Buzz Locations with Google Maps

Google have today released Buzz, a new social network, status update, photo and video sharing tool (think Twitter, FriendFeed or Wave Lite).

Google Buzz for Mobile has a lot of exciting looking integration with Google Maps. Using Google Buzz on a mobile phone lets you tag your location. The tagged location will show up on your tag and your friends can click on it to see your location on Google Maps.

'Nearby View' will show all the public Buzz updates around your current location. The 'Buzz Layer' on Google Maps for mobile will help you find hotspots around your current location. These hotspots are presumably created by the number of 'buzzes' from a particular location. Therefore the hotspots could show you information about recent road closures, hot restaurants or bars or a local news event.

If you have a Gmail account you should see Google Buzz appear in the next few days.

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The Winter Olympics on Google Maps

With the 2010 Winter Olympics Games Google have added some stunning new Street Views taken by the Street View Snowmobile.



The new Street View includes images from the Dave Murray Downhill (site of the men's alpine skiing event), from the top of the 7th Heaven Chairlift on Blackcomb, and from the peak of Whistler. Imagery of Whistler Village has also been added to Street View in Google Maps.

You can check out the amazing panoramas from the top London Mountain and Blackcomb here.

Google also have a nice mapplet for Google Maps that links directly to Street Views of Olympics venues.



3D Buildings
Google have also modelled all nine venues in Google Earth, comprising 54 buildings (and thousands of trees!). You can view all the venues in Google Earth or by using the Google Earth browser plugin.

Watch a tour of the venues in your browser.

Embeddable Gadget
Google have also today released an embeddable gadget with real time info and Street View/3D/map of venues.

The gadget also features a medals table (with a Google Map that has markers showing the gold medals won by each country).

Favourite Places Vancouver

Google have also updated the Favourite Places page for the Winter Olympics. Favourite Places in Vancouver now includes suggestions by athletes, politicians, and other top Vancouverites on where to shop, eat, and play.

Vancouver 2010 Olympic Torch Route

With three days to go it is still possible to view this Google Map of the Olympic Torch relay route.

Vancouver - the 2010 Winter Games

The city of Vancouver has created this really nice Google Maps mapplet to show the venues of the Winter Olympic games and to highlight some of the other great locations the city has to offer. The mapplet makes use of the Street View imagery to let you view the locations with Google's panoramic images.

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French SP Using Google Maps

La Carte des Divisions de la Droite

The French left-wing political party PS have produced this Google Maps mashup to highlight the mistakes that they believe the French right-wing party UMP have made in the current local elections campaign.

The map includes mainly reports from newspaper articles. However the map also includes a form for supporters to send in their own relevant stories. It is possible to embed the map in a website or blog by cutting and pasting a short piece of code.

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Google Map of Toronto Free Parking

Toronto Free Parking

Apparently there are hundreds of free parking locations in Toronto, just a few minutes walk away from most of the city's important hubs. The secret is knowing where they are located. Thankfully, Toronto Free Parking is willing to share the secret.

Toronto Free Parking uses the Google Maps API to show the location of free parking locations. The map uses different map markers to indicate how long it is free to park at each parking spot (1,2 or 3 hours).

Clicking on a map marker will open an information window with details of the parking spot's location and the times during which free parking is available.

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California Science Center with Google Maps

California Science Center Multitouch Map

Ideum create technology-enhanced visitor experiences for museums and other public settings. They have just created a multitouch exhibit for the California Science Center.

The exhibit consists of an interactive multitouch enabled Google Map with KML overlays allowing visitors to pan and zoom around the L.A. Basin while learning about the weather patterns, wind currents, geologic make-up, and vegetative patterns that have shaped the landscape of southern California.

Thematic overlays illustrate on the map phenomenon such as fire risk, water supply, Santa Ana wind patterns and fault lines. Geo-tagged photo and video content, managed by Flickr, is displayed across the map. Visitors can explore this content through the use of intuitive gestures, building the basin's story through discovery. Flipping the images over reveals embedded metadata to assist the exhibit narrative.

The exhibit uses Ideum's multitouch and multiuser table platform, which allows several visitors to explore content simultaneously. Using multitouch gestures, users can scale, zoom, and pass virtual objects around the table.

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Street View Arrives in Norway & Finland

Google have released Street View imagery in Norway and Finland. There also seems to have been lots more Street View imagery added in Canada (including some ski runs taken by the Street View snowmobile), the USA, and Mexico.


Stortinget, Oslo


Uspenski Cathedral, Helsinki


Helsinki Cathedral

In Whistler, Canada there seem to have been a lot of ski runs added. I assume these must be related to the upcoming Winter Olympics. In these Street View images Pegman is wearing his ski gear.

Check out this amazing panorama from the top of London Mountain.


Whistler, Canada


Whistler, Canada

Hat-tip: Google Earth Blog

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Pretend that Google Maps has Cycle Routes

Transparent Map Comparisons

Imagine a world where Google Maps had cycle routes!

This map mashup allows you to compare Google Maps with OpenStreetMaps. It is possible to select from Google Street maps, satellite imagery, topographic maps and Yahoo Maps as a base layer and then view various OpenStreetMap layers superimposed on top.

The map includes a transparency slider so it is possible to adjust the transparency of the base layer and the overlay. So if you want you can pretend that OpenStreetMap has great satellite imagery or pretend that Google has great cycle maps.

The application even comes with a permalink option so you can send the current view of a map to friends and colleagues.

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Flickr Photos Added to Street View

The Geobloggers website noticed today that Google have started using Flickr photographs in Street View.



When you open Street View in Google Maps the 'User Photos' option often appears in the top right hand corner. If you select this option you can view photographs of the same view from Panoramio, Picasa and now from Flickr.

The User Photos option includes a neat 'Photosynth' type experience allowing you to navigate between the different user photographs of the view. This is definitely now enhanced with the addition of geo-tagged pictures from Flickr

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Street View Best Streets Award

In the UK Google have teamed up with VisitBritain to create a competition to find Britain's best streets in three different categories; Best Foodie Street, Best Fashion Street and Most Picturesque Street.

Anyone can vote for their favourite street from a shortlist of entries in each category.

If you can't be bothered to vote you should still definitely check out The Shambles, York in Street View. This street if one of the entries in the Most Picturesque Street category. It definitely gets my vote.


The Shambles, York


New College Lane, Oxford


Hat-tip: Mapperz

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Google Maps Renewable Energy Portal

Reegle Maps

Reegle Maps is a Google Maps based portal to sustainable energy news, events, projects and statistics.

Using the map it is possible to view sustainable energy news for countries around the world. It is possible to click on a country on the map and then view 'News', 'Key Events' and 'Country Profiles' by clicking on the options in the map sidebar. Searches can be filtered according to sector (for example climate change, energy efficiency or renewable energy).

It is also possible to view energy statistics for Europe on the map by selecting the year and data set from the drop down menus above the map.

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