Sunday, March 15, 2015

Maps Mania's Maps of the Week


One of the most shared maps featured on Maps Mania this week was The Langscape Map. The Langscape Map is a map of the world's languages. It allows you to click anywhere on the world to discover the languages spoken at that location.

The map includes 6,400 of the world’s languages. As well as helping you discover which languages are spoken where, the map includes information about demographics, language families and audio recordings & text materials. After clicking on a location on the map you can select one of the listed languages to view more information about it beneath the map.


Two Esri Story Maps have also proved very popular on Maps Mania this week. The Motion of Tectonic Plates provides a great introduction to the subject of the Earth's outer crust. This Story Map explores the forces that cause the tectonic plates to move, the seismic cycle and the causes of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Mountains of Fire is another Esri Story Map, dealing with geological features. This map takes you on a tour of some of the world's biggest volcanoes. The tour uses Esri's 3D Scene Viewer, which means you can explore each of the featured volcanoes from all angles.


The New York Times has introduced a neat new twist in its latest map quiz game. There have been loads of map quizzes created over the years with the various online mapping platforms. In The NYT's new Who Needs a GPS? quiz you get to see the guesses made by all the other players.

In the game you are asked to pinpoint a number of New York locations on a map. After you have made a guess you are told the percentage of other players that you have beaten (by clicking closer to the correct location on the map). You also get to see a point map of all the guesses made so far.

The locations that you have to identify in the quiz get harder as you progress through the game. The game also keeps a running total as you progress, informing you of the percentage of people you have beaten overall in all the questions answered.

No comments: