Mapping Happiness!

This is great: somehow they quantified 'happiness' from geotagged tweets and mapped it across the United States (detailed methods are included in a paper). And the happiest city is: Napa (CA), whereas Beaumont (TX) appears to be the saddest city.

• The Happiest City in the USA
• Real-time Happiness Updates!

Co.DESIGN has a good article on this project.

Here's a map of the average state happiness - go Maine!

Open States

Open States offers searchable legislative data for all 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Find your lawmakers, track bills, and more. Learn more about it with their YouTube demo. Also available as iPhone and iPad apps.

An Online Ice Sheet Model!

This is great: an online ice sheet model: Javascript Ice Sheet Model (J-ISM)

• J-ISM (running in your browser)
• Source code (on GitHub)
• Instructions here and here

Update (14 September 2013): SICOPOLIS 3.1 released.

Demographics Differently!

National Geographic created this great interactive map showing the distribution, quantity, and origin of last names in different parts of the USA: What's in a Surname?

Maps You Never Needed!

This is a great compilation of weird and quirky maps:

• 38 Maps You Never Knew You Needed (from BuzzFeed)
• For more immature readers: Vaguely Rude Place Names Of The World

The Greenhouse Effect

There are 100s of diagrams illustrating the greenhouse effect available online - here's one that captures the main features in a simple way:

Source

Making Infographics

Want to make your own Infographics? Here are some useful tools:

• Stately. A font for creating maps of the United States - clever! Read more about Stately at Co.DESIGN.
• Chartwell. A font-based program for making graphs without using a spreadsheet - cool! Read more about it at Co.DESIGN.

More software for creating Infographics (and much more) can be found on my GIS Resources website at Westfield State University.

Infographics: Greenland, Albedo, Sea Level

Infographics are all the rage right now - here are a few related to climate change, sea level rise, and the Greenland Ice Sheet.

• Polarseeds.org Infographics

Man Walking A Dog

This is brilliant: Trend and variations explained using a man walking a dog!

Create A Graph

This is perhaps a bit outdated now that Google Docs are available, but this is still a fun and simple way to create graphs from data: Kids' Zone - Create A Graph
Even more retro: Simple Grid Graph Paper PDF Generator

NIE mGeo

This looks promising: an integrated data collection app for iOS to collect and save geographical information, data, photos, videos, and qualitative information. Apparently the app does not require a live Internet connection, but rather stores the data locally and syncs with the Cloud once an Internet connection is available.

NIE mGeo

Asteroid Crash

There are plenty of videos out there capturing the 15 February 2013 asteroid crash in southern Ural region of Russia - this is the best one I have seen: 2013 Russian asteroid event

Good background information is available on Wikipedia.
If case you are wondering why there are so many Russian dash-cam videos around on the Internet...

The Rich vs. The Poor

Here you have an interactive map showing income and rent costs for every neighborhood in the United States (based on the American Community Survey data).

Rich Blocks, Poor Blocks

Screenshot for Holyoke (MA)

How far is the Moon anyways?

This is a great video: How far is the Moon from the Earth? People have no idea - why? We constantly see diagrams and figures depicting the Earth and the Moon close together (perhaps with a spacing of 1 Earth radius or diameter). But these diagrams are not to scale because they have to show enough detail while still fitting onto the page of a book or onto a computer/smartphone/tablet screen.

Video: How Far Away is the Moon?

Also excellent: How Big is the Solar System? and The Solar System - Our Home in Space!

After watching that...have a look at how graduates from Harvard University explain to you what causes the seasons. We all have the incorrect impression that our orbit around the Sun is highly elliptical and thus it intuitively makes sense to think of the Earth closer to the Sun in the summer - wrong!

Harvard Graduates Explain Seasons

The Moon, The Earth, and The USA

Great map! The continental USA draped over the moon.

Source: It's Okay To Be Smart

How's My Waterway?

A new website by the EPA about water quality and stream conditions based on ArcGIS Online: How's My Waterway?

Twister - meet Nemo!

This is what happens when a tornado track (1 June 2011) meets a Nor'easter named Nemo:

It's a little difficult to see - click on the image for a larger version or check the NASA website for the full-resolution version.

That thin white line paralleling the southern border of Massachusetts is the snow-covered tornado track.

inklewriter and Story Maps

Hmm - this looks fun and possibly useful: a tool for writing interactive 'stories' that can be published as eBooks. Sounds like the perfect way to write textbooks for MOOCs: inklewriter
Somewhat related: Storytelling with Maps (by Esri) - they provide all the templates and base layers.

The Geography of Wikipedia

This is great: many Wikipedia articles are geotagged (I did not know that) = geospatial information you can map into images that show culture, history, lifestyles, and more.

• The Geographic Structure of Wikipedia
• Mapping Wikipedia

Map of Wikipedia articles about mountains, glaciers, etc.

ArcGIS 10.1 and Windoze 8

This should be easy - not! Here's helpful video:

US Geography

This is old-school geography: simple, yet fun and somewhat addictive!
Know Your States!

What's wrong with Mercator?

This is a great clip from The West Wing (Season 2, Episode 16): The Gall-Peters Projection


I could not explain it better myself!

Related: The True Size of Africa and Gall-Peters Projection

Physics and Science Education

I'm not a physicist...and they can be quite annoying with their we-know-it-all attitude, but here are two great online sources (mostly physics, but also some more useful general science):

• Minute Physics: Short videos about physics and sometimes other sweet science.
• Radiolab: A show about curiosity.

Animated GIFs

Animated GIFs have been around forever and seemingly have been replaced by new cooler technology - but maybe not:

See more on Patakk's tumblr blog: http://patakk.tumblr.com/ or at Co.DESIGN

Panoramic Photography

How about some amazing photographs?

• 2012: The Year in Volcanic Activity
• 360 degree aerial panorama of an erupting volcano in Russia
• Amazing giga-pixel panorama of Mount Everest

Worldmapper

This is one of the best teaching tools I have seen: Worldmapper

Cartograms of the world with the underlying data as MS Excel spreadsheets - great!

Mercator Map Puzzle

This is fun: the Mercator Projection progressively distorts areas as you move north or south away from the equator - here's a fun online puzzle to demonstrate that.

• Mercator Puzzle

Tweet, Flickr, and Facebook Maps!

(Near) real-time global twitter activity map - mesmerizing to watch!
http://tweetping.net/

Flickr and Twitter mapped together! (More information here)
Facebook Friends (More information here)