The launch of Google Maps in 2005 brought with it a new way to think about web maps: “tiles”. Lots of tiles. Actually, millions of tiles. The smooth panning and zooming were awesome, but keeping track of all of those 256 x 256px PNG images was, frankly, a chore. Even with a computer. And the […]
“Why Map Portals Don’t Work” is a five-part exploration of why the dominant visual grammar of GIS interfaces serves its public audience so poorly and continues to diverge from the best practices found most everywhere else on the web. Read Part I, Part II, Part III, Part V. On February 27th, I will be joining […]
That the web mapping explosion of the past few years has ushered in a new Golden Age of Cartography has been noted more than once (here, here, and here). But what is really exciting is that the increasing variety of tools for map-making are engaging folks from a variety of disciplines, including the emerging field […]