The 200 Best Maps of 2013

For centuries New Year's Eve has been known as a time of quite reflection. A time when people around the world spend a quiet abstemious night in perusing over old maps.

This year, for your night of quiet study, you are spoilt for choice, as 2013 proved to be an epic year in the world of interactive mapping. Not only did we see some epic maps this year, we also saw the world of neo-geography

Mapping the Odyssey

Over the centuries there have been numerous attempts to map the fictional locations in Homer's Odyssey to real-world locations. It is no surprise then that some modern readers have decided to use the tools of modern interactive internet maps to attempt to map Odysseus' journey in Homer's epic tale.

While the locations used in such map depictions are purely a matter of conjecture the maps

Map Your State Senator

The Senate Address Geo-coding Engine (SAGE) is a Google Maps based application and API that is designed to provide voters with easy access to information about New York State districts and representatives.

Enter an address into the District Lookup and you can view the state district that the address falls within and discover the State Senator for the district. The senator who represents the

The Happy New Year Twitter Map

This New Year's Eve you can watch the world celebrate for 24 hours, from Australia to Hawaii, on the #happynewyear tweetmap.

The #happynewyear tweetmap is a Google Map displaying Twitter messages around the world containing the hashtag 'happynewyear'. You don't even have to wait until New Year's Eve to visit the map as people around the world are already wishing each other a happy new year.

The Bike Routes of San Francisco

Cyclodeo has arrived in San Francisco. Cyclodeo is a really useful application that enables cyclists to preview a route on a Google Map and on video before undertaking the journey by bike.

This means Cyclodeo's mapped videos of cycle routes are now available in New York, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Eindhoven and San Francisco. The new San Francisco coverage includes 92 routes representing close to

Where's this Street View from?

GeoGuessr has to be one of the most popular and shared Google Maps based applications of 2013. Map Tag is a new Street View game that pretty much follows the same format.

In the game you are shown a Street View image of a random location around the world and you have to guess the correct location by clicking on a Google Map. You are then awarded points based on how near you were to the actual

Historical Maps in the Digital Age

Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright's Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States was first published in 1932. The Atlas contained nearly 700 maps covering a vast range of social, economic and political aspects of life in the Untied States.



Most map fans will probably be familiar with at least some of the maps featured in this comprehensive Atlas of life in America. For example

Mapping the Internet of Things

Thingful is a rare example of an interactive map made from Nokia map tiles. The map itself shows the location of thousands of internet connected devices around the world, including energy monitors, weather stations, pollution sensors, geiger counters and shipping containers.

You can search the map for connected devices by location and filter the results shown on the map by category. If you

A Google Map of Digitized Medieval Manuscripts

The Digitized Medieval Manuscripts Map is a Google Map showing the location of libraries around the world in possession of digitized medieval manuscripts.

Every marker on the map represents a library. Clicking on the marker opens an information window with the institution's name and a link to the digitized manuscripts available. If you select the 'about' link above the map you can also view a

Where America's Uninsured Live

The New York Times has released a Google Maps based visualization of the insured and uninsured in America. The Mapping Uninsured Americans uses census data released on December 17th to show where the uninsured live.

Users can mouse-over any county on the map to view the percentage of the population without insurance and the percentages with public and private insurance. If you zoom in on the

The Prettiest Map of the Year

Mapping the Sea is a gorgeous interactive map of the Isle of Barra in the Outer Hebrides.

The map was created by artist Stephen Hurrel and social ecologist Ruth Brennan. For the map local school pupils interviewed local fishermen and older inhabitants of the island. The map explores the rich cultural knowledge of the islanders, particularly in relation to the seas around the island.

The map

Liberté, Fraternité & Non Égalité

This French Revenue map shows the geographical distribution of high and low earners in France based on the country's tax returns.

The map appears to show a concentration of higher earners in the north-east, whilst lower earners seem more concentrated in the south-west. Zooming in on Paris the map also effectively visualizes the concentration of low earners in the Saint-Denis northern suburb.

The Maps of the Week

We've featured a lot of Carto DB Torque powered maps in the last month.
This animated map of the geography of 400,000 hours of TV news is among
the most interesting.

The Internet Archive geo-coded 400,000 hours of U.S. television news and mapped the locations mentioned in each report. The Animated Geography of TV News
map animates through the locations mentioned in the news providing a