London 2012 - Transforming the Lea Valley

In one month's time, on July 27th, just a mile down the road from where I now sit, the 2012 Olympic Games will begin.

Over the last five years I've watched as the Olympics Park has been built on an under-developed and run down part of my home town. Looking at the area now it is quite hard to remember what this area of the East End looked like just five years ago.

Luckily photographer Toby Smith has created a Google Map showcasing his photographs of the area taken in 2007. The Lea Valley Map places Toby's photos on top of Google Map's satellite imagery of the Olympic Park.

The contrast between the bleak landscapes portrayed in Toby's photographs and the shiny new stadiums in the satellite imagery helps to highlight the transformation of this area, whether if it's for the better or not.

200 British Towns on Google Maps

200 Towns uses Google Maps with creative commons photographs and geo-located Tweets to provide a portrait of 200 UK towns.

You can navigate to individual towns using the alphabetised links in the side-bar or by zooming out on the map and clicking a town's marker. Each individual town page includes a Google Map showing its location, a selection of photographs submitted to Flickr taken in the town, Tweets about the location and its Wikipedia entry. 

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.

Video Tracking with Google Maps

Ubipix allows anyone with a smartphone to capture, tag, upload and share video or photo collections and view the submissions on a Google Map.

Using the Ubipix application on your phone allows you to capture video alongside a GPS track. Once you have captured your video (or photographs)  you can view and share the video on the Ubipix website. The video is automatically synchronised with a Google Map, so as you watch a video you can also view the location of the camera and its direction during the video's capture.

Below the video and the Google Map you can also view other data, such as the speed and distance travelled whilst shooting the video.

Vintage Film on Google Maps

I've added a few more archive videos to my Street View application There and Then. The app allows you to watch historical films embedded on a Google Maps Street View image of the same scene, as it looks today. 

If you like this sort of thing you should also check out Historypin, which now also includes a few early film scenes, dotted in amongst all the user submitted historical photographs.

Mapping with Drones - Part Two

There are now quite a few cheap(ish) solutions for capturing aerial imagery with balloons, kites or UAV's (see this Mapping with Drones post).

Pix4d's low altitude aerial imagery software can help turn captured aerial imagery into a full 3d map of an area. The Pix4UAV showcase demonstrates a number of example Google Maps displaying aerial imagery captured by different UAVs and processed by Pix4UAV.

This is impressive in itself but Pix4D can also generate 3d images from the 2d aerial imagery. Check out the video below to see how Pix4d can create 3d models from aerial photographs.

Pin Your Media to a Map with Mapinterest

Mapinterest is an interesting social network built on Google Maps. The application allows you to pin media to places on Google Maps, follow other users, check-in at locations and explore places added to the map by other users.

You can connect to Mapinterest with a Twitter or Facebook account. Once you have connected you can begin adding places to the map.  One of the most interesting features of Mapinterest is that it allows you to add media to place locations. Once on a place page you can add a link to a YouTube video, a Flickr or Instagram picture or even a Pininterest page and the video or photo is automatically added to the place page on Mapinterest.

Even if you aren't interested in joining a map based social network Mapinterest is a great way to share your videos and photographs with the world.

Aerial Street Views with Google Maps

On April 1st Google Sightseeing ran a spoof post about Google releasing aerial Street View on Google Maps. Google might not have glued a pair of wings to the Street View trike - yet - but  a number of other websites are concentrating on providing  interactive 360° aerial panoramas.


The New York skyline has to be one of the most interesting in the world and the Pixelcase's Aerial Tour of New York City does it full justice.

The tour includes ten interactive 360° aerial panoramas taken above New York City. Each panorama includes a Google Map that shows the location of the photo and the direction of view as you pan the image.

Be aware however that Pixelcase also includes the most annoying welcome screen I've ever seen. The screen makes you wait to view the site for over a minute unless you 'share' or 'like' it with a social network.


Tours from Above is a showcase of some amazing 360 degree aerial panoramas. The site uses Google Maps to show you the locations of aerial panoramas. These panoramas allow you to view oceans, forests, waterfalls and some of the world's cities in a way that you have never seen them before.


AirPano also has a great collection of 360 degree aerial panoramas of locations around the world. Each of the panoramic images has an option to use Google Maps to show the location of the image and to show the current field of view.

Post a Virtual Postcard with Google Maps

Dabble is a new photo sharing application that lets you share virtual postcards with your friends and the rest of the world.

Dabble allows users to pin photographs or 'postcards' to a Google Map and attach a short message to the picture. If you share your location with the Dabble desktop app you can view the 'postcards' that have been submitted around you.

Dabble is available on the iPhone and an Android app is also in development. This makes taking a postcard very easy. You just need to use the iPhone app to take a picture and add your message and your photograph is automatically added to the map.

The Diamond Jubilee on Google Maps

Google and Historypin have created an interactive archive of photographs and videos from Queen Elizabeth's visits and jubilee celebrations over the six decades of her reign.

For the project Historypin want to collect as many contributions as possible, from individuals and archives all around the world. So if you have any Queen Elizabeth related photographs or videos you can add them to the Historypin - Diamond Jubilee Album.

Historypin, if you still haven't seen it, is a great collection of user submitted historical photographs and videos which can be viewed on Google Maps. One of the stand-out features of Historypin is the ability to view the photos and videos superimposed on the modern Google Maps Street View image.

Another stand-out feature is the ability to create your own album. This Golden Jubilee album is a great way to promote this feature. I'm sure Historypin will be getting a lot more UK users due to this new project.

Instagram Photos on Google Maps

Foodogram is a real-time Google Map showing the location of the latest food related photographs submitted to the Instagram photo-sharing website.

As a new food photograph is added to Instagram it is displayed beneath the map and the map itself moves to the photographer's location. I do love maps but I can't help thinking that the map is given too much screen real-estate on this app and more prominence should be given to the photographs.


Mapstagram is a super-fast real-time Google Map of photos taken with the Instagram iPhone app.

When the Mapstagram map first loads it displays the most recent photos from a number of U.S. cities. After the initial photos have loaded Mapstagram goes into real-time mode. As photos are uploaded by users in these cities, they are immediately displayed on the map in real time.

World Tourism Heatmaps

The World's Most and Least Touristy Places Google Map shows a heatmap of the most photographed places based on photographs submitted to Panoramio. The analysis takes into account how many photos and by how many authors there are in any given area.

On the same website the Interesting Remote Places Map provides a heatmap of interesting places away from urban centres that have a high number of photos submitted to Panoramio. This map shows only places that are away from cities; usually outback, hiking destinations, or remote tourist attractions.


The Tourism Map for France and Southern England takes the same approach but provides a heatmap of Panoramio photos by location for a more localised area. The same author has also created a heatmap of Tourist Areas in Estonia.

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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Historical Weimar on Google Maps

Zeitsprung uses historical photographs from the Weimar city archives to allow users to see how the German city has changed over time.

The site uses a jQuery slider control that allows the user to compare a historical photo with a photograph of the same view today. The photos can be browsed by location with the help of a Google Map. Alternatively it is possible to organise the photos by date or by title.

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Two Great Google Maps for Photographers

Nucuo is a Google Map and online database designed to help photographers search and find shooting locations around the world. Registered users of Nucuo can even add their own great locations for taking photos to the database and map.

Locations are displayed on the map with thumbnail images of a photo taken at each location. Using the map it is possible to search for great shooting locations by place and by a large number of tags, categorised into 'Outdoors', 'Feelings' and 'Style'.

Nuoco is a great tool for finding the right location for your photo shoot. If you do find the right location with Nuoco you could then use The Photographer's Ephemeris to find the right time to visit for the perfect light.

The Photographer's Ephemeris is a free sun and moon planning tool for outdoor photography. The application uses Google Maps to show sunrise and sunset times and indicates the current direction of the sun based on your location. The application includes some really advanced features, including automatic time zone and elevation detection, correction for atmospheric refraction and height above the horizon.

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Historical Photos of Philly on Google Maps

PhillyHistory.org provides access to the incredible collection of historic photos of Philadelphia held by the City of Philadelphia, Department of Records.

Users of the site can search for photos based on geographic location, subject matter, or date. The location of the view depicted in individual photos is marked for reference on an interactive map. Whilst the map itself doesn't use the Google Maps API PhillyHistory.org does make great use of Google Maps Street View.

When you select an historical photograph there is the option to see the same view portrayed in the picture using Google Maps Street View (where available). This provides a great way to see how Philadelphia has changed over the years.

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Google Maps - Your Vacation Photo Album

Travelogic is an experimental website by Gabe Morton-Cook. Gabe says the project "is intended to bring together three of my passions: Travel, Photography and Interactive Design/Development".

The application plots Gabe's travels on a styled Google Map. If you click on any of the map markers for a trip you can view a selection of beautiful photographs taken at that location and Gabe's blog post about the journey.

The map includes forward and back buttons to help the user navigate through each journey and also includes a handy time-line below the map.

Via: TNW

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Create a Google Map Based Photo Album

Codrops has created a very nice template and tutorial for a Google Maps based photo album.

This multi-level map and image gallery displays images related to their location. The first level of the map shows the location of places that have a set of images. If you click on a marker on the first level the map will zoom in and also display thumbnails of the photos at this location.

Clicking on a marker in the second level will result in the photo being displayed next to the map. The images can also be viewed in a lightbox and the map can be viewed in full-screen.

Check out the demo to see the map in action.

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1930's Connecticut on Google Maps

Neighborhood Change in Connecticut lets you view aerial imagery of Connecticut from 1934 side-by-side with the modern satellite view on Google Maps.

This map, created by the Trinity College and University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center, lets you explore the changing landscapes of Connecticut from the 1930's to the present. The dual map control allows you to zoom in on different areas and compare the past and present views. For example, in the picture above you can see commercial development on formerly rural farmland.

As well as imagery of Connecticut from 1934 the map includes aerial imagery from 1990, 2004 and 2006.

Also See

• The New Jersey State Atlas - aerial photography of the entire state taken in the 1930's
• Sasgis.by.ru - World War II aerial photographs of Russia
• Declassified Military Aerial Images Map - Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monument of Scotland's declassified military aerial photographs of Europe

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Throw a Dart at Google Maps & Take a Snap

In April 2011 over 250 creative St. Louisans gathered to throw darts at a huge map of the City of St. Louis. Participants then had one month to visit the area where their dart landed and take a photograph.

DART St. Louis 2011 is a Google Map of the resulting collection of photographs. It provides a wonderful snapshot of St. Louis as it is today, one random block at a time.

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