This Friday Fave is a little bit different. My interest in geospatial technologies (although we just called it GIS back then) largely because I wanted to measure my running routes more accurately and efficiently than the paper map & scrap of paper method I was using in the early 90s. When I was introduced to GIS, I knew what I was going to use it for. Now that GPS technology is ubiquitous–I’m currently using four different GPS devices, at the same time, on my bike rides–I seldom have to use a map to measure my routes.

I admit, I love picking up freebie maps. Whether it is from the front desk of a hotel or from the bicycle shop, there is a certain appeal to seeing what people put on maps. I have maps organic orchards, breweries, Minnesota authors, rails to trails, zoos, fictional places, race maps, and a variety of other things that someone felt the need to cartographize.(http://thefriends.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/mn_writers_on_the_map_web_download.pdf)http://thefriends.org/ So, with all these paper maps lying around, I was thrilled to find Custom Maps, a free app on Google Play.

Obviously Cartographers belong in the same category as other superheroes like Superman, Batman, and Spiderman and we finally have a our own comic book to prove it. Cartozia Tales is a collaborative effort of nine indy artists with two guest artist each issue. They have an interesting plan, they’ve split the world into nine regions (what’s the name for the ninth of an area, nona-rant?) and the artist will tell a story from a different region each issue.

When I first found out about GIS, the first application that came to mind was using it to map my running routes. At that time, I was using paper maps and scraps of paper to measure how far I was running each day. GIS obviously offered a better method. Almost twenty years later, GPS has become so common place that I think we have four or five devices in our household that have GPS capabilities and measuring my runs has become ridiculously simple.