Saturday, March 11, 2006

Seeing the World

As I've commented on before, mapping and mash-ups are on the rise, and new maps are appearing quicker than British colds. Worldchanging is also following this trend and commenting upon it. Here is an edited extract from their latest on this:

"We're not alone in this appreciation of spatial displays of information, and the variety of maps out there -- either novel designs or "mash-ups" using Google Earth -- keeps growing at a pleasingly rapid pace. Here are some of those that have caught our eye over the last couple of weeks, but I want to start with some thoughts as to where the trend may go.

The Earthtop Interface: Imagine something like Google Earth (or something very similar) as your main computer interface. You connect to email, voice over IP calls, web pages, even work tools through a geographic metaphor instead of a desktop metaphor.

The Earthtop Interface may not be the most efficient user interface design, but that's okay; it would be worth trying out, if only as a tool for virtual organizations and remote collaboration.

Poverty Mapping: Poverty Mapping collects indicators of economic and social development around the globe.

Stopping Extinction 6.5: Biologists often talk about the "sixth extinction," the wave of species deaths ongoing today, largely attributed to human activity.

Daily Disaster Maps: Budapest, Hungary-based Havaria Information Service has assembled an AlertMap of global disaster events.

GeoNews: GeoNews mashes up RSS-driven news reports and Google Maps, resulting in a geographic display of where major events are taking place.

Making the News: Word of novel uses of online mapping tools has started to hit the mainstream."

Read full post here

No comments: