Leonardo da Vinci’s octant map and projection:

http://www.artofgeography.com/info/octant-projection.html

Soviet-Era Topo Maps of Russian Cities: “Paul sends along a link to these scans of topo maps of Russian cities. The Soviet-era maps date from the 1980s, from what I can tell; they’re downloadable as very large TIFF files. Previously: Soviet Mapping Update; Soviet Spies…”

(Via The Map Room.)

Breaking News: Google Earth 4.0: “News from Google’s Geo Developer Day, reported by Google Earth Blog, Ogle Earth and The Unofficial Apple Weblog: Google Earth version 4.0 (beta) is now available, with a new interface for all platforms. I say ‘all platforms,’ because there is…”

(Via The Map Room.)

Manhattan Elsewhere: “Depending on your vantage point, Manhattan seems either very big or very small. On complete map of the New York City area, Manhattan is dwarfed in size by the other four boroughs and surrounding megopolis. But for someone on the ground in Manhattan, the population density, the height of the buildings, the endless number of things to do, and the fact that many people don’t often leave their neighborhoods, much less the island, for weeks/months on end makes it seem a very large place indeed. This divergence sense of scales can cause quite a bit of cognitive dissonance for residents and visitors alike.

A few months ago, I found an image online … from Bill Rankin’s project, The Errant Isle of Manhattan) that worked to alleviate some of that dissonance. The image depicted downtown Chicago with Manhattan placed alongside it in Lake Michigan. I’d been to Chicago a few times and the image immediately gave me a better idea of Manhattan’s true size.”

(Via http://www.kottke.org/.)

“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