International Marketing Review #55

International Marketing Review – World Maps

World Maps come is all sizes and shapes. The average world map in the school book I used growing up showed America in the center, Asia to the left and Europe to the right. Maps in Europe tend to have Europe in the center and maps for Chinese students show that China is in the center. A lot of things changed based on your location.

This set of posts include several different maps, different ways of viewing the world. Some are a little unusual and by clicking on some, but not all, of the maps you will have a full screen version of the map, to have a more clear idea of the point that the author or cartographer wants to get across. I hope you enjoy these as much as I did.

Toby Ng Kwong To presents The World of 100,  a set of maps defining the world as if it were a village of 100 people, posted at Toby Ng Design saying “There are a few different versions of this text in circulation about the world’s statistics. I found the data very striking and neatly summarises the world that we live in. So I used information graphics to re-tell the story in another creative way. I designed a set of 20 posters, which contain most of the information. I used simple vector graphics that related to a statistic in order to present the information in the simplest and most accessible way.”

The example to the right shows how many people, in the World of 100, would speak different languages. Toby Ng Design has about 25 of this type map, and they are well worth looking over.

John Yunker @johnyunker presents Are You Master of Your Domains? posted at Global by Design saying “

This map was designed to fit on a cubicle wall and include the major country code top level domains (ccTLDs) that a global Webmaster may encounter. And although the map includes a whopping 180 ccTLDs, that is not all of them. To include all of them, I would have to develop a much-larger map, which is what I ended up doing.

And here it is, our newest and biggest map, shown below:”

PajamaNinja presents Russian Prof. Igor Panarin Predicts US Civil War, Includes Map of “New America” posted at College OTR saying “according to a Russian academic, Professor Igor Panarin, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.

“There’s a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur,” he says. “One could rejoice in that process,” he adds, poker-faced. “But if we’re talking reasonably, it’s not the best scenario — for Russia.” Though Russia would become more powerful on the global stage, he says, its economy would suffer because it currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S.

Really, there’s a 50/50 chance the US will “disintegrate”? And what’s the time table on this? Oh, 2010? OK then. I mean talk about not having faith in Obama. Even Sean Hannity isn’t predicting the total collapse of the US. Looks like Ohio is going to be in Canada now”

Philippe Rekacewicz presents World economy cartogram posted at LINK saying “To highlight the distribution of wealth and power in the world of today, this cartogram sizes the countries according to their relative financial status, here presented through gross domestic product (gdp) per capita, offering an alternative world view to a regular map. Countries such as China and India become much smaller, next to giants in Western Europe, North America and Japan. Africa represents a minor speck, while South and Central America lands somewhere in between.”

World Water Council presents Water Crisis posted at World Water Council saying “Water stress results from an imbalance between water use and water resources. The water stress indicator in this map measures the proportion of water withdrawal with respect to total renewable resources. It is a criticality ratio, which implies that water stress depends on the variability of resources. Water stress causes deterioration of fresh water resources in terms of quantity (aquifer over-exploitation, dry rivers, etc.) and quality (eutrophication, organic matter pollution, saline intrusion, etc.) The value of this criticality ratio that indicates high water stress is based on expert judgment and experience (Alcamo and others, 1999). It ranges between 20 % for basins with highly variable runoff and 60 % for temperate zone basins. In this map, we take an overall value of 40 % to indicate high water stress. We see that the situation is heterogeneous over the world.

As the resource is becoming scarce, tensions among different users may intensify, both at the national and international level. Over 260 river basins are shared by two or more countries. In the absence of strong institutions and agreements, changes within a basin can lead to transboundary tensions. When major projects proceed without regional collaboration, they can become a point of conflicts, heightening regional instability. The Parana La Plata, the Aral Sea, the Jordan and the Danube may serve as examples. Due to the pressure on the Aral Sea, half of its superficy has disappeared, representing 2/3 of its volume. 36000 km² of marin grounds are now recovered by salt.”

Sun Bin presents Map: world population and GDP scaled maps posted at Sun Bin saying “This is the world map scaled by population. It shows why BRIC (the biggest 4 developing countries in this map, sort of, though they should include Indonesia, BIRIC) has been talk of the town these days.”

Know H20 presents Water Maps posted at Know H20 saying “Worldmapper has created a unique series of maps to show how resources are managed around the world. Water is an important resource that isn’t distributed quite so evenly. Click on a map to make it bigger.

Take a look at some of these global water maps to see who has a lot of water resources?and who doesn’t. Find your country and take at the bottom portion of Africa, what do you see? How can things be different? Territory size shows the proportion of all worldwide freshwater resources found there.”

More International Marketing Reviews:

• #55 – World Maps
• #54 – Interracial Relationships
• #53 – Multi-cultural Cities
• #52 – International Social Networking
• #51 – Mothers Day 2009
• #50 – Cross-Cultural Management
• #49 – Holidays Around The World In May 2009
• #48 – Earth Day 2009
• #47 – Easter 2009
• #46 – G20
• #45 – UN-Earth Hour Events On Earth Day
• #44 – World Water Day
• #43 – Flat Stanley travels the world
• #42 – English Tweeting Women to follow from Europe
• #41 – English Tweeting Women to follow from Europe
• #40 – Intercultural Encounters
• #39 – International Valentines Day 2009
• #38 – The White Paper Summit 2009
• #37 – Social Media Changes and President Obama
• #36 – Social Media and the President
• #35 – Globalization and the Global Economy
• #34 – Cross-Cultural Encounters
• #33 – Cultural & International Links
• #32 – 2009 Predictions
• #31 – Christmas Meals Around The World
• #30 – Christmas Trees Around The World
• #29 – Santa Claus In Different Cultures
• #28 – International Christmas Shopping
• #27 – On Multicultural Matters
• #26 – On International Sales
• #25 – On Cross-Cultural Communication
• #24 – On Translations
• #23 – On Email Marketing
• #19 – International Business

Here is a complete list of International Marketing Reviews Technorati tags:

the international marketing review, blog carnival, international sales best practice.

Tagged as: Igor Panarin, Map of "New America", water crisis map, water maps, world economy cartogram, World Maps, world population and GDP scaled map

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