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GIS Lounge points readers to a quaint (and quite beautiful) map that shows 92 years of Bigfoot sightings in the US and Canada.

With Christmas just around the corner, it’s only fitting that Google Maps Mania has a post showing off the Christmas-themed maps of the week, including an online advent calendar based around the city of Wellington, New Zealand.

Last week, I wrote about the possibility that Amazon will use drones to enable 30-minute delivery for small items. Discovery News has posted a video that addresses the issues surrounding it, and points out why this might just be pie in the sky thinking.

Sensors and Systems has a post talking about what the recent proliferation (last fortnight, two rockets carried 61 such devices) of low-cost, low-orbit micro satellites means for the future of Earth Observation.

Geospatial World has reported on a Washington Post story that asserts that the omniscient, secretive US National Security Agency (NSA) tracks the locations of over 5 billion mobile phones daily. More so, it is not only logging locations, but also the other phones in regular close proximity to any given phone, noting regular interactions and relationships between people. Privacy? What’s that?

The Safe Software Blog has a piece outlining Amazon’s recent announcement that its cloud Relational Database Service (RDS) now supports PostgreSQL, including PostGIS. You can now have scalable spatial databases hosted in the cloud – no database hardware, backup, or maintenance costs required!

And, on the opposite end of the Google Maps Mania spectrum, the site also has a map of the 50 most violent cities in the world. Sort of like an anti-tourist map, I suppose.