This past week, Google Maps and Tele Atlas agreed to a five-year partnership. The Dutch-based mapping company will provide Google with more maps and geographic data, allowing Google to disseminate the information to over 200 countries. The agreement broadens Google Maps and Google Earth, but also allows for a mobile platform – specifically for the much anticipated Google Android.

After the release of ArcGIS 9.3 last week, ESRI has now made web help available. The help documentation is apparently very easy to understand. A few of the help features include ArcGIS 9.3. shortcuts, PDF Support and nominal scaling.

As Bill Gates retired, we take a look back at his predictions on mapping. In 1995, Gates said, “You’ll be able to jump into a map so you can navigate down a street or through the rooms of a building.”

EveryBlock, a virtual map that keeps track of news for every city block in Chicago, New York and San Francisco, just added Charlotte and Philadelphia to the list.

Popularity: 6% [?]

With Monday’s unveiling of Google’s Map Maker, Google account holders now have the ability to edit and add to certain Google Maps. The Map Maker currently only allows for map editing in a select group of countries including Cyprus, Iceland, Pakistan, Vietnam and the Caribbean nations. Functions of the tool include custom map creations, borders and regions, places of interest and road networks.

ESRI released their downloadable application, ArcGIS Explorer 480, this week. The upgraded version still offers the same basic function of geoprocessing services, but with major improvements such as KML improvements and increase in performance.

Nokia acquired Plazes, an LBS social mapping network. Plazes provides updates of friends’ activities in a find me/follow me type of service. The social mapping application will take Nokia one step closer to “bringing people and places together” and also acknowledges the rise and demand of LBS.

Microsoft and Virtual Earth launched a program that allows state and local governments to share their imagery, called GoVE. All of the imagery from these governments, municipalities and aerial photographers gets sent to Microsoft, which in turn is published by Virtual Earth.

Popularity: 15% [?]

As the outbreak of Salmonella Saintpaul from raw tomatoes spreads throughout the country, we thought it would be good to track the cases over time. You can find all of these updated datasets, ready to be mapped, at Finder!.

This map, made from the dataset “Outbreak of Salmonella Saintpaul from Tomatoes All Updates” shows the spread of the outbreak throughout June.

Finder! also has datasets on the areas in the U.S. and Mexico whose tomatoes have been declared safe by the CDC. This map shows those places as of June 20^th. Canada, Belgium, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Israel, Netherlands and Puerto Rico are also included on the safe list.

Knowing which states have safe tomatoes can be helpful but sometimes it’s difficult to know exactly where tomatoes in the grocery store came from. Shopping at your local farmers market is a good way to be sure of the origin of your fresh produce.

Finder! has datasets on farmers markets that provides not only the location of the market but hours of operation, contact information and much more. Just make sure you ask the farmers if the products for sale are from their farm and make sure you are in a state whose tomatoes have been declared safe. Here is a map of our California Farmers Market dataset.

So check out Finder!, check out your local farmers market and enjoy your fresh tomato salsa again!

Popularity: 14% [?]