German Bike Routes on Google Maps

Naviki is a German bike route application. The application uses Google Maps with OpenStreetMap cycling route data to help cyclists find the shortest or most cycle friendly route between two locations.

Users just need to add a starting location and a destination and select whether they want the shortest or the most bike friendly route. The bike friendly route takes into consideration altitudes and congestion in calculating a route optimised for cyclists.

The calculated route is displayed on a Google Map alongside an elevation profile and details such as the distance of the route and an estimated time for the journey. The waypoints of the calculated route can also be downloaded for GPS units.

Freiburg's Buses Live on Google Maps

Stadtbahn Tracker Freiburg is the second live transit tracking map featured on Google Maps Mania this week (the first was MTA Bus Time). In fact live real-time tracking maps have become so common that it is easy to became rather blasé about them and forget just how amazing it is to track in real-time whole transit networks on a Google Map.

Stadtbahn Tracker Freiburg is a live map of of all tram cabs, buses and local trains in Freiburg, Germany. The developer of this map has taken a novel approach to how he fetches the real-time data of the vehicles. The map loads all departure/arrival times in advance during startup. These times are then updated every 5-10 minutes or so. The calculation of the exact vehicle positions is therefore completed on the client side by JavaScript.

Another interesting feature of this map is that you can query the map by time. For example, you can view the city's transit network during the morning rush hour by attaching a time stamp to the URL, for example http://tracker.patrickbrosi.de/freiburg/?time=1335419192000

Germans Living Near Nuclear Plants

Last year I reviewed Zeit-Online's American Nuclear Power Plants Map. A Google Map that shows how many Americans live near nuclear power plants. Zeit-Online has also created a similar map for its German readers.

The German Nuclear Power Plants Map shows how many people live close to German nuclear power plants. The map includes a distance slider tool that lets you visualise how many people live within different distances of a nuclear power plant.

After radioactive material escaped from Japan's Fukushima power plant, everyone within 30 kilometres of the plant was evacuated. The Zeir-Online map shows that nearly 10 million Germans live within 30km of a nuclear power plant.

The Bavarian Forest in Google Maps

Der Bayerischer Wald is a great Google Maps guide to hiking routes, accommodation and events in the Bavarian Forest region in Germany. Points of interest are organised into five categories (food, accommodation, events, sights and tours) which can be accessed from the map side-panel.

A nice feature of the map is that areas outside the map's area of interest are shaded so that the Bavarian Forest region has more visual impact on the map. For those interested in creating a similar look then you can use Swiss Trains' open-source masking effect for Google Maps.

The effect transforms a KML polygon into a mask that effectively highlights the polygon on the map by shading the rest of the world. You can see a demo of the effect on this Swiss Administrative Boundaries Map.

If you want to use the effect in your own Google Maps then grab the code from GitHub - Masked Polygons.

Via: Lankartenblog

Lights, Street View, Action

Roter Faden Hannover is a website that provides immersive 360 degree videos of Hannover in Germany.

Immersive videos are like Street View, only instead of still images they use video footage. As the video plays the user can control the direction of the camera. Roter Faden Hannover has created a number of these immersive videos on the streets of Hannover.

The site uses Google Maps, with OpenStreetMap map tiles, to show the location of the streets that currently have immersive video coverage.


StreetView.ch has been using Google Maps for a while to map video Street Views in Switzerland. It's coverage now includes video Street Views in Switzerland, Vietnam and Dubai.

Find Lunch Deals with Google Maps

It is lunch time and you want to eat. Wouldn't it be great if you could turn on your phone and view nearby restaurants with great lunch-time deals?

Wo-Wollen-Wir-Essen.de (where shall we eat?) is a German Google Maps based website and mobile application that does exactly that. Using the app you can quickly see and browse through local restaurants' lunchtime offers on a handy Google Map.

Currently the site has lots of suggestions for where you can eat during the day in Hamburg. Coverage outside Hamburg is currently patchy but I'm sure that will improve as the app's popularity grows.

Via: Landkartenblog.de

German Sound Pollution on Google Maps

The German courts recently decided that Berlin Airport can operate flights between 5 am and midnight. Residents who live close to the airport say that this gives them just a 5 hour window in which it is possible to sleep.

German newspaper Taz has created Fluglärm-Karte BBI-Airport Berlin, a Google Map showing the noise pollution caused by aircraft at Berlin Airport. The map shows the number of decibels along the flight paths to and from the airport and in the immediate vicinity.


Umwelthaus has created a series of similar Google Maps, called Fluglärmkonturenkarten, showing noise pollution around Frankfurt Airport.



These heat maps show noise levels around the airport using data from 2007 and also show noise level predictions for 2020 in two different traffic modes.

Hat-tip: Street View Funny

Overheard on Google Maps

Watch what you are saying - or you just might find your conversation posted to this German Google Maps app. Laushekarte.de is a map of funny or strange things that have been said, overheard and reported to Belauscht.de.

Here is just one example from the map(overheard in a nightclub):

Man 1: I always smoke after sex
Man 2: So you're a non-smoker then

The overheard conversations on Laushekarte.de are all in German.

Via: landkartenblog

Ordering a Taxi from Google Maps

In Germany the myTaxi app allows smartphone users to order the closest taxi and to track the taxi's approach on Google Maps.

The free app locates the passenger's position automatically or can be set to pick-up from the user's favourite locations (e.g. work, home etc). The app then finds and orders the nearest available taxi and informs the user of the driver's name and ratings. A Google Map shows the passenger's position and the position of the taxi and displays the distance left and the estimated time of arrival.

ZDF Videos on Google Maps

Public-service German television broadcaster ZDF has created a Google Map of geo-tagged videos from their archives. ZDF - Geothek lets users browse a map for video clips from ZDF that cover both current and older events around the world.

As well as browsing the video by location a time-line allows users to browse the video by date. Users can view the ZDF videos directly from the map. The map also includes a geographical quiz and information about countries around the world.

Route Planning with Google Maps

Komoot is a German language route planning application with a number of really useful features.

The site uses OpenStreetMap, Google Satellite and Google Terrain map layers to help users plan their route. When planning a hiking or cycling route users can view points of interest along the route and adjust the trip to take in any that take their fancy.

Finished routes come with lots of information, such as the length of the route, its difficulty and an altitude chart. The app is available for the desktop and for iPhone and Android smart phones.

California Dreaming with Google Maps

Berlin Designers Annette Bruns and Oliver Spies fulfilled the dream of a lifetime by completing a surfing and skateboarding tour of California. Die Asphaltsurfer is a Google Maps and video application documenting the tour.

Using the application it is possible to view all the stops on the Asphaltsurfer's tour and view videos of the adventures that the pair experienced along the way. The application is another great creation by experienced German developers Ubilabs in partnership with MonstaMovies for the German media company 3Sat.

Find a Book by Location with Google Maps

Pinbooks is a German language search engine and community for books with stories set in a particular place and/or at a certain time.

The pinbooks home page features a prominent Google Map which animates through the latest geotagged ("pinned") books by the community's members. It is also possible to search the map to find books that are associated with a particular location.

Users of pinbook can use the social features of the site to build friendships within the pinbook community and they can share their actions on pinbooks with their Facebook friends.

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Historical Weimar on Google Maps

Zeitsprung uses historical photographs from the Weimar city archives to allow users to see how the German city has changed over time.

The site uses a jQuery slider control that allows the user to compare a historical photo with a photograph of the same view today. The photos can be browsed by location with the help of a Google Map. Alternatively it is possible to organise the photos by date or by title.

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Berlin Elections on Google Maps

The Beliner Morgenpost has used Fusion Tables to create this nice Berlin Elections Map. The election was held on September 18th to elect members to the Abgeordnetenhaus. All 141 seats were up for election.

The map allows you to click on any of the political parties and view the constituencies where their candidates won. It is also possible to search the map by address or by district to view local results.

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Fluglärmkonturenkarten on Google Maps

DFLD Radar is a Google Map of real-time air traffic over Europe.

There are quite a few live aircraft tracking maps already but DFLD Radar has a nice USP. DFLD Radar colour-codes the aeroplane map markers by altitude. The redder map markers indicate that the plane is flying at a lower altitude and the greener markers show planes flying at a higher altitude.

You can also click on any of the plane markers to read further details, such as the type of plane and vertical speed.


One consequence of all that aircraft traffic over Europe is quite a lot of noise pollution. Fluglärmkonturenkarten (you really do have to admire Germany's skill in eradicating those useless spaces that other languages insert between words) is a series of Google Maps showing noise pollution around Frankfurt Airport.



These heat maps show noise levels around the airport using data from 2007 and also show noise level predictions for 2020 in two different traffic modes.

Hat-tip: Bartalis

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Proximity Search with Google Maps

Arrlee is a new Google Maps based application that can tell you how far you can travel from a destination on public transport within a certain time.



Arrlee give three good examples of when you might need to carry out a proximity search:

• You are planning a weekend trip and are looking for locations you can travel to in a specified time
• You are looking for a new job within a certain commuting time from your home
• You want to find somewhere to live within a certain commuting time from a specific location
  
  

To use Arrlee just enter a station name and set the time available to travel. You can even add points of interest to the map, so, for example, you can find out where all the museums are within a certain travelling time of a location.



Arelee currently works in Germany, Austria and Switzerland but there are plans to add more countries soon. A mobile version is also in development.



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Book a Flight with Street View

The Lufthansa airline has created a clever booking form that allows users to click on a map to input the destination of a flight.



As well as auto-filling the booking form with the selected destination a click on the map also displays a Google Maps Street View of the chosen destination. For example, if a user clicks on London a Street View of the Houses of Parliament is displayed to help entice the customer to book a trip to the UK.



Lufthansa: Street View Live



Via: Google Geo Developers Blog



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Your Google Maps Guide to Berlin

The Guardian's Google Maps based city guides now includes Berlin.



The Berlin City Guide maps the best places to stay, eat and shop in the German capital and also maps great bars, clubs, museums and galleries to visit. You can select a category to view on the map from the menu above the map. When you select a category as well as dropping the appropriate markers on the map a list of the venues is displayed beneath the map.



If you select an individual venue, by clicking a marker or from the list beneath the map, The Guardian's review of the location will then be displayed.



The Guardian - Berlin City Guide



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Munich's S-Bahn Live on Google Maps

I'm a great fan of live real-time maps of city transit systems. There is something about watching trains moving in real-time on a map that really appeals to my inner geek.

This real-time Google Map of Munich's S-Bahn shows the transit system's trains live as they move around the city. Each train is represented on the map with a numbered map marker indicating which line it is travelling on.

You can click on any of the train markers and view its next stop and its destination station. It is also possible to click on any station on the network and view the times and destination of the next trains scheduled to arrive.

S-Bahn Munich: Real-Time Map

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