The Map Room – Blogging about maps since 2003 (@maproomblog.com.web.brid.gy) Bsky

Alice Hudson and Women in Cartography Alice Hudson, former chief of the New York Public Library’s map division from 1981 to 2009, died in 2024. Last month The Cartographic Journal published a long look at Hudson’s life and career, written by… More

2 days ago 0 0 0 0

Apple Denies Removing Lebanese Towns and Villages from Apple Maps Claims circulating on social media that Apple erased towns and villages in southern Lebanon from Apple Maps as a kind of support for the Israeli invasion are not true, says Apple. Apple’s coverage of Lebanon… More

4 days ago 0 0 0 0

The Physics of GPS Shri Khalpada explains the physics of GPS. “GPS is fundamentally a translation tool: it converts time into distance. A satellite sends a signal, your phone catches it, and the delay between those two events tells… More

5 days ago 0 0 0 0

The Sky Atlas On page 96 the author notes that “the actual mapping of the heavens did not exist” in medieval Europe; on page 98, that “celestial cartography awaited its invention.” That these words appear nearly 40 percent… More

1 week ago 0 0 0 0

Who Gets to Digitize Colonial-Era Congolese Geological Maps? Reuters: “A U.S. mining company backed by billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates is in a tangle with Belgium’s AfricaMuseum over who should digitise antique maps of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo… More

1 week ago 0 0 0 0

Saul Steinberg’s Cartography It’s likely that artist Saul Steinberg may be best known for “View of the World from 9th Avenue,” an illustration that appeared as the well-known cover of the 29 March 1976 issue of The New… More

2 weeks ago 0 0 0 0

Now on Patreon: The Territory Is Not the Map Today is The Map Room’s 23rd anniversary. As a thank-you to paid members of my Patreon, whose generous support has enabled me to remove ads from The Map Room, and as an enticement to those… More

2 weeks ago 0 0 0 0

Ads Coming to Apple Maps This Summer (U.S. and Canada) Per Apple’s announcement of its new Apple Business platform, ads are indeed coming to Apple Maps. Beginning this summer in the U.S. and Canada, businesses will have a new way to be discovered by using… More

3 weeks ago 0 0 0 0

John Rocque’s 1746 Map of London A book reprinting John Rocque’s 1746 map of London, a massive 24-sheet, 1:2,437-scale map originally printed in 24 sheets, has just been published. Or rather, republished: it’s an updated reprint of a 1947 paperback by… More

3 weeks ago 0 0 0 0

Moogle Gaps, for when you want to be misdirected. TrendWatching: “Whipped up by two Australian ex-Droga5 creatives, Paul Meates and Henry Kimber, Moogle Gaps is an anti-wayfinder. Users input their navigational query as they normally would, but instead… More

3 weeks ago 1 0 0 0

How Google Maps Disappears Restaurants from Search Results For the Guardian’s “It’s Complicated” feature, Josh Toussaint-Strauss looks at how great restaurants end up being invisible when you search for a place to eat on Google Maps. He talks with data scientist Lauren Leek,… More

3 weeks ago 1 0 0 0

A Deep Dive on ‘The Map Is Not the Territory’ In another side-quest from his current work in progress, Matthew Edney goes down a deep rabbit hole trying to work out a specific point related to Alfred Korzybski’s famous adage that “the map is not… More

3 weeks ago 0 0 0 0

Minnesota’s Unmappable City The wealthy enclave of North Oaks, Minnesota got itself removed from Google Maps Street View 2008 and has stayed invisible to the service since then, thanks to the fact that the entire city of 5,272… More

4 weeks ago 0 0 0 0

Parking: Navigation Apps’ Next Frontier A team of MIT researchers think that navigation systems have a parking problem. They’re capable of telling us about traffic congestion and offering us alternate routes, but once we’ve arrived at our destination, we’re on… More

4 weeks ago 0 0 0 0

‘The Map Itself Should Be Messier’ In an interview in the Spring 2026 issue of The World Today, William Rankin, author of Radical Cartography, looks at cartography in the present geopolitical situation and argues that maps need to be up to… More

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

Maps in Movies John Nelson and Peter Attwood look at how maps are used in a bunch of different movies (and one TV show: Game of Thrones). They talk about using maps to indicate travel in the Indiana… More

1 month ago 0 1 0 0

The Leventhal Center Is Hiring a Curator The Leventhal Map Center is looking to hire a curator or associate curator of maps and geography. “This position will play a leading role in advancing the Center’s broad public agenda around the study of… More

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

Faye Passow’s State Map Goods About half of Minnesota artist Faye Passow’s Etsy store is filled with map-related merchandise—postcards, prints, napkins and towels, mugs and other stoneware—featuring colourful pictorial maps of the regional specialties of several U.S. states. For example,… More

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

CBC News Looks at Jeff Clark of Clark Geomatics Jeff Clark of Clark Geomatics, who’s been producing backcountry recreation maps since 2008, plus some very nice wall maps of British Columbia coastal regions, gets a profile from CBC News. Always nice to see mapmakers… More

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

Google Maps AI Updates: Ask Maps, Immersive Navigation Google just announced a couple of fairly major Gemini AI-powered updates to Google Maps. Ask Maps is a a chatbot that produces personalized responses to questions—essentially an intermediary that sifts the data so you don’t… More

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

More on GPS Jamming in the Strait of Hormuz BBC News on GPS jamming in the conflict between the U.S., Israel and Iran: The interference currently affecting ships in and around the Strait of Hormuz is far from the first time that maritime intelligence… [More

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

Imaginary Maps as Cartographic Guides The Bodleian Map Room Blog looks at a specific kind of map of imaginary places, “designed to be a guide to cartographers by showing how to portray certain features, or for the map reader to… More

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

La figure de la Terre: Un débat franco-anglais (XVIIe-XXIe siècle), an exhibition running at the Bibliothèque Mazarine in Paris from 1 April to 20 June 2026. This exhibition offers a historical and scientific journey through more… More

1 month ago 1 0 0 0

GPS Jamming and the Iran War GPS jamming has become pretty much endemic in every conflict, open, hybrid or frozen, so it’s no surprise that it’s going on in the Persian Gulf: “Though commercial vessels are not the target, the electronic… More

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

A Paris Symposium on Maps and Popular Culture A symposium on maps and popular culture, Popcartographie : cartes et cultures populaires (XIXe-XXIe siècle), will be taking place at the Bibliothèque nationale de France’s Mitterrand site in Paris on 10-11 April 2026. Its three… More

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

AI Crawlers and the Cost of Geospatial Infrastructure Bill Dollins reacts to Gary Gale’s experience with AI crawlers taking down his mapping project (previously), and what that portends for the open geospatial web. “On its own, this is a small incident. No critical… More

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

Google Maps Granted Access to South Korea’s Map Data, with Conditions Reuters: “South Korea will soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps doesn’t work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data… More

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

Aurora’s Map-Themed Fountain Pens I’m as much a fountain pen nerd as I am a map nerd, but I somehow only found out just now that Italian pen company Aurora has been releasing a collection of antique map-themed fountain… More

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

Meet the History of Cartography Project’s Managing Editor A short interview with Jude Leimer, who joined the History of Cartography Project in 1981 (!) and has served as managing editor for every single volume. (That’s a lot of institutional memory.)

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

‘And Then the Bots Came’ (AI) Bots Ate My Map Tiles: In which Gary Gale discovers that his Vaguely Rude Places Map’s 200K-map-tiles-per-month plan is no match for the hammering delivered by AI crawlers.

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

Posts by The Map Room – Blogging about maps since 2003