Today's xkcd strip is pretty amazing. The strip, 'Click and Drag', includes one frame (the last big one) which is interactive in the style of on-line slippy maps. If you click and drag the strip around you will discover a very huge world lies beneath the limited frame of this comic strip.
The only thing missing from the image to make it an online map is zoom controls. This means that it isn't possible to zoom out on the strip and zoom in quickly on a different area of the image.
I obviously wasn't the only person to think it would be a great idea to create an actual map from the last frame of the xkcd strip. Earlier today I came across xkcd Map, a quick hack that lets you view the whole image with the Google Maps API. Being just a quick hack the developer didn't create map tiles for the image so unfortunately you can't zoom in and appreciate the finer details (such as the speech bubbles).
Update - this Google Maps API version of xkcd Click & Drag works brilliantly - xkcd 1110.
This xkcd 1110 map uses ESRI maps and works a little better.You can actually zoom in anywhere in the image and appreciate fully the true genius of Randall Munroe. However the best map is this Leaflet powered map, xkcd Map-Rent-a-Geek.
Actully the ESRI just 'steals' the tiles from
ReplyDeletehttp://xkcd-map.rent-a-geek.de/
which is a mashup made by another developer. (see the credit at the bottom)
Thanks Barry, I obviously didn't look at the code close enough :(
ReplyDeleteI've added the rent-a-geek map to the post.