A Travel Journal with Google Maps

Everlater is an application that allows you to create your own travel journal and travel blog.

As you add entries to your everlater travel blog they are also added to a Google Map of your journey. The map includes markers for each journal entry and all the markers are connected by polylines to show the progression of your trip.

Everlater has an iPhone app which allows you to update your travel blog whilst you are on your travels. Your travel blog can include photos of your trip and you can also connect your everlater account to a Facebook account so that all your entries are also posted to your Facebook wall.

Create a Personal Journey Map

Go Pro Travelling lets you create a Google Map of any trip whether it be a walking tour, a bicycle ride or a vacation. Users can add information and photographs to each stage of the trip and create a great mapped record of their journey.

The finished map includes numbered map markers showing the chronology of the trip. If you click on a numbered marker you can view the text and photographic entries for that stage of the journey. The application automatically displays how far has been travelled since the last stage and you can even indicate what mode of travel was taken.

Links to Twitter and Facebook mean it is very easy to share created trip maps with friends and friends can even leave comments on the map itself.

How a Trails Map Should be Made

The Nature Valley Trail View is a beautiful map of trails in the Grand Canyon.

The map includes a number of trails, each of which can be experienced with a glorious animated custom Street View tour. If you click on the menu link you can select any of the trails and then virtually walk the trail with custom Street Views of the whole trail.

Each tour includes an option to animate a walk on the trail, so you can just sit back and watch as you walk the trail with custom Street Views. Below the Street View is an altitude graph and a compass rose is also provided.



The Nature Valley Trail View Grand is a great example of what can be achieved with the Google Maps API. I'd almost go as far as to say it nearly matches the beauty of the Grand Canyon itself.

Hat-tip: Street View Funny

Bookmark Locations App with Google Maps

Everplaces is a really nice new location bookmarking application. With Everplaces you can keep a record of all the amazing places you've been or those you'd love to try out one day.

Everplaces makes it very easy to add locations to your personal collection. You can painlessly import locations that you have saved in Google Maps. The Everplaces bookmarklet lets you easily add locations and venues that you find on other web pages. Everplaces also allows you to 'Explore' the locations added by other users and add those you like to your collections.

Whilst creating your locations collection you can easily share your favourite location finds with your friends via Twitter, Facebook and via the Everplace smartphone application.

Find a TAM Flight with Google Maps

Brazilian airline TAM has released a nice destination finder called TAM Tips. The application allows users to search for vacation destinations based on their personal preferences.

TAM Tips uses Google Maps to show possible vacation locations based on TAM airlines' destinations. The destinations suggested on the map can be refined by selecting categories of interest, for example museums and galleries, sport, music, mountains, beaches etc.

If you click on a suggested destination on the map you can then read a review of the location and view the price of a ticket on TAM airlines to the destination.

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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Virtual Travel with Google Maps

Wandercast.TV is a travel video website that aims to allow you to "Watch where you’re going before leaving home."



If you are planning a trip you can search Wandercast.TV for great places to visit and view a video of the location before travelling. Alternatively you can of course just browse Wandercast.TV to virtually visit places in the world that you may never get a chance to visit for real.



Each video on Wandercast.TV is accompanied by a Google Map showing the location where it was shot. If you have your own travel videos then you can also upload them to the Wandercast.TV map.



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How Far Can You Fly with Google Maps?

Hungarian Airline Malev has a nice flight finder tool that allows you to select an airport, the amount of money that you are willing to pay and then view on Google Maps destinations that you can afford on your budget.

The travel finder is very easy to use. You can just click on any of the mapped airports to set them as the airport that you wish to fly from. You can set the amount of money you are prepared to pay using the slide control. When you press enter all the destinations that you can afford with Malev Hungarian Airlines are shown on the map (with the cost of flight).

You can even book your flight directly from the map.

Malev Travel Planner

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Swedish Travel Tips with Google Map

ReseEkonomen

This Swedish language Google Map provides advice and tips about the favourite tourist destinations of the Swedish around the world.

As well as providing travel tips from Mattias Varén the map also shows tips sent in by users. The yellow markers on the map indicate tips provided by Mattias and the green markers are those sent in by users of the map.

It is possible to filter the travel tips shown on the map by country and by type of holiday destination. The categories include, Family Travel, Weekend, Backpacking, Cruises and Adventure.

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Google Maps Plane, Train & Boat Directions

rome2rio

Google Maps includes a number of little Easter Eggs with suggestions for your inter-continental travel. For example, if you ask Google Maps for driving directions from Japan to China Google Maps suggests, at step 42, that you 'Jet ski across the Pacific Ocean'.

If you don't fancy jet skiing then rome2rio could be the solution that you are looking for. This Google Maps based travel search engine can help you get to anywhere on Earth with flights, trains, ferry and driving directions.

This introductory video is a great introduction to what rome2rio provides:



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Where in the World is it Safe to Travel?

The Guardian Travel Advice Map

In the UK the Foreign and Commonwealth Office issues travel warnings and advice about countries it is safe to travel to. The Guardian newspaper has used Fusion Tables and Google Maps to create a world map of the 53 countries that the FCO currently has travel warnings for.

Even if you are not interested in travelling the world the map provides an interesting view of countries currently affected by conflict or disaster. Do bear in mind however that where the FCO has issued more localised warnings, for example not to visit Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, The Guardian's map displays the whole country as unsafe.

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Finding the Best Hotels with Google Maps

The Best City Hotels in the World

Last the week The Guardian published a Google Map mapping the newspaper's travel videos, called Video Breaks Around the World. This week they have created a Google Map highlighting the best city hotels in the world.

So far the paper has mapped out the best hotels in 32 cities across the world, 'hand-picked by locals and experts from San Francisco to Beijing'. The Guardian says it has plans to add more cities to the map in the future.

You can select to view a city's hotels from the drop-down menu in the map sidebar. If you then click on the individual hotel markers you can read The Guardian's review.

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Travel Suggestions with Google Maps

Wanderfly

Wanderfly is a new travel suggestion site. Tell Wanderfly where you are leaving from, how much money you have and the sorts of activities you are interested in and it recommends travel destinations based on your preferences.

Wanderfly will recommend flights and hotels. It will also recommend places to see and visit based on your activity preferences. Google Maps is used to show the location of each of your recommendations.

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Travel Videos on Google Maps

Video Breaks Around the World

It is easy to forget what a great mapping tool Google My Maps is. Even without programming skills you can use Google My Maps to create a great Google Maps application.

This map from The Guardian newspaper is a nice example of what can be created with My Maps. The map showcases The Guardian's travel video collection, from taxi driver tours of Buenos Aires to atmospheric backstreet workshops in Istanbul.

The map uses custom map markers and allows you to view The Guardian's travel videos directly from the map. So. if you have a little time this weekend. you can while away the hours with a little sightseeing from the comfort of your own home.

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A Google Maps Guide to Hotels in Lima

Hospedate.pe

Here is the first ever Peruvian Google Maps mashup to feature on Google Maps Mania. Being one-eighth Peruvian myself I hope it is only the first of many.

Hospedate.pe is a Google Maps based guide to hotels in Lima. The map allows you to search for hotels by location and order the results by price or by the hotel's rating.

If you click on a hotel's map marker you can get details about the services provided, the address of the hotel, a link to the hotel's website and view the hotel's rating.

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Share a Travel Journal with Google Maps

Traveljournals.net

Traveljournals.net provides a simple means for travellers to share their journeys and travel photographs with their family and friends. Registered users of the site can upload their travel journals and pictures and get a unique URL that they are free to share with anyone they want.

Traveljournals.net provides a simple Google Maps interface to the journeys uploaded to the site. The map displays markers around the world where stories have been submitted. If you roll-over a map marker you can view statistics about the number of stories submitted in that region,

If you click on a map marker you will be taken to the dedicated page for the selected country / region where you can then browse the shared travel journals and photographs.

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Cheap Beds for the Night on Google Maps

Prooms

If you are jetting off somewhere this summer and need somewhere cheap to stay or, if you want to stay somewhere a little less impersonal than a hotel, you should consider renting a room in someone's house.

Prooms is a website that allows anyone to rent out a bed (or even a couch or a whole apartment) to paying guests and allows travellers to search for available accommodation. Anyone can post a bed on the site and anyone can take them up on the offer. The listings include private rooms, entire apartments or even just a couch.

The listed beds/rooms include a Google Map showing its location and details about cost and the neighbourhood the accommodation is located in.

Google Maps is also used to show the locations of accommodation when you carry out a search. So, for example, if you search for accommodation in San Francisco for a particular week the places that have rooms available are shown on a handy Google Map.

Also See

Airbnb

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Finding Hotels with Street View

Expedia: Hotel View

Expedia, the travel reservation website, has added Street Views to all their hotel views in the UK. The new Street View service allows visitors to explore the immediate vicinity of hotels before booking directly from Google Maps Street View.

The Street Views themselves are implemented really well. Expedia are using overlays on top of the views to display the hotel room prices and the room availability calendar. The Street Views also include an overlay with quick links to Street Views of other hotels nearby.

Hat-tip: Mapperz
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Find a Scenic Drive with Google Maps

myscenicdrives

myscenicdrives is a website designed to help you find and share scenic drives. Whether you are looking for a Sunday afternoon drive, a weekend getaway, or are looking to plan your next summer vacation you can search myscenicdrives' Google Map to find your perfect drives.

Currently the site has mapped a number of drives in Washington and Oregon. The drives are shown with coloured lines on Google Maps. If you select one of the drives you will be taken to a dedicated page with details of the route.

The dedicated page for each scenic drive also includes a Google Map which shows the route of the drive. You can also select a number of points of interest to view along the route. The points of interest are categorised into; Hikes, Activities, Museums, Bridges, Vista Points, Information, Food and Services.

Also See

• Crown of the Continent - map of the Rocky Mountains, where Alberta, British Columbia, and Montana meet. Includes scenic drives and many other points of interest
• Fall for Tennessee - Scenic Drives - Car journeys that highlight Tennessee's rich variety of natural beauty
• Drives of a Lifetime - National Geographic's top 50 Drives of a Lifetime mapped

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UK Hotels in Street View

UK Series

The UK Series of websites includes a number of UK travel sites (UKhotel.com, UKcottage.com, UKbed.com, UKcampsite.com and UKattraction.com). The UK Series websites all feature Google Maps to show the locations of their travel points of information. Now they feature Street View as well.

This means that if you now search for a hotel or a famous landmark in one of UK Series' websites you can not only view it on a map but see how it looks in Google Street View.

The Street Views can be found under the 'more info' tab on each place page. You can see an example of the new feature in action on this Street View of the beautiful Royal Crescent, Bath

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