The Biggest Project Undertaken by One Man

I think Brad Thompson has just started one of the biggest projects ever undertaken by just one man. Pastmapper is "a new platform for organizing data using the visual language of online maps to describe the world of the past."

A very early prototype of the project can be viewed at Pastmapper - San Francisco 1853. This is a map of San Francisco in 1853, using geometries from a scan of a US Coast Survey Map. Overlaid on the map is data from the 1852-53 San Francisco city directory.

The result is an interactive map of San Francisco in 1853, with map markers that you can click on to view the people and businesses that were listed as living or based in a particular building in 1853.

Brad says he wants 'to scale (Pastmapper) to every location and every year'. That will obviously prove a huge task. But what an achievement that would be. Imagine if he manages to succeed in his project just for San Francisco. Wouldn't it be amazing to be able to view the history of a building or neighborhood through time. As Brad says it would be amazing to be able to sit in a cafe and look it up on Pastmapper and find at different times in its history it had been a 'saloon, or a speakeasy, or a soda fountain – or all three'.

How to Find the Best Ramen in LA

Burp's mission is to help you find the best restaurants for specific types of dish.

Currently Burp has four Google Maps, two maps showing the restaurants serving the best burgers in the San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles areas and two maps showing the restaurants serving the best Ramen in the same two areas.

After clicking on a restaurant map marker you can click through to read other users' reviews of the restaurant, the restaurant's Yelp rating, the number of Facebook 'likes' and the number of foursquare check-ins.

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San Francisco 1930's Aerial View

The ever excellent David Rumsey Map Collection has put online a huge collection of aerial photographs of San Francisco taken in 1938. They are also working hard on creating a composite image of all the images joined together.

So far 46 of the images have been stitched together and you can view the resulting aerial map of 1930's San Francisco with the help of the Google Earth browser plugin.

The images are also available as a KML which means you can examine the photos on Google Maps as well.

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Talk to the Mayor with Google Maps

KQED News have created a 2011 San Francisco Mayor's Race Google Map.

KQED sent a team of reporters to five districts in San Francisco and asked voters what they want the next mayor to fix in their neighborhoods. They then mapped the results. KQED say the map provides a way "to compare communities and get a pretty good idea of some key issues the next mayor will have to tackle".

The map itself includes a pretty cool comment and scrolling feature. If you mouse-over the respondent's comments at the bottom of the page then the map will scroll to the correct location and show a preview picture of the interviewee. Even as you scroll down the page, to read the lower comments, the map remains in the same position.

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Historical Views of San Francisco

Old S.F. is a great Google Map of thousands of historical photographs of San Francisco. The map provides a great way to browse the San Francisco Public Library's Historical Photograph Collection by location and by date.



The map includes a slider navigational aide that allows you to select a date range for the photographs you wish to view. For example, if you are interested in viewing photographs taken after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake you can set the slider to 1906 to view only the photos taken in that year.





Time Shutter is another great Google Maps based website that allows users to view historical photographs of San Francisco. Users can upload historical images to the site and browse through the images submitted by others.



The site includes many postcards of San Francisco from around 1900 and includes a historical map overlay featuring the Chevalier Commercial, Pictorial and Tourist Map of San Francisco from 1903.



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5000 Crimes in San Francisco

This Google Map displays 5000 crimes in San Francisco almost instantly on a Google Map. The map was created with the Google Maps API and the Dotter.js, a javascript class that generates data URIs.

The crimes displayed were committed in San Francisco between the 25th April and 25th May 2011. What is really impressive about the map is how quickly the 5000 data points load on the map.

If you want to create your own super-fast map with thousands of data points then the Dotter.js class is available on Github

Dotter Example - San Francisco Crime Map

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Tracking Bike Accidents with Google Maps

San Francisco Bike Accident Tracker 2.0

The Bay Citizen has improved their Google Map of bike accidents in the Bay Area. The map now includes five years of bike accident statistics for the whole Bay Area.

Cyclists can use the map to find out where accident hot-spots are located. It is also possible to filter the data shown on the map by date, road conditions and accident type.

As well as displaying the accident data with Google Maps the Bay Citizen has also created a series of charts exploring bike accidents in the Bay Area.

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CartoView - Google Maps Templates

CartoView - SF Social

CartoView has released the source code for a number of Google Map templates.

This Google Map of San Francisco includes Fusion Tables, Twitter, Flickr and You Tube layers. The map lets you view layers that display San Francisco parks, events, Tweets and videos directly on the map.

If you want to create a similar map for your own town you can download the source code and adapt the map to your own purposes. The source code for the map and for a number of other Google Maps templates is available from the CartoView Demos page.

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San Francisco Bike Routes on Google Maps

San Francisco BikeMapper

The San Francisco BikeMapper uses Google Maps to provide biking directions using all existing Class I, II and III bike routes in San Francisco, southern Marin County and northern San Mateo County.

Using the BikeMapper it is possible to find the best bike route for your trip with turn-by-turn directions. To get directions you just need to enter your starting point and destination. You can also select to get the shortest bike friendly route or, importantly for hilly San Francisco, the flattest bike friendly route.

The results of your search are then displayed on the map and the turn-by-turn directions are listed in the map sidebar. Details of the route are also provided, such as the length of the journey, the estimated time and the carbon emissions saved.

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Real-Time Parking on Google Maps

SFpark

The San Francisco Municipal Authority has released a Google Map to help improve car parking in the city. The new map displays real-time information about where parking is available so drivers can quickly find open spaces.

As part of the new initiative San Francisco now periodically adjusts meter pricing to match demand. To help keep car drivers informed about the variable meter prices SFpark displays in real-time current prices.

Roads on the map are color-coded to reflect real-time meter pricing. The darker the shade of green of a road the higher its current pricing. It is also possible to view in real-time the current availability of parking spaces.

City owned parking garages are also displayed on the map. Rates at these garages will now also vary to match real-time demand.

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The Bay's Data on Google Maps

The Bay Citizen is another news organisation getting into data journalism in a big way. You can browse a number of apps created by The Bay Citizen on its new Data Library.

Here are two of the apps that use Google Maps to help visualise data relevant to Bay area readers.

2010 Census

The 2010 census revealed that the Bay Area is seeing slow growth in its population. This Google Map allows you to view population growth in the Bay Area since 2010 by county, city or by census tract.

The Bay Citizen's analysis of the data also reveals some interesting shifts in the race / ethnicity demographics in the Bay area.

Bike Accident Tracker

The Bay Citizen's Bike Tracker uses Google Maps to visualise two year's of bike accidents in San Francisco on Google Maps. The map also shows all San Francisco bike routes.

Using the map The Bay Citizen have been able to identify accident hot-spots in the city. It is also possible to click on any of the map markers to read the full details of each accident.

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Ye Olde San Francisco on Google Maps

Time Shutter

Time Shutter is another great Google Maps based website that allows people to see how cities used to look and how they have changed. Users can upload historical images to the site and browse through the images submitted by others.

Currently the site is concentrating on historical images of San Francisco but images for New York will also soon be added. The site includes many postcards of San Francisco from around 1900 and includes a historical map overlay featuring the Chevalier Commercial, Pictorial and Tourist Map of San Francisco from 1903.

Time Shutter is also available as a free iPhone application.

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The 4th of July on Google Maps

4th of July Bay Area Celebration Map

The Mercury News are the first off the block this year with their 4th of July Bay Area Celebration Map. The map is an interactive guide to this weekend's Fourth of July festivities around the San Francisco Bay Area.

The map includes fireworks, festivals, food, parades, music and much more. If you wish to add another event to the map just click on the 'Add' button and complete the form.

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Mapping the Trees of San Francisco

Urban Forest Map

The Urban Forest Map is a Google Map application that is trying to map every tree in San Francisco.

One aim of the map is to calculate the environmental benefits the trees are providing, how many gallons of stormwater they are helping to filter, how many pounds of air pollutants they are capturing, how many kilowatt-hours of energy they are conserving, and how many tons of carbon dioxide they are removing from the atmosphere.

Using the map it is possible to search for trees near any location in San Francisco. You can find trees that bear edible fruits and nuts or those with beautiful flowers. You can also search the map for trees of a particular type.

Looking at the map you can see that the Urban Forest Map already has a huge database of trees in San Francisco but if you know of one that is missing you can add it to the map.

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Finding Trails in the San Francisco Bay Area

Transit and Trails

The Transit and Trails website has built a Google Maps mashup to show the locations of walking trails and parks around the San Francisco Bay Area. The site allows the user to find trails and plan your trip to the start and from the end back home using public transport.

Once you have selected a trail from one of the numerous markers on the map an information window opens with details of the closest public transit to this point. You can then get transit directions to the trail from any point from either Google Maps directions or 511.org.

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Airship Tracking

Airship Ventures

Airship Ventures provide Zeppelin tours of the San Francisco Bay, Los Angeles and the Monterey Coast. They also provide a live tracking Google Map that shows the current position of the airship.

When the airship is in flight its position and speed is updated every 30 minutes. The most recent flight is currently displayed on the map, with the ship located at the red map marker. Each of the red dots represent one of the half hourly updates. Hovering over a dot will reveal the flight data reported at that update.

You can also click anywhere on the map to see how far that point is from the airship's current location.

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Things to do in San Francisco

The Best of San Francisco

7x7 Magazine, the insider's guide to San Francisco, has produced a Google Map of 100 things to do in 10 San Francisco neighborhoods. The 100 locations are available on one Google Map and each neighborhood gets its own personal map.

Each map consists of a number of markers containing a simple 7x7 recommendation and a link to the location's website. And that's it really.

The beauty of this map lies in the simplicity of the recommendations. So whether you would prefer to 'have a 3 a.m. post-clubbing breakfast at Bagdad Café' or 'build a fire at Ocean Beach' you are bound to find something you like on this Google Map.

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Google I/O Videos Map

Interactive Conference Map

Roman Nurik, a Developer Programs Engineer at Google, produced an interactive conference map of the Moscone Center, San Francisco for Google I/O. The map was available for attendees to consult during the conference at two kiosk stations.

Now that the conference is over Google have decided to use the Google Map developed by Roman to showcase videos of the keynote sessions. The map contains overlays for each of the three levels of the center.

The map has also been open sourced and there is a handy how to article outlining the steps taken to create the map.

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Where 2.0 Local Picks

Local Picks San Francisco

To coincide with the start of Where 2.0 Schmap.me have released a new Twitter account that retweets Twitter user comments about local restaurants and bars. It also lets Twitter users tweet their own restaurants and bar picks.

Each of these local tweets have short Schmap.me links so followers can quickly find the local pick on a Google Map. If you want to recommend a San Francisco restaurant, bar or pub you can add a rating, short review and optional photo before tweeting your pick, on this Schmap.me page.

The equivalent link for tweeting a New York pick is, www.schmap.me/picks/newyork

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The San Francisco Port-a-Potty Arsonist

An arsonist (or arsonists), variously dubbed the 'Toilet Torcher', the 'Loo Lighter' or the 'Poo Pyro', has been burning portable toilets in San Francisco. So far at least 19 port-a-potties have been burned.

Curbed Port-a-Potty Arsonist Map

Curbed SF have produced this very good Google Map showing the location of all 18 gutted toilets. The map displays the date and time of each burning.

Dream Not of Today Arsonist Map

Not to be outdone Dream of Today also have a Google Map mashup showing the location of all of San Francisco's burnt toilets. The markers on this map are colour-coded to indicate in which month the toilets were set ablaze.

Via: Derivative Works

Finally - whilst the objects of this arsonist's attacks might seem funny, you just have to read the post below to see why arson is not funny at all!

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