Began in 2009.
Natural Earth is a public domain map data set available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110m scales, featuring vector and raster data.
Primary authors: Tom Patterson and Nathaniel Vaughn Kelso.
Vector data is in ESRI shapefile format and raster data is in TIFF format with a TFW world file. All data uses the Geographic projection, WGS84 datum.
Title from home page (viewed Dec. 8, 2009).
System requirements: Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software that reads ESRI shapefile format.
Supported by: North American Cartographic Information Society.