-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        Re: Price for USGS Topo Maps Rises Gently
Date:   Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:24:15 -0700
From:   Matt Fox <[log in to unmask]>
To:     [log in to unmask]
References:     <[log in to unmask]>



On a related note....I recently started a project to make all 57,000
USGS topo maps (DRGs) available online via Google Earth for free.  I
just started rolling out the first release a few days ago, which
includes Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and California.  It
will probably take me the rest of the year to finish all 50 states
since I'm only able to commit a few hours a week to the project in my
spare time.  I hope this will provide an alternative to GeoPDFs (which
I've never been a big fan of) and websites that charge monthly fees to
access the topo maps.

The plan is to include all the scales available (24K, 125K, 250K,
etc.).  I also decided not to sacrifice image quality, so there is no
lossy compression used or reduction in resolution.  If you're familiar
with how Google Earth works, I'm using Super Overlays, which means
each map is cut up into 100's of smaller tiles so that Google Earth
view them at full resolution.  I then pack all the tiles for each map
into a single KMZ file to make distribution easier.

If anyone wants to help, I am looking for sources of the DRGs.  Right
now I'm downloading them all off of various websites, but this is
often very time consuming.  If anyone has a large collection of DRGs
on DVD that they wouldn't mind sending me, that would be a great help.

More info on this project and a link to get started viewing the maps
in Google Earth can be found at
http://www.gelib.com/usgs-topographic-maps.htm

Matt Fox
[log in to unmask]


On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Maps-L Moderator for Robert Wyatt
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject:        Re: [MAPS-L] Price for USGS Topo Maps Rises Gently
> Date:   Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:57:27 -0500
> From:   Robert T Wyatt <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To:       [log in to unmask]
> Organization:   http://bentones.us/
> To:     [log in to unmask]
> References:     <[log in to unmask]>
>
> Not to be argumentative, but 33% is gentle?!
>
> -rw-
>
> Maps-L Moderator wrote:
>>
>> The price of the popular USGS 1:24,000 scale topographic quadrangle map
>> - often called a "topo" or a "quad" - will go up $2 per sheet to $8
>> beginning today March 16, 2009. Larger format ("poster") maps will go up
>> $3 per sheet to $10. These prices were last increased 7 years ago.
>
>