“Today, Google Maps for the iPhone has arrived. It’s free, fast and fantastic.”
Google Maps App for iPhone Goes in the Right Direction-Review

“You can get 98% of stuff on maps right, and people who use it will remember the 2% you got wrong until they die.”
While Apple Regroups, Google Offers a Maps App
Reactions on quote from twitter include @atanas “Isn’t that true about everything?” and @whisperangela “In most cases, we did nine things right, and one thing wrong, the whole credibility was ruined. I call it: 9 + 1 = 0.”

“The approaches presented here offer landscape architecture a long-overdue reconciliation of the depiction of the ground as a site of design with the geological and geographic, the regional and the territorial.”
Current exhibition at the Harvard Graduate School of Design: Cartographic Grounds: Projecting the Landscape Imaginary

The Esri ArcUser Fall 2012 issue is out! I’m pleased to see Cartographer’s Toolkit reviewed in the GIS Bookshelf section on page 60. You can also read the review online here.

The center of Hurricane Sandy is currently at 37.5 N and 71.5 W. It is predicted to make landfall near the Southern New Jersey coast this evening or tonight (NOAA). Listed in this post are a few of the interactive Hurricane Sandy maps that are available now. The greatest thing about all these maps? Near to real time updating! Maps like these make a huge difference for all those involved or watching from elsewhere in the world. Stay safe everyone.

The New York Times hurricane map has been lauded during past storms for being one of the easiest to understand interactive maps. It only has three layer choices (map, satellite, radar), and these choices are not presented to us in the usual GIS fashion. Instead of layer names with checkboxes, the three layer choices are presented as clickable icons.

The Google Crisis Map has channeled GIS design by incorporating a multitude of layer choices, all presented with check boxes. While I believe this could have been presented better, there are many people who appreciate this approach for its wealth of information.

Con Edison gives us a map of power outages in New York City. This one also has the similar-to-a-GIS feel, but we are nevertheless impressed with the fact that we have any information on this subject in real-time.

Similarly, National Grid also has put up a power outage map for its customers in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

A comprehensive overview of the path and several other map layers can be found at Weather Underground.

Here is a gas infrastructure map showing refineries, wholesale fueling stations, and pipelines in Hurricane Sandy’s path.

Here is another great one from The New York Times: New York City Evacuation Zones. This reminds me of a recent NYC crisis map with evacuation zones delineated — it was in PDF. This interactive one is a huge step forward.

In this webmap, Esri provides us with a map of the evacuation zones in New York City as well as some social media layers telling us the density of mentions via Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube.

Esri also provides us with an entire map gallery devoted to interactive Hurricane Sandy maps created by ArcGIS Online users.

Keep an eye on the hint.fm wind map for a visualization of wind patterns in the storm’s path.

Others?

The sign-up form is now available for those of you who would like to attend a class I am teaching on October 26, 2012 from 1pm to 5pm at Colorado State University. The class costs $60, payable by check at the workshop or by CSU account number and is open to anyone who would like to attend.

We are going to try and have a lot of fun in class. There will be oranges, exclusive videos on cartographic workflow from some of the best in the industry, cartoons, West Wing, and much more! There will be prizes! I may actually do a bit of teaching too!

I’ll bring copies of Cartographer’s Toolkit along so workshop attendees can buy them directly from me at a reduced price. I’ll take check or PayPal.

The rough outline of the workshop includes:

1. Introductions
2. Coordinate Systems
3. Label Placement
4. Typography
5. Color
6. Layout Design
7. Cartophilosophy
8. Career Considerations / Workflow Tools

Yes, we will discuss tools of the trade including both open source and proprietary tools. But, in keeping with the tool-agnostic philosophy behind both my cartographic design books, this workshop will primarily focus on the basics of good map design regardless of the tools or the media (static and dynamic).

For those who don’t know my credentials, I’ve written two books on the subject (see side-bar). Also, here is a blurb from a recent GIS Lounge article:

Gretchen Peterson is a well-known geospatial professional who has run her own GIS consulting firm, PetersonGIS, since 2001. She has worked on a wide range of GIS projects including (just to name a few) solar energy site suitability analysis, stream restoration prioritization, wildlife corridor design, and an archaeological sensitivity model. Her extensive experience with geographic analysis and mapping forms the baseline for the knowledge she shares in her publications on maps and cartography. Peterson shares her thoughts about cartography and the geospatial field regularly on her blog and via her @PetersonGIS twitter account.” ~GIS Lounge

• Geo means Earth. The Earth is in the shape of a geoid. Therefore, the Earth is the shape of the Earth. Any questions?

• Steve Waterman created a new projection called the Waterman Polyhedron in 1996 and updated it in 2012 with new satellite imagery. He wrote a poem about the projection. Anyone who writes a poem about projections has a sufficient mixture of outright nerdiness combined with risky creativeness to deserve our attention.

• There’s a new book called The Revenge of Geography that calls for a new profession dubbed sociography. The assertion is that the physical landscape has shaped the course of human history and will continue to do so in the future. If his thesis is correct, and most certainly it does have at least some veracity, then people who can design maps and interpret maps will be a shoe-in for this sociography role.