ClustrMaps

ClustrMaps
is back on the scene with a recent beta release.  I don’t know that it was ever completely off the scene, but I dropped my map sometime in the spring because it didn’t seem to be updating any longer. It’s quite likely that
they’ve worked around some of the problems they had late last fall with
high-traffic maphogs, sluggish updates and so on, although my current (re-added today)
ClustrMap’s reflection of two visits since July 27 suggests there’s still a
glitch or two with the beta rollout.  Or much worse, it’s accurate, meaning
that I’ve had just two visitors in 19 days (welcome to both of you, if that’s
the case).  Yet another (highly likely) possibility, you actually have to
have the map showing on your site for the visits to reflect.  Either way,
the beta release is available to others by invitation only from existing users. 
And so, since I signed up last October, I have two invitations
available–exactly enough to pass along to both of you.  No, seriously, if
you want a ClustrMap, just drop in a comment, and I’ll have one of the sign-ups
sent to your email.

Google Maps EZ

With
Google Maps EZ
, you can embed a marked

map
with ease and include links, text and images (all via HTML) in the
captions associated with each marker (via).


EXTENT

A

Alliance Bank Stadium


B

Alliance Bank Stadium

We
started out in right field,
but as the sun set, it was too
much to bear. Couldn’t
see into the sun. So we switched seats.
Not like it was a
packed stadium that night.
Here’s the perspective from our first
seats at around 6:30 p.m.


C

Alliance Bank Stadium


D

Alliance Bank Stadium

When I first tried it out earlier today, I was having trouble with the EXTENT
definitions.  With EXTENT, you can establish the scale and map type
(hybrid, map or satellite), thereby giving the map a stable look. 
The fancy dropcaps feature that I added to the blog a few weeks ago were interfering with the
"E"–grabbing it away from "XTENT" and clouding up the whole process.  With
that resolved, I’ve tried to push just a bit farther to mark the photographed
spaces at a Syracuse Sky Chiefs game in late July (could be anything though). 
Basically, I wanted to integrate the Flickr image sources for the thumbnail
views with links to the larger versions of the photos.  Click on the each of the markers to see what I mean. You can navigate the map with the control buttons, too. In concept, it’s similar to geo-tagging in Flickr, except that it’s localized, speedier and needs
only to work with the images you involve.  I haven’t had much success with
geo-tagging, actually; even after I’ve tagged photos, they only sporadically
cycle into Mappr, and the KML bit with Google Earth doesn’t notice them after a
week.  Always possible that I’m doing something wrong, of course. 

Continue reading →

Mapping Contenders: A More Writable Space

Over at The Map
Room
, Jonathan Crowe posted a

few

notes about MSN
Virtual Earth
that tipped me on to a few ideas and the
Virtual Earth weblog
where MSN is inviting input.  In light of the clamor raised over two
notable features at Virtual Earth–the
absence of Apple headquarters and the
presence of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, Crowe verifies (if there was
any doubt) that VE uses "very old imagery."  As I see it, the age
of the satellite images concerns me less than their superior resolution. 
Right, already
been over this
.

Continue reading →

Wanderlust

I’ve downloaded Google
Earth
.  It’s loaded with visual-planetary wonder:  fly-overs,
angular adjustments, and surprisingly clear shots of the terrain.  The
upgrade, which allows
annotations (something I might use) and .csv or GPS imports, tech support and
crisper printing (stuff I might not use), is tempting for just twenty bucks. 
But for now I’m content to mess around with the free version.  (via)

Here’s a look at the main interface (simple, easy to use) and, in it, a
from-above view of SU’s main campus.

SU from Google Earth

A Comp-landia Itinerary

Encouraged by

C.’s comment at cgbvb
and entries by
Jeff and

Donna
, I’m in on the carnival; flipped through Fulkerson’s essay in the
latest CCC (56.4) this afternoon.  My general impression is that it’s an
interesting overview of the discipline–engaging for the divisions he suggests
and for the grim note that caps the essay.  Good carnival entries
(jus’ sharpening the axiology), I think, keep it to a few points, raise
questions or pull on knots, puzzles and so on. Right?  So, on:

Continue reading →

Bellwether

Over the weekend I finished up Connie Willis’ 1996 novel Bellwether
It was the between-semesters pleasure-read I made space for.  I overheard
C. and
M. chatting about it one
day this spring; decided it’d be worth a quick read if it made both of their
lists. And so reading lists spread.

Basically, Bellwether is the story of a diffusion researcher, Sandra
Foster, and her work on fads.  Foster is concerned with hair-bobbing and,
as well, with other inexplicable flare-ups of activity.  She maps the 
flashes of pop anomaly in space and time, works to discern the forces figuring
into the genesis and spread of fads, runs statistics to trace patterns and
trends.   Each sub-chapter leads off  with a blurb on a specific
fad–coonskin caps, mah-jongg, diorama wigs–and the narrative is laced with
allusions to Robert Browning’s
Pied
Piper
and

Pippa Passes
.  I was familiar enough with the Pied Piper of Hamelin; in
fact, reading Bellwether reminded me of an encounter with P.P. when I was young:
Mom had a hair appointment in Rosebush and it was the only kids book (only one I
remember, anyway) in the waiting area.  Read and read and read that story. 
The references to Pippa Passes were unfamiliar and something of a pleasant
surprise.  Pippa, as framed second-hand in the novel, is an elusive,
fantastic figure–one who influences others from the obscure periphery, whose
passing song carries from a distance and leaves its mark without Pippa
full-knowing.  In this sense, Pippa mirrors the annoying office assistant,
Flip, who unwittingly proliferates fads while fumbling through her duties as an
office assistant at HiTek, the lab where Foster works.  And a third
mirroring: the bellwether itself, as an exceptional looks-like-a-sheep,
smells-like-a-sheep leader who impacts the herd without much cognizance of her
persuasive impact.

I don’t think I’ve ruined it yet–for those who haven’t read this one. 
S. mentioned recently that she finished Doomsday Book by Willis;
Bellwether
is the first I’ve picked up, but I look forward to reading more
of her stuff, perhaps during a future between-semesters break (now that my
summer course on genre theory has officially started–today).

Here’s just one more keeper on research-mapping models from
B’wether
.  There’s a place mid-way through where Foster is at a
friend’s house for a birthday party. The friend’s kid, Peyton, is in her room as
a punishment, and Foster goes in to use the telephone–a conversation with her
rancher friend who ends up providing the sheep herd for research.  Rather
than skulking through the punishment, young Peyton appears to be doodling, but
instead she’s line-charting–with a series of squiggles–her Barbie’s
predilection for this or that (shopping, riding mopeds, dating) because
"everybody’s doing it."

It was a map, in spite of what Peyton had said.  A combination map and
diagram and picture, with an amazing amount of information packed onto one page:
location, time elapsed, outfits worn.  An amazing amount of data.

And it intersected in interesting ways, the lines crossing and recrossing to
form elaborate intersections, radical red changing to lavender and orange in
overlay.  Barbie only rode her moped in the lower half of the picture, and
there was a knot of stars in one corner.  A statistical anomaly?

I wondered if a diagram-map-story like this would work for my twenties data. 
I’d tried maps and statistical charts and computational models, but never all
three together, color-coded for date and vector and incidence.  If I put it
all together, what kinds of patterns would emerge? (122)