map related goodies

the last time i was clearing off my desk i realized that i had enough map related goodies to make their own post, so today i'm just going to make a rundown of those and that will mostly take care of my list.

so.

very simple, but very handy: latitude and longitude of a point. i don't know about you, but i am always on some site or another where i need to enter the location of a thing i want to  look up. sometimes they only want it in terms of latitude and longitude, which is only handy if you know the coordinates and it's nice to have a site where you can just look it up quickly.

while you're there you might want to look at a less practical but still interesting tool that tells you where all the M5+ earthquakes have been lately.

then, if you want to get more personal instead of geologic, you can go and have a look at US census data, tract by tract. here are the data representations for my neighborhood.

and if you've always wanted to know everything about timezones, the bbc has a beautiful interactive globe with tons of information for you. go soak it in, and then style yourself an expert.

if you want to get a big-picture idea of why the middle east is so much of a quagmire, you may wish to look at this map. if you have general worldwide interest in the history of conflict, you might could go here.

if you have a picture of a place but don't know where it is, or you're somewhere and you have no idea where you are but you have a camera and an internet connection, you can send the picture to this site and ask where it is.

and then, if you want something you can pin up on your fridge or keep in your wallet to remind everyone where to go in case of an emergency, you can make a safety map.