july 2008 archives

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

TomTom HD Traffic online

Today, ilse media and TomTom together launched the new website Startpagina/Verkeer. Until now, HD Traffic has only been available to owners of TomTom satnav devices, such as the ONE XL HD Traffic and the new GO x30 range. Using the new website, also online visitors can now keep tabs on the traffic situation on the Dutch roads from behind their Web browsers even before they hit the road. Furthermore, I can finally honour this blog's title webmapper again, because I have been involved as a Product Manager at TomTom in getting this website together.

Since HD Traffic combines government data based on induction loops in the roads with locations of anonymous mobile phones in the Vodafone GSM network, it does not only cover the motorway network, but also the secondary roads. Startpagina/Verkeer thus provides visitors a much more realistic sense of the current situation and is relevant even if you do not take the motorway on your daily commute!

Monday, July 14, 2008

French village names that make you smile

On the occassion of the French national holiday Quatorze Juillet (literally 14th of July), the Dutch news this morning featured an item on the annual convention of around 40 French mayors of communities that have a funny or musical town name. The towns are all members of the Association des communes de France aux noms burlesques et chantants. In case you don't know Dutch and French, some of the mayors present come from the following communities:

Beaufou — sounds like beau fou — which means beautiful fool
Bouzillé — sounds like bousiller — which means to destroy
Monteton — sounds like mon téton — which means my breast
Vatan — sounds like Va t'en — which means Get lost
Corps Nuds — sounds like corps nu — which means naked body

However, I still miss the town Condom in the Midi-Pyrénées in the list! Maybe next year?

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Map of violence

A photo of nothing but lines in the sand won the 2nd prize singles in the category General News of the World Press Photo contest 2008. The lines were drawn by Asdallah Asdel Khaled in January 2007, in a refugee camp in Chad and represent a small map of the assault on the village of Furawiya, Darfur that took place in 2003. Asdel Khaled explains through this map how the Janjaweed circled the village and came in shooting, looting and murdering.

I saw this photo by Stanley Greene this afternoon visiting the World Press Photo exhibition here in Utrecht. Although simply drawn with a stick in the sand, this map tells a horrific story that words cannot describe.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Lovely language

I have just bought the book Lovely Language: Words Divide Images Unite that shows the universal visual language of the social scientist and philosopher Otto Neurath and graphic designer Gerd Arntz. The book accompanies the exhibition I visited late last year. It does not only contain essays on Isotype, Neurath and Arntz, but also on contemporary usage of pictograms. The book fortunately contains some statistical maps, but I particularly like the various signage systems of airports and the Dutch Railway Company (by Mijksenaar) that make for interesting comparison.