Map of Global Underwater Internet Cabling

Here's a nice web map - Greg's Cable Map - of internet cabling around the world. Zoom in and see the location where the cabling comes on land as well as the providers. It's interesting to see where you've been and where the internet access was sub-optimal (Belize, for instance) and see why.

This came to my attention via Bryan Alexander.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Make Your Own (Different-looking) Web Maps

Sometimes you want a web map that looks just a bit different than the usual fare. Here is Polymaps:

Polymaps provides speedy display of multi-zoom datasets over maps, and supports a variety of visual presentations for tiled vector data, in addition to the usual cartography from OpenStreetMap, CloudMade, Bing, and other providers of image-based web maps.

Because Polymaps can load data at a full range of scales, it’s ideal for showing information from country level on down to states, cities, neighborhoods, and individual streets. Because Polymaps uses SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) to display information, you can use familiar, comfortable CSS rules to define the design of your data. And because Polymaps uses the well known spherical mercator tile format for its imagery and its data, publishing information is a snap.

Check them out. Polymaps provide the code for different and slick-looking maps.

I saw this on a tweet by Barbara Hui.

My Last Day of the My Fulbright

I had my last day of my Fulbright fellowship at CERMES and the University of the West Indies last Friday. I probably should have posted this earlier in the week but here it is. Short and sweet.

This year has been a gift to me. I have had a golden opportunity to spread my wings and take flight and I have had encouragement and a stable base to do so. Sure, I contributed some of my expertise to a few projects. But I gained so much more than I gave. Last Friday the department gave me a coffee, tea, and banana bread party send-off. It wasn't until a little later when I got in my car to drive home that I cried. I cried nearly the entire way home. What a joy to weep about missing a place that embraced me in such a short period of time.

The first project I worked on I did some final edits and additions. You may recall that work was a Google Earth project based on data from the Grenadines. Here is the MarSIS project site. Here is the project KML (will open in Google Earth). Take a look. It came out great, I think. But would love your feedback if the user experience is less than satisfying.

The second project was to organize the CERMES GIS data library. There were already some geodata up on the CERMES server but I just added some more data, organized by country and region, and set up a template for future data to be added. I hope this helps the students out. I'm not a librarian. I should try to go back and get an MLS degree if I really wanted to be an effective GIS consultant, but I don't think I have the time. I really do admire librarians, though.

This week has been spent packing and reflecting and filled with lasts...last full moon, last flying fish sandwich, last Magnum bar, last trip to Animal Flower Cave...our flight back home is Monday. Back to New York. Back to reality.

Worldwide Dengue Map

From the Google.org Blog, I heard about the Dengue Map. It's a Google Maps-based health map showing the locations around the world where there have been incidences of dengue. The maps was created by HealthMap and is a result of a Google.org grant. Dengue is on my mind because I'm living in Barbados where there is a worry about dengue, mosquitoes are everywhere, and according to this map Barbados is an area of ongoing transmission risk. I've heard that there's one child who got dengue, though I don't see that listed here as yet.  Wear your bug spray!