Introducing Hot Air Balloon View

It has been my practice to call Google Business Photos 'indoor Street View'. Google Business Photos never really seemed as accurate as 'indoor Street View' to me - but boy was I wrong.

I was wrong because Google Business Photos do not actually have to be taken indoors. In fact, as these Street View shots from the Turin Eye prove, they can actually be taken from 150 metres above the ground. Thanks to the owners of the Turin Eye you can now virtually ascend to the skies above Turin on Google Maps, walk around inside the hot air balloon and get a 360 degree panoramic aerial view of Turin.

Now that's what I call a business photo!

Via: Google Street View World

Stay of Execution for Google Maps API v2

Next month thousands of Google Maps around the world were scheduled to die. May 19, 2013 was the day that maps using version 2 of the Google Maps API were meant to be shut down but Google has now decided to extend the deprecation time-line for v2 maps by six months.

There is even better news for those who are determined not to convert their v2 maps into v3 maps. Google says that on November 19, 2013 they "will attempt to automagically turn remaining v2 maps into v3 maps, by way of a JavaScript wrapper". Google says that they expect the wrapper to work with simple v2 maps but to be safe they encourage you to migrate your maps to v3 ahead of this date.

To help you migrate v2 maps Google have prepared an upgrade guide to help make the migration process as painless as possible.

New York Neighborhoods Across the World

In an article entitled New York Elsewhere The Morning News makes a pretty good attempt to insult everybody in the world.

Using a series of embedded Google Maps The Morning News compares neighborhoods in cities across the the US (and a few other cities worldwide) with neighborhoods in New York. The purpose of the article is to inform fleeing New Yorkers which neighborhoods they should move to in other cities.

So, for example, the embedded map of San Francisco compares Treasure Island to Roosevelt Island, NoPa to Prospect Heights and San Anselmo to Nyack. Accompanying each map is a brief witty description of the mapped neighborhoods explaining their similarities to neighborhoods in New York.

Solving the Brooding Goose Problem

The 'Travelling Salesman Problem' is a well known routing problem. Basically the travelling salesman problem is: "Given a list of destinations, what is the shortest possible route that visits each destination exactly once and returns to the original starting point?"


The latest Google Maps based solution to the travelling salesman problem that I've found is Speedy Route. Speedy Route is a world-wide route planner that integrates with Google Directions to find the shortest route for a number of planned destinations.

Beginning at your start location, Speedy Route calculates a route that visits every other location you provide exactly once, before finally returning to your start location to finish, all by the shortest and quickest route possible. Speedy Route also provides the driving directions as supplied by Google Directions for the entire calculated route.


I have been wondering for a while, however, about what the opposite routing problem is called. What if you need to find a route that avoids certain locations along a planned route? In honour of the University of Waterloo, I'm calling this the 'Brooding Goose Problem'.

The University of Waterloo set themselves the problem of devising a campus routing solution that shows the quickest route between two locations that avoids the known locations of goose nests on the campus.

To help students and staff who are frightened of geese the university have created the Goose Nest Avoider. Using ESRI Maps the Goose Nest Avoider allows users to select a starting point and a destination from two drop down menus and then displays an optimal route that steers clear of any nesting geese.

Commuting Times on Google Maps

Trulia Local inlcudes an awesome feature that allows users to check out commute times in a number of U.S. cities. Using the map house hunters can check out how long it takes to commute to or from any location by public transit or by car. For example, you can center the map on your place of work and find out all the areas within your choice of commute time.

A slider tool allows the user to adjust the time of the commute and it is possible to select either driving or public transit times. You can drag and drop the map marker to set the center point of your commute time request.


In the UK Locrating has created a nice Google Maps based app that displays the commute times of rail stations to any location.

If you enter a location and the length of time that you are prepared to commute the map displays all the stations that you can commute from. The markers for each station are colour-coded to show how quick the commute would be from each station.

Users can even add properties for sale to the map so that it is possible to search for a new home at a location that is within your preferred commute time zone.


Mapnificent is a Google Maps based application that shows you how far you can travel on public transport for any given length of time, in a number of major cities around the world.

Mapnificent allows users to drop a marker anywhere in a city and adjust a slide control to define a commuting time. The map then displays the commutable area using an isochrone layer on the map. Users can adjust the slide control to show longer or shorter commute time zones. 


The Centre for eCommerce and Communication at the University of Ballarat created this animated Google Map visualisation of 1,000 commuter journeys undertaken by university employees.

The UB Commute Visualisation shows how far staff travel from their home to arrive at their destination campus by 9 am. As the visualisation animates the most used roads become thicker on the map to reflect the increased traffic.

A Summer of Festivals on Google Maps

Festival season is on the horizon once again and a couple of Google Maps based apps can help you find the best musical, arts and other types of events happenings near you.

In the U.S. EventNearby is a mapped based guide to upcoming events of all kinds. Users can use the links in the map sidebar to filter the results shown on the map by category. If you find an event that takes your fancy you can click through to get further details, such as the dates of the events and the event website.


Festival Searcher is another Google Maps guide to music festivals taking place in Europe and America this summer.

The map markers are colour-coded by month so that you can get a quick overview of what festival is taking place when. I assume the size of the markers relates to the size of the festival displayed.

68 Sumo Wrestlers on Google Maps

Ryōgoku Kokugikan, Tokyo's major sumo arena, is now on Street View. You can walk around the arena and look down on the sumo ring from the top of the 13,000 capacity stadium. You can even wander down and stand in the ring itself.

However there are 68 sumo wrestlers guarding the arena and to gain entrance you do have to fight and beat them all. Warning - this is what happened to me when I tried:


Ideas by Music

Google Maps Says Thank You London

Well it appears that today is the day that everyone uses Google Maps to make London a far happier city. First came Here Comes the Sun, an app to make the streets of London shine on Google Maps, now we have Thank You London, a Google Map for people to thank other Londoners for the little things that have made their day.

If someone has brightened up your day you can add your gratitude by simply placing a marker on the map and adding a short message.

Creating Better URL's for Google Maps

NiceMapUrls is an interesting experiment to create a nice url for a google map location or address. The approach used in the map works in a hierarchical manner, starting from the country and ending with a street name and house number, e.g.

united-states/california/san-francisco/noe-valley/valencia-street/1026

My limited testing of the map suggests that this approach works really well in the United States and many other English language speaking countries. There is a good discussion on Hacker News however about the map and the problems with this approach when place names have non-latin characters or in countries where postal addresses are not so easily defined.

If you want to look at the code behind the app you can check it out on GitHub.

The Campaign for Sunny Street View

If there is one major disadvantage to living in London it has to be the almost perpetually oppressive grey skies. Thanks to Here Comes the Sun we lucky cockneys can now at least pretend we live somewhere sunny.

Ian Butterworth noticed that the Street View imagery in London on Google Maps looks a little dull and lifeless. He therefore devised Here Comes the Sun so that Londoners can browse their streets on Street View and see what it would look like if the sun ever shone on their grey city.

The application does a little processing of Street View in the browser to adjust the brightness of the imagery. Unfortunately because of the differences in modern browsers you will probably need to use Google Chrome to view Here Comes the Sun.

On the plus side Here Comes the Sun isn't actually restricted to London and you can use the application to brighten up the Street View imagery anywhere in the world. 

Street View Hyperlapse with Leap Motion

Teehan+Lax created the awesome Street View Hyperlapse app that allows anyone to create their own animated movie of a drive using Google Maps Street View.

They have now released this video of them driving in Street View with Leap Motion and a hacked version of their own Street View Hyperlapse app.

Hat-tip: Google Street View World

The Google Maps of the Week

TweetMap is a Google Map of a massive 95 million global tweets. Currently the map displays geo-tagged tweets from 10th December 2012 to 30th December 2012.

If mapping 95 million twitter messages wasn't impressive enough the map also allows you to query the tweets by time, location, and keyword. For example, the heat map above shows all tweets mentioning 'Christmas'.

TweetMap really is a great resource for exploring Twitter data. Hopefully in the future TweetMap will be able to add data from a wider date range. 


Thanks to Isuzu Trail View it is now possible to take a virtual Street View drive on some of South Africa's best off-road trails. Isuzu equipped a Isuzu KB with a 360 degree camera and captured custom Street View imagery of four off-road trails.

Users can select any of the four trails and view the 360 degree imagery just as they would with Google Maps Street View. Each trail includes a handy little feature that allows users to capture a picture of any particular beautiful view you find and then share the image via social media.


Climate Commons is a Google Maps based application for providing news and information on climate change in the USA.

Climate change stories are presented on the map by location. As you zoom in on a location on the map the sidebar automatically updates to display the stories immediately visible in the map view. Climate change data can also be viewed on the map by selecting the category tabs in the upper left-hand corner of the map. Users can explore the climate data by annual averages, monthly anomalies or extreme events.

The non-Google Maps of the Week

The US Census Bureau has released an animated map that shows where the mean center of the population has been for each US census from 1790 to 2010.

The Mean Center of Population for the United States 1790 to 2010 shows how the mean center of population in the US has shifted westward in the last 220 years from Kent County, Maryland to Texas County, Missouri.


French rail operator SNCF has released a nice map to help rail passengers plan great days out in France.

Le Carte des Bons Plans allows passengers to search for great places to visit on the train within a fixed rail fare. Users simply have to enter their town and city, define how much they are prepared to pay for their train ticket and then all the great destinations within range of the fare are displayed on the map.


On a more sombre note The Guardian and CartoDB have mapped every US terror attack between 1970 and 2011.

The START Global Terrorism Database monitors terror attacks around the world and has compiled details of each incident recorded since 1970. The US Terror Attacks map animates through all 2,386 US terror attacks from 1970 to 2011.

The Coffee Surfers Tour of Google Maps

Coffee company illy have created a beautiful promotional website in which photographer Gabriele Galimberti shares his experiences and photos as he tours the world and meets fellow coffee lovers.

The whole website is worth a visit at it features some great scrolling effects as well as Gabriele's photographs and interviews. The Tour Map is also worth checking out, especially for its stunning use of the Styled Map feature in the Google Maps API.

When you load the map be sure to mouse-over the individual map markers! When you roll over the markers the whole color scheme of the map style changes. Each marker even has its own uniquely colored map tiles.

Hill Shading on Google Maps

Gmap4 is a Google Maps based interface for viewing detailed topographical maps of the USA and Canada.

The application allows the user to view a number of topographical base maps using the familiar navigation tool of Google Maps. The app also comes with a really neat hill shading effect that allows the user to adjust the hill shading on the 'Topo High' map view.

Gmap4 contains a whole host of other useful features, such as route planning and the ability to view KML, KMZ, GPX and TPO files. It even has a feature that lets you view your GPS tracks in 3d using the Google Earth browser plugin.

Find Diving Locations with Google Maps

Dive Seven is a community based website for logging, sharing and researching great scuba diving locations around the world.

The Dive Seven Google Map is a useful resource to find recommended diving spots around any location. The recommended diving spots are displayed on the map with small red map markers and interesting ship wrecks are displayed with small anchor icons. The map also displays diving and marine related photographs taken in the current map view.

Users can click through on any diving location listed to view details about the spot, including diving depths, recommended diving levels required and interesting features of the dive.

Climate Change on Google Maps

Climate Commons is a Google Maps based application for providing news and information on climate change in the USA.

Climate change stories are presented on the map by location. As you zoom in on a location on the map the sidebar automatically updates to display the stories immediately visible in the map view. Users can read a brief overview of the mapped climate change stories by clicking on the map markers and read the full report by selecting the 'Full Story' link in the map sidebar.

Users can also search for stories on a specific climate-related issue by using the filters in the sidebar or by searching for a specific term.

Climate change data can also be viewed on the map by selecting the category tabs in the upper left-hand corner of the map. Users can explore the climate data by annual averages, monthly anomalies or extreme events.

Support Boston Retailers

The Back To Back Bay campaign is designed to help retailers in Boston who have been affected by the Boston Marathon bombings.

As part of the campaign a Google Map has been created to show the locations of retailers whose businesses have been affected by the bombings. The map displays stores that have been closed for a week or more. The campaign asks you to support these retailers by sharing their websites on Facebook or Twitter and, when they reopen, to support them with your business.

Journalists Under Threat

324 journalists in Italy were threatened in 2012. Ma Chi Me Lo Fa Fare (Why Am I Doing This?) uses Google Maps to show the location of the 312 journalists who were threatened last year and to provide heat maps showing which Italian regions have witnessed the most threats made against journalists.

Ma Chi Me Lo Fa Fare has used the BatchGeo Google Maps creation tool to provide three different maps. The first map plots all the cases where Italian journalists have been threatened and users of the map can click on the individual map markers to read more about each individual case.

Two other maps on Ma Chi Me Lo Fa Fare provide heat maps showing where journalists have been most and least threatened in the country. 

Inside Street View Ideas

The introduction of indoor Street View imagery on Google Maps for stores and businesses has led to some interesting and creative ideas from a number of participants in the scheme.

Some participants have ensured that the indoor Street View for their businesses are visually compelling. Other users (LiquidWeb) have decided to create a little treasure hunt competition to ensure that users engage with their Street View imagery and other users (Ideas by Music) have just decided to use indoor Street View as a temporary website.


bddpunlimited.com


acmebrooklyn.com‎

BTW - if you want to take part in the LiquidWeb Street View scavenger hunt you could win yourself $500 by simply solving a few clues.

Hat-tip: Google Street View World

The Game of Life on Google Maps

A team from ProPublica created this little Google Maps based game at the GEN Editors' Lab Hackathon. HeartSaver was designed with the aim to help New Yorkers explore access to good emergency care in the city.

In the game heart attack victims are dropped on the map at random locations. Your job is to pick up the victims and transport them to the nearest hospital. Your score depends on how fast you get the victims to the hospital. If you are too slow the victim dies.

The quality of care avaialable at different hospitals also plays a part in the victim's chance of survival. Therefore as you play the game you have to gamble on transporting a victim to a nearby hospital with a below average heart-care rating or risk a longer journey to a better hospital.

Win a Holiday with Street View

UK online travel agents Holiday Hypermarket are running a Majorca Street View Competition in which participants have to find the best view of Majorca that can be found on Google Maps Street View. The winner of the competition will receive £600 towards a holiday in Majorca.

The competition is very simple. Players are presented with a virtual camera, featuring a Street View screen and a small Google Map. All you have to do is navigate around the island using the map and Street View until you find a view that you think will give you a chance to win the prize. You then just press the green button to take your snap and enter the competition.

America's Most Endangered Rivers

Every year, American Rivers names America’s 10 most endangered rivers. This year they have also released a Google Map of America's Most Endangered Rivers.

The map shows the location of the ten rivers and also gives s special mention to Merced River, part of which is threatened by damming proposals. Users can click on the eleven marked rivers and click-through to read more about the specific environmental dangers facing each river.

Asia's Air Pollution on Google Maps

Air Pollution in Asia is a Google Map of real-time air quality readings.

The map provides a visual guide to air quality across China, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and a number of other Asian cities. When looking at the map the dangerous pollution in China is immediately evident. There also seems to be highly dangerous air pollution in Delhi.

Users can click on any of the map markers to view the latest air pollution reading from the selected air monitor and click through to get detailed readings and readings from nearby monitors.

Street View Arrives in Hungary and Lesotho

Széchenyi Thermal Bath

Street View is now available in 50 countries worldwide.

Today Google Maps made its biggest ever update to Street View, adding new and updated imagery for nearly 350,000 miles of roads across 14 countries. This update includes new Street View imagery in France, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, Singapore and Thailand. It also includes the launch of Street View in Hungary and Lesotho.


Lesotho

Via: Google Lat Long

95 Million Tweets on One Google Map

TweetMap is a Google Map of a massive 95 million global tweets. Currently the map displays geo-tagged tweets from 10th December 2012 to 30th December 2012.

If mapping 95 million twitter messages wasn't impressive enough the map also allows you to query the tweets by time, location, and keyword. For example, the heat map above shows all tweets mentioning 'Christmas'.

TweetMap really is a great resource for exploring spatial variations in the use of language. I've had a lot of fun this morning exploring where people say 'Father Christmas' and where they like 'Santa', and discovering where people drink 'soda' and where they drink 'pop'.

Mapping Twaddle

Twaddler is a Google Map that displays geo-tagged Tweets in real-time. Just share your location with Twaddler and you can sit back and view a live stream of what is happening around you.

If there is something happening on the other side of the world that you want to keep abreast of then you can switch your location on the map and instead view a live stream of Twitter messages from the new location. Twaddle uses the Marker Animation function from the Google Maps API to drop and bounce each new marker onto the map so that it easy to visualise the location of each new Tweet as it appears on the map.  

Custom Street View Africa

Thanks to Isuzu Trail View it is now possible to take a virtual Street View drive on some of South Africa's best off-road trails. Isuzu equipped a Isuzu KB with a 360 degree camera and captured custom Street View imagery of four off-road trails.

Users can select any of the four trails and view the 360 degree imagery just as they would with Google Maps Street View. Each trail includes a handy little feature that allows users to capture a picture of any beautiful views that are found whilst navigating a trail and then share the image via social media.


The Nature Valley Trail View is a beautiful map of trails in the Grand Canyon, in Yellowstone National Park and in the Great Smokies.

The map includes a number of trails, each of which can be experienced with a glorious animated custom Street View tour. If you click on the menu link you can select any of the trails and then virtually walk the trail with custom Street Views of the whole trail.

Each tour includes an option to animate a walk on the trail, so you can just sit back and watch as you walk the trail with custom Street Views.

Searching for a Home with Natural Light

RealScout is an interesting new San Francisco real-estate search engine that allows you to search for properties by a number of characteristics, such as properties with large backyards, lots of natural light or in need of refurbishment.

Like most property search engines RealScout allows you to search for properties by price, location and number of bedrooms / bathrooms. However RealScout also allows you to add a number of other requirements that are important in your property search.

For example, you can add a requirement to your search to only show properties that have hardwood floors, have a luxury bathroom and a gourmet kitchen. All the results of your search are displayed on a Google Map. The map includes your category search requirements as selectable tags so you can refine your search simply by deleting a tag or selecting another category from the drop-down menu.

Banish the Monday Blues with Google Maps

Why not start the week than with a little geography guessing game.

GeoGuessr is a Street View geography quiz that sets you the challenge of guessing the locations of a series of random Street View images. Using visual clues, such as the fauna, landscape and street furniture you have to place a pin on a global Google Map indicating where you think each Street View image was taken.

The closer your guess to the actual location then the more points you win.


Locatestreet is a very similar game that presents a series of random Street Views and the player has to guess the country where the image was captured.

The featured terrain, architecture, street furniture and modes of transport all provide clues that can help the player guess the country of origin of the random Street View image. The game also includes three clues for each image, but be warned - if you use a clue you will win less points.

Hat-tip: Google Street View World

The Google Maps of the Week

Over the last couple of weeks Street View Hyperlapse has rightly received a lot of praise. The app uses Hyperlapse.js, Three.js, GSVPano.js, and the Google Maps API to create really smooth animated Street View movies.

Users of Street View Hyperlapse can search for any location that has Google Street View coverage and create their own animated movie. All you need to do is drop two map markers on a map to show the start and end of your drive and then press 'create'. The result is a really smooth animated drive using Google Maps Street View.


 Pick Me Up - Cartograph is another very impressive use of Street View.

Created for this year's graphic arts festival 'Pick Me Up 2013' Cartograph uses Google Maps Street View to take the exhibition outside the confines of the gallery in Somerset House and into augmented digital locations around London.

Locations around London have been chosen by the artists for their relevance to the artwork and then the art has been superimposed over those locations in Street View.


Another map that has received a lot of praise this week is SF Live Bus. SF Live Bus is a live animated map that shows the location of all the buses on San Francisco's Muni network in real-time. Just load up the app and sit back and watch the Muni buses as they travel around the city on the map.

If you like real-time mapped transit visualisations then you should also have a look at One Map, One Week in Public Transit. In this Google Map Vasile Cotovanu uses his popular vehicle simulator to present a simulated real-time map of Geneva's TPG tram network.

Mapping the Boston Marathon Bombings

It is surprising how few news stories are illustrated with online maps. This week's tragic bombing at the end of the Boston Marathon and the ensuing hunt for the suspects proved however to be a notable exception.

The New York Times went with a static 'bird's eye' aerial view of Boylston St in Boston to show the location of the two bomb explosions and the marathon finishing line. Whilst most other online news sites opted for annotated maps of the scene the Times' Site of the Explosions at the Boston Marathon aerial photograph, was for me the most evocative visualisation of the tragic events.


Boston.com used Leaflet to create a map that allowed Bostonians and other witnesses to add their own accounts of the events to a map of Boston. The Boston Marathon Bombings: Your Story provided a compelling means for eye witnesses to share their own stories of the day's tragic events.

The shooting of one of the Tsarnaev brothers and the subsequent 22 hour manhunt for the other brother led to a proliferation of online maps as news sites and citizen journalists tried to provide some geographical context to the unfolding events. Again the New York Times provided one of the best mapped visualisations for the hunt for the bombing suspects.


The Hunt for the Boston Bombing Suspects uses a static Google Map with interactive hotspots to provide a narrative of the hunt for Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev.

Readers can either click on the interactive map markers to read the accompanying text or can simply scroll down the page. As the reader scrolls the map itself is held in place and as each stage in the news narrative appears below the map the relevant location is highlighted on the map.

Street View Arrives in India

Google Maps has gone for a very low key approach to its launch of Street View in India.

This week some small patches of Street View have appeared on Google Maps in Bangalore. All the imagery appears to me to be in private resorts, hotels, museums and other venues and not on public roads and streets.

Here are the Street View locations I've found so far:

Janapada Loka Folk Museum
Wonderla
Soukya International Holistic Health Center
Olde Bangalore Resort 
Clarks Exotica 
Prakruthi Club & Resort 

If you find any other Street View imagery in Banglaore or other Indian cities post a link in the comments.

Hat-tip: Google Street View World

London's Virtual Street View Art Gallery

This year's graphic arts festival Pick Me Up 2013 has an amazing virtual presence with the launch of Pick Me Up - Cartograph.

Cartograph uses Google Maps Street View to take the exhibition outside the confines of the gallery in Somerset House and into augmented digital locations around London. Locations around London have been chosen by the artists for their relevance to the artwork and then the art has been superimposed over those locations in Street View.


Some of the artworks have been placed on tower blocks, some appear in doorways or, as in this amazing spinning 3d virtual sculpture, appear floating over the pitch at Wembley Stadium.