With Summer heating up the Sydney Morning Herald has run a piece on the ‘Nerve centre at heart of Australian fires’ – the GIS systems at the headquarters of the NSW Rural Fire Service.
And speaking of fires, the Converstion has a piece that tries to put the recent Tasmanian bushfires into perspective by analysing some of the data collected over the many decades of fire history in Australia.
On a lighter note, Big Think has an amazing palindromic map of the Earth – in that it can be read both upside down and … downside down? – you know, the normal way up. The point is that is that it’s very cleverly done, and needs to be seen to be believed.
The piece was also responsible for teaching me this tasty nugget of information:
“Modern maps are usually oriented towards the north, in the tradition of Ptolemy's Geographia. However, for sacral reasons, maps in the Middle Ages often had east 'up' – hence our word 'orientation'.”
“Modern maps are usually oriented towards the north, in the tradition of Ptolemy's Geographia. However, for sacral reasons, maps in the Middle Ages often had east 'up' – hence our word 'orientation'.”
Nextgov has a brief post talking of the US dat.gov’s plans to move to, and support, an Open Source platform, called the Open Government Platform.
Digitalglobe has collated some of the best satellite images relating to some of the biggest events of 2012 to create its latest WorldView report. Direct PDF link is here.
An interesting post from late December by The Verge talks of a New York paper’s decision to publish a map of all the registered gun owners in the state, including their names and addresses. Is this a public service, or a privacy breech?
The All Points Blog have an update on the situation, posted just yesterday.
The All Points Blog have an update on the situation, posted just yesterday.
Google Maps Mania points readers toward a map that displays the latest Instagram photos from a given area. Handy when you want to see some images of a current event, or just want to do some armchair tourism.
