A slideshow made for the conference HyperUrbain.2 hold in Paris, on the 3rd and 4th June 2009.

More info: http://www.citymurmur.org

Myriahedral projections are a new class of methods for mapping the earth. The globe is projected on a myriahedron, a polyhedron with a very large number of faces. Next, this polyhedron is cut open and unfolded. The resulting maps have a large number of interrupts, but are (almost) conformal and conserve areas. A general approach is presented to decide where to cut the globe, followed by three different types of solution. These follow from the use of meshes based on the standard graticule, the use of recursively subdivided polyhedra and meshes derived from the geography of the earth. A number of examples are presented, including maps for tutorial purposes, optimal foldouts of Platonic solids, and a map of the coastline of the earth.

The projection used for this world map, also known as the "Dymaxion Map," was created by Buckminster Fuller, distinguished mathematician, inventor and 20th century visionary. The map began as a sketch,

My brother pointed out this series of maps over at New Scientist. Combining a Buckminster Fuller-like interest in the most efficient way to map a sphere in two dimensions with a deployment of new algorithms, the maps show alternative ways of representing the earth's surface.

OpenScales is a Open Source (LGPL) mapping framework based on ActionScript 3 and Flex. It has been designed for building Rich Internet Mapping Applications easily.

Another expression of this less-is-more approach to navigation is the Maps Optimised to the Vehicular Environment (MOVE) project at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Using variations of the LineDrive approach, the researchers found that drivers needed less time to understand navigational instructions presented semantically (in words and numbers) rather than symbolically (as street signs and corporate logos)

This is an enormous amount of geographic data. To put it in perspective, last week's planet was bzip2 compressed at 7.4GB, unzipping to 116GB, and occupying 113GB in a PostGIS database. The process of importing the data is very serious: even with a large Amazon instance which lets me allocate five gigabytes of RAM for the importer, the initial load takes over 29 hours.

The following maps represent the first stage of a project I am embarking on to map out some of the spatial contours of Wikipedia. Data were obtained from the August 2009 Wikipedia geodata dump organised by user Kolossos. The information was then ported over to a GIS. There are almost half a million geotagged Wikipedia articles (i.e. Wikipedia articles about a place or an event that occurred in a distinct place), so the preparation time alone for the files needed to create these maps was almost a week.

Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110m scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software.

Vicente reinterprets the city of San Francisco as a grid for drawing pixel art using his bike, a map, and a GPS device.

"It's almost what you'd see if you flew around the area," says Hart. See a video of the map, above.

ARMCHAIR explorers who soar over 3D cityscapes on their computer may be used to the idea of maps with an extra dimension. But they are now getting accurate enough to offer much more than a preview of your next holiday destination. Accurate, large-scale 3D maps could soon change the way we design, manage and relate to our urban environments.

Recently I’ve been doing some ‘gardening’. You can see this clearly from these images on NearMap…. What’s really special about NearMap apart from the fact they are updating imagery more often than I am at home is that they have integrated OSM into their viewer and you can use their data to update OSM:

Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya, widely known as Africa's largest slum, remains a blank spot on the map. Without basic knowledge of the geography and resources of Kibera it is impossible to have an informed discussion on how to improve the lives of residents. This November, young Kiberans create the first public digital map of their own community.

H1N1 cases across Canada

MapBox is a suite of open source tools to create beautiful custom maps in Amazon's cloud.

l’espace urbain, à sa représentation, ainsi qu’aux créations et réappropriations de cet espace par les artistes et chercheurs. Il propose ainsi une veille pluridisciplinaire (Sciences de l’Information et de la Communication, Science de l’ingénierie, Ergonomie, Art, Architecture, Urbanisme, Géographie, Sociologie, etc.) sur les innovations technologiques (réalité virtuelle, réalité augmentée, réalité mixte, Internet et mobilité), les pratiques artistiques et les nouveaux usages dans les domaines de l’art, du jeu, du patrimoine et du tourisme.