We are pleased to announce the establishment of first Open Source Geospatial Research and Education (OSGeoREL) Laboratory in the United States at the Center for Earth Observation, North Carolina State University, Raleigh. The laboratory is one of the founding members of a worldwide network developed under the auspices of the ICA-OSGeo Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
...
OSGeoREL at NCSU is led by Dr. Helena Mitasova and Dr. Laura Tateosian. The laboratory has an established program in graduate education in geospatial information science and technology using FOSS4G and extensive research in geospatial analysis, modelling and visualization with focus on natural resources.
Dr. Helena Mitasova is an Associate Professor at the Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, OSGeo charter member since 2006, member of the OSGeo education and conference committees and Sol Katz award recipient http://www.osgeo.org/solkatz . She has been actively involved in the GRASS GIS development since 1991 and together with Markus Neteler she has co-authored the first book about GRASS GIS.
Dr. Laura Tateosian is Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Earth Observation Her research interest focus is on visualization, human visual perception, computer graphics, geospatial sciences, non-photorealistic rendering, and human-computer interaction.
More details of the lab at http://gis.ncsu.edu/osgeorel/
- OSGeo via @OSGeo
Manifest Destiny is a mapification of content from the original Wikipedia page Territorial evolution of the United States. Michael Porath, Data Visualization Consultant and Bay Area based Swiss Information Scientist built it to make the content more interactive. He used lots of open source projects along the way. He describes the project as "The History of the U.S. Told in 141 Maps." It's offered under Creative Commons and I think Esri would describe it as a Story Map.
via @howardbutler
Yet another option to map Excel spreadsheets:
How to Build Maps for Free Using Microsoft Excel and Topo.ly
