During a late night epiphany we decided the blog had gotten a bit stale. So, to encourage a regular flow of content we figured a new look and pithy title would be just the trick. Welcome to the shiny-new, rebranded, USGS approved “Off the Map”. Now fortified with vitamins, minerals, insight, and elegant prose.

Why change the title to “Off the Map”? Well push pins seemed so 2005 and we needed another reason for an office contest. The winner you’ve now seen, but there were lots of other great entries such as:

1. Geo Me This
2. Plain to the Simple
3. MapRap (bling your map ????)
4. Map This (including middle finger to the man* graphic)
5. Libre la Data
6. The Lat and Long of It
7. Atlas Maximus
8. Adept and Disheveled

Why did we end up picking “Off the Map”. Well speaking for myself I just wanted to be able to use Kyle’s graphic with the dead push pin.

The next reason? As we’ve been developing the second generation of GeoCommons we found the big areas we were having to innovate had nothing to do with the map. The new ideas that were going to change the way people use maps - were literally “off the map”. Whether it was handling large datasets ridiculously quickly in a browser or structuring taxonomies and semantic relationships we were increasingly putting lots of resources into data management. Just so happened that data could be shown on a map.

Don’t get me wrong the map is still the single interface that ties all the data together, but increasingly I think what will make the GeoWeb matter has less to do with maps (including all sorts of crazy 3-D worlds) and more to do with delivering useful data to help people make better decisions. Which happens to be done through a map.

We should be getting a couple of posts up a week explaining this line of thought in more detail. Most likely with several side trips of randomness and entertainment. So, please stay tuned and we promise to keep a regular flurry of GeoWeb bits o’ knowledge.

* “The man” of course being all those evil cabals preventing easy public access to open data

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