Blog Archive

Saturday, December 29, 2007

New Year's mashups from Google Maps Mania!

Figures of '08 Google Map:

To ring in the New Year here is a Google Maps photo mashup produced by National Museums, Liverpool (UK). It features locations of photos throughout the city that display "08", the logo that celebrates Liverpool's year of being the European Capital of Culture. Note the special "08" map marker as well! :) This map doubles as a great New Year's Google Maps mashup! Happy New Year!

10 Google Maps Mashups to help you ring in the New Year:
Wikipedia: 2008, New Year, New Year's Day

Google Maps Creation Tools - Part 20

(New to creating Google Maps mashups? Try My Maps!)

New Google Maps tools & software:
Google Maps Mashup Tools and Resources:
Blog Posts & Articles:
For more recent Creation Tools post, click the label below!
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Saturday, December 22, 2007

50 More Things to do with Google Maps Mashups

1. Find a world brewery
2. Track world terrorism
3. Find a WiFi Hotspot in the US
4. Align your satellite dish properly
5. Catch live music in your area
6. Track a US package
7. See the world at night
8. Walk in a straight line around the world
9. Explore the new 7 wonders of the world (More)
10. Map 2008 presidential campaign contributions
11. Find a public toilet
12. Track a US or Canadian flight number
13. Lookup real-time US airport status
14. Map US FAA delayed flight information
15. Find a world airport, airline or connection
16. Find out "walkscore" for house or apartment
17. Calculate US or Canadian Taxi Fare
18. Look at the clouds!
19. Explore any location on earth
20. Map US telephone area codes
21. Drive like a madman
22. Find a job
23. Find even more webcams
24. Scan your UK driving route
25. Explore and map the bible
26. Map your wedding festivities
27. Find a world hostel
28. Form a crop circle, send a smoke signal
29. Track US big box store construction
30. Map US Zip code boundaries
31. Find a UNESCO World Heritage Site
32. Find an alternate map
33. Find a US mailbox
34. Plan a mid-point meet-up (exact)
35. Find out who is sick around you
36. Explore photos of the world
37. Map places by book name
38. Find a US Winery
39. Find an extreme sport
40. Map the top 10 world skyscrapers
41. Find a place to eat in the US
42. Find a popular map in any area
43. Measure long range distance.. in 2 ways
44. Determine Lat/Long for anywhere
45. Make your own map
46. Find the shortest round-trip route
47. Google Map your blog or website visitors
48. Find tons of area info for anywhere
49. Plan and map a worldwide conference call
50. Determine ease of doing business in any country

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Santa Claus is 874 miles from Christmas!

What's better than a good Christmas card around the holidays?? A Google Maps themed Christmas card of course! Loyal Google Maps Mania reader Emil Goh from Seoul, Korea dropped me a line with this Google Maps Christmas greeting:

Hi Mike, Just wanted to say hi & merry xmas & happy new year. Made a google maps christmas card, which i hope you & your crew will like. Keep up the good work! cheers, Emil Goh - Seoul

Accompanying Emil's greeting was this great Google Maps screenshot which shows how far Santa Claus is from Christmas!!

The answer:
874 miles (about 13 hours 42 mins)..If Santa decides to take it easy and checks the "Avoid Highways" box on Google Maps he may need to break the news to Rudolph that he'll be galloping an extra 60 miles for 7 more hours. :) Take a look at the entire route between
Santa Claus, Indiana and Christmas, Florida. :) Check out Emil's post about the card on Theme Magazine!

More Christmas Maps fun:
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New ways to embed, search & maintain your maps!

Embed a panoramic Google Maps Street View! - Hot on the heels of a 6 city Google Maps Street View update comes the launch of "embeddable panoramas". Now you can embed a panoramic image from street view in the same way you can embed a Google Map! Here's a sample view from just outside the arena of the greatest hockey team in the NHL: :)


View Larger Map

Comments, ratings and top links added for My Maps:

This Google LatLong Blog post introduces some awesome new features for My Maps (Google's easy maps creation tools). If you're busy creating maps in the My Maps tab on Google Maps you are being rewarded with ways to learn more about the visitation of the map you've built and what people think! Follow the directions contained on this post to find out how many views your map has received, what the overall rating of the map is and who is linking to it. I've long maintained that the Google Maps mashup craze is creating a new chapter in the history of the web where the map is the web page. These tools help you, the "mapmaster" to take control, gain feedback on your work and be inspired to make your map even better! :)

Confessions of a (Google Maps) search box - Learn about new Google content that has been added to Google Maps search: Panoramio pics, YouTube vids and Google Book Search pages

For more Google Maps updates, click "Google Maps" below..
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Thursday, December 13, 2007

9 great new US Google Maps mashups!

MapEcos: Awesome US Environmental Performance Mashup:

MapEcos is a Google Maps mashup that "presents a balanced view of industrial environmental performance." It mashes up with the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) dataset from the EPA and then displays the information logically on a map so an average person can understand what the factory down the street is spewing into the air. MapEcos was developed by students at Dartmouth College along with faculty of the business schools at Dartmouth, Duke, and Harvard. This is a fantastic UI that has some really nice clustering, search and zoom features to work with a very large dataset. This is a great mashup.

Over 300 Great Lakes webcams (US & Canada) .. mapped!

This awesome webcam mashup is courtesy of AJ Hartley at Michigan/Canadian weather mashup PleasantWeather.com..

CrimeReportsLive.com: Crime Reports in Dallas

Kenneth "Ellis" McCall has created a well presented crime map for Dallas, Texas. It welcomes you with a great options to learn about the free and premium service and also offers a mobile mapping service. (News coverage for this mashup)

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Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Google Maps Mania links for 2007-12-12

Make a Google Maps Wall Calendar! - Looking for a 2008 Wall calendar? Make a Google Maps wall calendar with Piet Jonas' GMaps Wall Calendar Generator. Center and zoom the map to a place you want to capture and click "Open Print Preview" to create the calendar page. Further customize the month view by inserting captions or include the exact lat/long and zoom level of the map you've chosen!

PlayStation 3 "Game Map": UnCharted - Drake's Fortune - A PS3 game title is using Google Maps in a pretty challenging web-game that you can take part in. Follow the clues and watch the clock! [Thanks to Leon McComish for the tip!] -- See more alt. Maps API examples here..

Beerdex: Mapping beer prices worldwide:

The Beer Index or just simply "Beerdex" is a Google Maps mashup of beer costs from around the globe. Collected via polling from the site the Map itself displays beer prices by country and city and places an emphasis on... cheap. :) The mashup uses the British pound as a currency so use Google to work it back to your own local currency.

House hunting just got easier with Google Maps collaboration (iTWire Dec.6/07) - Couples searching for the perfect real estate now have a great online assistant thanks to Google Maps' new collaboration features [Read More..]
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New Google Maps Street View Cities: Detroit, Boston, Providence, Indianapolis, Dallas, Minneapolis

New Street View Cities added!


6 New US cities have been added to Google Maps Street View! Detroit, Boston, Providence, Indianapolis, Minneapolis and Dallas are all able to be viewed at street level by clicking the "Street View" toggle button at the top right of the viewport in Google Maps. Look for parking before you set out, explore city landmarks, search for a local business or look at a house you might be interested in buying! Street View is an awesome way to explore cities!

Related:
Google's candid camera snaps Australia
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Wednesday, December 5, 2007

3 great new Google Maps Music Mashups!

3 Interesting and very different "Music Maps Mashups" have caught my attention this past week. Here they are:

MappaMusica: "a mashup to discover music":

Wondering what kind of music folks in Australia dig? Want to be as cool as the kids from Bangkok or South Korea? MappaMusica takes you on a global musical journey by way of a Google Maps interface to explore and discover popular music, by country! This mashup takes statistics from Last.fm and presents the top artists and tracks being listened to in a particular country. This is a great way to discover new music by simply clicking a country on the map! The top track in India according to Last.fm? Comfortably Numb.. Pink Floyd. :)

Map of Led Zeppelin Landmarks:

Here is a perfect music maps mashup of significant places for the band Led Zeppelin. If you're a die hard fan you'll be interested to see the actual place where the Physical Graffiti album cover was photographed, or perhaps you'd like to locate the recording studio that made them world-famous? This map has great captions packed with stories, photos and best of all placemarks showing you where these locations are on a Google Map. A little geo with your stairway?

JamLoop: Map your musical gear search

Looking for a new electric guitar? Maybe you're searching for a specific Fender tube amp? JamLoop is a new Google Maps powered musical gear search tool that will help you locate these sought-after pieces of equipment. The service aggregates US local and national listings from hundreds of sources and brings them to you in one place. Your search results can be mapped and from there each result links off to its original source so you can gather further details to decide on the purchase. A true music maps mashup!

Check out my recently updated list of Google Maps Music Mashups from here on Google Maps Mania!
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Monday, December 3, 2007

Google Maps Mania links for 2007-12-03

Google Maps Fastest Roundtrip Calculator Tool:

The TSP (Traveling SalesPerson) Solver is great new Google Maps tool that will help you calculate the fastest round-trip from any starting point and one to many destinations. To use the tool just click on any two (or more) points on the map and the TSP Solver will automatically determine the quickest route for you to take. The tool incorporates Google Maps Driving Directions to provide you the right streets/roads to take and also calculates the round-trip time and length for you. It's a great tool to help you create a round-trip itinerary from a starting point to any number of locations!
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