LiDAR reveals the underlying history of a landscape. Image from Kate Johnson.

GIS Lounge has a fascinating post on ‘LiDAR and the archaeology revolution’, which highlights some of the ways that LiDAR is being used to remotely locate areas of interest to archaeologists, including otherwise overlooked townships.

Also on GIS Lounge also has an interesting history of the Mercator projection, including some current criticisms of it.

The BBC has an article that talks of a recent patent put forward by Google that offers not only ads, but free transport to the retailer/restaurant behind the ad. The idea is that technology like Google Now will know when you’re looking for food, and can pop up a food discount, as well as the ability to get to the restaurant, free of charge. This will be made possible by Google’s investment in San Franciscan car-hire network, Uber, as well as Google’s R&D in driverless cars.

Also on the BBC is an update on some of the data extracted from the now-completed GOCE gravity satellite mission, including evidence of ancient subduction zones.

Inside GNSS has an interesting journal article that uses a 3D model of a city, in tandem with analysis of the (usually problematic) GNSS signals blocked by buildings in cities, to figure out location in urban canyons. A very clever up-side to a usually frustrating problem.

LiDAR News has a post on some research being conducted over at MIT that aims to be able to use just one single photon to determine the range of an object. If successful, it will allow laser rangefinders to infer depth from a hundredth as much light — and to produce images from only one nine-hundredth the light.

Google Maps Mania has a post on how to create story maps using Google Maps, including an open-source tool to help you along.

GMM also has a map of preventable disease outbreaks, that highlights outbreaks of measles, mumps, whooping cough, polio, rubella, and other diseases that are easily preventable by inexpensive and effective vaccines.