Slashgeo

Declan Butler allows us to view Reporters Without Borders's data on press freedom in Google Earth. From the Reporters Without Borders blog: "“Unfortunately nothing has changed in the countries that are the worst predators of press freedom,” the organisation said, “and journalists in North Korea, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, Cuba, Burma and China are still risking their life or imprisonment for trying to keep us informed. [...]" Update: 10/30 20:28 GMT by S : Story promoted to main page.

The Catholicgauze blog has a nice analysis of the Index of Economic Freedom map. The Index is published by The Heritage Foundation. From the blog: "The top seven all have been strongly culturally influenced by England and the English ideals of personal and economic freedoms. [...] A secondary break down has Hong Kong and Singapore as Asian tigers. [...] The bottom fifteen countries include Venezuela, Iran, Zimbabwe, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea. The bottom part of the list coincides with Thomas Barnett's Gap. These countries are either African, Islamic, Communist/Thug Communist, or a combination of the variables."

I just stumbled onto this world map of the Corruption Perceptions Index 2006. From the Transparency International website: "Transparency International commissioned Prof. Dr J. Graf Lambsdorff of the University of Passau to produce the CPI table. For information on data and methodology, please consult the frequently asked questions and the CPI methodology or www.icgg.org." From the site, less corruption perceived in Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Denmark and Singapore, while at the other end of the spectrum, Haiti, Myanmar, Iraq, Guinea, Sudan and Congo.

Featured both on AGISRS and the EiS, the biggest atlas ever named Earth: "It is being billed as the ultimate book about the world and it is something of a landmark in its own right. "Earth" -- the biggest atlas ever to be published -- promises to be a luxurious benchmark in cartography. Created by Millennium House, "Earth" -- complete with a clam shell case -- measures 610 x 469 millimeters and weighs in at over 30 kilos.The price is pretty hefty too. The leather bound, gilt-edged book will set you back around $3500." For other recent Atlas coverage, see these two entries on The Map Room.

Another Earth Atlas was featured on the geonews recently, the one using the Thematic Mapping Engine. From the announcement earlier this month: "Earth Atlas is a prototype web application showing how KML files can be visualised directly in the web browser. The Google Earth API and the Ext JS library are used to create a responsive user interface. Earth Atlas contains KML files from the Thematic Mapping Engine, a few KML SuperOverlays as alternate background maps, and KML files from external sources." See also related stories below.

Here's a few atlases recently featured on the geoblogs. There's EurAtlas: "EURATLAS has recently released 5 centuries of geo-referenced vector data for Europe. The historical data and the licences are available in the Euratlas Shop. Included are 2000, 1900, 1800, 1700, 1600 and 1500. The 15 remaining centuries will be added progressively and the same data will be available in French too." There's the Atlas of True Names: "The Atlas of True Names “reveals the etymological roots, or original meanings, of the familiar terms on today’s maps of the World and Europe.” Place names are replaced with their literal meanings. It’s fascinating — and some of the names are quite surprising." Theres maps of the World of Food, crops and Politics: "In Wired Magazine's November issue, the author of the article "Feeding the World" uses a world atlas to identify trouble spots that hinder the proliferation of food production." There's the U.S. National Atlas website: "Don’t get me wrong, I really like the site, but that’s as much a function of the serendipitous nature of the maps and data you can stumble across as it is its utility. I don’t know that I’d send someone there to look for a specific set of data, since the datasets and categorization are all over the place. But it’s a fun site to poke around in." And finally, CNN on The Atlas of the Real World: "The Atlas “has redrawn the map giving vivid new insights and bringing economic, social and environmental data to life.”" Several previous stories below, but will find more with a search.