Geo tattoos?

Google Sightseeing has a curious post exploring one of Angelina Jolie's tattoos; specifically, a jumble of numbers forming four sets of lat/long coordinates related to her children. For a photo, brace yourself and follow this link to the evil, evil Daily Mail.

"Google killed my privacy", round n+1

How to put blinders on Google Street View - "Just as governments have asked Google to blur the overhead images of Google Maps, you can ask Google to censor street-level photos." [Webware]

The facade of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheium is cracking like crazy [New York Times via Kottke]

Orange Alert

This afternoon I dad an americano at Orange Alert Organic Coffee @ McCaul and Dundas West for the second time in three days. Tasty stuff.

I came home, and after a little Googlin', I discovered a review of the café on a site called Tupalo (tagline: "stuff in your neighborhood"), which is a city-by-city, user-generated map site. It's a solid implementation of an idea I've seen several times elsewhere (e.g. Google Local), but based on individuals adding their favourite places rather than adding a whole phonebook's worth of locations. For example, here's a search for coffee near Dundas that returns just four locations based on reviews by happy-camper customers.

Later that night, Borrelli, Liam, Dave and I made rowdy fools of ourselves over loads of delicions "meat" at Bo De Duyen. Maybe a positive review will go some distance toward making ammends?

Far too big, too high, too close - "It's a cat-and-mouse game between the [billboard] advertising companies and overworked city inspectors trying to enforce an inadequate bylaw that is convoluted and confusing, even to them. Among other things, it mandates the kind of billboard that is permissible and the minimum distance between signs." [Toronto Star via Spacing]

This article profiles Rami Tabello of IllegalSigns.ca and its map of allegedly offending billboards.

Click2Map is a fancy-pants Google Maps tool that's verily oozing with AJAXy goodness.

Mapshark bites (in a good, sharkey way)

Mapshark is a fancy index of online maps built using Google's custom search engines that claims to include some 700 different sites.

Bag ladies (and lords), rejoice

Ontario curbs scavengers seeking big bucks from bottles - "Starting Monday, customers were charged a recycling fee of 10 cents or 20 cents a bottle for liquor or wine purchases. The money is returned when the empties are brought to a Beer Store. However, nothing prevents people from returning bottles bought before Monday and claiming a deposit they never paid." [CBC; also Toronto Star]

I've been saving wine bottles for a couple of months myself, but only because I learned that the vast majority of glass put in Ontario's blue boxes ends up in the landfill. 10 or 20 cents to haul your bottles back to the Beer Store is hardly a giant unwarranted payday. Maybe giving a little sugar to people who haven't paid the deposit on their empties is a relatively cost-effective way to publicize the recycling program? Certainly cheaper than the TV spots they've been running.

I wish they could be returned to LCBOs, as they tend to be more conveniently located next to bus routes and subway stations than their Beery cousins. By way of evidence, I offer up BeerHunter.ca, which is a handy way to locate your nearest booze peddler.

Strange maps

Strange maps is a blog of bizarro cartography, fictional and otherwise. See the world political map of Orwell's 1984, the original Gerrymander, or world hog population density. [via Kottke]

Google map of Toronto grow-ops busted in '06 [Toronto Star]

• Best. TTC. Google. Map. EVER. [via Torontoist]


• Money talks: folklore in the public sphere - "This article examines 'currency chains' - messages and petitions written on paper money - as folkloric expressions and rhetorical acts that critique or commend dominant American public discourse." [via MeFi]


• Judith Regan Is Fired After O. J. Simpson Book [New York Times]

• Rentometer says our rent is below average for comparable apartments in the area. If only vacant units in the same building weren't going for less! [via Torontoist]


• "Moments after the nine-member commission elected him to the post yesterday... Councillor [Adam] Giambrone, 29, the youngest TTC head in recent memory, assumed control of one of the city's weightiest files." [Toronto Star]


• Microsoft's Live Search Books, which indexes Internet Archive texts, is now out in beta. It's fun. [CNet]

The better way map

I threw a new-and-improved TTC subway map together today. If you have a spare moment, I'd appreciate it if you could try it, look for bugs and/or errors, and give me some feedback.

There's a great deal more information here than on the old version, of which the flashy (ha ha) custom icons are but a foretaste. Bus routes on all stations will eventually have their proper names (e.g. 36 Finch West rather than 36) and will be linked to individual route maps such as this. The layout of the page will also be improved once the map content is done.

If I hack away at it long enough, the ability to show or hide entire subway lines at will might work out, too. If that's out of reach, I'll have to be content with adding VIVA and GO stops to the mix.

Multiple maps in Flickr?

I geotagged many, if not most, of my Flickr photos this week. I haven't quite got the hang of the 'pages' that Flickr seems to automagically create (for some reason, I have two pages).

Is it possible to create separate maps for a certain set of photos? I'd like to toss my 69 stations transfer photos onto a map of their own, rather than mixing them in with shots from other places in Toronto.

I've noticed that within Flickr, the map function is referred to in the singular ("your map") rather than the plural form used for other features ("your sets", etc.). Also conspicuously absent is some way to link to specific zoomed-in areas on the map instead of the default zoomed-out view.

[Edit: whoops, I missed the handy 'Link to this' icon at the bottom-left!]

Tudor? I can't help but presume that you're the Flickr guru among my myriad readers. Flickr's geotagging screencast didn't cover pages at all. Hook a brother up! How do I manipulate these crazy map pages?

Tags: Flickr, geotagging, feature set.

TPL Finder, built with Google Maps

I've slapped together a Google Map of Toronto Public Library branches using a wonderful tool called Map Builder.

All 99 branches are represented, with small blue pushpins for neighbourhood branches, large blue pins for district libraries and large white pins for reference libraries.

Clicking on any icon brings up an infowindow with (in most cases) a photo of the library plus a link to TPL's profile of the branch for hours of operation, etc. I plan to add street addresses, wheelchair accessibility, and special collections information soon.

I might also spin it off into it's own domain name, tplfinder.com or somesuch.

I know a couple of profiles links are broken, along with several missing pictures. If you notice anything else awry, please let me know!

Tags: Toronto Public Library, mashup, map.

I made this!

Sure, it's not super accurate. Yeah, I haven't added as much detailed information as I ought to. I know, I should have used for loops instead of just manually coding all of the stations. I'm no CompSci major, after all.

But here's my TTC subway/RT station google map thingum anyway.

It has markers for all of the Yonge-University-Spadina, Bloor-Danforth, and Sheppard subway lines, plus the Scarborough RT line and the 'proposed' stations extending to the north-west of Downsview.

Clicking on any station brings up a small version of the TTC's schedule for that station; clicking on the small version brings up a full-size version.

What else should I add? Bus and streetcar routes would be fun, but I suspect I don't have the skills or patience. Maybe just working on precision for the pointers, or adding wee little TTC logos to mark the entrances for each station...

Tags: Google maps, TTC, Mashup, Beta.

• Sativex + Health Canada Approval + Chronic migraine headache = ?


• Anti-US leftist leads Bolivian presidential vote [Reuters]


• Umm, fuh2.com.


• The City of Toronto's DineSafe web site includes a searchable, online repository of food premises health inspections. For example: the landmark Pizza Pizza on Yonge [report, map] in front of which the diabetic police horse died in Half Baked, or this local joint I almost ate at last week [report].


• "[I]f Vice President Cheney is right and that some 'cruel, inhumane or degrading' (CID) treatment of captives is a necessary tool for winning the war on terrorism, then the war is lost already." [Washington Post via MeFi]