Google Maps Adds Transit Alerts

In New York Google Maps now includes transit alerts.

When you click on any of the 468 New York City subway stations labeled on Google Maps, you can now see whether any planned service changes are expected to affect that station. In addition, the relevant alerts will be included in the step-by-step transit directions pointing you wherever you’re going.


In the UK Google has also rolled out some new Street View. Last week Google Maps added panoramic imagery of the 2012 London Olympics. This week 10 Downing Street, the home of the British Proime Minister, has been added on Street View.

Also in the UK Google Maps has released its first Canal View imagery. Caen Hill on the Kennet & Avon Canal, and Pontcysyllte on the Llangollen Canal now have Street View imagery captured by the Street View trike.

Google Maps CanvasLayer Library

A CanvasLayer library has been added to the Google Maps Utility Libraries. The library allows Google Maps API developers to easily add a canvas layer as an overlay on Google Maps.

Using canvas with Google Maps can have many advantages. Brendan Kenny and Paul Saxman recently discussed the CanvasLayer library in a Google Maps Developers Office Hours broadcast. You can watch the broadcast here to view just some of the possibilities of using the CanvasLayer library with Google Maps.

View Your House in Ascii Art

Ascii Street View converts Google Maps Street View imagery into Ascii characters in real-time. Using the app you can search for any location that has Street View and see it in Ascii text. So, if you want, (most of you) can look up your house on Street View and see it in text art.

Ascii Street View uses WebGL to convert the Street View image in real-time. Therefore to use the application you will need Chrome, Firefox 8+ or another browser that supports CORS WebGL textures.

Hat-tip: Street View Funny

Share Interesting Locations on Google Maps

Navmarker is a nice idea for a location sharing Google Map.

Anyone can add markers of interesting places to the map but each marker is automatically assigned an expiration date. The expiration date however changes depending on whether it is 'Hyped up' or marked as 'Lame' by other users. Therefore the best markers can stay on the map for a long time and the worst will disappear more quickly.

If you click on a shared location on the map you will be taken to a dedicated page for that venue which includes more information & photographs and where you can vote your approval or disapproval.

The History of the World - Part One

MapTime is a visualisation tool for deep time. 'Deep time' represents events that occured perhaps millions / billions of years ago. MapTime includes a mapped visualisation of deep time using the Google Maps API.

A good example of a deep time visualisation is the Organic Evolution Timeline which represents the evolution on life on earth from the beginning of single celled life until the present day as a journey on Google Maps. For example if you imagine the time-line as a journey from Washington to San Francisco with Washington representing the formation of the Earth, then the emergence of the human race occurs nearly at the end of your journey in the middle of San Francisco.

One of the beauties of MapTime is that you can set your own starting point and destination for your visualisation. This allows you to create a time-line that is familiar to your target audience.

Displaying Housing Data with Google Maps

UK charity the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has created the Housing and Neighbourhoods Monitor to provide analysis of key housing and neighbourhood trends across the UK.

The monitor includes an application that allows the user to explore key economic, demographic and housing data on a Google Map. Users can select data sets from the map sidebar and view the data overlaid as a choropleth layer on the map.

The map tools include location search and a slider to control the opacity of the data layers on the map.

The Google Maps of the Week

I am increasingly impressed with the creative ways that marketing teams use Google Maps Street View to create viral campaigns. The Volkswagen Street View Quest is up there with the best.

 
The Volkswagen Street View Quest is a game created by Volkswagen South Africa which invloves contestants finding Volkswagen cars in Google Maps Street View in South Africa.


The game is very simple. You just need to navigate around South African streets using Google Maps Street View. When you find a Volkswagen car you then drag and drop a map pin onto the car in the Street View.

There are four quests in the competition and the winners of the four quests will take part in a live Street Quest Grand Final to win a host of prizes.


The Internet Map is a Google Map of the 350,000 largest websites in the world. The map was created by Ruslan Enikeev and the Russian creative agency Positive Communications.

The circles on the map represent individual websites. The size of the circle is determined by website traffic, the larger the amount of traffic, the bigger the circle. The location of websites on the map is determined by the links between sites. The more traffic generated from links between different websites then the closer the websites are displayed on the map.


Meograph allows anyone to easily create, watch, and share interactive stories on a Google Map or with the Google Earth browser plug-in. Until today only selected media producers have been allowed to use Meograph to create narratives. Now anyone can sign up and start creating their own interactive stories.

Narrated stories created with Meograph can include photographs, video and audio narrations. If you want to see what is possible with Meograph then have a look at some of the mapped interactive stories already created on the Meograph Demo page.

The Google Maps of the Internet

The Internet Map is a Google Map of the 350,000 largest websites in the world. The map was created by Ruslan Enikeev and the Russian creative agency Positive Communications.

The circles on the map represent individual websites. The size of the circle is determined by website traffic, the larger the amount of traffic, the bigger the circle. The location of websites on the map is determined by the links between sites. The more traffic generated from links between different websites then the closer the websites are displayed on the map.

It is actually possible to search the map by country to find the most popular websites in individual countries.


The Web 2 Map is a metaphor of the internet, as seen by the organisers of the Web 2.0 Summit. The map assigns territories or 'countries' to different sectors of the internet, for example 'social networks', 'search' 'e-commerce' etc.

The map also includes a data layer. The data layer adds what might be seen as capital cities to the map. The buildings or skyscrapers in the city act as a metaphor for the different data segments within the dominant player in that sector.

For example, the Union of Social Networks includes a Facebook capital city. The Facebook city is dominated by a 'social' skyscraper but also includes a smaller 'location' building to reflect that Facebook also now includes check-ins etc.



TeleGeography's Submarine Cable Map looks at the physical connections that make it possible for the internet's data to travel around the world.

The map depicts 188 active and planned submarine cable systems and their landing stations. Both the cables and their landing points on the map are interactive. Clicking a cable provides access to data about the cable, including the cable’s name, ready-for-service (RFS) date, length, owners, website, and landing points. Clicking a landing point reveals a list of all submarine cables landing at that station.

The map makes great use of Google Map styles and custom info windows to create a map that is both functional and great to look at.

The Olympic Medals Map

Google's London 2012 Olympic Games website includes an Olympics Medal Map. The map is empty this morning but should start filling up soon. The map shows the distribution of medals won by location. It is possible to refine the medals shown by gold, silver and bronze.

The map also shows the location  of every country in the Olympic Games. If the athletes' parade from the opening ceremony left you scratching your head once or twice then you can use this map to find out where a country is in the world (I admit I had to look up Sao Tome and Principe).

If you select a country from the drop-down menu the map zooms in on the chosen country and also shows you the country's flag, how many athletes are representing the country, how many sports they have qualified for and also gives a breakdown of any medals the country has won.

The Olympics on Street View

The Olympic Stadium & the Orbit

Google Maps has added Street View imagery of the Olympics Park and some of the other stadiums being used for the 2012 London Olympics.


The Velodrome (affectionately known as the Pringle) 

The imagery was taken during the park's construction so the park doesn't look quite as attractive in Street View as it does now that it is completed, but nevertheless this new imagery does allow you to take a virtual walk around the location of this year's Olympics.


Wembley Stadium

Various other locations around London are also hosting Olympics events. One of the most attractive is Horse Guards Parade, which is the venue for the beach volleyball.


Horse Guards Parade (Beach Volleyball)

In the spirit of Olympic fair play I also have to give a shout out to Bing Maps, whose Bird's Eye view imagery of the Olympics Park is pretty stunning.

This shot of the stadium shows that a map of the river Thames has been created on the stadium pitch, providing a little clue as to what we can expect in tonight's opening ceremony.

Earth Porn on Google Maps

EarthPorn is a forum on Reddit dedicated to beautiful images of natural landscapes. The Earthporn Mapper is a Google Map that allows you to view the images and to see where they were taken. The map itself is very simple but the simplicity works well as there is little to distract from the beauty of the photographs on display.

Personally I think the map is most effective in satellite view and zoomed in on the photograph's location. If I was the map's creator I would make satellite imagery the default view and add an event listener to the map markers that zooms the map in when an information window is opened.

I also found that the map didn't display properly for me in Firefox but works fine in Explorer and Chrome. Despite these little niggles the map is definitely worth a visit for the beautiful photography on show.

The HOG Ride Planner on Google Maps

The Harley Davidson Ride Planner is a Google Maps based application for riders of Harley Davidsons to plan and share their favorite rides.

Using the app it is possible to plan your ride by giving your starting point, destination and any locations you wish to visit on the way. A suggested route is then shown on a Google Map. You can then choose to view hotels, great roads, and Harley Davidson events that are along your route.

You can save any of your planned rides and share them with friends. It is also possible to rate and review rides submitted by other riders.

Find the Golden Hour with Google Maps

The Golden Hour Calculator is a Google Map that displays sunrise and sunset times, the elevation and azimuth of the sun and shows users when the golden hour occurs for any location.

The Golden Hour Calculator defines the 'golden hour' as "the first and last hour of sunlight in the day when the special quality of light yields particularly beautiful photographs". Using the calculator photographers can enter the location where they are planning to take photos and the calculator will display a graph beneath the map showing when the golden hour occurs.

Users can change the date of their shoot to ensure the calculator displays the correct times for the golden hour.

Also See

The Photographer's Ephemeris - a map tool for photographers, including sunrise & sunset times

Australia's RF Transmitters on Google Maps

The Australian Geographical RadioFrequency Map is a Google Map of all registered RF transmitters in Australia.

If you mouse-over a transmitter's map marker you can view a site description. If you click on the marker you can find out who broadcasts from there, and at what frequencies. The map can be used to find out how close you are to your nearest mobile base station and how good a carrier's coverage is in a particular area.

The map can be searched by location, site name, client details, frequency range, emission designator and call-sign.

New Satellite Imagery for the Olympics

You will have to excuse my endless posts about the Olympics this week. I live about 700 metres from the London 2012 Olympics Park so you can guess at my heightened levels of excitement at the moment.

I was hoping for some Street View or Bird's Eye imagery to be added to Google Maps this week for the Olympics Park. There is no sign of this yet but Google have updated the satellite imagery.

In the screenshot above you can see the Olympics Stadium, the Aquatics Centre and The Orbit (the red building in the centre). Clicking on the image above will open Google Maps. If you pan north you will see the other stadia in the park - all nicely labelled in Google Maps.

Further north you can see that the Lee Valley White Water Centre also shows up in the new imagery. This is where the canoe slalom will be taking place.

London Olympic Lanes on Google Maps

Today in the UK 170 miles of roads are affected by the introduction of the Olympic Road Network (ORN). For the duration of the Olympics some roads now include Games Lanes that can not be used by normal road users. Other roads have been closed and certain roads will be subject to temporary closure during cycling road races and the marathon event.

In order to help minimise the disruption caused by the Olympic Road Network a Google Map has been created that displays all the changes made to the road network (although I notice that the road closed at the end of my street for the duration of the Olympics isn't on the map).

The Temporary Road Changes Map includes a time-line so it is possible to check for temporary closures that will only be in force during certain game events, such as the cycling and marathon.

Exercise with Street View

Real Indoor uses Google Maps Street View to create a realistic biking experience for those with exercise bikes.

The application creates Street View tours that play back at the user's cycling speed. Owners of spin bikes are able to configure Real Indoor so that the simulated bike tour plays at a realistic speed for their bike. It is also possible to create a tour anywhere that Street View is available.

As the tour plays an information panel displays the speed, the current slope and elevation, the number of calories burnt and the distance travelled so far. The tour playback controls also allow the user to adjust the speed and pause the tour.

Can you Find a Volkswagen in Street View?

The Volkswagen Street View Quest is a game created by Volkswagen South Africa which invloves contestants finding Volkswagen cars in Google Maps Street View in South Africa.


The game is very simple. You just need to navigate around South African streets using Google Maps Street View. When you find a Volkswagen car you then drag and drop a map pin onto the car in the Street View.

There are four quests in the competition and the winners of the four quests will take part in a live Street Quest Grand Final to win a host of prizes.

Create a Tour with Google Maps

Map Channels, the Google Maps creation service, has added a really nice new feature that allows users to create an animated tour with Google Maps.

Tour Maps animate a route on Google Maps and show placemarks along the route as they appear on the created tour. A Tour Map is really easy to create. You can even create the tour by using the My Places 'create a map' feature in Google Maps and then using the KML or GeoRSS feed to create your tour.

In about twenty minutes I managed to create this Olympics Park Walk using Tour Maps. Tour Maps includes lots of options to customise the map including the map's appearance, the duration of the tour and the size of the information windows.

Completed tour maps can be embedded in a blog or website or you can just link to the full-size Tour Map hosted on Map Channels.

Custom Street View Tutorial

Here is a good example of a custom Street View map of a Kyoto building which includes a custom overlay in the small map inset.

The map's developer has written up a nice tutorial, The Way of Creating Custom Street View, that provides a step-by-step guide to creating a map with custom Street Views. The tutorial includes instructions about taking and creating your own 360 degree panorama photographs, how to create tiles out of your panoramas, how to add your panoramas to a Google Map and how to create the arrow links that will allow users to navigate from one Street View to the next.

The tutorial also includes a number of example maps created by the developer. If you want to view more examples of custom Street Views in action check out the Google Maps Mania Custom Street View tag.

Google Maps Hangouts

There are two very interesting Google+ hangouts happening tomorrow (Tuesday).


The Google Maps team's 'Google Maps Developers Office Hours Live!' kicks off at 10 am Pacific Daylight Time (PDT). The hangout will be looking at WebGL and the CanvasLayer utility library.

You can submit questions and watch the hangout here.

Another hangout taking place tomorrow is Episode 4 of Project Geo - 'Geospatial Humanitarians'. The hangout is taking place at 7 pm EST.

This episode we will be talking about geospatial humanitarian efforts, Maps that make a difference, and non-profits increasing worldwide awareness of their respective efforts through geospatial technology.

Find out more +Project Geo.

Using Hover Interactions with Google Maps

Population change from 2010 to 2011 is a chloropleth map showing the percent change in population of all 159 Georgia counties between 2010 and 2011.

It is possible to mouse-over each county on the map to view the data for that location. The map creator, Carl V. Lewis, discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using mouse-over interactions on Google Maps in his article Making the Case for Hover Interactions in Maps.

Carl is a journalistic web developer and his blog covers a number of interesting articles covering various aspects of data visualisation in journalism.

Welcome to London with Google Maps

If you are lucky enough to be visiting London this summer for the 2012 Olympic Games then check out these handy Google Maps that should help you get the most out of your trip.

Sightseeing

The Museum of London's Street Museum app, for both Android and iPhones, is a nice guide to London's past. The app uses your phone's GPS to display historical photographs and information of the places immediately around you, from the museum's extensive collection of images.

The UK's Blue Plaque scheme is a way of commemorating the lives of famous and important people. Blue circular signs are erected on houses to indicate that someone of note was born or once lived there.

The PlaqueGuide is a Google Map of the UK's blue plaque houses and can be used to find blue plaque buildings near your current location.

Getting Around


London is a very large city that can be very confusing to travel around, especially if you are a visitor to the UK capital. CityMapper London can help you navigate the city by providing you with bus, subway, cycling and walking directions. Or, if you want to get a taxi, it can give you an estimated cost for your journey.

Next Bus London shows the location of London bus stops and informs you how long you will have to wait to catch the next bus.

There are around 7,000 red buses in London transporting passengers on over 700 different routes. BusIt London is a bus route planner that can help you navigate London's extensive bus network.

The Barclays Cycle Hire Map shows the location of over 400 special docking stations around the UK capital where you can hire a bike and avoid the busy public transit system.

Find a Hotel on Your Route

If you are planning a very long drive and you need to find a hotel along your route then try HotelBetween.com. Enter a starting location and your final destination and tell the application how far along the route you wish to stop for a break and HotelBetween.com will suggest a hotel for your overnight stay.

A slide control allows the user to adjust the number of miles along the route they wish to travel. If you adjust the slide control then the map automatically updates to suggest a new hotel. Each suggested hotel includes a guide price, a rating and a brief description.

If you like the sound of the suggested hotel you can then click through to check room availability, current rates and book your room.

Telling Stories with Google Maps

Meograph allows anyone to easily create, watch, and share interactive stories on a Google Map or with the Google Earth browser plug-in. Until today only selected media producers have been allowed to use Meograph to create narratives. Now anyone can sign up and start creating their own interactive stories.

If you want to see what is possible with Meograph then have a look at some of the mapped interactive stories already created on the Meograph Demo page. Narrated stories created with Meograph can include photographs, video and audio narrations.

Published Meograph stories include playback controls to pause, rewind and fast-forward the narrative, "More context" buttons to explore more details about any element of the narrative and options to view the locations with Google Maps or with the Google Earth browser plug-in.

To create a Meograph mapped story you currently have to use the Chrome browser but all completed Meographs can be viewed in any browser.

London Olympics Tweets and Vids

There are only a few days left before the start of the 2012 London Olympics. This week the Olympic torch is touring every neighbourhood in London, all the competitors will be checking into the Athletes Village and even a few events will take place (the women's football starts on Wednesday).

As the deadline to the opening ceremony approaches you can be sure that the Olympics will be rising up the Twitter top trends table. You can follow all the latest #Olympics Tweets on this 2012 London Olympics Tweet Map.

As well as animating through the latest Tweets the map also allows you to view the latest geo-tagged You Tube videos related to the Olympics.

The Google Maps of the Week

This week I was particular impressed with two Google Maps experiments. One designed to track grizzly bears and the other to predict the weather along a route.


The Foothills Research Institute has developed a great application to visualise GPS tracks with Google Maps. The application was developed in order to be able to visualise the movements and environments of two GPS-collared grizzly bears.

The application uses an ArcGIS Python script tool to parse raw GPS text files into a list of coordinates and the new Google Maps API Symbols and HeatMap layer to animate and visualise the GPS data on a Google Map.

The Foothills Research Institute can't reveal the real position of the bears so they have created a nice demo of the application using fake randomised data for two different bears. The Fake Bear Tracker Map uses an animated symbol for each logged location and, as the application progresses, uses a heat map layer to display the areas visited by each bear.

The result is a very effective visualisation of the bears' movements and of their territorial range. 


Dark Sky is an app for the iPad and iPhone that predicts the weather for your location to the minute. For example a Dark Sky prediction might say that it will start raining in three minutes and then stop raining in half an hour.

Predicting the weather to such a fine degree means that Dark Sky is a great resource for showing weather along a route. The Dark Sky: Weather Along a Traffic Route map does exactly that. The app lets users request directions and then displays the route on a Google Map.

The first 60-minutes of the trip also displays a forecast from Dark Sky, showing where (and how hard) you’ll get rained on if you left right now. The application is just a demo showcasing how the DarkSky API could be combined with the Google Maps API and Dark Sky warn that,

 "it lacks features, is not robust, and might behave erratically. Please do not rely on it!"

One feature that is missing is the ability to check the weather for a specific time. However the map could still be useful if you are heading out for a walk and you want to know if it is going to rain any time soon.

Play Me, I'm Yours

Play Me, I’m Yours is an artwork project by artist Luke Jerram. For the project pianos have been installed on streets in cities throughout the world.

Currently pianos are located in Toronto and Salem. You can view the locations of the 41 pianos currently in Canada on the Toronto Google Map. The 11 street pianos in Salem and Keizer can be viewed on this map.

As well as discovering the locations of the pianos users can post comments, videos and pictures about each piano.

Mapping Diners, Drive-ins and Dives

Diners, Drive-ins and Dives is a Google Map of the diners visited by Guy Fieri on the Food Network's 'Diner's Drive-Ins and Dives'. It is a great resource for finding traditional American diners.

Users can search the map by address or zip code and specify to view results within 100, 200, 300 or 400 miles. The Diners, Drive-ins and Dives are then displayed on the map and also listed beneath the map. The list view indicates how far each venue is from the searched location.

If you select a diner from the map you can view a YouTube video of Guy's review and photographs of the diner posted to Flickr. You can also read reviews of each diner submitted by readers of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.

Japanese Post Boxes on Google Maps

Post Map is a Japanese website that is busy mapping the locations of post boxes and covering such issues as post office closures and the privatisation of postal services.

The site uses Google Maps to provide a crowd-sourced map of post box locations. Users can submit locations and photographs to the map and use the map to find their nearest post boxes. If you select a post box then the map sidebar shows you how far it is to the nearest alternative post boxes.

Google Maps Comic Strips

The Joy of Tech recently took a humorous look at the divorce of Apple from Google Maps.


xkcd are the undoubted royalty of on-line cartoonery. My Road Trip ... Ran Into Trouble imagines how Google Maps might appear in a horror flick.

Another strip from xkcd, Going West, looks deep into the eyes of Google Maps.


This FoxTrot comic strip by Bill Amend shows a little diappointment that the GooglePlex doesn't have a huge banner on the roof for satellites.


College Humor created this animation looking at the difficult relationship between the Google Street View car drivers.

Cartoon Stock also have a few Google Maps related  cartoons.

Proposed Canadian Electoral Boundaries

The Canadian 2012 Redistribution of Federal Electoral Districts website has used Google Maps to create a tool for voters to view proposed electoral boundary changes.

Using the map is is possible to view the existing electoral districts and the proposed electoral districts and names. Both the existing and proposed boundaries can be viewed separately or viewed simultaneously as an overlay on the map.

Users can search for boundaries by address or postal code. It is also possible to save a PDF file of a map view showing either the existing and proposed electoral boundaries or both together.

A Google Maps Guide to Brazil

Quem Passeia is a Brazilian website being developed to provide a Google Maps based guide for everyone travelling to Brazil for the next World Cup, 'The 2014 Copa'. The map includes thousands of useful points of information for anyone travelling in the country.

The markers can be filtered by category, including accommodation, food, sports and recreation & landmarks. If you open an information window for a marker you can view basic information about the location and click through to read a more detailed review, including address, phone number and website links.

Romanian Route Planning with Google Maps

Transport Urban is a really well designed public transit route planner for the Romanian cities of Bucharest and Iasi.

Using this Google Maps based application you can get a route across either city using the bus, metro and tram system in each city. You can search for a route either by entering a start point and destination into a search box or by simply clicking on the map.

The app lets you search for both day routes and routes that are available at night. It is also possible to refine a route to use any combination of buses, metro or tram. The results of each search are displayed on the map and there are options to print, save and share a link to any created route.

Driving Directions with Weather Predictions

Dark Sky is an app for the iPad and iPhone that predicts the weather for your location to the minute. For example a Dark Sky prediction might say that it will start raining in three minutes and then stop raining in half an hour.

Predicting the weather to such a fine degree means that Dark Sky is a great resource for showing weather along a route. The Dark Sky: Weather Along a Traffic Route map does exactly that. The app lets users request directions and then displays the route on a Google Map.

The first 60-minutes of the trip also displays a forecast from Dark Sky, showing where (and how hard) you’ll get rained on if you left right now. The application is just a demo showcasing how the DarkSky API could be combined with the Google Maps API and Dark Sky warn that,

 "it lacks features, is not robust, and might behave erratically. Please do not rely on it!"

One feature that is missing is the ability to check the weather for a specific time. However the map could still be useful if you are heading out for a walk and you want to know if it is going to rain any time soon.