RSS MAD

Google Maps Virtual Microscope

NYU School of Medicine Virtual Microscope

Created by the NYU School of Medicine the Virtual Microscope uses the Google Maps API to display and navigate scanned slides of microscopic images. Students and faculty members who are logged into the school's Learning Management System can even add markers to the slides to annotate and comment on slide features.

The site even comes with its own 'hot or not' feature which allows students to rate the slides (at the moment the most popular is a slide of the intestinal helminthic infection Trichuris trichiura - as if you hadn't guessed). The slides also come with a 'link-to-view' button which allows students to save or share links to a specific image, location within the slide and zoom level.

There are currently 246 slides available for viewing.

Via: Ogle Earth

________________

Track Down A Pirate Day

Live Piracy Map 2008

This is rather a topical map, what with the Sirius Star currently being held hostage off the coast of Somalia with $100m dollars of oil on board. This Live Piracy Map 2008 by the International Chamber of Commerce purports to show all the piracy and armed robbery incidents reported to the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre during 2008.

As you might expect there is a large cluster of incidents around Somalia but the biggest cluster seems to be off the coast of Yeman. As a rough guide it seems to me the closer you are to the equator the more likely you are to meet a pirate.

Via: Mibazaar

________________

MyGeoPosition

MyGeoPosition

MyGeoPosition is a great application to help you geo-code a single address. From my limited testing it seems very accurate.

Apart from its accuracy, the site offers a number of really useful facilities for geo-coding a position and for how you might then want to use the data:

• Finetuning of the position using a drap & drop marker
• Geoposition as float or in degrees
• Setting an inaccuracy (~1m, ~10m, ~100m, ...) for data protection reasons
• Automated creation of geo-metatags for websites and weblogs
• Automated creation of geotags for websites, weblogs and images
• Automated creation of kml files (Google Earth)
• iGoogle gadget for quick geocoding from your personal landing page
• Slim design, quick loading process

As well as all these features the site returns a website url so it is possible to create a simple link to an address. If you don't want to link to MyGeoPosition, that's covered as well, as MyGeoPosition creates links to the location on Google Maps, Microsoft Live Local and Yahoo Maps.

The site is available in English, German, Dutch and Bulgarian.

Water Quality Google Map

Canterbury Water Quality

New Zealand's 'Environment Canterbury' believe they are the first to create a Google Maps mash-up showing water quality in rivers, lakes and the sea. The mash-up takes water quality data from ECan's GIS system and integrates it with Google Maps to provide a dynamic method for accessing Canterbury's water quality information on-line.

Swimming locations in the area are each tagged with a colour coded map marker (with a red marker warning you not to swim and blue markers representing very good water quality). It is possible to select a region of Canterbury from a link in the sidebar. When you click on a link the map zooms to that region and also loads links to swimming locations in that region into the sidebar.

So if you are enjoying the New Zealand summer and you fancy a swim do your self a favour and check this map for clean waters before leaving home.

________________

Google Maps Case Studies

Google have redesigned the Google Maps Case Study video website. The site contains a number of video case studies of websites that use the Google Maps API.

The site includes this video case study of Yelp.



Via: Google LatLong: A local focus: two new case studies

Google Map of Nazi Members

Spod.cx

A UK map developer created a Google Maps mash-up showing the addresses of members of the British National Party (a neo-Nazi political organisation). He created the map from a leaked list of the BNP's members.

The creator of the map has now taken down the map because of some of his readers' concerns:

"Many people have commented that the map does give a false impression of accuracy, despite my making this clear, and I'm tempted to agree. I do not want to single anybody out and by removing the accuracy from the map it is possible that it ends up incorrectly implying a property contains a BNP member. It has been suggested that an inaccurate map that doesn't make that clear is worse than publishing the list itself, and I think that's a reasonable comment."

Spod.cx has therefore replaced the original Google Map with a non-Google heat map showing those areas in the UK with strong BNP support.

It seems to me that most of the complainers to Spod.cx were happy that the BNP members addresses were revealed but less happy that the present inaccuracy of geo-coding could lead to cases of mistaken identity.

UK TechCrunch has been following the story closely all day and has even managed to interview the map creator (by e-mail). It has also begun to identify some of the other mash-ups (LOLCats Nazis anyone) being created with the leaked BNP membership list.

The story has also now made it onto the websites of most of the major newspapers in the UK.

(thanks to Mapperz for the heads up on this story)

Google Maps Story Collage

Young People's Stories

Australia's National Cannabis and Information Centre has put together a rather beautiful collage using the Google Map's API. The collage contains nine real stories by young people telling their experience of using cannabis.

The names of the nine narrators are linked at the top of the mapped collage. When you click on one of the names the map zooms in on that young person's part of the collage and an information window opens on top of the map containing the individual's story.

As well as text outlining the individual's experiences with drugs a number of links are also given that attempt to answer any questions that the reader might have about the story and the drug experiences mentioned.

This is an excellent example of how the Google Maps API can be used to present non-geographical information in an interesting and aesthetically pleasing manner.

________________

More News on Google Maps

Topix

Topix is one of the largest news communities on the web, bringing together news from over 60,000 sources and categorising these stories into over 46,000 locations and 450,000 topics. It is now the third largest individual newspaper website (comScore, July 2008), attracting more than 6 million unique visitors.

Topix uses Google Maps to show the location of news stories. News stories, photographs and local events are all shown on the map via different markers. Clicking on a news marker will open an information window containing a brief snippet of the news and a link to that story's own page.

Topix uses Lat49's geo-contextual advertising to help monetize their content.

________________

Get Your Weather Map Here

iMap Weather

iMap Weather is an outstanding new Flash Google Map weather service with ambitions to be the number one weather themed social network.

iMap Weather currently provide some of the largest players in the mainstream media, including Fox, ABC, Gannett, Scripps-Howard and a whole host of local TV and Newspapers with their interactive weather map. Now they want to share this amazing weather map with you.

One of the main ideas behind iMap Weather is that anyone with a website can install a really nice interactive weather map on their site quickly and easily by just cutting and pasting a few lines of code.

The iMap Weather map uses the Flash Google Maps API to provide a weather map with an incredible number of features. It is possible to view the weather and weather forecast for any location in the world. In the US you can view a nationwide radar image that is zoomable to street level! It is possible to view a hurricane forecast and to view buoy and ship data.

iMap Weather also have strong plans for the future. For example, they will be introducing ski and snow conditions in conjunction with SnoCountry.com. At the moment temperatures are only shown in Fahrenheit but Celsius will be available in the next month or so. Radar is only available in the US at the moment, but will be available for Japan and Canada soon. Many other features will also soon be added such as wind and waves, etc.

Probably iMap Weather's biggest plans however are in the area of social networking. On the horizon is a complete weather themed social network where members can upload photos, create mini-blogs, save customized maps, receive alerts, connect with other users and get all the weather information you need.

________________

Mashup Camp & London Geo Meet Up

Mashup Camp is under way in Mountain View, California. Tomorrow the winners of the Best Mashup Contest Awards should be announced. Hopefully we will be able to bring you news of the role Google Maps has played in any of the winning entries.

Map developers in the UK, who couldn't get out to California, can console themselves by joining the new London Geo/Mobile Developers Meetup Group. There is still time to register for the group's first meeting next Thursday (27th November).

First New Argentinian Map Mash-up

I think this could be an Argentinian themed week on Google Maps Mania. Yesterday Google Maps introduced road maps in Argentina which should prove a spur to Argentinian Google Map developers.

It certainly provided inspiration for Oh Buenos Aries who worked through last night to provide the first Google Maps mash-up (post road maps).

Hoteis Em Buenos Aires

Hoteis Em Buenos Aires is a Google Map that shows hotels in the Argentinian capital. The hotels are all listed in a sidebar next to the map. Clicking on any of the hotels will open an information window containing a link to photographs and details of the chosen hotel.

Oh Buenos Aries have also created:

• Oh Buenos Aires - a virtual tour of the capital
• Oh Buenos Aries Dual Map - Google Maps satellite view / Virtual Earth map view

________________

Geography Awareness Week

This week is Geography Awareness Week. During Geography Awareness Week National Geographic Magazine and other organisations try to raise the awareness of the importance of geography education.

Google for Educators have produced a special page with some exciting geo-tours for Google Earth. Here are some more websites you might want to check out if you want to inspire some kids with neo-geography:

Digital Geography
Noel Jenkins’ blog is all about using new technologies in the Geography curriculum. Neil is the winner of the UK's Royal Geographical Society Award for ‘Contributions to excellence in the teaching of Geography at secondary level'. So, as you might expect, his blog is full of inspirational ideas for the geography classroom.

Juicy Geography
Noel is also the author of Juicy Geography. Juicy Geography has free ideas and resources for teaching geography. The site includes a great a lesson that gets students to describe places they know on Wikimapia and there are lots of lessons built around Google Earth files (which can of course be viewed in Google Maps as well).

I particularly like the idea for a psycho-geography project. Noel's students found out from some questionnaire research that people in the local community were quite negative about their town, so his students made a simple sign and persuaded shop-keepers to display it.



Digital Explorer
Digital Explorer is a social enterprise set up to pioneer new ways of engaging young people in global and environmental issues through the application of technology. The website includes classroom resources for the Antarctic Climate, Antarctic Foodweb, Land Use - Marrakech, a
School Grounds Projects and a Sustainable Building project.

Soar Valley Geography
This website displays the work of student geographers in the Soar Valley. These students used Google My Maps to map their worlds.

Google Lit Trips
Google Lit Trips creates Google Earth kml files that plot the journeys taken in works of literature. The Google Earth files can of course be viewed in Google Maps. For example here is the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce as viewed in Google Maps

Bionic Teaching
Inspired by Google Lit Trips Tom Woodward mapped out Whirligig by Paul Fleischman on Google Maps to help inspire his students.

The Google Earth Education Community
This is a website for teachers and students to share and find information about educational topics that have been organised using Google Earth (hopefully you haven‘t forgotten that Google Earth files can also be viewed in Google Maps). All the resources are categorised by subject area.

Google Earth Design
A blog about good design in Google Earth which includes a lesson plan showing the causes and effects of global warming on flooding in the Brahmaputra.

Dale Basler
Dale Basler has posted about how he teaches speed, velocity and displacement using Google Maps. The students use Google Maps to map out bus routes, find the average time needed for the bus to make a complete circuit of the route, calculate the average speed of the bus and display the results on a Google Map.

KQED Quest
KQED Quest uses Google Maps to present a multimedia series exploring Northern California science, environment and nature. The materials on this site are incredibly well presented.

From Previous Posts

• Teachers Teaching Teachers: Sharing Stories with Mapping - a podcast about useing maps in the classroom
• Use Google Maps Mashups in K-12 Education - A blog post outlining how Google Maps tools and mashups can be used to map walking routes, measure area and teach earth science
• A Windowless Room With a View: How Digital Mapping Tools Can Change Our Perspective on Learning
• Educator website uses Google Maps to connect students with pen pals

Teachers should also check out the Google Geo Education Section in the Google for Educators Discussion Group.

________________

Argentina Finally Gets Road Maps

One of the most common questions I get asked via the comments on Google Maps Mania is:

'When is Argentina going to get road maps?'

I've never been able to answer before but now I can.

Today.

Make sure you check out all these Argentina Google Maps mash-ups and for the first time there is a reason to press the button marked 'Map' (if there isn't a button marked 'Map' you can be sure the map maker will be adding one soon)

• Dormir en Buenos Aires - holiday accommodation in the Argentinian capital
• Basta de Demoler - buildings in danger in Buenos Aires
• Milongas of Buenos Aires (for Tango lovers)
• Argentinean Blogger - Julián Gallo: Google Maps
• Argentina Geocoder
• Oh Buenos Aires - a virtual tour of the capital
• Oh Buenos Aries Dual Map - Google Maps satellite view / Virtual Earth map view
  
• Flof - Argentinian points of interest with street maps!
  
• Mendoza, Argentina newspaper creates a Crime Map
• Argentina Satellite Views & Stories..

________________

Google Maps Ad Loses Grand Central

Google is currently advertising New York Google Transit directions in New York subway trains. The adverts supposedly show subway users how to get from Grand Central to Madison Square Garden.

However, in what can only be causing red faces at Google, the advertising poster gets the location of Grand Central Station completely wrong. That big green A in the image above is actually positioned over Times Square - Oops.

Via: Advertising Age

Find Flix Near You!

Geolocation Demo

The Google Geo Developers Blog has posted an interesting demo of a Google Map and YouTube mash-up that uses the Gears Geolocation API to determine the map user's location.

The Gears Geolocation API provides an approximation (WIFI-based for PC and GPS/CellID-based for mobile devices) of your physical location. The map then uses the YouTube API to load in videos that have been geo-tagged as near your location. It is possible to search for particular tags in the videos geo-tagged near your location. So, for example, it would be possible to load only videos tagged hotels near your current position.

Via: Google Geo Developers Blog

________________

Polygon Search on Google Maps

Varna Plan

Varna Plan is an impressive Google Maps mash-up for the Varna area in Bulgaria. Thanks to the map's impressive area polygon selection search engine it is possible to view an incredible amount of data about Varna on the map.

It is possible to view commercial, rental and residential property for sale in Varna. It is also possible to view from a large selection of tourist related layers.



Varna Plan does some amazing processing to calculate whether points are within a defined area. It can actually carry out between 25 to 400 million record comparisons a second. Varna Plan can search within complex non-regular polygons on the map by reducing them to a series of regular polygons.

It does this by creating a virtual grid in memory using squares of the desired accuracy. It uses the graphics rendering tools available in java to create an image in memory, map it onto the squares and then check to see if the chosen point is within one of the squares. If the shapes are fixed then some of this can be done before the request and stored.

________________

News on Google Maps

Trackthisnow.com

Trackthisnow.com tracks the news in real time in 236 countries worldwide and presents the news on a Google Map. It is possible to search the news for any item and see what each of the 236 countries are currently reporting about that item.

It is possible to enter any query into the Trackthisnow.com search box and it will return the news reports for that query in any of the 236 countries. If you click on one of the country markers the headlines and a brief brief extract will appear in the map's sidebar. Clicking on the story headline will take you through to the source of the story on the internet.

In the future Trackthisnow.com say that users will be able to drill down even further. So, whilst at the moment you can view the news for a search term for any country in the world, soon you will be able to see how the news is being reported at city level.

GNewsVision

GNewsVision is a new Google Map mash-up that animates between different news stories in the style of TwitterVision. The map animates between different countries displaying the current top news stories in each country.

It is possible to select which region of the world you wish to receive news for and to select which category of news you are interested in. It also possible to select from four different languages, English, Spanish, French and German. The map also allows you to adjust the animation speed to match your reading speed.

Geo Best of YouTube

From the same developer as GNewsVision comes this best of YouTube map. The map lets you select a country to view the most viewed YouTube videos in that country. It is possible to view the most viewed 'today', 'this week', 'this month' or 'this year'.

A really nice feature of this map is that after you have viewed a country its marker changes to a tick. So it possible to see which countries you have already explored on the map.

________________

California Fire Maps

Hundreds of homes have been damaged or destroyed in Los Angeles County and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency as wildfires burn across the northern San Fernando Valley.

Los Angeles Fire Tweets
This map shows Titter Users comments about the fire from those who are within 100 miles of the fire. The Tweets are shown on the map (presumably at the user's location) and are also displayed in a sidebar.

This map is likely to have the most up date information but possibly the least accurate.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Department have produced a Google MyMap that shows the general locations of major fires burning in California at the moment.

Both ab7 News and The LA Times have provided MyMaps of the fire and evacuation centers.

Sylmar Wildfire Map

View Larger Map
This MyMap, by abc7 News, shows the extent of the fire in the hills above Sylmar. The evacuation area is shown by a blue shaded polygon.

The LA Times have also created a MyMap of the Sylmar fire. The map shows the evacuation centers, the location of the Olive View Medical Center and the location of the animal evacuation centers.

The California Active Fire Mapper pinpoints blazes across the Western US, and allows users to zoom in on different cities.

Search Engine Land has also produced a good list of maps covering the California fires.

The Weekend Break

Famous Tourist Sites

An EarthSwoop contributor has created this 3D tour of some of the world's great tourist destinations. The collection is quite an extensive tour of some of Google Earth's best 3D buildings, taking in: the Arc de Triomphe, Big Ben, Chichen Itza, Christ the Redeemer, the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, the Grand Canyon and a whole lot more.

Via: Google Earth Blog

Chicago

This tour of Chicago takes in Frank Gehry's stunning Jay Pritzker Pavilion and Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate sculpture. Also featured in this tour of Google Earth's 3D buildings in Chicago is the Adler Planetarium, the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum and a number of other Chicago sights.

To view both collections you will need the Google Earth plug-in and be using Windows.

________________

Google Maps Change Terms of Service

This week the Ordnance Survey in the UK wrote to local government organisations stating that they could not use any local authority data that is in any way geographically related without licensing the data from the OS.

This has huge implications for map developers in the UK. For example it means the police are breaking the law (according to the OS) for their Google Map based crime maps, because they use OS boundaries.

This move by the OS has been seen by many (see Charles Arthur's article in The Guardian) as a warning to map developers not to overlay any geographical data that is derived from the OS on Google Maps.

Charles Arthur seems to think this move by the OS is partly because,

"Google's terms and conditions appear to provide that any display of data on or through the Google services grants Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such data."

Presumably in response to this move by the Ordnance Survey Google have this week rewritten their terms of service for using the Google Maps API. Ed Parsons (a Geospatial Technologist at Google) has written a good blog post today that attempts to explain the effect of the new terms of service on Google Maps mash-up developers. The post is called "Who Reads the Terms of Service Anyway ...".

If you are a map developer and you can't be bothered to read the TOS you should at least read Ed Parsons' post.


If want to read the new Terms of Services for yourself:

New Terms:
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/terms.html

Updated FAQ:
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/faq.html

And if you want to join the debate:

Google Maps API Group TOS discussion

Some Google Maps Developers have certainly interpreted the new TOS less favourably than Ed Parsons. Barry Hunter of nearby.org, certainty feels the changes are less benign than Ed Parson's suggests.

Update (17th Nov): The BBC have also printed an article about the battle between Google Maps and the Ordnance Survey - The Mapping Mess - Google vs OS

Thanks to Mapperz for the links.

________________

Friday Fun With Google Maps

Ground Zero

What could be more fun than using Google Maps to nuke any location on the Earth. To drop a bomb on your least favourite place is very easy. Use the search box to find your location, choose the size of bomb and drop away!

The screenshot above shows the impact of a 'Hiroshama' sized bomb dropped on my house. Hmm, maybe its not so much fun after all.

Dart On Map

Can't decide where to go on holiday? Let Dart On Map decide for you.

Dart on Map is a fun little map mash-up that let's you throw a dart at a Google Map to find a random location. If you do not want to travel the entire world you can select individual continents. You can even select your own custom area, so if you just want to decide where to go for a walk during the lunch break, that's also possible.

Street View Catches a Troll

Google Sightseeing found this Google Maps Street View of a troll hiding under a bridge in Troll Avenue. Now what are the chances of that?

Amazing Mazes

The Search Engine Land website has put together a cool collection of cornfield mazes that can be seen in Google Maps.

Via: Mibazaar

The Longest Place Names
Google Sightseeing (in their second mention this week) put up a fun post yesterday about the longest place names in the world (with links to Google Maps). So if you want to know where "the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems" is located check out this Google Sightseeing post.

________________

Musical Pilgrimages on Google Maps

Musical Pilgrimages

Music Pilgrimages is a database and community sharing website for those interested in the locations made famous by musicians. The site's aim is to help you look up the location of a place mentioned in a song, shown in an album cover, used in a video or just where an artist was born.

The site uses Google Maps to show the locations. Each location on the map comes with a detailed description and the map also features photographs of album covers and even embedded YouTube videos of relevant songs or concerts.

Other Music Maps

• Copenhagen Music - songs about different locations in Copenhagen
• Music About London - songs about different locations in London
• Word Magazine Album Covers Map
• MappaMusica - discover the favourite artists of different countries
• Grüvr - find live music fast

________________

MyMaps for Mobile

MyMaps for Mobile
Have you ever spent hours creating a wonderful MyMap and then wished you could view it on your mobile phone? Well now you can thanks to this web-app that allows people to view their My Maps on their iPhone or Nokia N95.

For support in using the application there is a Google Group called MyMap for Mobile where it is possible to ask questions about the application and talk about how it works.

If you are looking for some great MyMaps to view on your mobile phone (or even on your computer) then check out the Google MyMaps Directory.

________________

Add a Map for Locations on Your Page

MapMyPage

MapMyPage is an awesome utility that enables bloggers and web site owners to attract and engage their visitors by adding maps, photos, weather, and more to the locations mentioned in their web pages. What's even better is that to do this you only have to add a tiny piece of code to the html of a page.

If you add that tiny piece of code to the code of a web page every time a location is mentioned on that page a small globe will appear next to the location. When visitors click on that globe a Google Map of the location will appear hovering above the page.

Google Maps Mania originally reviewed MapMyPage back in September but since then they have added a number of new features. One of the new features is the integration of the Google Earth Browser plug-in. So now it is possible for your readers to also click through on a location mentioned on your page and view the 3D buildings and terrain that come with Google Earth.

MapMyView have also added Street View, Traffic, Terrain, Local Search, Panoramio photos, and Wikipedia articles to the maps.

________________