Friday, August 22, 2008

Friday Google Maps Fun

The Original Sat-Nav

This wristwatch was invented in 1920 and allowed drivers to navigate around the UK. The watch used paper maps wound around wooden rollers. However because there were so few cars around the watch failed to take off. If you are in London you can check out the watch at the Weird and Wonderful Inventions exhibition at the British Library (until November).

Take the Road Through the Lake
screen shot of Google Maps driving directions
When you ask Google for driving directions from Gamètì/Rae Lakes Airport to Rae/Edzo Airport you are told to drive through the middle of a number lakes. The walking directions state you should "Use caution – This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths", which is a slight understatement when its -40 and and 197 km of only ice ahead. When do we get sledge directions?

The reason that the roads go across a number of lakes is because these are ice roads that are built every year across the ice. Check out the Ice Road Truckers website for more information.

Via: Mapperz

The Last Guy


The Last Guy is a game from Sony that is built on top of satellite imagery that looks very similar to Google Maps / Earth imagery (but presumably isn't). The game itself seems to be a 2D shooter.

Via: Very Spatial

The Street View Boat?

In Australia an expanse of water was not enough to stop the street view car.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know we knew this already but if you pan down on the boat views it's a great example of how the system masks the Google car itself by grabbing a bit of the foreground, zooming in on it and pasting it on top of the vehicle.

smokeonit said...

and the gps data from the GSVC is wron on the other side of the river.... it doesn't map the ramp correctly....

Anonymous said...

The guy driving the truck on the ferry may possibly have the distinction of being the most photographed person by a GSVC on the planet!

He is in the truck, gets out, has a stretch, checks the wheels and gets back in.

Looks like someone needs to give Kent & Julie Rohde of Strath-Stock transport 0428 813 105 a ring and tell him:-)