Customer Reviews

Mapping Hacks: Tips & Tools for Electronic Cartography

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I really wanted to like this book, especially after all the glowing reviews it received. But the book has fundamental flaws in structure, topics, and approach:

- As someone else mentions, the book is heavily, albeit not exclusively, skewed towards Unix applications. Given that only 3% of desktops currently run Unix (6% if you're generous and include MacOS X), this immediately raises an accessibility barrier for those unfamiliar with the intricacies of Unix, and an unfamiliarity with Perl, Python, and shells. There are many Windows mapping applications that do much of what is described in this book far more easily and accessibly than the Unix-oriented solutions presented.

- Critical topics are defined incompletely and haphazardly. For example, while shapefiles are mentioned in several places early on, the first even barely-adequate definition comes several hundred pages into the text. Datums are covered very poorly, and given their importance in real-life applications, that's simply not acceptable.

- A significant fraction of the book is handed over to a discussion of different kinds of projections, and programs that will display them. While interesting, the fact is that most of the useful information about projections can be gotten from the text, or from a website that discusses projections; the "hacks" are essentially superfluous. I'm also disturbed by the amount of space given to projections vs. datums. In my experience, more people run into mapping issues with datums (e.g. using GPS units in WGS84, and wondering why they don't match up with topo maps in NAD27) than they do with projections.

- A huge chunk of the book is taken up GRASS. GRASS is very powerful, and as much fun to learn and use as sticking red-hot knitting needles into your eyes. Most of the problems that GRASS is used to solve in the book could far more easily be solved either with other freeware programs, or with Manifold GIS if you've got the money. For that matter, other difficult-to-use programs are employed to solve tasks that could be done more easily with other programs (e.g. SPLAT! is cited instead of the superior MicroDEM or RadioMobile for broadcast coverage; POV-Ray for 3-D models instead of 3DEM/Landserf/MicroDEM/Wissenbach3D; GRASS for map texturing instead of 3DEM or MicroDEM; PERL for spatial data analysis instead of GeoDA/STARS/PASSAGE; and so on). You could spend huge amounts of time becoming a "GRASS Ninja", as the book suggests, or you could spend less time and get more done using other software that's far easier to use.

- Sloppy terminology. For example, "Georeferencing" is used to refer to both linking digital photos to the location they were taken (should be "geotagging"), as well as its normal use in cartography, associating geographic coordinates with raster or vector features. And a GeoTIFF is not a Tiff with a world file, it's a Tiff with the georeferencing information embedded in it.

- A book of "hacks" should contain complete, self-contained hacks, and any number of hacks in this book don't fulfill this requirement. For example, the hacks on WMS/WFS, PostGIS, and building your own car computer/navigation system are either incomplete or hopelessly inadequate in giving you the information you need to implement them.

- Many of the hacks have been superseded by recent developments, like Google Maps/Earth, and the APIs from Yahoo and MSNLocal. This clearly isn't the authors' fault, but it does lessen the overall value of the book.

I could go on, but you get the idea. I have no idea of who the authors and publisher believe is the intended audience for the book, but unless you've got both a strong cartographic background and a strong Unix background, most of these hacks will be beyond you. And if you are strong in cartography and Unix, few of these hacks are even worth bothering with, since you'll most likely either know them, or know a better way to get them done. There are a few nuggets of useful information, primarily in the GPS section, but for most people, this book simply isn't worth the money.

Addendum (7/3/2011): The book is also now hopelessly out of date.

I found another book that's excellent if you're into maps and software that creates them... Mapping Hacks - Tips & Tools for Electronic Cartography by Schuyler Erle, Rich Gibson, and Jo Walsh (O'Reilly). You can have a lot of fun with this one...

Contents: Mapping Your Life; Mapping Your Neighborhood; Mapping Your World; Mapping (on) the Web; Mapping with Gadgets; Mapping on Your Desktop; Names and Places; Building the Geospatial Web; Mapping with Other People; Index

What's nice about this book is that it's not all about installing some large mapping software package and then learning how to use it. Mapping Hacks covers a wide array of mapping techniques, tricks, and hacks that can be used by anyone willing to sit down and try things out. For instance, the first hack (#1 - Put a Map on It) shows you how to use the online mapping services and how to hack together a URL to add mapping to your website. Ever wondered how those driving direction sites work? Hack #2 - Route Planning Online - sheds light on that one. They even go so far as to cater to the ultra-geek and explain how to build a car navigation system that "will consume all your time and money, but make you the envy of all your nerd friends". Gotta love it...

Like O'Reilly's other mapping book, this is printed in color, so you get a lot of information from the context of the figures and graphics. Nicely done. The book is also larger than a normal Hacks title. There's the standard 100 entries, but there's around 525 pages to it. You get a lot of detail on some of the more complex hacks, which in my opinion adds a lot of value to the book.

A perfect book for those looking to get their feet wet on the subject, as well as for those who are more experienced but want to learn a few new tricks. Very nicely done...

Nowadays it isn't about simply getting information about a place or location, thanks to the recent explosion of personal-GPS units, online mapping and free and low-cost satellite imagery the latest trend is to transform information into a map to present the information in a more dynamic and sometimes more usable way.

Mapping Hacks is a unique book in that it will take you far beyond simply bringing up a map of Grandma's house. It will show you how to take data that you collect and use it to present maps and cartographic data about everything from mapping the wi-fi hotspots in your area, to tracking a package as it moves across the globe to creating 3-D maps of your neighborhood, your city and even the entire planet. This book is for those who aren't simply satisfied with the basic information MapQuest or Google Maps provide, but want to take that information and use it in ways that were unheard of just a few months ago.

Though having a GPS unit to collect data is a great way to get the most out of this book, there are also plenty of hacks devoted to simply mapping out or building on top of existing data. Perhaps you want to setup a web site that shows all the local eateries in your neighborhood along with their latest health report -- no problem, there is a hack that will walk you right through it! This book helps open your mind to the possibilities of what all you can do with the data you already have. You may implement the hack for the health code violations and then build from that to start mapping out housing prices, or crime statistics -- the possibilities are endless.

Unfortunately, the book does not cover the latest API into Google Maps -- one of the recent, and more popular resources for mappers. However, the book does cover a lot of the more traditional ways of accessing sites like MapQuest and Yahoo Maps. It was written so that you don't have to be a programmer or computer guru to get the most out of the book.

It's a unique book (and in full color too I might add) that really will open your eyes and mind to the new ways of using services and information that once was only accessible to map makers and businesses.

As another selection from the "Hacks" series, this book is useful for anyone, whether they have the time to read the whole book, or merely select and use a single hack. The authors have put forth 100 useful hints and tricks to introduce the reader to the world of electronic cartography. Within 1 hour of picking the book up, and choosing a hack at (nearly) random, I had accomplished something that could have taken me 2-3 days to find the tool for the job, figure out how, and then use it.

From pointers on using simple web-based mapping services, such as MapQuest (http://www.mapquest.com/), to using GRASS (http://grass.itc.it/) for advanced GIS mapping, to deploying your own basic web-based mapping, this book has all you need to get started, and even finished with whatever you want or need to do with maps.

A few of the hacks could use a bit more explanation, for my tastes, as to be more understandable to tweak, but overall it was an excellent selection, that I would recommend to anyone interested in electronic cartography.

I really like to look at maps. Perhaps that makes me kind of a geek. Maps can help people understand experiences (like vacations), cultures, and can even help in decision making. Maps are just neat. This book (at over 500 pages!) contained tips and ideas on everything I ever thought about doing with maps, and then some!

This book covers so many mapping topics, it's amazing. From tools and techniques for determining the shortest route between two points, to labeling your photographs with GPS information, to building a "neverlost" for your car, to building maps to help in decision making. The book really contains a little for everyone: from basic information to understand cartography, to using your GPS device to show where on the planet you've been.

O'Reilly did a really nice job with the printing of this book, as the whole thing is in color. For mapping applications, that's a necessity, and made this book stand above some of the others in this category. Additionally, the author does a really good job appealing to a wide audience and making many of the hacks interesting to as many types of people as possible. I have read some complaints that this book was printed before the Google Maps API became available, but that's certainly something that can be covered in the second edition.

This is a great book for the mapping hobbyist. The book contains a lot of great ideas, tips, and information on tools to really make the most of creating and using maps in your life.

This book was assigned as the textbook for a graduate class in cybercartography, mostly because the professor couldn't find a book that really addressed the topic. And while this is nothing like a textbook, it's a fantastic resource for anyone interested in internet or dynamic mapping -- and the information is relevant beyond this (perhaps relatively narrow) discipline.

It's cut into bite-sized pieces, and the bites are tasty and well chosen. The topics cover a broad range of material, from cool web sites I'd never have otherwise found to propeller-head "get under the hood and have some fun" stuff that you'd be hard pressed to find covered in a half-dozen other books.

This is definitely worth a look -- I'm going to keep this for years, and I KNOW I'll be using it for a long time.

I am definitely not a professional cartographer, but I do have quite an interest in mapping and GIS that started when I spent a summer making maps at work. When I saw this book on the shelf, I made a beeline right for it. Unfortunately I was on vacation at the time and spent an excessive portion of my vacation reading it. Thankfully I had my trusty Powerbook with me so I could actually start trying stuff out.

I have a bunch of the 'Hacks' series from O'Reilly and I really enjoy them. I like being able to read them in tiny chunks. This book, like the rest of the series, has Hacks that range from a page and a half to nearly fifteen pages, but most are 3 to 4 pages. The one drawback is that you never really get into things in great detail. For instance, there are entire books on some of the Hacks in this book (ie. #91, Build Interactive Web-Based Map Applications). But that can be a good thing as well, since you get introduced to lots of various things.

I really enjoyed this book. The writing is easy to follow, with enough humour to keep me entertained. The majority of the Hacks in the book were interesting and useful to me. A lot of them had me back in front of the computer before I had finished reading them to try them out. I found the cross-platform coverage to be excellent as most of the software covered is available on multiple platforms so no one gets left out.

If you are interested in mapping in general, I recommend you pick up this book. There are 5 sample Hacks available on the website ([...]) so you can take a look for yourself.

I'm in the middle of Sudan, reading Mapping Hacks whenever I can. it's the only book I brought but what else do I need!? this is really fun to read for someone fascinated with maps and images. This really is a must for anyone enjoying technology and maps, photography etc.. At least I've put the book in the brightest sun I could find, more or less in the middle of the desert ;-)
Bottomline: buy and give some copies to your friends!

I recently went thru half of this book and at first I thought it was a way to create your own maps ala cartography. Which is something I've done for many of my clients using Illustrator to draw the maps and then transferring it over to Fireworks (or sometimes creating the map directly in Fireworks) and then exporting it as a .gif. Not so here. This book shows various ways to use MapQuest, Yahoo and other types of mapping systems you've probably never heard of and learning all sorts of sneaky ways to take these systems to the limit. Probably too geeky for me and maybe a lot of you, but if you want to learn how to take these various mapping systems and sites to the max, this book is for you for sure.

If you are old enough, geography brings to mind globes and large musty maps from the schoolrooms you attended. But there has been a huge qualitative change in geography. Quite appropriate, perhaps, as we are now in the 21st century. This book describes what can happen when you have GIS available. It sits squarely at the intersection of computer programming and geography.

Intensely and inherently visual. Granted, most of the hacks involve a modicum of programming. But typically the output is a map of some kind. Which broadens the appeal of the hack, because the visuals can often be interpreted and used by a wide audience. Whereas, in many other O'Reilly Hacks books, a hack might be very specialised.

You may want to pay especial attention to the hacks involving GRASS. This is a huge geographic analysis package that is perhaps the analog of Oracle or DB2 in databases. The hacks can be used as a learning device, to get familiar with GRASS. This is not really for the person casually interested in some simple geographic hack. But for someone who wants to do serious geographic analysis.