Author: andre_sberger

The TeleGeography map gallery

Image source (click for full size).

The telecommunications market research and consulting firm TeleGeography have a big and nice gallery of maps with maps of global internet communication, submarine cables and voice traffic. They have both static and interactive maps. On the maps above you can see that there is a big cable between Norway and Svalbard. This is mainly due to the Svalbard Satellite Station, which downloads information from most of the polar orbiting satellites (for customers like NASA and ESA). These maps show the huge amounts of information being sent through the internet every second, and I, who has grown up in the internet age, can’t imagine how it was before the internet.

Since it’s Saturday I will link to a more fun map, the map of Vaguely Rude Place Names Of The World. The name of the map says what it is all about, places that have rude names. The Nordic countries have few places on this name, and I think this is due to the languages, as rude names in Norwegian, Swedish or Finnish will be hard to get for non-natives. I guess it’s a similar thing for Russia, where the Cyrillic names are hard to read if you don’t know the letters. But I’m surprised to see Canada this “clean”. Only Newfoundland and Nova Scotia in Canada have some rude place names. Otherwise I like the simple black and white layout of the map, and using open data like OpenStreetMap and Leaflet to power the map is in my opinion good ideas.

Here are several European maps showing the origin of common used words. I find it interesting that almost all of Europe uses the word ananas for pineapple (pineapple being one of few exceptions). These maps also explain the source of the word variations, which shows that our languages have more in common that I was aware of.

Today I want to share a link to another brewer, called TypeBrewer. This is a tool to help explore typography and get an idea of how different types can change the look of a map. The typography can also have an impact on how easily readable a map is, so it should be considered when designing a map. In TypeBrewer it is possible to choose between twelve different templates and then continue by choosing the font size, text density and text tracking (spacing between the letters). The template can be downloaded or printet out as a spec sheet. This is a useful tool that is based on best professional practices and principles in cartography and typography, so it may give a better result than just playing with the fonts in a map or graphics program.

For todays post I want to share one of my favourite websites about maps, Strangemaps. This website is filled with interesting maps and discussions about them. One of my favourite posts is about what happens to your head if you look at too many maps. Another is the map of Procrasti-Nation, and the explanation about which words are used to describe procrastination in different languages. BBC made a very good tv series about maps called the The Beauty of Maps, and one of the episodes were about cartoon maps, politics and satire. Some of these maps in this episode can be found on Strangemaps for those interested in learning more about them.  Here’s a link to that episode on Youtube:

Mercator Puzzle

Today I want to share a link to a game that is useful for learning how the Mercator projection distorts the shape of countries closer to the poles. This game is made by Google who uses the Mercator projection for their maps due the square grid which makes it easy to make tiles (Google’s map tiles are 256 x 256 pixels in size). Speaking of projections, XKCD has a good and fun webcomic about map projections. On the website of Steve Waterman it’s possible to learn more about the Waterman butterfly projection, and he also have a poem where he compares his projection to other map projections. Here’s the Mercator Puzzle