Maps - From Paper to Pictures to the Whole Earth
As the good people over at Idealist.org commented in a recent blog entry on maps:
"...It can also be a medium for changing the world. One organization that embraces this philosophy is Green Map System, a network of 400 cities, villages, and neighborhoods in 50 countries that create their own maps related to environmental sustainability. Focusing on bicycle paths, wind energy generation sites, farmers' markets, environmentally-friendly businesses, and a variety of other data that they deem important, local volunteer Green Mapmakers give environmental sustainability efforts more visibility, by literally putting them on the map." - Full article here
This is great news - when doing the selection for a Clouddog scholarship round in South Africa last year, we found that many of the emerging leaders who applied wanted to do something like this - and now they have the tool set to go and get it done: http://www.greenmap.org/greenhouse/
- As they say, 'Think Global, Map Local'.Whilst Green Map above have the resources for creating traditional paper maps (and also tips for interactive ones) and getting them noticed you may want to plunge straight into Google Earth - Back in May when I was in South Africa working with The Bateleurs we started looking at how their thousands of archive pictures of environmental degradation across southern Africa might be used in a mapping context. This is still undergoing - and in the meantime, Google has announced a new Outreach programme that should help not only Bateleurs but also many other organisations make use of the superb Google Earth tool. Here's the launch video:
How would this work in practice? Well, there is of course a bit of a learning curve, but here's just one tip to get just about anybody started: 
In Picasa there is an option under Tools --> Geotag --> Geotag with Google Earth...
Now, Google are of course not the only ones in this field. Here's a very brief demo of Microsoft's Virtual Earth:
Now, last but not least, sit back and be impressed with how pictures put in the public domain can be used to 'map' things:
