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Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Street View Rival in Tibet


View from the Potala Palace, Lhasa, Tibet

Google Maps and Bing Maps are not the only online map providers to offer a Street View type service. Chinese search engine SOSO.com's online maps also provides Street View for a number of locations.

SOSO has Street View type imagery available in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and in some of the surrounding area.



Also See

MapJack - Street View type imagery for Thailand
Norc - coverage in central and eastern Europe, including in Poland and Austria
Mapplo - panoramic imagery for Argentina
Yandex - coverage in Russia

Via: Street View Funny

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Where Street View Fears to Tread

There are still quite a lot of gaps in Street View's coverage around the world. Luckily a number of other providers have created their own Google Maps based Street View applications to try and plug these gaps.

China - with City8

In China City8 have created extensive interactive 360 degree panoramas in 45 of the country's biggest cities.

MapJack

As well as providing Street View type imagery in the USA, Canada, Singapore and Sweden Mapjack has also ventured where Google Street View has so far feared to tread. MapJack has great coverage in Malaysia, Thailand and Puerto Rico.

Norc

Norc has great coverage in central and eastern Europe, including in Poland and Austria, where Google's Street View cars have yet to drive.

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Saturday, March 27, 2010

Chinese Google Maps Mashups

Shanghai Taxi Calculator

Here's a really useful Google Maps mashup for anyone who needs to take a taxi in China's largest city. The Shanghai Taxi Calculator help travellers estimate the cost of a cab ride in Shanghai. It allows users to input departure and destination addresses or select from popular spot list and discover the estimated cost of the journey.

All search results are displayed on a Google Map alongside the estimated time of the journey and the estimated cost of the fare at different times of the day. The site also provides other information such as the latest cab rates and a directory of the major cab companies in the city.

Dajiudian.info


Dajiudian.info is the leading provider of multilingual China-wide hotel bookings. The site allows you to search, locate and book over 5,000 hotels across China.

It is possible to search the site by city, hotel name, date and by hotel rating. The results of a search are then shown on a Google Map. If you click on any of the returned map markers you can view further details about the hotel, including room charges and book your hotel directly from the site.

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Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Simulated Chinese Flight Tracking Map

AirCN Map

This Chinese Google Maps mashup is a simulated map of flights in and out of Chinese airports.

Planes are shown on the map with small red aeroplane map markers. Clicking on any of the plane markers opens an information window with details about the flight. The planes shown on the map are also displayed in a map sidebar. Clicking on any of the planes in the sidebar will centre the map on the selected plane.

The site is only in Chinese.

Hat-tip to Ren for pointing out that this is a simulated map and not a real-time tracking map.

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Saturday, October 3, 2009

Ditu Maps Chinese Political Prisoners

Ditu MyMap of Chinese Prisoners of Conscience

Someone has created an excellent MyMap of Chinese netizens, lawyers, journalists and others who have been imprisoned in China for their political beliefs.

The individuals are shown on the map with thumbnail pictures and each thumbnail map marker includes a brief description of their alleged crime and a link to their page on Wikipedia.

Ditu is the Chinese localized version of Google Maps. Ditu is maintained on Chinese servers, which are subject to Chinese law (more on this in this Ogle Earth post). Therefore if this map interests you I would check it out quickly, as I'm not sure how long it will remain.

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Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Live Google Maps

Google Pigeon Watch


Ditu, Google Maps in China, have unveiled a new pigeon tracking map. However these aren't just any old pigeons but trained information collectors.

Each pigeon is carrying a “Wireless rechargeable foot ring ... full of power 16 hours of work.” If you say "coo, coo, coo" to the pigeon Google will show information from the neighborhood in which you found the bird.

Cadie Map

Google have also today released CADIE (Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity), a major technological breakthrough and the first artificial intelligence tasked-array system. Google have found "a powerful new technique for solving reinforcement learning problems, resulting in the first functional global-scale neuro-evolutionary learning cluster".

CADIE has already managed to create a blog by extracting patterns from the social web pages indexed by Google. Even more excitingly for me CADIE has also created a Google My Map of it's favourite places around the world. Here is how CADIE introduces the map,

"After extensive analysis of geographical data, I have compiled a list of locations around the world that are pleasing to visit. I am excited to share them with you. Each of my favorite places is indicated by a visually pleasing icon of a panda. I think this combination of adorableness and exciting locations will produce an optimal mapping experience for humans."

Anchor Butter Attacks Street View

In the UK Anchor Butter has blamed Google Street View for ruining its latest advertising campaign. They say Street View has captured cows in an urban settings ruining the joke of their own campaign, run on a similar theme.

Pegman becomes PegPanda

Following complaints that the little yellow man shaped Street View icon wasn't cute enough Google have today replaced Pegman in Google Maps Street View with a panda.

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Tuesday, January 6, 2009

The Battle of Red Cliff on Google Maps

The Battle of Red Cliffs

Google China have produced this Google Mapplet to commemorate the 1800th anniversary of the Battle of Red Cliffs. The release of the map also happily coincides with the western release of the feature film Red Cliff. Like the battle itself (and the film) the map is epic in scope. It has also been lovingly produced, with stills from the film and a custom made graphics.

There are three main tabs in the map sidebar 'Historical Events', 'The Main Characters' and 'Vote'. The Historical Events tab allows the user to follow the events in chronological order. The Main Characters tab provides pen portraits of those involved in the battle, with links that load onto the map a graphical representation of the historical events that they were involved in.

I'm sure this map is going to prove very popular both with fans of Chinese history and fans of the many computer games based on this battle (if you've played Dynasty Warriors, Sangokushi Koumeiden, Destiny of an Emperor or Kessen II you are going to recognise some of these historical characters).



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Friday, August 8, 2008

The Olympic Games on Google Maps

2008 Summer Games on Google Maps

Google have released "a one-stop shop" Google Map for viewing live updates from the Beijing Olympic Games, including up-to-date medal counts by country, events by date, and results by sport.

Alongside the Summer Games Map Google have also released YouTube fly-through videos of the 3D buildings that have been developed on Google Earth to showcase the Olympic venues. Here is a fly-through of 'The Nest'.



You can also view the 3D models of the Beijing Olympics venues at:
Via: Google LatLong: Off to the Games!

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The True China on Google Maps

TheTrueChina.com
screenshot of True China
TheTrueChina.com shows news from the Chinese media translated and geo-tagged on a Google Map. In this way the site hopes to become a bridge for western people to the real subjects and topics that the Chinese talk about everyday.

TheTrueChina.com argues that the news we read from China has been 'filtered' and 'massaged' by international media companies or the Chinese government. Therefore they have developed a translation algorithm built on the Google Language API to translate Chinese news into English without any interference or spin.

The map itself shows the news headlines in a sidebar. It is possible to click on the headlines or one of the mapped tags. This opens up an information window that contains a photograph and a link to the full news story translated into English. The news itself can be filtered into 'Most Recent', 'Most Recommended' or 'Most Commented'.

TheTrueChina.com certainly does provide another insight into the news from China. So if you want to know what the Chinese really think about the Beijing Olympics then give TheTrueChina.com a visit.

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Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Google Maps Mashup Roundup for 7 Countries!

Time to get caught up on some newly introduced Google Maps mashups from the following countries: UAE, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Brazil, Korea, Turkey, China. If you know of any other new maps mashups from these countries, please post a comment below! :)

Brazil: Philips maps digital tv signal reception quality:

Brazil: imobilien real estate mashup
Brazil: Mapia is a city guide for 16 Brazilian cities
Turkey: Emlak Haritam is a Turkish real estate mashup
Singapore: PropertyGuru maps for sale and rent properties
China: Chinese real estate mashup
UAE: Places.ae uses Google Maps
UAE: Dubai City info Google Maps mashup
India: SadakMap lets public/private groups blog on a Google map
Malaysia: Mapdoo lets you create your own map
Worldwide: Falamosportuges maps Poruguese language businesses
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Thursday, April 10, 2008

Olympic Torch Relay on Google Maps

Google released their Olympic Torch Relay Map last week. I didn't post on it then because I thought it wasn't much use as an actual map. For example, if you zoom in on any of the cities involved there is no actual route of the relay through the city. Therefore if you want to know where to go to watch the torch relay the map isn't much help.

In London this was also a problem with the official maps released by the Olympics organisation. Here is the official map:



The route through London actually passed about a mile from my house. But because of the lack of detail in the map it was impossible to know which roads the torch was going to travel. I therefore missed the relay. My guess is that this was done on purpose to keep the protests down to a minimum. This might be why the Google Map doesn't have detailed routes of the relay - because the Olympics organisation are keeping it as secret as possible.

However I am posting on the Chinese version of the Google Olympic Torch Relay Map today because they have included video reports of the relay in their version of the Google Map.



The video content comes from CCTV which is a state run broadcaster in China. Unsurprisingly the videos don't seem to show the protests against the Chinese. However as a map I think Google China have made a big improvement on the work of their American counterparts.

Coincidently the 2012 Olympics are also occurring about a mile from my house. I am now worried that they will try and hide the 2012 games from me as well.

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Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Google Maps City Guides for China

新年快乐 Happy Chinese New Year!

English Google Maps City Guides for Chinese Cities:

Example: Beijing

If you're English speaking and living in or visiting China PseudoLocal is for you! It's a wiki-map-mashup that draws from content created by expatriates and English speaking Chinese people who share their tips about how to get around Chinese cities. Start by selecting from the list of cities then browse simple maps that plot and cover: Transportation, Accommodation, Restaurants, Bars and Nightlife, Embassies, Schools, Hospitals, Public Facilities, Stores and Shopping, Office Buildings, Tourist Attractions and Entertainment. The Beijing City Guide is a great example of how all information for a particular city is displayed on maps throughout the wiki pages. I have a friend that lives in Beijing and she was very impressed when I showed this to her and couldn't wait to start using it when she returned back to China!

Other Google Maps content for China:
Click on the China label (below) for more...
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Monday, August 27, 2007

Google Maps China Roundup

All eyes turn to the country of China as we enter the final countdown to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Summer Games. To help you explore the country of China, Google Maps can help in a variety of ways. Street maps and satellite images as well as user created maps will help you explore the Olympic venues and the country at large. This post rounds up all things new for Google Maps in China.

Google Maps updated for China:

Google Maps was updated at the start of Aug/07 with fresh satellite imagery for the cities of Beijing and Shanghai. In late July cities, major streets and roads were added throughout the country, as was map searching for cities and points of interest. These updates are also available to Google Maps mashups making use of the Google Maps API.

The Chinese localised version of Google Maps known as Google Ditu (Ditu = Map) features great detail, for urban areas, rail lines, labeling etc in the Chinese language. Anthony Wong has created a cool mashup of Google Maps and Google Ditu so you can compare the views:

..Read this post for more information. Anthony explains how he created the mashup and his recommendations for improving it. The Shanghaiist Blog also blogged about Google Ditu when it launched..

New China Satellite Sightseeing:

With brand new, updated imagery available in both Beijing and Shanghai a few sites out on the web are cataloging interesting sights and views that are found in China making for a unique online sightseeing experience:


Satellite-Sightseer.com: China Sights (191) - Sites include: Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, Three Gorges Dam, City of Lhasa (Tibet), Great Wall of China: Jyongguan Pass, All Shanghai Locations, Many many more here..

Wikimapia - China - Wikimapia is a unique, user-driven Google Maps explorer that allows you to view annotations of satellite imagery. Click the link above and roll your mouse over the boxes to read wiki-style descriptions. Be sure to zoom right in to see what the description is about and if you have something to add or would like to add your own wiki-descriptions for China go for it! Wikimapia is a great way to explore and learn more about the geography of China.

GoogleSightseeing.com - China - GoogleSightseeing tells you the stories behind the satellite imagery on Google Maps. This link will take you to all posts labeled with China by the bloggers at GoogleSightseeing.com

New China Mashups and Mapplets:
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Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Annotating China with Google Maps



There's a new addition to the Chinese Google Maps world and it's helping people to share and learn more about China. EEMap.org is a Chinese language Google Maps community that works on a wiki-style of editing which enables anyone to edit items on the map. Hao Ye, EEMap's Operation Manager adds that "We focus on the user's feeling and the fun of the sharing." Additionally, placemarks can also be turned into KML links viewable in Google Earth.

If you're familiar with Chinese characters start by registering for a new account, then add or edit markers on the map. Explore the tabs along to top of the map to reveal user-added places, a tagcloud and ways to link to the map you create or embed it in your blog. Here are some examples of EEMap placemarks:
In addition to EEMap, Hao Ye is also going to help us keep up to date on new Google Maps mashups in China by adding himself as a Google Maps Mania contributor.

Other recent Google Maps China finds:

Wikimapia: China - (Switch language to Chinese if required) Lets you share info and browse locations in China.
Trip to China Placemarks (from Hulver.com)
China Guide with Google Maps - Enter each individual post to reveal use of Google Maps
Baidu Search: "Google Maps mashup"

Recent China Roundups:

China Google Maps Mashups
Shanghai Google Maps Mashups
Hong Kong Google Maps Mashups

Monday, August 21, 2006

Google Map of Shanghai subway system

Shanghai Subway Map - Shanghai is a city that does not have street mapping from Google Maps as of yet. This subway map however will help you if you are matching recognizable Shanghai landmarks with the subway system there. If you know the city well it also acts as an interesting way to explore the city. Wikimapia's Shanghai descriptions might help as well.


More Google Maps for China:

Recent Post: Google Maps Mania in China - A roundup of all known Google Maps mashups and tools for China
Recent Post: Hong Kong Google Maps mashups

Tuesday, August 1, 2006

Hong Kong Google Maps Mashups

Discover Hong Kong with these Google Maps mashups and viewing tools:

Wikimapia lets you explore Hong Kong - Wikimapia features hundreds of user described buildings, parks, skyscrapers, airports and numerous other places in and around Hong Kong. It's a great way to match Google Maps satellite imagery with community-driven descriptions. I regularly use Wikimapia to research my travel destinations and for Hong Kong specifically there are tons of locations to explore!

Hong Kong sights and hotels - Pongu's Travel Community is a Google Maps mashup of notable Hong Kong attractions and locations and nearby hotels to these sights. As you hover over a pin the location name is given with options to zoom to that location or link off to a page to read more detail and photos. It's a nice little mashup to browse around on if you are traveling to this area. [Via ProgrammableWeb.com]

Other Hong Kong Google Maps mashups and tools:

Sightseeing with Google Satellite Maps: Hong Kong
Tagzania: Hong Kong
Google Sightseeing: Hong Kong
Platial: Hong Kong
Maplandia: Hong Kong

Do you know of other Hong Kong Google Maps mashups (in any language)? Post a comment to let others know!
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Technorati Tags: Hong Kong | Flickr Photos: Hong Kong

Wednesday, July 5, 2006

Google Maps Mania in China

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Streets and placenames for Google Maps in China - Hua has contacted me to let Chinese Google Maps Mania readers know about a great application he has created for the Chinese Internet community. It was designed to help Chinese Internet users who don't understand English to use Google Maps. He combined the Google Maps API with the mapping API from Chinese map site 51ditu.com to create a tool that lets you match the Google Maps satellite view of china with street and road maps. It will also allow you to match placenames like cities and towns. As far as Hua knows 51ditu.com is the only local Chinese mapping site that provides an API for users to create tools/mashups. Hua gives an interesting overview of the 51ditu name: "By the way, something might be interesting: "51" has similar sound as "I want", " ditu" is the sound of "map", it means "I want maps". And "52" has similar sounds as "I love"." His maps have been built using Google Pages and can be found here:

Chinese Google Maps Viewer
Chinese Google Maps Viewer (Interface is in English)

Learn about Chinese Geography - China-Profile (.com) has put together a collection of Maps links with many that include map pins with comments that explain landscape and geographic features in China. It's a great way to learn about China using Google Maps:
Map Overview 1
Map Overview 2

Currently Google Maps provides satellite mapping in its base mapping service. Google also released Bendi.Google.com some months ago, which resembles the local business search tool available in Google Maps (previously called Google Local). Google Bendi includes map search results from a company called MapABC.com. Here is a sample search from Google Bendi using "coffee" in "Beijing" to let you see these maps. Also of note, the blogger behind Googlified has noticed that Google Maps takes Chinese characters in the search field and displays these characters on the in-map search results.

Other Google Maps links for China:

Saturday, October 8, 2005

China Travel Guide integrates with Google Maps

The Treehouse Cityguide - This is an informational site about China, focusing in particular on the Southwest part of the country near South East Asia. If you're a traveler making your way to or through this area of China, this site is a good travel guide/Google Maps atlas for the region. The site contains attractions, cities, accommodations and restaurants for many locations and features integration with Google Maps satellite views to afford a closer look. It's a shame that Google Maps doesn't have street maps to make it even that much more helpful. Here are some examples: Heaven Pool in Jilin province (on the border with North Korea), or the somewhat well known "Tiger Leaping Gorge" in Yunnan province:

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