A Google Maps City Guide

Thessaloniki 360 is a nice photographic guide to the Greek city of Thessaloniki.

The map features a large number of 360 degree panoramic photos of the city. The panoramas can be accessed by category in the map sidebar or by just clicking on a marker on the map. When you click on a marker the panorama opens in its own information window. 

As well as the great panoramas of the city Thessaloniki 360 also provides a guide to points of interest. You can search for locations in Thessaloniki under a number of categories, including Arts, Public Sector and Hotels.

Greek Coupons and Deals on Google Maps

Deals on Map is a nicely designed Greek coupons map and if anyone deserves to be able to find cheap deals at the moment it's the citizens of Greece.

The site uses Google Maps to show users the nearest deals and coupons nearby. The map can be searched by location and by type of deal. Links in the map sidebar allow the results displayed on the map to be filtered by category, for example hotels, food, beauty etc.

When you click on a deal's marker on the map the offer is loaded into the right-hand sidebar. To claim a deal or coupon you just need to click on the sidebar image for the deal.

Getting Around Athens with Google Maps

The Athens Public Transit Planner is a public transit network map of the Greek capital, which also includes a very handy trip planner.

The app consists of two main parts; a network map and a trip planner. The trip planner allows users to plan a trip using the city's public transit system. Users can set a starting point, destination and the time of journey and get detailed step-by-step transit directions. The route of the journey is also displayed on a Google Map.

The network map allows the user to view all of Athens' public transit lines. Estimated live departure times for any stop on the network can be viewed by clicking on the station name in the map sidebar. The map itself includes a clever bounding box function that ensures that the available transit lines displayed in the sidebar always reflect the lines available in the current map view.

Greek Taxi Cost Calculator

This Greek Taxi Price Calculator allows users to calculate the cost of a taxi journey anywhere in Greece.

To use the calculator, simply right-click on the map to specify your starting and destination address or use the input fields in the left hand side menu. The route of your journey will then be displayed on the map and the estimated taxi charge is displayed in the map sidebar.

The costs are calculated according to the most up to date prices and include a full itemisation of charges you can expect from your taxi trip. The charges also include the 11% VAT introduced for Athens' taxi services.

Greek Flights in Real-Time on Google Maps

Greek Aircraft Tracking

As one of Europe's favourite holiday destinations Greece sees a lot of aircraft traffic. This Google Map lets you view all the civil aviation flights over Greece in real-time.

The map shows the location of all of Greece's major airports and of all the planes currently in flight in the country's air space. If you click on one of the plane shaped map markers you can view flight details for that plane in the map sidebar.

The details include the plane's manufacturer, current heading, altitude, model and call sign.

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Greece Taxi Fares on Google Maps

Taxi Fare Calculator

This very clever Greek taxi fare calculator can work out the potential cost of any taxi fare in Greece.

Perhaps the most clever thing about this app is that it uses a traffic forecast model that updates the trip duration / taxi cost depending on the hour of day. The model predicts the amount of traffic on the roads at different times of the day and uses this to help work out potential taxi fares.

To work out a fare you can enter a starting point and a destination, or you can just right-click on the map twice to work out a fare. An interactive graph at the top of the map displays an estimation of the duration of the journey at different times of the day. You can also use the time-line slider to work out the potential journey cost at different times.

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GRNET Visualised on Google Maps

GRNET Network Topology Tool

GRNET (Greek Research and Technology Network) is the national research and education network of Greece. GRNET provides internet access to the Research, Academic and Education communities of Greece.

The GRNET Network Topology Tool uses Google Maps to show the location of the nodes on the network and to provide information about the interconnections between network devices, the interfaces' descriptions and tags along with RRD traffic graphs per interface.

The tool is also available in a lightweight version, which can be easily embedded into other websites.

The map includes some custom made zoom buttons that nicely complement the Google Maps navigation controls. The buttons allow the user to quickly zoom back to a level that displays the whole network.

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Greek Google Maps Mashups Round-Up

Tavernoxoros

Tavernoxoros is a Google Maps mashup showing the location of all the taverns, restaurants and fast food restaurants in Thessaloniki, Greece (and there is a lot of them). It is possible to search for individual restaurants or to select categories of restaurant to view on the map.

It also possible to sort the restaurants and taverns by those with disabled access, tables outside, live music and those open 24 hours.

Gr-Navigator

Gr-Navigator is a local business Google Maps mashup for the whole of Greece. The map is designed to help you quickly find what you want from a large base of real estate, rental rates, hotels, businesses and services.

It is also possible to search the map by business type or location. It is possible to search for businesses directly from the map, as the map automatically updates the markers as you pan and zoom the map.

NTUA-Geography

The National Technical University of Athens has a number of Google Maps and GIS mashups that have been developed as part of their courses on GIS.

The plan is to add to the already large list with mashups produced by the university's students.

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Greece Wildfires on Google Maps

Greece Wildfires Map

In Athens several thousand residents in the city's northern suburbs have been forced to leave their homes because of a number of wildfires threatening the Greek capital. An area over 50km wide has been affected by the fires.

This Google Map uses data from MODIS to show the fires that have been active in the last 24 hours. Clicking on a fire map marker reveals details about the exact latitude and longitude of the fire and when the fire data was added to MODIS.

The map was created by Spiros Vathis. Spiros has written a brief article about how he was able to quickly create this Google Maps mashup, which he says has had over 3,000 hits in less than a day.

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Google Maps Mania - The Best of Europe (March - May)

My name is Robert de Heer and every month, I will be posting a shortlist (call it a hit-list, top-list or whatever ;-)) of new interesting European mashups. As an introductory post, below you will find 9 mashups that appeared since March on the web.

1) Bordeaux (FR) - where does my wine come from? - Always handy to know: you drink a nice glass of Chardonnay, but uhm, where is Chardonnay situated, and what are the characteristics of the wine? No worries, now there is "Findthevine.com', helping you to get all the details of the French wines. Santé!

2) Firenze (IT) - Best tourist places in Italy - Planning to visit Italy? Take a look at dal-satellite.it. This website offers basic details and info on touristic places within dozens of Italian cities. Not too sophisticated, but still a handy one-stop-source if you’re looking for quick and limited tourist information. Interesting however, is how this guy tries to generate revenue: in each map, he insert a Google Ad as a text-balloon. Check out this example, never seen it before.

3) Charleroi (BE) - strange places for airplanes - The Dutch and French sometimes make fun of the Belgians, like the English are making fun of the Irish. But we actually DO sometimes have a genuine reason to laugh. Check out this link, showing all the airfields that Belgian has. So far so good. But what does an airplane do in a school? Check out this and some other examples on this special Google Map.

4) Aberystwyth (UK) - cheap houses in the UK - Never heard of this place, Aberystwyth, but it exists in Wikipedia , so I guess it must exist. If you want to live there, you’re fortunate, because house-prices there are extremely low. How do I know? Because I checked out www.estateangels.co.uk/house_prices, a website that displays using heat-maps the cheapest and most expensive areas to buy a house in the United Kingdom.

5) The Hague (NL) - where to park my car? - Check out the image yourself, a nice way to solve parking problems ;-)



6) Dutch LandRegister website - In the Netherlands, the official Land Register has made an custom beta-version of a maps application. Using Google Maps, they created an extra layer showing the exact boundaries of real estate in the entire country. When visiting the website Find Your Own House (www.vindjeeigenhuis.nl), one can enter his house-address, and sees directly the boundaries of all real estate in the neighbourhood, including not just area boundaries, but also the boundaries of the houses themselves.

7) Googlelittrips - I guess everybody knows the Odyssey by Homer. A great story, which takes place around the current Greece. The website Googlelittrips has made this and several other stories available in Google Earth. It’s a great way to bring old stories to life!

8) No more soft-drugs - The Dutch political party CDA (christian democrats) launched a website enabling voters to display on a map where one can find coffee shops (selling soft drugs) nearby school areas. As it’s the political program to ban coffee shops nearby schools, the party is actively calling for more information on hazardous areas for school kids.

9) Where is Sarkozy? - In addition to an earlier post on euromapsmania.com about the French presidential elections: the website of candidate Sarkozy produced a map displaying his whereabouts since 2002. This is what I call openness!

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Google Maps update for: Russia, Turkey, Taiwan, Thailand, Croatia, Slovenia, Lithuania!

Google Maps Mania readers from around the world are noting updates to Google Maps in several countries worldwide today! Here is the rundown of countries that are seeing updates:

• Russia
• Turkey
• Taiwan
• Thailand
• Greece
  
• Croatia
• Slovenia
• Lithuania

In some cases there are enhancements to the road/street maps that were there previously (Greece for example) and for some countries streets and roads are completely new (Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey) This update of streets, roads and other points of interest will have a huge impact on users of Google Maps in these areas. It means that satellite imagery is now more relevant and easier to identify when "sightseeing" using the hybrid map view toggle. In addition, Google's new My Maps map creation tool is now instantly available for millions of people to begin creating and sharing interesting maps for these countries!

Know of other countries seeing updates or want to leave some feedback? Post a comment! :)

[Thanks to Scott Dexter for the tip!]

For other recent feature and functionality updates to Google Maps, click on the "Google Maps" label below:

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8 new Google Maps mashups for European countries

Sweden: Study in Sweden Google Map - StudyInSweden is the Swedish government's official portal for students thinking of studying in Sweden. There are around 300 master's programmes taught in English at Swedish universities, and they are free for anybody to apply to and attend -- including foreign students. StudyInSweden exists to tell the world that you can study for free in English in Sweden (if you're good enough), and now it's just become easier to find out just where these universities are through this Google Maps mashup which helps you locate where these universities are located. Start with this page or click, then click on the link above to view the Google Map. Google Earth functionality also exists. [Via Steff at OgleEarth]

Belgium: Election Results - JRoller.com points us to this next mashup from Belgium which maps the countries recent election results. Drill down from main cities, then regions within the cites show graphed results. I like the zoom and map-view toggling icons which are used. (Belgian/French language)[via]

Belgium: Where to Tango - It takes two to tango, and with this map you can find out where to go in major cities across Belgium. Google Earth and YouTube is also integrated. (English language) [via]
All of Europe: Gay Travel - Maps for Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Cologne, Granada, Lisbon, Madrid, Prague and Rome. Look for "city map" on each page. (English language)
All of Europe: Hotels - French language Hotel site for various cities in Europe. [Via ProgrammableWeb]
Greece: Mountain Refuges - Google Maps is combined with the Hellenic National Tourist Organization containing information about mountain refuges in Greece. Links to tourist site details also included. (bilingual English and Greek). [Via ProgrammableWeb]
Finland: Daily Gigs and clubs - Listings for Helsinki. (Finnish language)
Poland: City of Torun Map - (Polish language) [Via ProgrammableWeb]

..Coming Soon: Country Roundups for the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Italy and The Netherlands