In less than 24 hours the Ransom has been met!  Over 100 awesome, generous, Map Liberators donated or bought maps on DVD.

It’s been a great day.  I’m exhuasted.

Two and a half years ago I started the Libre Map Project. My goal was to make maps and GIS data freely available on one centralized web site. During that time I contaced the USGS in hopes that they would coolaborate by sharing data with me. That approach was basically met with silence. Next, I decided to submit multiple Freedom of Information Act requests trying to get Public Domain maps without having to pay thousands of dollars. Those were denied as well.

I’m now announcing a ransom. Instead of spending years trying to get the USGS to hand over the data, I have purchased every 1:24,000 scale DRG topographic maps from a USGS business partner. The Internet Archive has also agreed to host these maps so anyone can download them for free. But wait! Before I hand the data over to the Internet Archive, I am looking to the Internet community to help me recoup my costs.

Meet the $1600 ransom by donating or buying maps on DVD, and these maps will be liberated forever.

Read More on the Map Ransom page…

Even though it is still technically possible to download non-DRM’d MP3’s from This American Life’s website, they are making things better on the Audible/iTunes Music store side of things. According to the weekly update from TAL, they are lowering the price of a single DRM’d episode from $3.95-$5.95 down to $0.95:

…we’ve dropped prices for downloads of archived shows to $.95 at Audible.com; prices at the Apple Music Store should drop to $.95 soon. We’ll be announcing some other new audio developments in the coming weeks — watch this list for details.

We just got back from our 20 day trip the United Kingdom. Actually, we got home Thursday, then went straight to Vermont to get Ketzel, and now we are really home. I unfortunately missed the first two days of Wikimania, but Friday I was able to watch the live video stream which was in some respects better than being there.

We still have a backlog of photos for the gallery, but I uploaded a bunch in the last couple days.

I received a request from CBC Radio to remove the wiretap episodes. My fingers were crossed that they would make the episodes available in some form on the Wiretap website before sending a take down request. Unfortunately that isn’t the case. They still need to work out rights issues. Note, they do have a Real Audio stream of an episode on the site, however, I believe the same episode has been there a while.  So I don’t think they are posting new episodes after they air.
If you want to catch the show you’ll have to tune in via the radio or live Internet stream.