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In February of 1996, R.R. Donnelly & Sons, a publishing company founded in 1960, turned their gas-station-map division MapQuest into the first online consumer mapping web site. Over a decade later MapQuest.com serves up over 1.1 billion maps and routes each month. Of course MapQuest is not alone. In 1998, Microsoft launched the Expedia.com travel site, which included an address and directions finder map (full disclosure: I designed that original Expedia map). Eventually ESRI, Yahoo, Google, and a multitude of others jumped into the online map game. MapQuest was bought by AOL and while still popular is not the dominant mapping site any more. Microsoft’s Expedia maps morphed into MSN Maps and then into it’s latest incarnation called Live Maps.

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Note: We first mentioned this map in a Blurb a couple of weeks ago. We asked Eddie Jabbour if he would be kind enough to tell us a little more about why and how he created this map and he graciously agreed. - The Editor

The Kick Map’s purpose is to get more people to ride New York City’s subway system. Designed with clarity and ease of use, it allows riders to navigate this vast system easily and without uncertainty.

The subway map is the key to understanding this most complex subway in the world, which has 26 separate lines and 468 stations. A well-designed map not only welcomes and empowers novices to use the subway but also encourages additional use for regular “home-to-work-only” commuters to use the subway for recreational destinations where they might otherwise take a car. For this reason the design of the subway map can directly influence ridership numbers and can indirectly have an effect on New York’s traffic congestion and pollution.

In short, a better-designed subway map will make our subway system more open and accessible. (more…)

In 1918, at the close of World War 1, Latvia experienced a shortage of paper. The Germans had withdrawn from Latvia, but left behind a significant number of topographic maps printed on high quality paper. Nothing made more sense than to adapt these surplus topographic maps for a different use – as postage stamps. (images from this eBay auction)

The stamps were printed on the verso of the topographic maps, perforated, and the map side was gummed. Nearly twelve thousand map sheets were converted into stamps in this manner. A huge amount of information about these map stamps (including many images) can be found at the Latvian Map Stamps page.

Adaptive reuse is a term typically used in the context of buildings. The Ross Art Museum at Ohio Wesleyan, where I teach, is the old city post office. It actually works really well as an art gallery, with the tall ceilings, great natural light, and solid early 20th century architecture.

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The map nicknamed “America’s Birth Certificate” was officially presented by the German Chancellor to the U.S. Library of Congress on Monday, April 30^th, 2007. The now famous Waldseemüller World Map (Universalis Cosmographia) is the first known map to reference the New World as America and thus make a distinction between the American and Asian continents. Since 2001, the Library of Congress has been the process of acquiring the map from Prince Johannes Waldburg-Wofegg for US$10 million. Although the deal was finalized in 2003, the official transfer had been delayed due to the legal status of the map in Germany as a cultural artifact. (more…)

My daughter Libby, who is an inquisitive four and a half years old, recently asked me how difficult it would be to explore Mars…as she is already expressing a strong interest in exploring the heavens after attending “astronaut college” when she becomes an adult. Thanks to some recent efforts by the European Space Agency, those efforts to explore outer space have become just a little easier in recent weeks.

Approximately ten weeks ago, the ESA released the first topographic maps of the Martian surface, compiling footage from their Mars Express spacecraft. Nicknamed “hiker’s maps,” the images use contour lines to show the heights of the landscape. Contour lines are superimposed upon high-resolution images of Mars, taken by the High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) onboard Mars Express.

It may not be in my daughter’s lifetime when human beings will have a chance to tour the Martian surface. However, advances in technology are helping us get to know the Red Planet on a much more intimate level than has ever before been possible. To view a few “hiking maps” of Mars on the ESA web site, you may visit: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMOI5O2UXE_0.html

CartoBlog is an extension of CartoTalk, the premiere online resource for cartographers.  Blog authors include Nick Springer, Derek Tonn, John Krygier, Michael Page, Ben Bakelaar, and Jean-Louis Rheault.

Enjoy what is to come,
Nick Springer
CartoTalk Founder