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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Mashups!
Casabobo: Dutch celebrities on Google Maps - Always wanted to know where your favorite Dutch actor, TV-personality or athlete lived? Casabobo gives you the answers, on Google Maps. Originally the site also listed the homes of Dutch politicians. But, after considerable downtime the addresses of the Dutch politicians have been removed. Probably Dutch authorities intervened.
The Dutch Google Maps mashup scene is picking up speed so I'm back with my second Dutch post to round-up all of the recent examples..
Dutch Crime Mashup (Dutch language) - This Google Maps mashup uses a database of police records and lawbreaks and plots them on a map. The motto on the banner of the site indicates that there are "Already more than 62637 crimes" on this mashup. I really dig the icons that are used for the various types of crimes for this mashup. Pin design is often overlooked in most mashups and some time has been spent to make the pin markers interesting and descriptive. [Via Nederkaart]
Dutch Jeans Store Locator - Score.nl is one of the few Dutch businesses harnessing the power of Google Maps to let their prospective customers find their physical stores. Score has 65 stores in the Netherlands, 6 stores in Germany and 5 stores in Belgium and decided to create a Google Maps mashup to help people find one of the 65 locations in the Netherlands. Sharp, stylish map markers show geo-locales and info-windows contain store address and tools to help you map your route to that location. Web 2.0 technolgies are abundant on this retail website and others should take note: Google Video is integrated to show a fashion show of their clothing line, games, blogs and rss feeds are in play, as are Score content widgets for the Mac and PC! For a retail site this is *extremely* interactive! Well done.
Join me in welcoming The Kingdom of the Netherlands to Google Maps! Check out http://maps.google.nl which was just added by the Google Maps Team! :) [Thanks Frank]
