The Google Maps of the Week

Over the last couple of years there has been a number of clever promotional campaigns by companies using the Google Maps API (often taking advantage of Google Maps Street View imagery). Two of my favorite maps featured on Google Maps Mania this week were from Toyota and Moët & Chandon.

Both companies have managed to create campaigns with Google Maps that reflect some of the core values associated with their products and at the same time create interactions with potential customers.


Toyota has come up with one of the best Google Maps based promotional campaigns yet. To help promote the car the company are driving a Toyota IQ around with a 360 degree panoramic camera rig strapped to the roof. They are then capturing Street View images and filling in all the blanks on Google Maps.

The campaign, currently running in Belgium, allows anyone to report a street that doesn't have Street View on the Toyota IQ - Street View Google Map. The Toyota IQ then travels to the street, captures the Street View images and adds them to their Toyota IQ map.


If you can't afford to whisk the love of your life off for a romantic weekend in Paris you could try sending her a romantically tagged Street View image from the city instead. You never know it just might work.

Tag Your Love in the Streets is a nice Street View based promotional campaign by Moët & Chandon. Using the application you can select a Street View image from anywhere in the world and then add your own message. You can add text to the image and decorate the scene with a number of romantically themes images, such as flowers, hearts or a bottle of champagne.


The island of Sumatra in Indonesia has lost almost 50% of its tropical rainforest in the last 35 years. The World Wildlife Fund, Eyes on the Forest and Google Earth Outreach have joined forces to create a Google Map of land cover, land use, and land users in Sumatra.

Eyes on the Forest: Sumatra allows users to explore data about the island's conservation values, forest diversity and wildlife. The aim of the map is to increase transparency about the threats to the Sumatran environment and identify the drivers of deforestation and habitat destruction.

It is possible to view a number of data layers on the map, including the dwindling rainforest cover over the last 35 years, wildlife ranges, protected areas and natural carbon stores. 

Vintage Film on Google Maps

I've added a few more archive videos to my Street View application There and Then. The app allows you to watch historical films embedded on a Google Maps Street View image of the same scene, as it looks today. 

If you like this sort of thing you should also check out Historypin, which now also includes a few early film scenes, dotted in amongst all the user submitted historical photographs.

Drive the Indianapolis 800 in Street View

Google has added Street View imagery for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. You can use the link above to visit the track on Google Maps.

However, for those too lazy to click the forward button 200 times, I've quickly put together an animated lap of the track. Check out the animation and make sure you press the 'speed x2' button for the full racing effect.

Via: Google Lat Long

Monitoring Water Points with Google Maps

Water for People is a Google Maps reporting system used to monitor and record data from tens of thousands of water points around the world.

Using smartphones community members, partners and volunteers are able to report the status of water points and whether a project is up and running, broken, or on the verge of disrepair and requiring maintenance.

Markers on the map are color-coded to instantly show if a water point has a high, medium, basic or no service.

Friday Fun with Google Maps

Street View Funny created this compilation video of over 850 funny Google Street Views posted on the site over the last few years.


Google has created a nice Street View Galleries Collection for those looking for a little virtual stroll around the world's art.


Here's a little clue about how long Google took to capture the Street View imagery in Estonia. This road in Tartu has different Street View imagery depending on which side of the road you drop the pegman icon.

One side of the road shows you Estonia in winter. Travel over the road and suddenly it's summer. 

BioFuel Resources on Google Maps

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has created a BioFuels Atlas using the Google Maps API. The map shows the locations of biomass resources in the U.S..

Using the map it is possible to view overlays of bioenergy and brownfield sites, distribution infrastructure, and power plants. The 'State View' option allows the user to zoom in on a selected state and view a summary of traditional and bioenergy infrastructure in the state beneath the map.

The map also includes an analysis tool that allows the user to select a point on the map and convert the biomass resources within a specified area into potential biofuel production.

Telling Stories with Google Maps

Meograph is an interesting new narrative tool for telling stories with the Google Earth browser plug-in and Google Maps.

 The application is currently in beta testing (you can apply for beta testing access). However, even if you can't yet create your own Meographs yet, you can browse the demo stories already created.

A good example is the Meograph created to explore the Trayvon Martin shooting. The demo uses the Google Earth plug-in to show the locations in the case and includes a narrated explanation of the story and embedded photographs and YouTube videos.

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 rather than the default Google Earth view.

The Street Views of San Francisco

The Streets of the Invisibles is an experimental film that uses sound from the 1970's TV series the Streets of San Francisco with images taken from Google Maps, Google Street View and Google Earth.

Climb Every Mountain with Google Maps

The Guardian newspaper has published a visualisation by data scientist Robert Mundigi exploring the world's 50 highest peaks.

Climb Every Mountain features a clickable (non Google) map of the 50 summits that is synchronised with a Google Map to show the satellite images of each mountain. The visualisation also features data about each mountain's prominence and elevation.

All the different data panels in the visualisation are interlinked so that the Google Map always displays the mountain whose data is currently being explored.

Songs from Strangely Isolated Places

The Places Series is a Google Map of songs inspired by isolated locations. Using the map you can select a marker and listen to the song inspired by that location.

The information windows are particularly attractive on this map and allow the user to listen to the mapped music tracks directly from the map.  It is also possible to filter the tracks displayed on the map by genre and by artist.