Recently there have been several earthquakes around the world. In Negros-Cebu region, Philippines there was a 6.7 magnitude earthquake that resulted many injuries and deaths. The earthquake activity peaked my interest to explore what was happening around the world in terms of seismic activity.

To find data on recent earthquake activity I went to the U.S. governments data portal Data.gov, which is a clearinghouse for thousands of maps and datasets. I found data on earthquakes for the past 7 days.The link to this data is here. When you go to the webpage you will see that you can download the data in .csv or in .kml both of which are readable in Cartographica. I downloaded the file as a .csv. Note: when you download the data you may have to save it as a .txt file and then open it in a spreadsheet application. The spreadsheet application should be able to read the file as a .csv. You can then save the .txt file as a .csv.

Oil prices are a continuing concern of people all over the world. There are a lot of variables that enter into the price of oil, including where the supplies are relative to the damand and how much is controlled by a single party. Oil fields vary in size and in the amount of oil that they contain.I was curious about spatial distribution of oil fields and how much oil the fields contained. To visualize the issue I found data from the USGS.

I recently came across an article on The Guardian that looks at gun crime in the United States. The article includes several maps and it also includes downloadable gun crime data for U.S. states. In this post I show how to import the downloaded data into Cartographica to replicate the maps produced in the article.

I am always very interested in what's going on in Korea. The border disputes that have occurred there over the past several years have made tensions in the area very high. Despite my interest in what's going on I don't know a lot about the specifics of the situation. In this post I use Cartographica to explore the area a little more.

This post describes the process for collecting data using the new U.S. Census American Fact Finder website (Fact Finder2). The new website allows you to select data from almost all U.S. Census Bureau surveys. These include the Decennial U.S. Census and American Community Survey among many others. The new data collection process requires you to use a series of steps for collecting what you want. These steps are logical as you move from general to specific selections. To start, you first determine the dataset and year that you would like to use. Then you choose the geographic level (i.e. national, state, county, cities, etc.), and finally you select the specific variables that you want for each geographic unit. As you make selections the "Your Selections" box in the top left of the Fact Finder2 webpage will update. This is a new feature of Fact Finder2 that helps you manage what you have selected. As we move through the steps pay close attention to the "Your Selections" box to be sure that you are collecting exactly what you want. The new Fact Finder2 is now the only way to collect data. Previously, the American Fact Finder website operated differently and contained less data. The new American Fact Finder is more efficient and allows for quick data allocation. Note: Be sure to use Firefox when using the American Fact Finder 2 website.

This post shows an image downloaded from Digital Globe that depicts the wreckage site of the Costa Concordia cruise ship. The ship wreck occurred off of the coast of Italy and is still currently being handled by officials there. There has been much media attention given to ship's captain who mysteriously abandoned ship before many of the passengers. He was taken into custody by Italian officials. For this post, I georeferenced the Digital Globe image using Cartographica so that we can create more informative maps and new data layers.

CNN has released an interesting map that will be continually updated throughout the election year. The map shows CNN predictions for how they believe states will perform during the 2012 presidential election. The heading says that the map will be updated as new information becomes available. Probably the most interesting aspect of the map are the locations of the battleground states. Battleground states are those places that will have tough competition between the candidates. Also, another interesting feature of the map is that the total number of electoral votes is also included. This allows you to see which battleground states might really play a big part in the upcoming election.

Microsoft has recently gained a patent for a GPS app that uses sources of data to alert users that they are approaching an unsafe area. The app links to GPS and smartphone devices to sources of crime data that alerts users if they are approaching an unsafe area.There currently is limited information about exactly what types of data the app will use and if it will account for other factors that may influence crime in specific areas. The complete functionality of the app has not yet been made available, but already the implications of the app are taking criticism.

The highly anticipated Republican Presidential Primary is being held today in New Hampshire. The New Hampshire Primary is a particularly important election because it is the first non-caucus election held for the run up to the Republican presidential nomination and the subsequent Presidential election. The election receives a lot of media attention and is used as a tool for analyzing and estimating the performance of elections held in other states.