USGS Opens Its Map Toolbox

The U.S. Geological Survey's "Digital Map Beta" is a start toward a grand vision: anyone can build their own map, one as good as a printed USGS quadrangle map, by assembling current databases on the fly. The example shown combines aerial photography with road and placename databases into a quickie quad map PDF. And it's suitable for mashups with Google Maps. And it's all free. (Thanks to Kyle House, with his nose for the new, for tipping me off to this.)