Iceland on Google Maps

Iceland in Maps is the first series of Google Maps applications that we have featured from the Republic of Iceland.

The website is an interesting introduction to the geography and island of Iceland and features a number of Google Maps. The series includes maps showing the populated areas of the country, protected areas and national parks, and even a map that allows you to compare the size of Iceland by superimposing the island on top of other countries.

Iceland in Maps also contains a number of maps examining the interesting geology of the country. This includes maps of the country's volcanoes, geothermal areas and glacier access.

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The Volcanic Ash Cloud on Google Maps

Flightradar24

The eruption of the Grimsvotn volcano in Iceland has caused a huge ash cloud that is now affecting flights in Iceland and Scotland. Flightradar24, the live flight tracking Google Map, has now added an overlay to show the current position of the cloud.

The map shows the movements of flights in real-time. At the time of writing the map shows that most European flights seem to be unaffected by the cloud but there seem to be very few flights in and out of Scotland.

The BBC are reporting that flights to and from the airports of Londonderry, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Prestwick, Durham Tees Valley, Newcastle and Carlisle are likely to be affected by the ash cloud.

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Google Map Maker

It is getting hard to keep up with the pace of developments from the Google Maps team. Today's huge development from Google Maps is the ability to edit Google Maps.

Google Map Maker is a new service that allows users to contribute and edit map information for certain regions. With Google Map Maker users can locate, draw, label and add map features, including:

• Borders and regions (states/provinces, districts/administrative regions, cities, neighborhoods, etc.)
• Road networks
  
• Places of interest
• Local businesses
• And many more features like railways, waterways, events and reviews
  

In effect Google Map Maker is borrowing the concept of OpenStreetMap for collaborative mapping (the big difference to OpenStreetMap is that any submitted data will not become open source but will become owned by Google). As such any submitted content may be edited by other users or moderators .

Google Map Maker is separate from Google Maps and any additions you make to the map will not appear immediately on Google Maps. However it is clear that Google hope to get useful mapping data from the community and say that "at a later time, this content may be published in Google Maps for others to see and use."

Currently editing is available only in these countries:

• Antigua and Barbuda
• Bahamas
• Barbados
• Bermuda
• British Virgin Islands
• Cayman Islands
• Cyprus
• Grenada
• Iceland
• Jamaica
• Netherlands Antilles
• Pakistan
• St. Kitts and Nevis
• St. Lucia
• St. Vincent and the Grenadines
• Trinidad and Tobago
• Vietnam

To help users with this new service Google have produced a Google Map Maker Getting Started Guide and a User Contributed Help Site.

Via: Google LatLong Blog
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