American Presidential Election 2012 Map-a-Thon: Where to Vote and What is on the Ballot

In celebration of democratic-republicanism, Geographic Travels will be blogging interesting maps based on the upcoming election between President Barack Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney.

Google has a great tool which shows the proper place to vote and a lengthy ballot summary.  All one has to do is enter in their residential address and the information appears.  I wonder if their are any similar tools for foreign country elections.

Weather Tools on Google Earth

Google Earth Blog pointed out that Google Earth has a neat weather layer built-in for easy viewing.  "Simply by turning on the [Clouds] and [Radar] layers inside of the main [Weather] layer, you can get a great look at clouds and precipitation around the world."  Be sure to check out Google Earth Blog's Weather Toolbox for more in-depth tools to try out.

From Google Earth Blog

Meteorology is a weak point of mine so it will be interesting to see if I can successfully use these tools to gain a better understanding of weather systems.

How to Import Google Fusion Tables into Google Maps

Naveen Sidda has made a great tutorial on how to import Google Fusion spreadsheet table data into Google Maps.  As Google products slowly grow more advanced into the field of GIS (neo-GIS? GIS 2.0?) this is a useful skill to learn.

GeoThentic: The Useful Geography Eduation Tool

When National Geographic released their Geo-Literacy videos I did a rebuttal video showing how geographers should emphasizes how geographic thinking is a marketable and useful skill for a wide set of real world problems.



I received positive feedback from many readers as well as questions as to why National Geographic does not do something similar.  Well, apparently National Geographic is involved with something incredibly useful (though none of my teacher contacts knew about it).  GeoThentic is a joint project between the University of Minnesota and National Geographic which uses real world-like scenarios to introduce geographic thinking and geosptial tools.  The program is free for teachers to register and use.

From a description of the online software:

Currently, the software offers five modules: Build a Hospital, Global Climate Change, Avian Flu, Build a Stadium and Population Density. Within these modules, students play the role of a geographer, taking advantage of various digital resources and data to determine, for instance, where the best place is in San Francisco to build a hospital, or which U.S. states will be most impacted by population growth and decline by the year 2100.

This is the type of examples the public wants to see on why geography matters.  Now if only National Geographic would tell people about it.


Do you have a geography project idea which the public would also find informative and useful?  Be sure to register for the Geographic Travels Geo-Literacy Outreach Awards!

Light Pollution Simulator for Great Britain and Half of Ireland

Needless, a campaign to curb light pollution at night, has created a fascinating online program called Night Sky Simulator which demonstrates how light pollution blocks out the stars for Great Britain and the eastern half of the island of Ireland.  One can zoom to any point in the study area and see what is loss due to human created light.

Light pollution is not all that bad.  It is a sign of progress, compare North Korea's dark skies to South Korea's light pollution.  I would take living in South Korea any day over North Korea.  However, humanity and nature lose a certain something with the loss of the stars.  I remember thinking how sad the sky was at midnight around Washington DC after I came back from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tutorials for Map Mashups and GIS

Ever wanted to make a Google Map or another map mashup?  Ever wanted to use GIS to explore data and make simple maps?  Found the standard tutorials too hard?  Well forunately there is hope: tutorials made by non-geographers. 

The Knight Digitial Media Foundation at the University of California Berkley's Graduate School of Journalism has a series of easy to read, understand, and use tutorials on how to make your own maps or use QGIS, a free GIS program.

Those who already know how to use QGIS or make a mashup will learn nothing new.  However, students and a curious public will indeed get the skills they need to indulge their inner cartographer.  (Hat Tip: Der Hunter)

Traffic Maps of Major United States Cities

Checking the morning traffic reports is a daily ritual for many Americans.  Some wait for the traffic report on the television news before they head out while others get their updates on the radio while they are driving to work.  Many local news sites have traffic reports for their metropolitan area but the coverage is limited and quality can be hit and miss.

Navteq, maker of GPS products, has a website of live maps showing traffic updates for several dozen American metropolitan areas.  The traffic map shows the intensity of traffic, number of incidents, road construction sites, planned events, and "jam" factor.  The data is high-quality and is the same data Navtez uses in the car GPS products.  This is an excellent resource for those who are interested in their daily commute, wish to study traffic flows, or who are just curious.

How to Make Your Very Own Twitter Map

Let us say a massive wave of anti-government protests breaks out in Iran again.  Protesters, the press, and Iranian government will be following the Twitter hashtag to figure out the youth leaders demands, activities, obstacles, and rally points.  But you want to go one step further and see where these hastag tweets are coming from.  Thankfully, due to this easy to follow ESRI blog post, it is possible to make a map which plots spatially-located tweets based on search terms.  Now you can research the next protest, flashmob, or earthquake with easy by using this very neat tool! (Hat tip: Tom Baker)

Ultimate Travel Visa Requirement Finder

Coming Anarchy links to one of the most useful tools for people planning international trips: Emirates' Visa Requirements Finder.  The tool allows one to enter their nationality, alien residency if applicable, destination, and countries travelling through.  The tool then pumps out visa requirements and any other necessities.  The information is provided by International Air Transport Association so it is not guaranteeing but it is good for reference and to star planning a trip.

Map World: China's Response to Google Maps

First France made their own version of Google Maps and then India followed up with their own.  Now, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has made Map World as their rebuttal to Google.  This Google-rival is probably more neogeography-friendly than the others were at their launch with built in support for tools like feature creators, rulers, map pins, etc.

The resolution for the PRC is very good in most cases.  Foreign lands including the those held by the Republic of China (Taiwan) are not as detailed, however.  Oogle Earth has encountered some problems with the 3D support.  User beware: the website is in simplified Chinese characters and it is hosted by the PRC government.

I went map hopping to see if I could find any interesting nationalism built in the program.  At first it was standard: Taiwan shown as a province, Indian-claimed lands shown as Chinese, etc.  But then I looked at Israel (which is a major military partner of the PRC).  The map shows the 1947 UN partition proposal as the borders!  Yes, the PRC does recognize the "State of Palestine" as declared in the late 1980s but no one in decades has argued for the 1947 proposed borders rejected by the Arab states to be the borders for Israel and Palestine.  The last time I saw the 1947 proposed borders for the State of Israel was in a 1970s Soviet atlas.  This is a weirdness I cannot explain.

Is this official PRC policy?  I do not think so...

School Raitings for 4th and 8th Grade Math and Reading Scores

This weekend I saw Waiting for Superman and was depressed by it.  The effect cultural decline and failing schools have had on the United States is sad.  What it especially sad for many families is their inability to compare their schools with others and hopefully find a way out, either public or private, for their children.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have teamed up with others to create the Education Nation Scorecard for Schools website.  The website allows one to search for schools across the United States and compare the searched school with other schools, both public and private.  Data is given for the school, other schools in the state, and the United States versus other developed countries.  Reading and math scores for fourth and eighth grade are given as well as graduation rates.

Only 14% of DC eighth graders read at an eighth grade level.  But then again "high preforming" states like Massachusetts are under 50% reading at their grade level.

The results are saddening. The nation's capital, Washington D.C., is a blight on the country.  Only 14% of all eighth graders read at an eighth grade level and only 56% of Washingtonian kids will graduate high school (Nevada is worse with 51% graduating).  Then again, even "high scoring" states are under 50%.

This tool is useful for those looking to move to a new town.  Use this website to scope out the neighborhoods you are interested in moving to and see if your child(ren) will be going to a truly high preforming school.

Crowdmap: Make Your Own Intensity Maps

An example of Crowdmap: Haiti Earthquake internally displaced persons (IDP) camps

Crowdmap is a neat little yet powerful tool which allows users to make their own intensity maps for free.  The tool is completely online and does not require any downloading.  These sorts of intensity maps became popular during the Haiti earthquake and recent conflicts like the last Israel-Hamas War.

It is easy to categorize data entries. A timeline tool is also available for one to add a temporal dimension to the spatial data.  However, what truly seperates Crowdmap, and its earlier incarnation Ushahidi, from other tools is that it combines elements of Web 2.0 to allow for instant updating via crowd sourcing (imagine neogeography meets the open contributor policy of Wikipedia).  Updates can be submitted by text messaging, Twitter, or filling out a web form.

The learning curve is extremely shallow and setup is down within minutes.  Check out Vote Report India or Swine Flu for examples of what one can do with this powerful neogeography tool.

Big Update: How to Create a Legend in Google Earth

This is a big update from an old post.  Now it is possible to simply copy and paste the code into Notebook.

For my Russia-Georgia War maps I had a fixed non-movable legend in the bottom left corner of the screen. I preferred the legend because it provided a solid reminder of what date was being shown and it promoted the blog.

First, create a legend in an image editing software and save as an image file like .jpg, .bmp, or .gif. Second, open Notepad. Then type/copy in the code below into Notepad.

Only the name, description, and icon data need to be changed. The icon path should be something like "c:\maps\russiageorgia\legend.jpg

<ScreenOverlay id=”legend”>

<name>Give the file a display name</name>

<description>Write what you want displayed in the properties textbox</description>

<Icon><href>Write the path to the legend image</href></icon>

<overlayXY  x=”0” y=”.055” xunits=”fraction” yunits=”fraction”/>

<screenXY  x=”0” y=”.055” xunits=”fraction” yunits=”fraction”/>

<rotation>0</rotation><size x=”0” y=”0” xunits=”pixels” yunits=”pixels”/>

</ScreenOverlay>

When the text is inserted save the file as something like "legend.kml". Make sure the file is not saved as a text file. Now go into Google Earth and open the saved kml file. Your legend should be displayed. Using Google Earth you can make it change how opaque it is.

Map-Driven Population Estimater

Columbia University's Socioeconomic Data and Application Center (SEDAC) has made a Google Maps mashup that estimates population. The Population Estimation Service is graphically driven and the first online tool that can do population estimation. It is fairly easy to use but there is a slight learning curve as one click does not only pan (like normally in Google Maps) but also starts creating the polygon to mark an area for a population estimation. (Hat Tip: Catholicgauzette)

Ordnance Survey Releases Data for Free

Back in November I wrote about Free Our Data's fight to have the United Kingdom's Ordnance Survey (OS) release government generated geospatial data. Well, victory has been declared. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has authroized OS is give away much of their data. OS OpenData Supply is OS' main database website where one can download most of the United Kingdom geospatial data needs.

Convert Garmen GPS Waypoints and Tracks Directly to GIS Shapefiles

Last week I was preparing for field work when I encountered a technical issue. ArcGIS would not synch up with my GPS unit. After trying and failing to get ArcGIS to synch I decided to use Garmin' MapSource program to download the waypoints and tracks and then upload them to ArcGIS. However, MapSource would not allow me to save my data in shapefile (.SHP) format. (To make matters worse my field laptop cannot handle Google Earth so I feared I was doomed).

Fortunately; however, I managed to find the Minnesotan Department of Natural Resource's Garmin Application. The program allow gives "users the ability to directly transfer data between Garmin GPS handheld receivers and various GIS software packages. Using this program a user can use point features (graphics or shapefile) and upload them to the GPS as Waypoints. Line and Polygon Graphics or shapes can be uploaded to the GPS as Track Logs or Routes. Conversely, Waypoints, Track Logs, and Routes collected using the GPS can be transferred directly to ArcView/ArcMap/Google Earth/Landview and saved as Graphics or Shapefiles."

So this program allows for easy back and forth data sharing between GIS and GPS. While many GIS programs now allow for easy data sharing this program can be of use to geographers and others who for some reason or another lack that ability.

OpenOrienteeringMap: Create Your Own Orienteering Map

Long time readers wknow that I am a fan of orienteering, a sport that combines outdoor track and map reading. One of the most distinct things of the sport is the unique map that is required. Many times it is difficult to find a map for an area let alone pay for a set to play with.

Fortunately some minds managed to combine OpenStreetMap with Orienteering to create OpenOrienteeringMap (Hat tip: Map Room Blog) One can go to any place on the Earth and use either a street or pseudo-orienteering basemap and then add control points. While the more serious orienteering clubs already have their geographic supplies, this is one tool for us amateurs to enjoy when we play.

Search for Your Ideal American Geography Graduate School Program

PhDs.org has a very useful tool for those interested in searching for the right geography program at the university level.  The tool is very customizable as one it gives the option to sort rankings by user-valued importance of variables like education quality, faculty, tuition, financial support, student demographics, program size, and undergraduate selectivity.  Each school has a multi-page, indepth profile that breaks down all data a student would be interested in (Check out Kansas State University's program for an example).

While the tool only ranks schools with a graduate program, its results are useful for undergraduates who are willing to travel for a geographic education.

Haiti Earthquake Shaking Intensity by Address

For those who have family or friends in Haiti the Haiti Earthquake Shaking Intensity tool allows one to enter in an address in Haiti (either in French or English) to see USGS-supplied data on how intense the earthquake was at the location. The tool is not pretty, merely a textbox, but it shows how the marriage of geographical data and the internet is aiding researchers, rescuers, and families in times of crises and peace.

Track Santa Live with NORAD!

As always, NORAD, the United State military command that watches for incoming nuclear missiles from Russia, the People's Republic of China, and other potential hostile regimes has been monitoring Santa's progress as he travels all around the world.  The Official NORAD Santa tracker went live at 6 am Eastern Time (US) in several languages.  Right now the jolly old fat man is in New Zealand but he is making his way west.   In this era of Web 2.0 Santa and NORAD have also set up a Twitter feed.

For brief background and neat tidbits of information like why NORAD has been following the man since 1955, read Wired's article on just how NORAD tracks the red man.