Collabrative Geography

Reviewing the blogs on collaborative geography made me think of events during geography 412 that was collaborative. During our Google project 2 I got to work in a group dedicated to using Google and sketch up to recreate what Goldfield actually looked like during it's heyday. The interesting part of this project was how small Goldfield is today and how large it was when it was at its peak production. Just the grandeur of the Goldfield hotel tells you how much money was coming out of the mines. I found out through some readings that Theodore Roosevelt made an appearance a Goldfield during his presidency. What we set out to do was that the old snaborn maps would be set up on Google earth and two of the areas buildings, such as the hotel and the courthouse, would be sketched into 3-D.
Also during the semester we were to do a collaborative work on doing a Nevada Atlas for Nevada schools. This project would have required that we all work together to create not just single pages on our own, but to work out all the pages between us and create an Atlas that was truly collaborative in that everyone had a hand in creating the maps. It would have been fun to see how that type of project would have turned out.

Mapping Nevada

One of the was I see Nevada Mapping is in Google Earth. Many of the areas of the state still do not have High resolution images of cities and towns, so its hard to get a feel for the town from an aerial shot. One of the areas I keep complaining that should be higher resolution on Google maps is Virginia City sine it is a National Historic land mark. Bodie is in a high resolution picture and is also an Historic land mark. I just believe that some areas of Nevada need more pictures taken. I am just glad that Google finally got all of the roads right for Nevada and placed Virginia City in the right area instead of out near the Virginia City Highlands.
On a positive note about Google maps is the ability for people to post pictures and link area information into Wikipedia. This allows the people who have visited the area to post pictures of the area as they see it and some of the pictures are rather beautiful landscape shots of the area. Also allowing the information on the area to be linked to Wikipedia allows the person who is investigating a far off town to know a bit of information about the towns history. A really good source of information on towns would be great for High schoolers or grade schoolers to do a report. Especially since allot of the articles written on Wikipedia about cities is done by historians or long time locals.

Oddity in Live Search Maps

These are just a series of screen shots of my parents house using Microsoft's Live Search Maps with birds eye view turned on. Starting above I came from one direction and got my fathers truck in the picture. Next I come from above and now my fathers truck has lumber on it. Then I come from the west and now the truck is gone. Also when I turn the image when my fathers truck is present, it suddenly disappears when I look east west and south. Thought it was just funny that this occurred with in the shots. It is interesting to note how long the time between different photo bands the satellite took.

Virtual Worlds

Google Mars is my second favorite virtual world. The picture above is of Google Mars and where the Mars odyssey rover currently is. Being able to view the location of the rover in real time is amazing to me since, just a few years ago, the only way to know where the rovers or landings occurred was to check the NASA website and look at a static map. Now we can look at worlds that are not are own and get a good fell for how they look without even seeing them up close in person, but up close with the aid of a satellite. Just being able to have a non-static map to the galaxy is extremely fun for someone like me who loves astronomy. Being able to view various moons and how the planet they orbit looks from them is absolutely amazing to me. I never thought we would be able to view the moons of Jupiter or Saturn without having to look in a book at a couple of pictures to get a sense of how the moon orbits its parent planet.

3-D Cartography

3-D Cartography is a great way to help people get around, but the current limitations of on board GPS navigation systems does not allow the use of a 3-D graphics engine. I have heard that within about 5 to 10 years that vechiles will come with computers powerful enough to display a 3-D map. So the technology is coming and right now we just need to perfect the current cartographic technology. So when cars do have powerful computers within them they will be better able to take advantage 3-D maps.
The current GPS navigation systems have their flaws in that they have simple maps to convey where the person is. One problem is that since they are so simple people often listen to the voice and not look at the map. This leads them into restaurants, rivers and, literally, dead ends. 3-D cartography would help alleviate the drivers need to rely on the voice of the GPS system because they could look at it and see where they are on the ground through the use of remote sensing and GPS. Now that the person could see that the systems is leading them towards an in movable object or a nice big river, they can take the steps needed to avoid disaster. Of course this type of system cannot do anything to stop someone with the idiot gene, but it would help those trying to see where they are going before the actually go that direction.
Also by looking at a 3-D map before you go to said destination is always a good decision. On my recent trip to San Fransisco I was able to see buildings and such before I even drove into the city. Although this system was unable to exactly duplicate how crowded the streets and how tall the buildings were. But nevertheless I found my destination right off the bat, but did not realize it due to funky lighting conditions, but I swung around the block and got back to where I was supposed to be.

Spatial Games

For this post I decided to talk about games that I know and discuss how people interact with the environment spatially. First off I will start with World of Warcraft where everything is spatial. One of the main things that comes to mind is how player vs player combat sometimes plays. The people in the game who are experienced us the terrain to their advantage and try and use hills walls and such to hid themselves or break a lock on themselves from another player targeting them. Even hiding the opponents flag until you get yours back is an experiment in how spatial aware other players are. I my self have hidden in plain view and have had many people walk by me because I hid in a dark corner that people would run by without looking at.
Also in the game you get people asking where to go and, after a lengthy conversation, find out that they have not explored the map at all and have no clue what the the small sections within each area are called. Now it is an ongoing debate to whether these type of people are lazy or if they just do not care to explore on their own and discover the area themselves. Sometimes though it is because they are exploring, just that they got their east and west mixed up and went the wrong way, which is amazingly common. I too get mixed up and head east when I am suppose to go west. This is one of the spatial problems that I cannot figure out in the game and I wonder if a full fledged compass would reduce this problem.
Next I want to discuss any first person shooter because when a person plays that type of game you have to be spatially aware and if your not you will not last long. When playing a game like and FPS you have to know the layout and where good hiding spots are. You just can not run into an area and just willy-nilly shoot at everything because the more experienced player is probably hiding and waiting for you to do just that. To play a game like that effectively you have to understand where you can go, what type of supplies are there, and is it closer or farther away from enemy territory? It is always interesting to see how people react to an in-game spatial problem and how the ope with others using the area more effectively.

Political Cartography

This map is a breakdown of the French vote for the European Union. The site that I got this from stated that this map looked familiar in many respects. From what I was able to gleam is that the areas in red are voting no while the areas in blue are voting yes. From the sites that I was able to fin this on, excluding French ones, no one had a a firm grip on whether the red/blue relationship is the same as we use it to some extent. But I doubt this sense the French state has many more political group and it was just a happen stance that they used blue/red instead say yellow/orange. it would seem to me that it is just easier to use red/blue since the colors go well with each other and have been used before. It is interesting to see how the similarities are to he U.S. political map in that the inner areas are red , while the areas near large cities an coastal areas are blue. I would like to see someone give a better break down of the color so that we can see which areas are truly red and blue and which are purple. I believe those types of maps give a better telling of the story and what is going on. I found on one of the sites that the area on the upper right is the area of Brittany and the people seemed confuse on why it was part blue and part red. Seems that most people thought that it should be a solid color.
The only problem I had with finding out information was that I don't read French, so if someone who can read French would try to find out what the colors mean I would appreciate it sine there are a few sites in French that I found it on, but could not read.