The Google Maps of the Week

My favorite Google Map this week was Open Road. Open Road from OpenFile is an awesome bike directions application that shows you all the reported bike accidents that have occurred along a suggested bike route. So not only are cyclists given directions but they are warned about the most dangerous locations along the route.

The application uses the Google Maps API bike directions function to suggest a bike route between two points. All bike accidents reported to the police are then shown along the route and the most accident prone location along the route is also highlighted on the map.


This week we have to give a special mention to Google Maps Cube, Google's long awaited Google Maps game. The game is a great way to promote some of the features of Google Maps whilst users are having fun.

In the game you have to navigate a ball on a 3d Google Maps cube, avoiding the 3d buildings and other obstructions, by rotating the cube. Whilst you are also informed about some of the things that you can do with Google Maps.


Resource Intensity of Cities is a Google Maps based visualisation tool to analyse data on material and energy use in 42 U.S. cities.

The application uses a Google Maps interface to allow users to select an area and visualise a heat map of population, material and energy. It is also possible to generate a downloadable PDF report for the selected area, with a detailed breakdown of population and housing density, material intensity, material comparison, energy intensity and energy comparison.