Mapping Guns!

This is MAD: Mapping Arms Data - a visualization of global exports and imports of small arms and ammunition. This takes a little while to load and initially looks chaotic (maybe because that's what the arms trade is?). It's easiest to click on a specific country and look at the different arms categories (military, civilian, ammo, unspecified).

• MAD
• Information about MAD

WTF Charts, Graphics, and Visualizations

Here are three fun and scary compilations of bad, ugly, and sometimes deceitful visualizations used in the media and politics.

• Senate Floor Charts
• WTF Visualizations
• Ugly Charts (compiled by FlowingData)

Bizarre Borders

Two fun videos by C.G.P. Grey:

• Bizzare Borders (Part 1)
• Bizzare Borders (Part 2)

Where Does Stuff Come From?

Sourcemap is a crowd-sourced directory of supply chains and environmental footprint - as interactive maps! Where do products come from, what they’re made of, and how they impact people and the environment? Always interesting in this context: The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard.

Mapping a Supply Chain with Carbon, Water and Energy Footprints from Sourcemap on Vimeo.

The Geography of Food

Nice analysis and maps by Nathan Yau (aka FlowingData):

• Food Deserts
• Grocery Store Geography

UAVs in Science and Glacier Research

Here is an actual practical example of using a UAV in a real scientific application - not just to get some cool pictures and video, but to construct a high-resolution DEM for a remote glacier in the Canadian Arctic.

• Whitehead et al. (2013, The Cryosphere)
• Additional Information
• Outlander/CropCam UAV
• Inpho Software

Here's a nice review paper: UAVs as remote sensing platform in glaciology: Present applications and future prospects (Bhardwaj et al. 2016, Remote Sensing of Environment 175).

Bikeshare Maps

Here are five great bikeshare maps / visualizations.

• Bike Share Map. This is a global map, but you can click-on each city displayed to see its real-time information.
• Bike Movements in NYC and DC. As the tile says: this map shows average bike availability in New York City and Washington, D.C., both for the entire city as well as individual stations.
• Bike Trip Visualizer. Here you can explore, for each bikeshare station, where people go and come from (currently available for Washington, D.C., Montreal, Boston, and Minneapolis/St.Paul).
• BikeShare Data Video. 32,000 trips between 4 and 8 October in Washington, D.C.
• CitiBike in NYC. Interactive maps and analysis of station popularity.

Bike Share Map for London

Funny!

FieldScope and More!

FieldScope is National Geographic's Community Geography Initiative: a web-based platform for the collection, analysis, mapping, and sharing of scientific data with a spatial dimension. This all sounds a bit like the GLOBE program (except for the spatial twist). Another great program, more focused on environmental activism than data collection, is Jane Goodall's Roots and Shoots.

National Geographic MapMaker

This is a well-done, simple, and effective flash-based web mapping tool: choose different themes, base layers, add features (point, lines, etc.), and annotate with text and web links. Then you can share, print, or download your map. All that without the annoying requirement to first create an account and log-in (see Esri or Google). Try it at National Geographic MapMaker Interactive.

WorldMap

WorldMap has been around for a while and is a great open-source alternative to ArcGIS Online. Of course, for those of us with an Esri site license we get more from ArcGIS Online (map services, analysis tools, etc.), but WorldMap remains a great way to make and share maps online.

Zelig

Zelig is - according to the folks developing it - everyone's statistical software. That may be partly correct: Zelig is based on R and all is open-source. Still I would expect it to be somewhat challenging to install and use...unless you are somewhat of a computer geek. How about instead using the actual statistical software for everyone: Microsoft Excel (or the OpenOffice alternative Calc)?

Measuring Temperature and Pressure with your Smartphone

This is great - here they crowd-sourced city air temperatures from the internal temperatures of millions of smartphone batteries. Now...I can't believe this really works, but read the paper for yourself. It was published in Geophysical Research Letters, a highly-reputable peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

• Overeem et al. (2013)
• OpenSignal
• WeatherSignal

Mass and Madaus (2014) describe another interesting application - measuring air pressure with smartphones that have a built-in barometer (e.g. Galaxy S V, etc.).

The Saddest Place in NYC?

Or rather: mapping the sentiments or moods of NYC based on Twitter.

• Article and press release
• Interactive map (warning: a bit slow to start...)

America's Busiest Air Routes

Simple and elegant: an interactive map of air travel routes in the USA. A zoom-tool would be a nice addition to better distinguish the air traffic mess in the Northeast.

Spatial Patterns Across the USA

Have a look yourself...

• The Drunkest, Dumbest, Best Food, Worst Food, etc.
• Regional Accents

Operation ARIES!

Well - not sure about this...but the idea is interesting: a online game designed to teach scientific reasoning and critical thinking. One key concept used here: adaptive tutoring in so-called trialogues between the actual student, a tutor, and another student who adapt their behavior according to the real student's responses.

• Operation ARIES!

Google Crisis Response and Map

This is a great service provided by Google - read more about the Google Crisis Response. However, even better, the mapping tool can also be used to quickly create and publish your own maps.

• Crisis Map Video
• Crisis Map Help
• Crisis Map Editor Documentation
• Crisis Map Video Tutorial
• Crisis Map Code
• Sign-in and start mapping!

Google Earth Gallery

Google Earth Gallery is a way to share your Google-based maps with the rest of the world. Whether you want to do that is another question...but here are some interesting examples:

• NASA Blue Marble
• Google Earth Imagery Updates
• USGS Earthquakes (last week)

Who Owns Your Digital Stuff?

What happens if Google and/or Facebook shut-down or start charging for their services?

I have been thinking about this for a while - we are 100 percent dependent these days on these 'free' services. Furthermore, many schools and universities now use 'free' Gmail services, Google Docs, Google Drive, Facebook as an online learning platform, etc.

Sara Grossman has a nice article about that in the Chronicle of Higher Education and there are a few alternatives. Nothing is truly your own on the Internet, but these options are worth considering:

• Reclaim Hosting
• Diaspora
• Fargo

STEM OERs

Excellent article by Porcello and Hsi in Science (19 July 2013): how to crowd-source and curate online education resources, in this case for STEM. There is so much out there...how do you decide which collection(s) to search, use, and perhaps contribute to?

One thing that would be very helpful: create and use common metadata for these online resources - now searches and queries can be expected to yield more accurate and consistent results across OERs.

Here are a few examples of STEM OERs:

• Howtosmile.org
• inBloom.org
• NASAWavelength
• National Geographic Environmental Literacy Teacher Guides

SERC

The Science Education Resource Center (SERC) at Carleton College is awesome...but perhaps too massive and complex to navigate effectively. But, there are site guides!

• SERC Site Guides

EarthLabs, Visionlearning, Earthlearningidea, and More!

EarthLabs is a nice compilation of student-centered lab activities about earth science (targeted for high school students, but also quite useful for college).

• EarthLabs for Educators
• EarthLabs Student Portal

Visionlearning is a free resource for teaching and learning science, for example Biology, Chemistry, etc. as well as science as a process. Includes reading materials, resources, and simple short quizzes.

• Visionlearning

Earthlearingidea is great: real hands-on activities that can be used as part of classes or labs. Mike Tuke also provides great ideas for teaching Geology that can be implemented easily. Finally, Steve Whitmeyer has some great Google Earth material for teaching geology.

• Earthlearningidea
• Mike Tuke's Earth Science Activities and Demonstrations
• Steve Whitmeyer Google Earth

The Sun - Now!

Want to see the sun in real-time (well, almost): NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory

http://www.itsokaytobesmart.com/post/57561895717/our-multicolored-sun

Maps!

Here are two nice compilation of maps: some weird, some unusual, some crappy, and some really fun!

• 40 Maps To Make Sense of the World
• 38 Maps You Don't Need
• Vaguely Rude Place Names (for immature audiences only...) 

Here's one of them: global Internet use based on time of day:

http://internetcensus2012.bitbucket.org/images/geovideo.gif

US Fast Food Map

Source: http://assets3.thrillist.com/v1/u/food-chain-national-map.pdf

Fun: Pie charts with actual pies!

The Two Largest Photographs - Ever!

Read more about them at Co.Design:

• London (320 gigapixels)
• Tokyo (150 gigapixels)

Birth and Death Rates

Here's a map by Vicky Huang where the size of the type is a function of birth rate (white) and death rate (red). As expected, Europe and North America literally disappear, whereas Africa becomes the 'largest' continent.

• Read more at Co.Design
• Vicky Huang's website

The Green Earth

Great high-resolution map (and movie) by NOAA showing the greenness (or lack thereof) of our planet.

• NOAA Green Vegetation Viewer

Climate boundary in Iran

1 Year on Mars in 2 Minutes!

Brewery Map

Finally...a useful application of all that web mapping technology: where are all the breweries around you. And, perhaps even more important, where are all the breweries that are between you and your destination!

• Brewery Map

Airports: delays and weather

This is nicely done: a web-based visualization showing airport delays (as map and table) and airport weather - all updated periodically by the FAA.

• Airport delays and weather

StreetMix

Design your own neighborhood street - complete with trees, bike paths, or bus lanes! Save your design and share it with others: a great tool to explore options of what-could-be.

• StreetMix

One Dot per Person!

Here are several maps of the USA where each person is presented with a single dot - cool!

• 2010 Census Dot Map
• 2010 Census Racial Dot Map (Google version)
• 2010 Census Racial Dot Map (Leaflet.Js and OSM version)
• Simplified version from the New York Times
• Dot Map for England and Wales

For more information about these dot maps, and additional maps, see FlowingData.

Change Matters!

Esri is now providing free online access to Landsat imagery - very nice! Of course, the Landsat images have been public for a while now via the USGS, but this image service makes it easy and efficient to integrate them into ArcGIS projects (desktop or online) - at least for basic mapping and display purposes. Real quantitative satellite image analysis will still require the underlying multi-spectral images and the dedicated software packages.

• Esri Change Matters Viewer
• Esri Landsat image services

Maps as Art

Choose your city, color, and size - makes for a nice holiday present: Custom city maps for the modern home.

Amherst (MA)

Hill Mapper

Where else but in San Francisco? Simple and effective - give it a try!

• Hill Mapper San Francisco

R

Nothing new here: R has been a popular statistical analysis software for many years now. Now Google has released a nice 21-part series of short videos that introduce the basic functions of R (great for teaching!).

1. R
2. R Video Series (by Google)
3. Better charts in R (Nathan Yau)