Shapefiles for tz timezones and maps for 2008

[Eric Muller]

I am pleased to announce a first version of a shapefile for tz timezones 
of the world, available at <http://efele.net/maps/tz/>. There is still 
work to do: clarify some details, define a strategy for Greenland and 
Antarctica, clean up the US portion, figure out the licensing (the goal 
is something like CC-BY-SA or GFDL, at least for the parts I have rights 
to), so consider this a beta version. Also, no guarantee for now that 
the URLs will be stable.

If you don't know how to deal with shapefiles, you may still want to 
look at the pages, I have included maps as pngs. There are also a number 
of freely available tools to view and/or edit shapefiles, such as OpenJump.

I have also generated a couple of maps to visualize 2008 at  
<http://efele.net/maps/tz/2008>. They may be helpful to QA the tz 
database itself.

I have many folks to thank for their help in producing all this (see the 
thanks page), but I want to particularly thank Gwillem Law, Jesper 
Nørgaard Welen, Chris Walton, and of course the tz team.

Suggestions are welcome,
Eric.