Guerrilla Cartography Maps for Review

Posted on January 21, 2016 by socalgovgis - Michael Carson

In the spirit of academic peer review, Guerrilla Cartography invites its global peer community to review the maps submitted to Water: An Atlas. Share your questions, thoughts, and impressions to improve their global cartographic movement.

Guerrilla Cartography is a loose band of cartographers, researchers, and designers intent on widely promoting the cartographic arts and facilitating an expansion of the art, methods, and thematic scope of cartography, through collaborative projects and disruptive publishing.

New Book: Designing Better Maps

Posted on January 7, 2016 by socalgovgis - Michael Carson

Designing Better Maps: A Guide for GIS Users, second edition, is a comprehensive guide to creating maps that communicate effectively. Author and cartographer Cynthia A. Brewer guides readers through the basics of good cartography, including layout design, scales, projections, color selection, font choices, and symbol placement. Designing Better Maps also describes the author’s ColorBrewer application, an online color selection tool. The second edition includes a new chapter on map publishing. The book is paperback and 260 pages.

Check out a recent review of the book here.

The Art of Illustrated Maps

Posted on October 13, 2015 by socalgovgis - Michael Carson

If you are interested in illustrated conceptual maps, want to learn more about creative cartography, or want to see examples from illustrators around the world, The Art of Illustrated Maps by John Roman might be interesting to you. This is the first book ever to fully explore the fascinating world of illustrated conceptual maps. Check it out!

Getting to Know ArcGIS, 4th Edition

Posted on August 6, 2015 by socalgovgis - Michael Carson

ESRI has published the 4th edition of Getting to Know ArcGIS. Many of you have probably used past editions to learn the ArcGIS Desktop software or to teach others.

This edition is updated for the latest version of ArcGIS Desktop, 10.2 to 10.3.1. The book teaches GIS concepts and common tasks like how to find GIS data online, create web maps, set map projections, symbolize and label maps, edit GIS data, and geocode address locations. Included is a preview of ArcGIS Pro, however the book focuses on all the tools and functionality available in ArcGIS Desktop 10.3.1.

Getting to Know ArcGIS, 4th Edition was authored by Michael Law and Amy Collins. It is 808 pages long and retails for $84.99 from ESRI Press or about $54 to $58 on Amazon at the time of this post. The book also includes data for the exercises and a 180 day free trial of ArcGIS Desktop available for download at ESRI’s book resources website.

Atlas of Design

Posted on November 14, 2014 by socalgovgis - Michael Carson

The North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) has released their 2014 Atlas of Design. The Atlas of Design is dedicated to showing off some of the world’s most beautiful and intriguing cartographic designs. Check it out and order your copy today!

Free Python eBook

Posted on June 3, 2014 by socalgovgis - Michael Carson

Looking to learn Python or brush up on your Python skills? You can download for free Mark Pilgrim’s book Dive Into Python. Keep in mind this book is dated 2004 and uses Python 2.3 in the examples, but that should not stop you using the current version of Python and following along in the book. Click here to view the table of contents of the book before you decide to download.

Publishing Opportunity for Undergrads

Posted on November 12, 2013 by socalgovgis - Michael Carson

There’s a Call for Papers for a special edition of the International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities titled “Geographic Applications in Sustainability: Understanding the Needs, Addressing the Issues”. The editor welcomes any undergraduate paper submission broadly related to sustainability, with a deadline of December 15. More info at http://commons.pacificu.edu/ijurca/call_for_papers.html .

GeoServer Beginner’s Guide

Posted on June 26, 2013 by socalgovgis - Michael Carson

If you are into open source geospatial mapping and want to learn how to get your map data up quickly, this book is for you. GeoServer Beginner’s Guide comes in eBook and Paperback format.

From the publisher: GeoServer is an open source server-side software written in Java that allows users to share and edit geospatial data. Designed for interoperability, it publishes data from any major spatial data source using open standards. GeoServer allows you to display your spatial information to the world. Implementing the Web Map Service (WMS) standard, GeoServer can create maps in a variety of output formats. OpenLayers, a free mapping library, is integrated into GeoServer, making map generation quick and easy. GeoServer is built on Geotools, an open source Java GIS toolkit.

GeoServer Beginner’s Guide gives you a kick start to build custom maps using your data without the need for costly commercial software licenses and restrictions. Even if you do not have prior GIS knowledge, you will be able to make interactive maps after reading this book.

You will install GeoServer, access your data from a database, style points, lines, polygons, and labels to impress site visitors with real-time maps.

Follow along through a step-by-step guide that installs GeoServer in minutes. Explore the web-based administrative interface to connect to backend data stores such as MySQL, PostGIS, MSSQL, and Oracle. Display your data on web-based interactive maps, style lines, points, polygons, and embed images to visualize this data for your web visitors. Walk away from this book with a working application ready for production.

After reading the GeoServer Beginner’s Guide, you will have beautiful, custom maps on your website built using your geospatial data.