Sunday, July 15, 2012

The Google Maps of the Week

This week I came across two great services for on-line map developers. So whilst MapIt and The Open Weather Layer are not exactly Google Maps I think they deserve highlighting here.

MapIt is a new service from MySociety that maps geographical points to administrative areas. A really useful function of MapIt for map developers is that it returns the kml for area searches, so MapIt is a great resource if you need to get hold of shapefiles for administrate areas.

 The Open Weather Map is an open-sourced weather layer that can be added to lots of on-line map services, including Google Maps. Open Weather Map can be used to display near real-time information about temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity, cloud cover, wind speed & direction and precipitation on a map.

Now on to the maps ...



Lovely is a new apartment finder application that can help you find an apartment or rental home.

The application pulls in data from the most popular listing sites on the web in real-time and the listings are up-dated about once every minute. Lovely uses a the familiar Google Maps interface to allow users to search by location, price and number of bedrooms (you can also choose to filter the results to show only those apartments that allow cats and / or dogs).

The results of an apartment search are displayed on the map with color-coded markers highlighting new and un-viewed listings. You can also set email alerts to be notified when new listings matching your filters become available.


One year on from the appalling terrorist attacks of 22nd July 2011 Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) have created a 22nd July Memory Map. The map has been created so that Norwegians have the opportunity to share their memories of the day. The broadcaster hopes that people will use the map to share where they were, what they did and how they felt.

It is possible to browse the map to read the contributions already added and to submit your own memories. Quick links are available below the map to zoom to the biggest cities. 

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