Stating, “We’re German, we’ve got beards, and we’re making maps awesome again!”, cartographer Simon Schuetz’s  has created a Kickstarter project for a  hand-illustrated, global “bucket list” map.  It’s great to see some careful cartography being produced, and, with the Kickstarter campaign already at 4x its funding goal, it’s great to see a market for it, too.

Cute alert! Researchers at the Royal Veterinary College loaded a group of cats in Shamley Green, Surrey, with cameras and GPS trackers to figure out how roaming house cats spend their days.

NASA is showing off some Landsat imagery comparisons that highlight the recent flooding of the Elbe River in Germany.

Mostly Maps has a post that shows off some of the 150 years of celebrations for the London Underground, including some memorial maps constructed completely from LEGO.

Xconomy states that DigitalGlobe is looking to expand, adding more than 500 jobs, and moving to new headquarters.

Prioleau Advisors has an interesting take on Google’s acquisition of Waze – stating that it was a defensive move, and offering ways (Waze?) for competitors to successfully compete with “the world’s only mapping superpower.”

And, in further Google/Waze news, the All Points Blog have posted an article by TechCrunch that reckons that the acquisition could prompt a patent fight from Nokia. Ah, patent fights: is there no more grand waste of time and money?

And, to round up this week, Google Maps Mania has a post that looks at the data behind a controversial political map. It’s not quite House of Cards, but it’s very interesting, nonetheless.