Monday, November 17, 2008

News on Google Maps

Trackthisnow.com

Trackthisnow.com tracks the news in real time in 236 countries worldwide and presents the news on a Google Map. It is possible to search the news for any item and see what each of the 236 countries are currently reporting about that item.

It is possible to enter any query into the Trackthisnow.com search box and it will return the news reports for that query in any of the 236 countries. If you click on one of the country markers the headlines and a brief brief extract will appear in the map's sidebar. Clicking on the story headline will take you through to the source of the story on the internet.

In the future Trackthisnow.com say that users will be able to drill down even further. So, whilst at the moment you can view the news for a search term for any country in the world, soon you will be able to see how the news is being reported at city level.

GNewsVision

GNewsVision is a new Google Map mash-up that animates between different news stories in the style of TwitterVision. The map animates between different countries displaying the current top news stories in each country.

It is possible to select which region of the world you wish to receive news for and to select which category of news you are interested in. It also possible to select from four different languages, English, Spanish, French and German. The map also allows you to adjust the animation speed to match your reading speed.

Geo Best of YouTube

From the same developer as GNewsVision comes this best of YouTube map. The map lets you select a country to view the most viewed YouTube videos in that country. It is possible to view the most viewed 'today', 'this week', 'this month' or 'this year'.

A really nice feature of this map is that after you have viewed a country its marker changes to a tick. So it possible to see which countries you have already explored on the map.

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