Easy and customizable maps with TileMill by Nathan Yau.
From the post:
I’m late to this party. TileMill, by mapping platform MapBox, is open source software that lets you quickly and easily create and edit maps. It’s available for OS X, Windows, and Ubuntu. Just download and install the program, and then load a shapefile for your point of interest.
For those unfamiliar with shapefiles, it’s a file format that describes geospatial data, such as polygons (e.g. countries), lines (e.g. roads), and points (e.g. landmarks), and they’re pretty easy to find these days. For example, you can download detailed shapefiles for roads, bodies of water, and blocks in the United States from the Census Bureau in just a few clicks.
Very cool!
Makes me wonder about shapefiles and relating information to them as information products.
You can download a road shapefile but does it include the road blocking accidents for the last five (5) years?