I came across this article that shows what can happen when you don’t get it all right. To quote…

The Los Angeles Police Department is battling a virtual crime wave in downtown L.A. caused by an Internet map coding error.

If the department’s online crime map is to be believed, one might thing that a downtown location just a block from the LAPD’s new headquarters is the most crime-ridden place in the city. In the past six months, that location experienced 1,380 crimes–4 percent of all crimes mapped–or roughly eight a day.

The crimes were real, but a coding error with the system’s geocoding–the process of converting addresses into map points–caused the crimes to be represented at a default location, according to a report Sunday in the Los Angeles Times. The mistake caused many crimes to be mapped miles away from their actual locations, causing false trends to be reported while masking real ones, according to the report.

You can read the full story here

Cedric Sam has created a Google Earth map application of all Canadian ridings as they were represented when Parliament dissolved and shows a variety of information, such as election history by riding and some Pie charts represent vote shares at the last general election. You can read about the details of how he put together this application on his blog.

Google Earth / Élection fédérale 2008 au Canada / 2008 Federal Election in Canada

The Toronto Star now has a blog dedicated to highlighting a “Map of the Week”. These maps are not necessarily linked to particular stories, although that might happen along the way. They are using Google Maps as their base. Check out their Gratuitous Map of Canada’s Olympic Athletes hometowns or Urban Bees.

Saw this in The Globe & Mail this morning, mentioning one of my colleagues in the article. Way to go, Tracey! Below are some excerpts from the article.

COMPUTER APPLICATIONS: CYBERCARTOGRAPHY Planning your next vacation, with dollars and scents written by Science Reporter Anne MCilroy. February 27, 2008.

Carleton University cybercartographer has developed multimedia maps and atlases that use sound, music, photos and artwork to convey information about places.

Carleton University cybercartographer Fraser Taylor and his colleagues have already developed multimedia maps and atlases that use sound, music, photos and artwork to convey information about places such as Antarctica and the Arctic. Now he and doctoral student Tracey Lauriault are working on maps with scents.

Ms. Lauriault is developing a scented digital map for the Bytowne Museum in Ottawa. She is considering, for example, using the smell of sawdust to help convey the importance of lumberyards that once dominated a large working-class neighbourhood.