China vs America – World Influence Map / / No Comments The Global Influence Index (GII) shows the influence of the United States and China on 191 countries around the world based on 28 different economic, security, and political criteria. Using the GII’s new 3D globe you can tell at a glance where in the world either the U.S. or China has the greatest influence.Individual countries on the GII globe are colored to show whether they are aligned more Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: America, China, Influence, World
Let’s Map Traffic Incidents… Again / / No Comments This blog has been around for a while (twenty one years currently) so it isn’t too uncommon for me to revisit old topics and demos and rebuild them. I think today’s post may be something of an outlier though. Way back in 2010, early 2010, I built a Proof of Content 911 Viewer that wrapped a local police department’s web site, lafayette911.org. Note the cute disclaimer at the bottom of the site saying you have to ask permission to link to it. Tell me you don’t know how the internet works without telling me you don’t know how it works. Anyway, back in 2010 I used Yahoo Pipes (pour one out for a cool as heck web service) to scrape the data and store it in a database.... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Again, Incidents, Lets, Traffic
The Book Banning Map of America / / No Comments The American Library Association (ALA) reports that attempts to ban books “surged 65% in 2023 compared to 2022 numbers, reaching the highest level ever documented by ALA.” Nearly half of the books targeted for banning were related to issues of LGBTQ+ communities or race.Now the ALA has partnered with Little Free Library and PEN America to release an interactive map which shows Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: America, banning, book
Using PDF Content with Google Gemini – An Update / / No Comments Way back in March of this year, I took a look at using Google’s Gemini APIs to analyze PDF documents ("Using PDF Content with Google Gemini"). At the time, the Gemini API didn’t support PDF documents, so I made use of our (Adobe) PDF Extract service to get the text content out from the document. This "worked" but was possibly less than ideal as my "glom all the text together" approach didn’t really represent the PDF well. The PDF Extract API returns information about text context (like if it is a header for example), but my method ignored that. I’m happy to share that Gemini now supports PDF files natively. Let’s take a look at how this... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Content, Gemini, Google, update, using
Using CSV Data with Leaflet / / No Comments As I continue to play with, and really freaking enjoy Leaflet, I thought it would be interesting to show a demo of using CSV data with it. This also coincides with an interesting dataset I got from the Data is Plural newsletter, a collection of datasets covering just about any topic you can imagine. A few weeks back, they shared ancient shipwrecks covering the years from 1500 BC to 1500 AD. I know, that’s a bit random, but I thought it was kinda cool. The dataset covers near two thousand unique shipwrecks and includes information, at times, about the cargo that was being carried. I thought this would be fun to map, and here’s how I did it. Working with CVS Disregarding the map, the... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: data, Leaflet, using
Land doesn’t vote, people do! / / No Comments Engaging Data has updated its US County Electoral Map – Land Area vs Population map so that you can now zoom in and explore the election results in each state. The map allows you to see the 2020 Presidential Election election results at the county level based on land area or population size.If you select the ‘Population’ button on the map then the colored proportional circles change size to Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Doesn't, land, people, Vote
Links For You (8/31/2024) / / No Comments For my American readers, I hope you are able to enjoy a relaxing three day weekend. I’ve got big plans to do absolutely nothing and do quite a bit of it. My September is going to be busy so I’d like to try my best not to think about that for the next few days. Let’s get to the links! One Million Checkboxes – You Won’t Believe This… I use a note app to keep track of the links I want to share in these posts and generally, I share in a FIFO manner – the oldest added links first. But this… this link comes from a post shared recently on Mastodon and frankly was way too cool to put off. I don’t even want to tell you about this link, I just want... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: 8/31/2024, links
245 Russian Military Targets at Risk / / No Comments The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and Critical Threats have identified hundreds of Russian military sites that are in range of Ukrainian ATACMS. Currently the United States will not allow Ukraine to use US supplied tactical ballistic missiles for long-range deep strikes into Russia. According to the ISW its new map shows “the extent to which US restrictions on Ukraine’s use of ATACMS Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: military, risk, Russian, Target's