Mapping the Films of New York

In the three years from 2011 to the end of 2013 there were 17,241 film scenes shot on New York's city streets. There were so many that it is probably harder to find a Manhattan street that didn't feature in one movie or another than one that did.

This Filmed in NYC Leaflet map allows you to explore which films were shot on which New York streets. You can click on the colored streets on the map to discover which films were shot on the selected street. Alternatively you can select a film from the map sidebar to discover which city streets were involved in the shooting of the film.

New York's city streets are colored on the map by the number of films that were shot there. You can therefore also use the map to discover which New York city areas are the most popular with film directors. Times Square and the Financial District both jump out on the map as being popular locations when shooting movies.

Google Maps Inside the Human Body

There has been a long tradition of using the Google Maps API to map the human body. One of the first examples was the NYU School of Medicine Virtual Microscope.

Created by the NYU School of Medicine the Virtual Microscope uses the Google Maps API to display and navigate scanned slides of microscopic images. Students and faculty members who are logged into the school's Learning Management System can even add markers to the slides to annotate and comment on slide features.


The University of New South Wales is following in this tradition by using the Google Maps to create maps of human tissue down to the individual cell. You can already explore the first map of human hip tissue.

This Google Map allows you to explore images captured with a scanning electron microscope. Creating map tiles from the electron microscope images allows the university to create an interactive map of the hip tissue. The result is this Google Map which allows researchers to pan and zoom into details in the microscope images, just as you can with any interactive map.


The Genome Projector is a searchable database browser that uses the Google Maps API to provide a zoomable user interface for molecular biology. The Genome Projector currently contains four views, the Genome map, the Plasmid map, the Pathway map, and DNA walk.

The Genome Projector says that "In molecular biology, looking at reactions and behaviors of specific molecular components in microscopic levels is important. ... Therefore, researchers need a scalable point of view, having access to all of the microscopic, macroscopic, and mesoscopic levels of biological knowledge. Moreover, biological data is highly multi-dimensional by nature, and understanding of the data requires multiple views, layers, or projections ..."

Map Happy

The happy people of the world just cannot stop sharing their happy videos. in 2013 Pharrell Williams released a 24 hour video of his song Happy. In 24 Hours of Happy you are dropped into a position in the video based on your local time. If you don't want to watch the full 24 hours of the video you can use the stop-clock control to navigate to any point within the 24 hours of the video.

One result of the video and Pharrell's song was that people around the world decided to make their own Happy videos. We Are Happy From is an Esri map featuring some of these global video responses. Click on any  marker on the map and you can watch people around the world getting down to Pharrell's Happy song.


Inspired by all this happy video mapping Pharrell Williams and the United Nations Foundation this year invited everyone to a Global Happy Party for the International Day of Happiness, 2015. In response thousands of people around the world created videos of their happy dances.

Click on a location on the Global Happy Party Google Map and you can view GIFs of all the people who sent in their happy dances at that location beneath the map.

The Medieval Digital Map

The Gough Map or Bodleian Map is the oldest surviving route map of Great Britain. The map probably dates back to the 14th or 15th centuries.

There is some debate over the age of the Gough Map and Linguistic Geographies has been attempting to answer the question of who made the map & when by examining the language and place-names used on the map. Their research of the map's language suggests that some of the map’s writing dates to around the 1370s. The research also found evidence that some of the place-names on the map have been overwritten at later dates.

You can examine the map and the map's language yourself in close detail on The Linguistic Geographies digital version of the map.


The Agas Map is a beautiful bird's eye view map of London, first printed in 1561. The map depicts a London which is still a walled city and where the banks of the Thames are dotted with bear pits and playhouses.

The Agas Map of Early Modern London is an interactive version of the map built using the OpenLayers platform. You can pan and zoom in on the map and you can explore locations on the map using the location categories menu. For example if you turn on the streets layer you can click on roads on the map to learn more about the road and its etymology.

The Map of Early London website includes a comprehensive encyclopedia of London people, places and topics featured in or important to the map. The interactive locations on the map connect with the encyclopedia. If you select a location from the map or from the locations menu you can read a snippet from the encyclopedia and click through to read the full encyclopedia entry.


Old Maps of Paris includes a number of interesting historical maps of the French capital. There are 25 historical maps in total in the collection, including a map of the small town of Paris circa 360 AD.

The oldest maps in the collection the 360 AD, 580 AD & 1180 AD maps of Paris were all actually created in the 18th century and were based on the historical records of the time.

The Transit Map Quiz

Can you recognize a city purely from its transit network? Well you can now find out if you can on this fun Google Maps based quiz, Guess the City by Transit Stops.

The game is very simple. You are shown a series of maps which only contain a city's transit stops. You are then given a choice of four cities to pick from. Guess the right city and you get a point. There are five cities in each level and four levels in all. However be warned the quiz gets more difficult with each level.


I'm not that familiar with America's transit systems so I got a little frustrated with the quiz. I thought that I might do better recognizing the transit systems of some of the world's major cities. So I decided to create my own transit system game.

I used the Google Maps Styled Maps Wizard to create a blank Google Map. I then simply turned on the transit layer. This results in a Google Map which just shows a city's transit system. I didn't have enough to time to actually create the game but I think it's kind of fun exploring cities on Transit Lines.


If you also find Guess the City by Transit Stops a little too difficult then you might prefer the Washington Post's Street Map Quiz.

The Washington Post has created a number of maps showing only city streets and no other features. Your task in this quiz is to try and name each city map from only the pattern of its roads. Some of the city maps are easier than others. However, even if you don't recognize a map, you still have a chance of picking the correct city from the choice of four answers.

Mapping the American Odyssey

NBC's new conspiracy drama American Odyssey premieres this Sunday night. This new action drama follows the stories of three Americans as their lives become entwined in an international cover-up involving global politics, corporate espionage and military secrets.

You can get a head start in unraveling the secrets behind this international conspiracy by solving the clues on the American Odeyssey Google Map. Click on the icons on the map to search through the latest leaked documents and video interceptions.

New clues will be added to the map after each new episode of the American Odyssey airs on NBC. Don't hang around too long though as whoever 'they' are, you can be sure that they are out to get you.

The 2015 ATP World Tour

The 2015 ATP global elite professional tennis tour is now well under way. You can explore the tournaments and venues that play host to the world’s greatest players on the ATP World Tour Venue Map.

The ICA Map Commission on Map Design praised the map this week for its "clean and clear design". This clean design is most immediately apparent in the attractive circular image map markers (if you want to learn how to create custom image map markers for the Google Maps API you should have a look at this tutorial, Getting Creative with the Google Maps API).

The map also uses a clear numbered cluster marker system, with the numbers indicating how many markers are in each cluster. Clicking on a numbered marker zooms the map to reveal the individual markers within each cluster. The markers are also clearly categorized, with the color of each marker indicating the category of tournament. The category which each color represents is readily apparent from the tournament categories in the map sidebar.

The Paris Bike Route Video Map

Video bike directions have arrived in Paris. Cyclodeo, the application that synchronizes cycling routes on a map with a full video of each route, now has coverage of around 200 km of Paris' streets.

You can view the full Cyclodeo coverage in the French capital on this Paris Google Map. Using the map you can choose any of the Paris routes to preview the whole bike ride on video before you try the ride yourself in real-life.

Some of the highlights in the new Paris coverage include:

• Quai de Jemmapes 
• A morning ride around Le Louvre 
• Ile Saint-Louis 
• A long (27 min) cross Paris ride

Cyclodeo video bike routes are also available in San Francisco, New York, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Eindhoven and Copenhagen.

Null Island on Street View

Earlier today Google added the World's Newest Island to Google Maps. Not content with creating the first ever map of Null Island Google has also released the first Street View imagery from the Atlantic's newest landmass.

Null Island Street View allows you to explore the world's newest landmass from the comfort of your own home. Not content with just creating the first ever panoramic imagery of Null Island, Google is also testing out its latest live real-time Street View cameras on the island. This means that you can actually spy on Null Island in real-time.

Google Maps World's Newest Island

A new island has been formed in the Atlantic after the eruption of an underwater volcano. Scientists say that the new island is likely to be highly unstable, and dangerous to visitors. Despite the instability of the island Google Maps has already been updated with a map of the world's newest landmass.

I assume that Google mapped the new island using the latest Landsat satellite imagery. On Google Maps the island is called Null Island. I'm not sure where the name originates, and it seems that the UN has yet to officially recognize the island's name as 'Null Island'.


Despite being the world's newest country the island (inevitably) already has its own website, The Republic of Null Island. The Republic of Null Island website refers to the 'long history' of the inhabitants (referred to on the site as Null Islanders). It would be safe to assume that The Republic of Null Island website is not meant to be taken entirely seriously.

Null Island also already has its own entry on Wikipedia.