In recent weeks a sub-set of journalists have begun working with the problem of how do we  quantify and illustrate speech.  Or speeches.  The Cyberjournalist.net newsletter (at the American Press Institute) reports:

Sorta interesting, when it's working.  We applaude the attempt as a fine beginning, but what's missing is some context and explanation, the “So what?” factor.  In fairness, the site's author recognizes the shortcoming, saying: “Of course, they lack any kind of context, but who needs that? (We're kidding.)“

On the other coast, ever-inventive Matt Ericson takes another bite of the State of the Union apple and offers up a more interesting visual, “The Words That Were Used.”  [Look in the left column for link to graphic.  But the toned “bubbles” actually show up better in print than online, so if you can't see it well online, try this (and may the copyright gods forgive us).

We missed this one when it was originally posted on the National Public Radio site, but the story offers such interesting info and links, we wanted to get it into the IAJ archive.  The NPR links at the top are of value, but be sure to scroll down to see other fascinating mashups from around the world.

Jan 12, 2006

Tailor-Made Cartography with Google Maps

 

A Google Maps mashup of brew pubs and breweries around Wilwaukee, Wis. Beer Mapping Project

NPR's Top 10 Markets

See Google Maps “mashups” of public radio stations and their coverage areas in the top 10 markets:

See the map

Public radio stations in the San Francisco market. NPR

• New York
• Los Angeles
• Chicago
• Philadelphia
• Boston
• San Francisco
• Dallas-Ft. Worth
• Washington, D.C.
• Atlanta
• Detroit
• Search for More Stations

 

 

All Things Considered, January 12, 2006 ·
Google's popular mapping service has inspired people to add their own
information to maps. The resulting “mashups” are maps overlaid with
clickable icons that provide a unique look at fast-food restaurant
locations, crime statistics and other data sets.

Robert Siegel talks to Mike Pegg, whose Google Maps Mania Web log tracks the latest mashups, by category.

Topics include transit (Boston subway stations), current events (BBC world news), and weather and Earth (meteor impact sites).

Some are clearly designed to be useful for everyday life: New York pizza places, Washington, D.C., home prices, and Chicago crime locations. Others are more for fun: find the nearest pub or brewery, peek in on Webcams, or look for a convenient jogging route.

“One of my favorites is a mashup in Dublin, Ireland, which takes the real-time locations of a commuter train and plots it onto the map, and it actually shows that train moving,” Pegg says.

Another popular mashup lets users see where they would end up if they drilled through the Earth to the other side. For example, click on Wichita, Kan., and you come out in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

“I
think we're destined to see big things from this, both as the maps
improve and as people's imaginations just continue to go wild with
this,” Pegg says.

Three-Day Series

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/special_packages/foreclosure/

summary stolen from (http://www.thescoop.org/)

Charlotte Mortgage Foreclosures
Posted by Derek on January 18th, 2006. Filed under Fed Data, Mapping.

     Lisa Hammersly Munn, Binyamin Appelbaum and Ted Mellnik of the
Charlotte Observer have a three-part series on mortgage foreclosures,
finding that home loan failures have more than quadrupled in Mecklenburg
County since 1999. More foreclosures are filed here, per person, than any
other county in the state. On average, 11 Mecklenburg houses are sold in
foreclosure auctions every business day. The owners are evicted, their
credit ruined, and they face thousands in court fees and moving expenses.
     Included with the series is an interactive map of Mecklenburg County
foreclosures and a sidebar reporting that local loans from the Federal
Housing Administration are failing at almost twice the national rate.

From the Librarians' Internet Index



“AP News and Google Maps Mashup

This mashup plots selected current
Associated Press (AP) news stories superimposed on a Google map or
satellite image of the United States. It includes national news,
sports, business, technology, and “strange” stories. Clicking on a
marker provides a synopsis with a link to the full story as hosted on
the site for the San Francisco Chronicle. From a software developer
with a degree in computer science.

URL: http://81nassau.com/apnews/

LII Item: http://lii.org/cs/lii/view/item/20125″

From CCA:

Socioeconomic Data and Applications Centre, or SEDAC, is a branch of NASA that offers geospatial on human interactions with the environment. World datasets that are available for download include population and urban development and wilderness areas.
Other data focus on a specific area of the world. Most of the datasets
seem to be in some sort of grid or e00 format. Some of the sites also
offer maps of the data.http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/  SEDAC Projects are designed to help users synthesize and apply earth
science and socioeconomic data and information in their research,
educational activities, analysis and decision making. These projects
include data products and applications that address various types of
interdisciplinary data integration.”

GIS Cafe Editor Susan Smith interviews
Robert Welch, president of Synergos Technologies, Inc. (STI) about the
GIS-based models his company is using to estimate the New Orleans
population after Katrina.  Welch's models are of interest and also
underscore the importance of “ground-proofing.”  (When you reach
the page below, scroll down to read the interview.)

Estimating Post-Katrina Populations with STI: PopStats


By Susan Smith



As we move into 2006, we are well aware that entire populations have
regrouped or moved as a result of Hurricane Katrina and Rita. With the
loss of homes, businesses and schools, not only an entire way of life,
but an extraordinary amount of data was also lost.

How is Synergos able to come out with population estimates every three
months? “Our STI: PopStats product is radically different from every
other population estimating product,” claimed Welch. “We're the only
the only company that can do an estimate every three months.”

Another good pointer from the Canadian Cartographic Assoc.

A TechNews (and a number of other news sites) story talks about the directions some of the larger online map providers are heading. With the release of Google Maps, Google Earth, Microsoft’s Live Local and upgrades to other online mapping sites such as Yahoo! Maps
all in the past year, the online mapping industry has become very
competitive. With many such sites offering a similar product, the key
is to differentiate oneself from one’s competitors by offer new
information or presenting existing information in a unique manner.
States the article: “Microsoft Corp. is working on a mechanism that
would have avid mountain bikers, for example, collectively plot good
trails. Yahoo Inc. is appealing to its users to add information on
local businesses and places of interest. Yahoo even recently bought Upcoming.org, a collaborative calendar of events.”

Interestingly, Mapquest
“estimates that driving directions cost [the] company a penny apiece
and a static map much less — expenses recouped through sales of ads
displayed at the site.” The article goes on to discuss the online map
sites’ different approaches to the problem of determining the right
driving directions.”

The Rocky 
took a bold swing at developing an interesting web server application
this month.  And the editor sees that this attempt is extensible.

— From Adena Schutzberg, executive editor, Directions Magazine http://www.allpointsblog.com/archives/957-guid.html

“Rocky Mountain News Editor: Web Mapping Isn't that Easy

“The Rocky Mountain News
gets a lot of coverage due to its strong online presence. Some 42
“hubs” cover local news and encourage citizen journalism. So, it was
quite interesting to read editor, publisher and president John Temple's
discussion of attempting an interactive map of Christmas lights in his editorial  from December 24 higlighting the paper's accomplishments.

I hope you feel it in this newspaper and on our Web site
every day. A passion. A passion for trying new things to serve you
better. A passion for telling stories.

Take our new mapping service for Christmas light tours. This year,
instead of just printing maps in the paper, we're offering personalized
maps on our Web site.

In the newspaper, we have to give everybody the same map. On the Web, you can create the map that best suits your needs.

Go to com and click on “Holiday Lights” and you'll find an offer to “Get directions to light displays in your area.”

It will take you to a page where you can enter the address where you
want to start your tour. Click on “Find Nearest” and you'll get a
listing of the best nearby displays. In my case, there were 16 within
three miles. Choose the ones you want to visit and click on “Find
Route” and you'll get step-by-step directions and a map of the entire
route. Print it and you'll have a guide for a fun excursion.

We developed this service as an experiment with ESRI, a Boulder company
that specializes in Web mapping. We wanted to see what was possible.

It wasn't as easy as we had hoped. For example, I'd love – yes, love –
for people to be able to post their own pictures of their lights on our
Web site and to have them show up with the addresses when others call
up a map. I'd like for you to be able to e-mail the light show
creators. And, of course, you should be able to get our maps and photos
on your cell phone while you're driving, maybe even with a soundtrack
to make your journey more fun. And how about coupons or special offers
from coffee shops or gas stations for participating? But those ideas
will have to wait for future years.

This mapping effort, believe it or not, is linked to our plans to help
you decide how to vote in the 2006 election. We're going to build our
deepest election Web site ever, where just by punching in your address
you'll be able to find links to all our stories and data, such as
campaign finance reports and information about the candidates and
issues you'll find on your ballot.

We hope you'll walk into your polling place next November with a printout from RockyMountainNews.com as your sample ballot.

“Of course ESRI is based in Redlands, California. I'm sure that the
local office worked their butts off in developing the app. Still, he's
right – the hodgepodge of voting for lights displays (which linked to PDF maps???), routing by RouteMap IMS, and a grid to find local displays were quite challenging to navigate.”

One
of the interesting and most challenging aspects of cartography is that
of mapping ideas and their ebb and flow in populations.  Think of
trying to dynamically map memes and at what scale.  How, for
example, does the concepts of neo-conservatism or approval of national
health care move through a society and what does that movement look
like on a map?



Recently, following race riots down under, the Sydney Morning Herald
took a crack at trying to map “tolerance.”  While the results are
not perfect, it's a good go at a difficult problem.  Here's how
the CCA blog reported it.



“Mapping Tolerance in Sydney
Published Sunday, December 25, 2005 by CCAer



The Sydney Morning Herald has a story on a map
produced after the Cronulla race riots earlier this month. The map is
based on a survey of 1,800 respondents and was conducted by Associate
Professor Jim Forrest, of Macquarie University, Kevin Dunn, of the University of NSW and others.



From
the article: “Less tolerant areas include outer locations such as
Gosford and Campbelltown, but also culturally mixed areas such as
Bankstown and Ryde. Bankstown has a substantial Muslim population,
while Ryde has many Chinese and Koreans. Culturally diverse areas such
as Parramatta, Marrickville and Penrith, and the suburbs Hurstville,
Randwick and Botany, are tolerant.”



The map
itself is fairly generalized and could use a better colour scheme.
Based on 1,800 respondents across the area, that means that less than
100 residents would determine how a neighbourhood is classed. Still, in
light of recent events in Australia, an interesting map.”