Today we hear from a friend from our NYC community, Chris Henrick. Chris is a MFA Design & Technology graduate student at Parsons, The New School For Design. He is a long time user and an expert on CartoDB. We recently saw The Northwest Bushwick Community Map, a project he has been developing to document ongoing change in one of our communities. We wanted to hear more! Read Chris’s description of the project below.

We’re pleased to welcome Eric Bean to the Madrid contingent of the CartoDB team! He’ll be souping up our customer relations with a slurry of financial services, data analytics, and management skills!

Recently, CartoDB had the the chance to put our new space to work by hosting MaptimeNYC in our New York office. This exciting and informative session was a great opportunity to bring together mappers from across the city in a community-run and critically engaged environment.

Building a startup is both difficult and rewarding work. It requires a team of dedicated and passionate people, with the tools and skills to face challenges head on, and re-imagine the possibilities of successful innovation. Being a product of these experiences, our team at CartoDB was proud to partner with The Startup Institute New York to elevate and educate new communities of innovators!

In exactly one year from today, the force will re-awaken with Star Wars: Episode VII. Until then, get caught up on humanity’s favorite space saga with this comprehenisive map of the Star Wars galaxy:

Fall semester is coming to a close and with that thousands of incredible educators get to wrap up their courses and start planning for the next ones. We are really proud that CartoDB has been a part of many of those courses and will be a bigger part of many more next semester. That is why we thought it was time to start digging into the challenges of teaching with maps in the classroom.

Let’s imagine the following scenario…

There doesn’t seem to be a day that goes by anymore without us seeing some far out data visualization using CartoDB. From modeling the Alcatraz escape routes to mapping the Starwars Galaxy our users know how to keep us impressed. Our goal in it all is to continuously make our platform easier to use and to give you the tools that make your maps shine. As part of that march forward, today we wanted to show off two new basemaps available in the CartoDB editor.

Wow. CartoDB is going to Mars? Well, kind of. We’re looking for an extra special intern that will help the European Space Agency search for a martian landing spot and communicate it to the public, though.

Geospatial data lovers know that proximity has its perks- especially in a major city like New York. We recently spent a few minutes browsing through the work of New York Public Library’s Map Division and discovering all of the awesome tools they’re creating- one of which we are about to share with you. World, meet (or re-meet for those of you who already know) MapWarper: The NYPL’s open-access tool for rectifying historical maps from its collections and making them available to the public.