The Google Maps of the Week

This week Google Maps Mania has been dominated by Hurricane Irene tracking maps. We have seen great maps from Google Crisis Response (2011 Hurricane Season & 2011 Hurricane Irene New York City), the (The New York Times' New York City Hurricane Evacuation Zones & Hurricane Irene Tracking Map)

Looking further afield, One-Eight Basetrack has created a great looking website with Google Maps and the Simile Timeline.

One-Eight Basetrack

One-Eight Basetrack is an experimental media project, tracking the deployment of 1/8 – 1st Battalion, Eighth Marines, throughout the duration of their deployment to southern Afghanistan.

The project is using Google Maps with the SIMILE Timeline to provide a navigation aide to the videos, photographs and posts collected by the project team on the ground.

Lufthansa: Street View Live

I was also impressed this week by Lufthansa airline's clever booking form that allows users to click on a map to input the destination of a flight.

As well as auto-filling the booking form with the selected destination a click on the map also displays a Google Maps Street View of the chosen destination. For example, if a user clicks on London a Street View of the Houses of Parliament is displayed to help entice the customer to book a trip to the UK.

________________