Map Watch News

Ireland recently enacted a law that bans English on the road signs and "Offical" maps of portions of Ireland's western coast, where Gaelic is the long-spoken language. This is also an area that receives many tourists. Private map publishers will be permitted to use any language that they wish on their maps. An interesting article on these "Irish Maps" can be seen at Newsday.com

Joe Mehaffey, Jack Yeazel and Dale DePriest have assembled a great collection of GPS education resources at their website - http://gpsinformation.net/
Visit their site for GPS Software, Hardware and Mapping Information

Geology.com has posted detailed satellite images for all 50 states. These are Landsat images from the GeoCover data set. State boundary lines are superimposed over the images as shown in the Delaware example below. Images for each state have been posted at two different scales. The Delaware image below is the less detailed one from the geology.com website.
See the entire collection at the United States Satellite Images page on geology.com.

The Beyond Diversity Resource Center has produced a collection of maps that graphically illustrate the diversity of US states and 20 major cities. The maps show the probability of encountering a person of another race. Areas in white have a low diversity score while areas in darker blues have higher diversity scores.
Map Copyright 2005 - Beyond Diversity Resource Center
See the full Diversity Map collection in greater detail.

Shiveluch and Klyuchevskaya Volcanoes on the Kamchatka Penninsula are erupting. Images of the snow-covered landscape with ash clouds streaming in the prevailing wind can be seen at the Earth Observatory Website.
See more detailed images of Kamchatka Volcanoes at the Earth Observatory website.

Two new services have been lauched that enable you to monitor drivers via GPS-enabled cell phones. Teen Arrive Alive and ULocate offer the service for under $20/month if you have telephone service through Nextel or Motorola respectively. These programs will provide the location and speed of the auto. The Teen Arrive Alive service transmits speeds and locations while the cell phone is in use. The ULocate service can transmit the data every two minutes.
Read more at Teen Arrive Alive and ULocate