Snakes on a Plane(t)

Last year, I created Map Snake - a playful adaptation of the classic computer game. The concept was simple: maneuver an ever-growing snake around a map of cities while avoiding collisions with your own tail.

Well, now Engaging Data has released their own take, called Snake on a Globe. And let me be clear: I’m not annoyed that they stole my idea - I’m annoyed that they made it better. And a lot more fun.

Snake on a Globe

In Snake on a Globe, the game expands to a spherical Earth and includes the largest cities in the world, turning your Snake adventure into a true test of geographical knowledge. Your mission? Navigate from city to city, gobbling up apples as you go. But there's a twist - movement is restricted to lines of longitude and latitude, and the Earth is round. That means you can move east, west, and even over the poles.

The game calculates the minimum number of steps it should take to reach each apple. If you exceed that number, your score begins to decline—and it turns red to remind you.

Behind the Scenes

The game is built using Three.js and Three Globe, powerful JavaScript libraries that render the globe in full 3D. The list of cities - and their populations - comes from Simplemaps, giving the game a real-world data backbone. 

Some Musical Maps in Motion

Elevation Music

Everybody hates elevator music but everyone will love Elevation Music.

Elevation Music is an interactive map in which the elevation data is styled based on the intensity of an accompanying music track. It is a dancing map!

If you want to know how Elevation Music works the author's blog post explains: 

'This demo uses Mapbox GL JS raster-color-value and other raster-* paint properties to alter the colors on the map by elevation, based on the intensity of the music. Turn sound on and click the play button to start the experience.'

The blog post also reveals that the song used by the map is actually called 'Elevation'.

Ohio is a Piano

Inside every cartographer, there’s a musician trying to get out - or at least it seems that way, judging by the number of musical maps.

Take, for example, the ever-popular Ohio is a Piano. Andy Woodruff’s map turns Ohio’s 88 counties into the 88 keys of a piano, meaning you can literally play the map like an instrument. You can even listen to it perform a version of Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer.

MTA.me

Transit maps can be instruments too. For example MTA.me Conductor transforms Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 New York subway map into a real-time string instrument. It visualizes subway trains moving across the network - and plays a note every time one train crosses paths with another.

Fire up the map and just sit back as a New York subway symphony is composed and performed in real time. You can even join the composition by plucking the trails created by individual trains.

Sing to Me

Mapbox's Animate 3D buildings based on ambient sounds is another dancing map - but this time, it’s the buildings that groove. Instead of elevation data being influenced by music, this map makes 3D buildings respond to sound.

According to Mapbox:

"It uses runtime styling with the Web Audio API to create a map where the 3D buildings dynamically change height to the rhythm of your ambient environment, giving the appearance of dancing."

In layman’s terms? The buildings on this map will dance when you sing to them!

The Walk Management System

🥾 The Walk Management System: 

I’ve decided to walk the length of the Jubilee Line on the London Underground. But before setting off, I figured I needed a WMS (Walk Management System) to help plan and document each stage of this epic hike.

With a little help from ChatGPT and MapLibre GL, I’ve built a lightweight web app that lets me create, edit, and view walking routes - complete with custom markers, images, and notes.

Let’s break it down:

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✏️ The Editor – edit.html

At the heart of the system is the walk editor page, edit.html. This is an interactive map that can be used to design walking routes and annotate them with rich, location-based information.

🔧 Key Features:

• Draw Routes (Polylines): Click on the map to draw consecutive points that form a walking route. Each route can be named for better organization.

• Add Markers with Images & Text: Drop a marker anywhere and attach an image URL and descriptive text to it - ideal for pointing out landmarks, rest stops, or scenic viewpoints.

• Load Existing Walks: Import previously saved GeoJSON walk files directly into the map for editing or review.

• Save as GeoJSON: Export your custom walk—complete with routes and markers—as a .geojson file for easy sharing or later use.

🧠 How It Works:

• Draw Mode: Click "Draw Route", enter a route name, then click on the map to create the route point-by-point. Each segment is drawn in real-time.

• Marker Mode: Click "Add Marker" to drop custom pins. You can attach an image and a short note that pops up when the marker is clicked.

• GeoJSON-Based: All route and marker data is saved in standard GeoJSON format, making it easy to reuse in other mapping tools.

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👀 The Viewer – view.html

Once your walk is saved, the view.html page becomes your user-friendly presentation map. Visitors can explore your routes visually, view markers, and even get a summary of total distance and estimated walking time.

🌍 Viewer Highlights:

• Auto-load Walks: Display any saved walk by specifying its file (e.g., walk1.geojson) in the URL or file input.

• Interactive Map: All drawn routes and markers from the GeoJSON are rendered beautifully with MapLibre GL.

• Walk Summary Panel: Automatically calculates and shows:

  • 📏 Total Distance Walked

  • ⏱️ Estimated Walking Time

• Responsive and Clean UI: The walk summary is neatly styled for clarity and blends into the overall map layout.

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🧹 How It All Fits Together

1. Use edit.html to create or modify a walk.

2. Click "Save Walk" to generate a .geojson file.

3. Open view.html to display that file and interact with the walk.

This separation of concerns means you get both powerful walk editing and a polished public-facing viewer - no backend or database required.

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🛠️ Under the Hood

• MapLibre GL powers the interactive maps.

• GeoJSON is used for route and marker data storage.

• Client-side JavaScript handles all logic - no server needed.

• Marker Popups include custom HTML, so you can embed images and rich text descriptions.

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🚀 Ready to Explore?

You can clone the entire WMS (Walk Management System) package from its Glitch page. Once cloned, simply upload any images you want to use into the Assets folder, then copy and paste their URLs into the edit.html interface.

By default, view.html is set up to map data from walk1.geojson, which is saved in the /public folder. You can easily modify view.html to work with any GeoJSON file stored in that folder. Once your custom file is working in view.html, you can edit it using the edit.html interface.

For example, after completing another stage of my Jubilee Line walk, I can upload walk1.geojson into edit.html, draw in the newly completed route, and add markers and photos. I can then download the updated GeoJSON file and replace the existing walk1.geojson in the /public folder of the Glitch project.

Russia's Disinformation Network Mapped

The Pravda Dashboard

The Pravda Network is a coordinated Russian disinformation campaign designed to disseminate pro-Kremlin content across the globe. At its core, the network launders news from sanctioned Russian media outlets and questionable Telegram channels, distributing it through a constellation of country-specific websites. In each country the news is recycled to fit local narratives and most likely distributed through AI-driven systems: 

In the last two years this disinformation network has published over 3.7 million articles, with an alarming focus on influencing audiences in countries like France, Germany, Ukraine, Moldova, and Serbia. To help researchers, journalists, and open-source investigators make sense of this complex ecosystem, the DFRLab has released a public interactive map. This map is part of a broader Pravda Dashboard, designed to provide near-real-time visibility into how specific countries are being targeted.

The map allows users to click or search for any country and immediately see how it is being influenced: the volume of articles, the most commonly cited sources, and notable surges in activity over time. The map is a powerful reminder of how Russian propaganda is not just local - it’s multilingual, multi-platform, and meticulously engineered for impact. The map reveals a sprawling operation pushing coordinated disinformation across over 80 countries, fueled by bots & AI.

The Hotness Map No One Needed

LooksMapping is a digital map that rates restaurants not by food or service, but by the attractiveness of their clientele. It scrapes millions of Google Maps reviews, runs each reviewer’s profile photo through an AI model trained to score “hotness” out of ten, and then color-codes restaurants accordingly - red for hot, blue for not.

LooksMapping feels like a relic from a digital past - with the dated visual style of a 20-year-old Google Map and the same superficial, objectifying logic that powered early websites like Hot or Not. The map gamifies human appearance in a way that feels both regressive and oddly voyeuristic, echoing a time when online interactions prioritized judgment over connection.

I'd like to believe the retro aesthetic of LooksMapping is an intentional satire of the outdated cultural views of Trumpian America. That it’s a sharp, self-aware parody of the very culture it mirrors. But more likely, it's not a commentary at all - just another product of the MAGA-fueled gamification of culture and human interaction.

For me LooksMapping earns a 'blue for not'.

Via: Quantum of Sollazzo

Scrambled Maps in the Wild

Maps in the Wild is a crowdsourced and curated map archive of real-world maps found in everyday life - such as park maps, museum guides, transit maps, or historical maps displayed in public spaces. The website consists entirely of images of real-world maps submitted by readers.

People from around the world submit photos to Maps in the Wild of maps they spot in real-life. These can include maps on clothing, tattoos, café walls, subway stations, advertisements, public murals, or even on cakes. The archive is a fun, often quirky celebration of how maps appear in unexpected places and how they’re used creatively outside of on-line contexts.

Scrambled Maps in the Wild

Now, TripGeo (to which I also contribute) has teamed up with Maps in the Wild to launch Scrambled Maps in the Wild - a new twist on the classic scrambled map jigsaw game. This special series takes selected real-world map images from Maps in the Wild and turns them into interactive puzzles.

The first installment features seven scrambled map games (with more to come), each challenging players to reassemble these creative and unusual map sightings.

Check it out and get puzzling!

If you have an image of a map that you want to contribute to Maps in the Wild e-mail it to "Maps at Mappery dot Org". 

Hyperlocal Social Media

Ever wondered what people might say if conversations were pinned to real places - like digital graffiti on a map? That’s exactly the experiment Pintalk is trying out.

Created as a minimalist web app, Pintalk invites you to talk where you are - or more accurately, to start or join public text conversations anchored to specific latitude/longitude points. Think of it like a chatroom stapled to a street corner, trailhead, or coffee shop patio.

The developer describes Pintalk as:

“an experiment in discovering real-time, hyperlocal public discussions. What happens when conversations are anchored to places?”

And that’s what makes it fun. There’s no algorithm feeding you trends. No follower counts or hearts. Just geography and curiosity. 

So far, only a handful of discussions have been started on Pintalk, so it might be too early to say how it might be used. However, there’s already a brief conversation in Florida referencing the Blue Origin space launch, and a note in East London about the closure of a local cycle path. These two pins hint at possible uses for Pintalk - as a live event thread or a tool for hyperlocal community chat. Other potential applications include offering tourist tips, venue reviews, documenting local history, or providing real-time incident reports.

🧭 How It Works

Pintalk is stripped down to the essentials - and that’s very much by design.

• Visit the site - Pintalk uses your browser’s geolocation (or IP fallback) to center the map near you.
• Click any spot on the map - That opens a chat panel for that exact point.
• Start talking - Send a message, & boom - you’ve created a persistent pin and public conversation.
• Or jump into existing pins - Click one to read and join ongoing discussions.
• No login. No account. - You’re assigned a username like User_1234, and that’s it.

🎯 Will it Work?

Letting users add notes or start local conversations on a map isn’t a new concept. Over the years, there have been plenty of attempts to launch “note maps,” but in my experience, most haven’t gained much traction. The ones that have found success usually serve a clear and focused purpose - like Hoodmaps with its crowdsourced neighborhood stereotypes, or FixMyStreet's local issue reporting tool.

Pintalk’s minimalist, open-ended approach might end up being a weakness - it risks feeling aimless without a defined use case. Then again, that very lack of structure could be its strength. By leaving space for users to shape its purpose, Pintalk might stumble into something more meaningful. Maybe the conversations that emerge will reveal a natural direction - or even inspire a more targeted version down the line.

The Tariff Busting Map Game

Introduction: The Egg Crisis

In a world where breakfast has become a luxury, an evil empire has imposed crippling tariffs on eggs, sending prices skyrocketing. Omelettes are now a distant memory for the average citizen, and scrambled eggs are a delicacy only the wealthy can afford. But hope is not lost! Rebel forces have uncovered a loophole in the empire's trade barriers - by launching eggs directly into strategic targets across the USA, you can disrupt the tariffs and bring egg prices back down to earth.

Welcome to Angry Eggs, a map-based catapult game where your mission is simple: fire eggs at targets to evade trade tariffs and make breakfast affordable again!

How to Play Angry Eggs

1. Launching Your Egg

Aim & Pull: Click and drag the egg away from the center of the screen to set your trajectory. The further you pull, the harder you launch!

Release: Let go to fire your egg across the map. Watch as it soars through the air—will it hit its target?

2. Hitting Targets

Red Zones: Your objective is to land eggs inside the red circular targets scattered across the USA.

Economic Impact: Every successful hit causes egg prices to plummet, giving the people relief from inflation.

Missed Shots: If you miss, prices keep rising—so aim carefully!

3. Tracking Progress

Egg Price Tracker: A live ticker shows the fluctuating price of eggs. Watch as your hits cause dramatic market crashes.

Distance Indicator: An arrow points toward the nearest target, helping you line up your shots.

Behind the Scenes: How Angry Eggs Works

Angry Eggs is built with JavaScript and MapLibre GL, an open-source mapping library that brings real-world geography into the game. Here’s how it all comes together:

Catapult Physics: The egg-launching mechanic uses vector calculations to determine trajectory, making each shot feel dynamic.

Procedural Targets: The game generates random targets across the USA, ensuring no two playthroughs are the same.

In truth I started developing Angry Eggs as a joke rather than as a fully-blown map game. It is being released on TripGeo Labs as it really isn't a fully developed game. I do think, however, that there is potential to use some of the features of Angry Eggs to develop a much more engaging map based 'golf-game'.

Play Angry Eggs

Live London Underground Trains

Live maps displaying the movements of planes, trains, and automobiles have been among my favorite mash-ups over the years, so it seems fitting to launch the third decade of Maps Mania with a beautiful illustration of a live, real-time transit map.

The Live Tube Map is a fully interactive, real-time 3D map that lets you watch underground trains move across London as they shuttle through tunnels, stations, and lines. It’s like the classic Tube map - but alive. Built by Ben James, the Live Tube Map uses real-time data from Transport for London (TfL) to visualize each train’s location, progress, and route. Each moving colored line you see gliding across the screen is a real train, updated in near real-time and placed on a highly stylized 3D map of London.

The choice of using moving colored polylines with transparent tails gives the map a beautiful and mesmeric aesthetic (although I think the blocky trains used by Mini Tokyo 3D are hard to beat). 

Under the hood, the map is powered by:

• MapLibre GL for rendering a high-performance, interactive map in WebGL
• TfL’s live feed to gather real-time train movements and trip plans
• MapTiler map tiles with 3D buildings

Hovering over a train on the map reveals a clean tooltip: line name, current status, journey progress (with a neat progress bar), and even upcoming stations. Beyond the sheer visual appeal, the Live Tube Map is a fascinating demo of what’s possible when you mix open data with open-source tech. It transforms a complex network of live infrastructure into something playful, transparent, and informative. 

It shows you moving trains on a map in real-time!

Celebrating 20 Years of Maps Mania

It was 20 years ago today Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play when Mike Pegg first started writing about Google Maps. Which means Google Maps Mania is 20 YEARS OLD TODAY! 

🎉 Celebrating 20 Years of Maps Mania: A Cartographic Journey

For twenty years Maps Mania has been tirelessly chronicling the evolving world of interactive maps. Since its inception on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 Google Maps Mania has been celebrating and showcasing the wonderful online interactive maps created by the cartographic community, and for two decades, Maps Mania has been one of the go-to destination for map lovers, geospatial techies, data journalists, and curious minds worldwide. 

In this time tt has showcased everything from quirky custom visualizations to groundbreaking tools that have reshaped how we interact with space and place online.

So today, we celebrate not only Maps Mania but also the incredible journey of online interactive mapping over the last 20 years. Let’s take a look at some of the pivotal developments that Maps Mania has tracked - and perhaps help shape since 2005.

🌍 2005–2010: The Birth of the Mashup Era

When Google Maps launched in early 2005, it didn’t take long for developers to start “hacking” the platform, overlaying their own data onto the base map. This gave birth to the map mashup - an entirely new genre of DIY cartography.

Maps Mania was there from the start, curating early examples like:

- Real estate listings on maps

- Live transit tracking

- Crime mapping

- Flickr photo maps

Soon, APIs from Yahoo, Microsoft, and OpenStreetMap joined the party, and online mapping became an even bigger playground for creativity.

🧰 2010–2015: The Rise of Tools and Platforms

As the web matured, so did mapping. This era saw the emergence of powerful tools like:

Leaflet.js and Mapbox GL JS, enabling slick, custom maps in the browser

CartoDB (now CARTO), democratizing geospatial data analysis

D3.js, pushing the boundaries of data-driven cartography

Maps Mania didn't just report on these tools - it spotlighted how people were using them to tell stories, explore data, and visualize everything from climate change to historical journeys.

📱 2015–2020: Mobile, Real-Time & Story Mapping

With smartphones in everyone’s pockets, maps have now become more than just static guides - they have become live, reactive, and personal. Highlights from this period include:

- The explosion of story maps (via Esri, Knight Lab, and others)

- Maps for activism and crisis response (like during Hurricane Harvey or COVID-19)

- Location-based games and apps like Pokémon Go, changing public space experiences

Maps Mania tried to capture it all, curating the finest examples of maps that moved - both emotionally and physically.

🧠 2020–2025: AI, 3D & the Future of Place

In recent years, interactive mapping has leapt into new dimensions - literally and figuratively:

- 3D mapping with Google, Cesium and Mapbox adds realism and immersion

- Machine learning now detects buildings, roads, and land use from satellite images

- Digital twins of cities are enabling simulations for climate, traffic, and urban planning

- WebGL and immersive web tech are making maps feel more realistic

💚 A Labor of Cartographic Love

For 20 years, Maps Mania has been more than just a blog - it has been a living archive of the internet’s mapping imagination. 

Here’s to the next 20 years of exploration. The world is always changing - hopefully, Maps Mania will continue to help make sense of it, one map at a time!