Manifest Destiny tells the story of the United States in 141 maps from the Declaration of Independence to the present.
Explore and interact with any of the maps below, or fast-forward to important events, such as the Louisiana Purchase, the Civil War, or to the present-day US.
What do the colors mean?
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Just under a year ago, I wrote about how to create shared Reminders lists with iCloud. Back then, I explained that while you could create reminders and lists on your iPhone or iPad, the only way to create shared lists—which you and others could access together, making them perfect for collaborative items like grocery shopping lists—was via the iCloud website. Now there’s a second way to do it: via the Reminders app on your Mac. (Sadly, there is still no option for creating shared Reminder lists from an iOS device.)
To do it, you need to be running Mountain Lion version 10.8.2 or later. And you’ll need to make sure you turn on Calendars & Reminders syncing in System Preferences -> iCloud.
Hover over a list to expose the Sharing icon.
In the Reminders Mac app, identify the list you want to share. Then move your mouse over the list’s name in the left sidebar. Click on the broadcast/sharing icon that appears to the right of your list’s name, and then fill out the field that appears with the name or email address of the person with whom you’d like to share the list in question.
Your contact will receive an email from Apple asking them whether they’d like to accept your invitation, including a warning that by doing so, they’ll reveal their Apple ID to you. Once your contact accepts the invitation, you can both add reminders to your shared list from anywhere: Macs, iOS devices, or the Web. But you can only create those shared lists on via iCloud or, now, with the Reminders Mac app.
New Mapnik feature can be used for a hand drawn effect
Recently I posted about how I’ve been experimenting with new Mapnik features in TileMill. This past weekend at the Mapnik code sprint here in DC, I experimented with its new geometry smoothing feature that rounds the corners of polygons and lines and can be useful for making low-resolution data look reasonable at larger scales. Passing it values between 0 and 1 will create bezier curves that smooth shapes to various degrees.
It’s also possible to pass the style values greater than 1, at which point the beziers start to loop back on themselves and things get a little crazy. A ‘sketchy’ look to lines can be achieved by overlaying a number of line attachments with different smoothing values applied.
Here I’m smoothing by 5, 10, and 20, and the lines are overlaid using the ‘multiply’ compositing operation. This make areas that overlap more appear darker.
As an experiment I combined line smoothing with textures, compositing operations, and a script typeface to design a hand-drawn, weathered-looking world map.
These features are still in development, but will be available soon in TileMill.
New Mapnik feature can be used for a hand drawn effect
Recently I posted about how I’ve been experimenting with new Mapnik features in TileMill. This past weekend at the Mapnik code sprint here in DC, I experimented with its new geometry smoothing feature that rounds the corners of polygons and lines and can be useful for making low-resolution data look reasonable at larger scales. Passing it values between 0 and 1 will create bezier curves that smooth shapes to various degrees.
It’s also possible to pass the style values greater than 1, at which point the beziers start to loop back on themselves and things get a little crazy. A ‘sketchy’ look to lines can be achieved by overlaying a number of line attachments with different smoothing values applied.
Here I’m smoothing by 5, 10, and 20, and the lines are overlaid using the ‘multiply’ compositing operation. This make areas that overlap more appear darker.
As an experiment I combined line smoothing with textures, compositing operations, and a script typeface to design a hand-drawn, weathered-looking world map.
These features are still in development, but will be available soon in TileMill.
