GIS Christmas day 11

For today’s post I thought I could make a list of the map-themed XKCD comics (one of my favourite webcomics). As for all XKCD comics, don’t forget to read the mouse-over text, which is always fun.

Randall Munroe, the creator of XKCD have made two maps of online communities, one in 2007 and the second in 2010. The most notable difference is that on the older map, Myspace, Yahoo and Windows Live are the biggest communities, while on the newer map Facebook and Facebook games are the biggest communities. Online communities 2007 and Online communities 2010.
He has also created a wiki about geohashing, a sort of adventure where an algorithm gives you some random coordinates every day, and you have to get to these coordinates. This can make for adventures like geocaching, or give you a new and interesting place to discover or meet someone. It now has its own community of XKCD readers who go on expeditions to random places.
Also check out his project What-if, that answers many interesting physics questions.

A comic about what your favourite map projection says about you: http://xkcd.com/977/
This comic makes fun of using population maps for mapping anything else: http://xkcd.com/1138/
Google maps does not always give simple driving direction according to this comic: http://xkcd.com/461/

A few other map-related comics:
Movie narratives, and also a sort of map of Lord of the Rings: http://xkcd.com/657/
An older map of the internet: http://xkcd.com/195/
All the subway systems in USA: http://xkcd.com/1196/
And finally, two comics about GPS:
Cheap GPS: http://xkcd.com/407/
And what you can do if you should get a GPS receiver for Christmas: http://xkcd.com/201/