There is a classic census problem of how to provide reasonably detailed statistical and geographic information about a population while still protecting the identities of individuals. Consider this problem for a moment, and then turn it upside down:

How do you provide information publicly about individuals without exposing your database in its entirety to those who might mine it for unintended purposes?

Tom Owad just released an incredibly detailed howto for analysing the reading habits of Amazon.com wishlist users. Did you think this sort of profiling was only available to the likes of the NSA and FBI?

Think again:

Anders over at The Random Show created a really interesting video using Google Earth combined with spatial information for video bloggers around the world.

What I love about videoblogging (or video in general as a medium) is that if I get an idea, I can visualize it in almost no time at all because the tools available are so easy to work with, and I get some result immediately.

This video is a good example of how quickly we're approaching the point where the same can be said for mapping and GIS tools.

The data was supplied by the folks over at vlogmap.org who recently released a vlogger dataset for google earth.

Anyone want to post a list of their favorite video blogs?

[via makezine]

This is really cool. Someone at Google used the Google Earth software to provide an interactive map of the moon.

You've really got to zoom way in. It's amazing the level of detail they have in their data.

[via Waxy links]

I just came across a Google Maps hack that geocodes the home towns of Iraq war casualties and displays a visual timeline of the progression of U.S. soldier casualties throughout the war.

This is the most recent in a whole slew of Google Maps hacks, where the service has been tweaked and augmented to map things such as housing, cheap gas, crime occurances in chicago, and sexual predators in Florida.

Barb Dybwad put together a nice howto for using Google Maps to create your own annotated maps. If you want to dig a little deeper, you can check out the work being done to disect the more dynamic aspects of the maps code. There is an initial reference for the various javascript classes and functions, and a howto for embedding map data into your own page.

There's a lot of creative stuff happening here. Make sure to post your favorite map hacks in the comments area, or send me a tip!