Cultural Geography Blog

GA HQ on Street View - Image copyright Google and associated imaging partners... Today is the launch of the widely anticipated Google Street View. I had an invitation to attend, and would like to have been there, but had another appointment today pre-booked. Just following the LIVE LAUNCH on Sky News, which is also going out on TWITTER. People on TWITTER noticed it last night before the official launch. UK cities covered so far England - Birmingham - Bristol - Cambridge - Coventry - Derby - Leeds - Liverpool - London - Manchester - Newcastle - Norwich, - Nottingham, - Oxford - Scunthorpe - Sheffield - Southampton - York Northern Ireland - Belfast Scotland - Aberdeen - Dundee - Edinburgh - Glasgow Wales - Cardiff - Swansea

Picked up and had a browse at this yesterday in London, and it looks to be an intriguing read - part travelogue, and part exploration of gaming culture. However, it's £22 even on Amazon, which is more than I've paid for a book for years... Perhaps Ollie will buy it instead...

The Age of Stupid: final trailer Feb 2009 from Age of Stupid on Vimeo . In cinemas from Friday...

Just booked for a Stephen Fry talk at the Royal Geographical Society. He will be talking to Libby Purves about 'Discovering People' on the 28th of April. Visit the RGS website for more detail, and to book: £10 for members. More for non-members...

Don't forget to donate to Red Nose Day

Take a look at this Comic Relief ad... It works because it contains a range of marketing icons from over the decades: the Smash martians, the Honey monster etc. We British like our brands... This is part of the reason why the loss of brands such as Woolworths matter to us so much... The Marketing Society  have a website for people to vote for brands in a number of categories, such as the brand most loved by customers. Why is this geography ? Over to you...

Came across a fantastic photography project which casts immigrant workers in the USA as 'superheroes' and places them in the settings where they work. The exhibition is the work of Dulce Pinzon . The Mexican immigrant worker in New York is a perfect example of the hero who has gone unnoticed. It is common for a Mexican worker in New York to work extraordinary hours in extreme conditions for very low wages which are saved at great cost and sacrifice and sent to families and communities in Mexico who rely on them to survive. The Mexican economy has quietly become dependent on the money sent from workers in the US. Conversely, the US economy has quietly become dependent on the labor of Mexican immigrants. Along with the depth of their sacrifice, it is the quietness of this dependence which makes Mexican immigrant workers a subject of interest. The principal objective of this series is to pay homage to these brave and determined men and women that somehow manage, without the help o...

The desktop I had at school which led to the most interest was an inverted map of the world, with the continents as oceans and vice versa... It was produced by Vlad Gerasimov of the eponymous VLAD STUDIO , and now VLAD has released another great desktop: a TYPOGRAPHICAL MAP OF THE WORLD , which you will see if you click the link... Check out VLAD's other work from that link too. Nice work !