Climb the Zugspitze on Street View

You can now climb Germany's highest mountain in a new custom Street View tour from Zugspitze 360°. The tour consists of hundreds of panoramic images which allow you to virtually climb Zugspitze, from the foot of the mountain at Höllental all the way to the summit.

All the custom captured Street View images of the tour have been stitched together using the Google Maps API. This means that if you've ever used Google Maps before then you will easily be able to progress through the tour using Street View's familiar navigation arrows. The tour also includes a handy on-screen menu which allows you to quickly jump to different stages of this mountain tour.

As you progress through the stunning panoramic images of the Zugspitze you can also learn more about the mountain from a number of audio guides dotted along the route (in German).

As well as the amazing custom created Street View tour of the mountain Zugspitze 360° includes lots of useful information for anyone who wants to climb the mountain for real. This includes general information about the route & its highlights and track routes & tips which you can download.

Currently Zugspitze 360° has stage one of three stages which you can explore in Street View. Stages two and three will be released in the next few weeks.

How Spiritual is Your House?

My home is built on a well known sacred site of mystical energy. It lies exactly at the intersection of three ancient ley lines. These three straight line paths connect some of Britain's most spiritual monuments and all three paths converge exactly on the location of my house.

If you live in Britain then your home is also built on a site of ancient and magical importance.

Ley lines are supposed straight lines which connect three or more prehistoric or ancient sites. One of the biggest criticisms of ley lines is that because of the high density of historic and prehistoric sites in Britain (and probably most other countries), finding straight lines that 'connect' these sites is trivial and purely coincidental.

The Magical Mystery Ley Line Locator is a superb demonstration of this criticism of ley lines. It uses a database of ancient monuments and buildings in the UK to show how given any location in the UK you can draw three ley lines that converge on the location.

If you enter a UK postcode into the map then the Magical Mystery Ley Line Locator will draw three ley lines which converge on that postcode location (you can use 'RH10 5LU' if you don't know a postcode). Each of the lines passes through three or more site of historical importance. These historical sites are shown on the map by markers along the three 'ley lines'. To show how easy these lines can be created one of the ley lines that converge on your location will always pass through Stonehenge.

Maps of the Week

The Urban Fabric Map is a great new interactive map tool which allows you to compare side-by-side the building footprints of different cities around the world. Comparing the building footprints of cities in this way can reveal interesting differences in the street layouts and building densities of different cities across the globe.

The Urban Fabric Map uses OpenStreetMap building data. This map data is displayed using a custom created Mapbox style.

In the screenshot above I have compared San Francisco with London. The comparison reveals the clear grid like pattern of San Francisco's streets compared to London's more organic street layout. A building count is also displayed above each of the two maps. This reveals that San Francisco has around three times as many buildings in the same sized area as London. This is despite the fact that the Golden Gate Park is a prominent feature on the San Francisco map.


If you've ever dreamed of becoming a property tycoon then you might want to practice your real-estate skills on Next.Land. Next.Land is a multiplayer city building game built on top of an interactive map of the real world. The object of the game is to buy buildings, upgrade your properties and earn a fortune from your rental returns. The full game is scheduled for release in early 2007.

However you can get a sneak preview of the game on the Next.Land Demo map. In the demo game you can explore 30 real-world locations on the interactive map and become familiar with the basic game-play features. The maps are built on OpenStreetMap and SRTM data. Each of the locations feature 3d buildings which you can purchase (if you have enough money). Unfortunately in this demo of the game you can't save your progress.


The Met Navigator is a wonderful indoor map of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It provides an independent floor-plan of the Met's Fifth Avenue museum..

One reason that the Met Navigator works so well is that the level of detail shown on the map is dependent on the zoom level. The more you zoom in on map the more detail is shown on the floor-plan. If you zoom in completely on a gallery you can even view pictures and details on each of the individual exhibits.

The map was created with the Meurs Navigator library. There is nothing here, however, that you couldn't easily achieve using any of the other popular mapping platforms.

Spying on the Spies

Surveillance under Surveillance is an interactive map which reveals the location of CCTV cameras around the world. Using the map you can find out where spy cameras are located, what type of cameras they are and what area they observe.

Surveillance under Surveillance seems to have reasonable coverage throughout the world. It uses OpenStreetMap data to show the location of CCTV cameras. This means that if the data isn't very accurate in your area then you can improve the map by adding the location of CCTV cameras to OpenStreetMap.

The map uses different colored icons to show the different types of CCTV cameras. Red icons indicate cameras in public spaces. blue icons indicate cameras located in private areas and green icons show cameras which are observing an indoor area.

Property Speculators of Detroit

Nearly 20% of Detroit properties are owned by speculators. You can explore these speculator owned properties on the PropertyPraxis interactive map.

All speculator owned land parcels are colored on the PropertyPraxis map. If you select one of the colored buildings on the map you can view details on the property's owner and view a Street View image of the building.

It is possible to refine the properties shown on the map by individual property speculator. You can use the in-built search facility to search for individual speculators. Alternatively if you click on a speculator's name in the information panel the map display all the properties in the city owned by that speculator.

Comparing Cities at the Same Scale

The Urban Fabric Map is a great new interactive map tool which allows you to compare side-by-side the building footprints of different cities around the world. Comparing the building footprints of cities can reveal interesting differences in the street layouts and building densities of different cities across the globe.

The Urban Fabric Map uses OpenStreetMap building data and displays it using a custom created Mapbox style. Each of the two maps includes a search box which allows you to center the two maps on any two different locations in the world.

In the screenshot above I have compared San Francisco with London. The comparison reveals the clear grid like pattern of San Francisco's streets compared to London's more organic street layout. A building count is also displayed above each of the two maps. This reveals that San Francisco has around three times as many buildings in the same sized area as London. This is despite the fact that the Golden Gate Park is a prominent feature on the San Francisco map.

Play Property Tycoon on Google Maps

If you've ever dreamed of becoming a property tycoon then you might want to practice your real-estate skills on Next.Land. Next.Land is a multiplayer city building game built on top of an interactive map of the real world.

The object of the game is to buy buildings, upgrade your properties and earn a fortune from your rental returns. The full game is scheduled for release in early 2007. However you can get a sneak preview of the game on the Next.Land Demo map.

In the demo game you can explore 30 real-world locations on the interactive map and become familiar with the basic game-play features. The maps are built on OpenStreetMap and SRTM data. Each of the locations feature 3d buildings which you can purchase (if you have enough money). Unfortunately in this demo of the game you can't save your progress.

Next.Land looks like it could be an awesome game. If you want to keep up with the game's progress or contribute to its development through the game's crowdfunding appeal then check out the Next.Land website.

Mapping Toronto Parking Fines

Nearly 1.5 million parking fines were issued in Toronto last year, raising over $68 million in fines. You can discover where and when these parking tickets were issued on the Visualizing 2015 Toronto Parking Fines interactive map.

The map colors each block of road in Toronto Downtown & East York by the number of parking fines issued on that section of road. You can also select any road on the map to view the number of registered infractions, the total amount of fines and an assessment of the risk of getting a parking ticket on the selected road.

The map allows you to filter the results by day of the week and by hour of the day. Visualizing 2015 Toronto Parking Fines uses crossfilter to provide these interactive charts which allow you to view the number of fines issued on each road by day and by time of day.

If you want to create your own Leaflet maps with crossfilter then you might want to check out crosslet a JavaScript library which helps you easily combine crossfilter with a Leaflet interactive map.

The WWE 2K17 Interactive Map

To promote the upcoming release of the WWE themed video game WWE 2K17 the game's developers have released an interactive map of Suplex City. Using the map you can search Suplex City for clues to the identities of a number of WWE Superstars and Legends. Identify the legends correctly on the map and you could win yourself a roster poster of the identified WWE Superstar

The creators of Suplex City claim that this is an 'interactive map' of the city. However to me it looks more like the kind of crazed photo montage that a disturbed teenager might assemble on their bedroom wall. It does use the Leaflet mapping library - so I guess you could argue it is some sort of map.

At the moment there are two areas that you can explore in Suplex City - the Amusement Park and the Park. Each has its own crazy photo montage. Every week during August new neighborhoods of Suplex City will be released. So you can look forward to even more disturbing images of Suplex City.

Ocean Street View from Indonesia

Lots of new underwater Street View is available on Google Maps off the coast of Indonesia. The new panoramic imagery allows you to take a virtual scuba dive and swim with the fish, turtles and other marine life in Indonesia's seas.

Google's underwater panoramic imagery can be a little hard to find on Google Maps so the best way to explore the new imagery is on the dedicated Street View - Oceans web page. The new underwater panoramic imagery is available at twelve sites around Indonesia. You can navigate to any of the twelve sites by clicking on the thumbnails in the Oceans gallery.

Like much of Google's underwater Street View the new imagery was captured for Google Maps by the XL Catlin Seaview Survey.