Google Maps Friday Fun

Famous Cartographers on Twitter
In a bored hour yesterday I though I'd check out the Twitter accounts of some famous cartographers just to see what they were up to. Here is what they have to say:

Herodotus has protected his updates
James Cook is Loving my new G35!
Mercator is At work. leaving to go work out then a meeting.
Ortelius says 'Listen up all you people defending maps, its clear there are only 2 possible reasons you would need a map' ... http://tinyurl.com/6yqvfw
Tom Harrison says Surprise surprise, the only app on my Mac that continually freezes, crashes, and causes me to slam the desk and curse is Microsoft Word.

To tell you the truth I was a little disappointed that only one of the cartographers actually seemed interested in maps.

If the cartographers haven't got anything interesting to say then surely the philosophers will have some nuggets of wisdom.

Nietzsche is Taking a a casual stroll through the lunatic asylum
Wittgenstein is Waiting for the first twitter message to pop up at my firefox browser after I have installed Twitterfox (which is about the most profound thing I've heard for a while)
Descartes is Doing forex trading (I trade therefore I will be rich)
Socrates asks is all yellow snow bad for you? (now that's more like it)
Aristotle is Filling out stupid supplements to the common application - why can't they just be happy with the main app?!

Again this was not exactly what I hoped to find. With no alternative I turned to the last resort of the scoundrel - religion.

God says i love canada so much that my human "host" was going to move there
Jesus has protected his updates (oh Jesus why do you forsake us?)
Buddha doesn't exist (well not on this plane anyway)
Krishna says hi, shwetha h ru
Elvis says Preparations begin for the cocktail hour ( and he lives in Arkansas)

All of which proves only one thing. If you want to know where you are going in this world then you need a map.

Google Sheep View

The new sport of sheep spotting on Google Street View continues to grip the world. Google Sightseeing has taken a huge lead in the world rankings this week thanks to this sighting of the world's largest ram, 'The Big Merino' which is 15 metres tall!

Top 5 Map Related Songs


Most Popular Google Subdomains
Google Maps seems to be the third most popular Google service after Google Search and Google Image Search.

Rank	Subdomain	Description	Unique Visitors
1	www.google.com	Web Search	126,269,804
2	images.google.com	Image Search	43,023,240
3	maps.google.com	Google Maps	36,914,680
4	mail.google.com	Gmail Google Mail	24,895,354
5	news.google.com	Google News	13,356,758
6	video.google.com	Google Video	10,204,587

This data is from Compete for the month of November 2008 and counts only unique visitors.

Via: Digital Inspiration

Street View Rival in Stockholm

Google have been beaten to the draw in providing street view type imagery in Stockholm. Swedish mapping website hitta.se have teamed up with MapJack to create a 'street view' type experience of the Swedish capital.

Via: vrLOG & 360cities.net

Street View Old Style
This is kind of cool. A photo entitled "School children with teachers under Magnolia trees on Oxford Street" on Flickr (lower picture on the right) can be compared to its current street view.

Flickr user Pbump worked out where the photograph was taken and found the location on Google Maps. It isn't very clear in the pictures on the right but if you check out the steps leading up to the house in the background you can see that it is the same house.

The original picture was taken in 1910.