Cool Toy of the Day

Cool Toys pics of the day: SciMaps

Places & Spaces: Mapping Science
http://www.scimaps.org/

I opened this up, and almost immediately unplugged my computer,
grabbed the laptop, and started running all over the library showing
people the screen. Such an exciting concept!

"Places & Spaces: Mapping Science is meant to inspire
cross-disciplinary discussion on how to best track and communicate
human activity and scientific progress on a global scale. It has two
components: the physical part supports the close inspection of high
quality reproductions of maps for display at conferences and education
centers; the online counterpart provides links to a selected series of
maps and their makers along with detailed explanations of how these
maps work. The exhibit is a 10-year effort. Each year, 10 new maps are
added resulting in 100 maps total in 2014."

Now, I am a tiny bit addicted to data visualizations, so this was, um,
pretty special? /me beams. I also really liked that they have a
competition, so this is kind of crowdsourcing, albeit loosely defined.

Call for Maps for the 6th Iteration on "Science Maps for Scholars" (2010):
http://www.scimaps.org/flat/call/

The overall concept structure is fascinating, as is the outputs of
images and maps for sale and the forthcoming book or two.

* 1st Iteration (2005): The Power of Maps
* 2nd Iteration (2006): The Power of Reference Systems
* 3rd Iteration (2007): The Power of Forecasts
* 4th Iteration (2008): Science Maps for Economic Decision Makers
* 5th Iteration (2009): Science Maps for Science Policy Makers
* 6th Iteration (2010): Science Maps for Scholars
* 7th Iteration (2011): Science Maps as Visual Interfaces to
Digital Libraries
* 8th Iteration (2012): Science Maps for Kids
* 9th Iteration (2013): Science Maps for Daily Science Forecasts
* 10th Iteration (2014): Telling Lies With Science Maps

They are missing, tho, maps that change lives, as in the broad range
of GIS applications to public health issues. That would be really
interesting. I also bet there are a lot of neat related concepts other
folks could come up with. I want to see this extended past 10 years.
Oh, I can hardly wait ...