Apple's Lion and TOPO!

Getting a new operating system on my Mac often freshens the experience so much that I feel like I have a new computer. That's certainly been the case with OS X 10.7.3, Apple's Lion operating system. It has many new features, especially in the browser and the interface with the swipe pad, that really feel new.

In fact, it seems that new OS on old hardware could be the model for future economic growth without resource consumption. For example, imagine in the future if we could keep our old car and yet when we have the cash upload a new "look". That way status-conscious could upgrade their status, yet the new look would just be software -- now that's sustainable growth. The growth is people buying and consuming (i.e., the 20th century economic engine model) but what they buy is not extracted from the Earth, but rather from people's imaginations, which seems like a sustainable resource.

Anyway, that digression aside and back to reality, Apple's Lion operating system and TOPO! aren't yet compatible so I have been forced to look at Google Earth alone for Alaska trip planning.

Which brought up an old email from Hig:

Hi All,
 I was talking with a GIS geek this week and he mentioned that you can get
 a feed of all the Alaska topo maps for Google Earth:
 > http://kml.gina.alaska.edu/
 (There's some other cool stuff here too.)  If you zoom in, it will give you progressively more detailed maps, right down to the 1:63k.
  It's a bit sluggish, but otherwise it's a pretty incredible and free tool
 for exploring Alaska.  Maybe you all know about this already and I'm just
 out of the loop, but it's not exactly an easy thing to find, so I thought maybe
 not.
 -Hig