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The ultra-hip stroller maker Bugaboo has added a new site showing day trip walks in major cities around the world.  Each trip is presented with unique maps created by various artists. (via Quipsologies)

Bill Slawski of SEO by the Sea gives a good overview of a new patent filing by Google for Place Rank and Interestingness, a new system for placing community value on geographic locations.

Akamai, a major provider of internet media trafficking, has a Real-Time Web Monitor map.  It can show traffic, latency, and attacks.  There are also some other interesting data visualizations from a dropdown menu on the page.

During the World Children’s Festival in Washington DC, Lego asked kids to help build a giant Lego map of the United States. (via BoingBoing)

The Breathing Earth map beautifully shows a simulated real-time view of births, deaths, and CO2 emissions across the world. It even sounds like a living organism.

Historian Christopher Marshall is heading an effort hosted by Maptech to create a collection of historic USGS topographic maps.

A new edition of Eduard Imhof’s classic book, Cartographic Relief Presentation, has been published by ESRI Press. It is available June 1st from ESRI Press or Amazon.

A team of researchers from UC-Boulder and Ohio State have made a “supermap” of the avian flu using Google Earth. The map includes genetic and geographic information, allowing researchers to track changes in the genomes of the flu sub-strains. The application was outlined in a publication in the journal Systematic Biology. A short movie is also available.

Recent evidence of global warming can be seen in the newly disconnected land mass from Greenland, named Warming Island. Here is a map showing the number of days per year that the icesheet melts in Greenland. If Greenland were to fully melt, experts say that would raise the ocean’s water levels by 23 feet.

Three years ago Eddie Jabbour, of Kick Design, created a beautiful and useful new version of the NYC subway map on his own time. He finally got a meeting with the MTA, which rejected the design. (via Design Observer)

The USGS upgraded their online store to improve the searching of U.S topographic maps and to add the capability of downloading free GeoPDF files (georeferenced PDF maps). Simply search the Google map within the USGS Store - Map Locator & Downloader, select a point on the map, double-click the icon and download your map. If you don’t have the GeoPDF Toolbar for Adobe Acrobat you will need to get it from here.

The USGS released a new set of maps and animations showing the potential effects of sea level rise around the world. (via Light Blue Line)

Cambridge, Mass. is planning to implement a sensor network using city lights as data collection points. The CitySense project is being run by researchers from Harvard University and Cambridge-based BBN Technologies.

Ryan Bigge explores the history and sociology of helvetica, the famed 20th century modern typeface used on many 20th century maps.

On his Vector One blog Jeff Thurston opines whether the now thousands of mashed-up-maps are really useful to anyone (cached version) other than the developers flexing their technological skills.