The Google Maps of the Week

This week I was very impressed by the Portsmouth History Picture Map. It is a great example of how even individual, personal projects can use the Google Maps API to create impressive, original maps.

The Portsmouth History Picture Map includes an historical map overlay of the city from 1896, as well as historical photographs of the city. I particularly like the custom map markers, combining circular historical photos with an accompanying text label.

The map itself contains information about important historical locations in the city and some of the city's historically important citizens. It is also possible to view on the map over 200 vintage photographs that help to illustrate the history of Portsmouth.


Another impressively designed map is this Ayrton Senna Memory map. Formula 1 racing driver Ayrton Senna died nineteen years ago in an accident while leading the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. The McClaren Formula 1 team has released a Google Map so that racing fans around the world can share their memories and post tributes to Senna.

Fans can post Senna pictures, YouTube links or their own written memories and thoughts about the legendary driver. McClaren has also added their own tributes and photos to the map (zoom in on the UK to view these).  I like the toned down look of this map, which helps to highlight the green markers posted by fans to the map.


Archilovers have also gone for a similar toned down design, created using the Styled Maps feature in the Google Maps API.

Archilovers is a social network for architects, designers and lovers of architecture. Users of the network can post projects, exchange opinions and interests, and get to know designers and architects around the world.

The Archilovers Google Map presents a mapped interface to featured architectural projects around the world. Users can select the featured project on the map and click-through to visit the dedicated page about the project. The map includes a Street View layer so, where available, it is also possible to view the projects with Google's interactive panoramic images.
 

The Twitter Hills of San Francisco

There has been some beautiful visualisations of Twitter data lately. Twitter has now released a few more beautiful visualisations that present Twitter data as topographical maps.

The Topography of Tweets presents Twitter usage as mountain ranges. The peaks represent the places most Tweets are sent from and the troughs show where the fewest Tweets have originated from. Currently there are three maps available (San Francisco, New York and Istanbul). Each map allows the user to change the style of the map tiles, including Stamen's pretty Water Color map style.

OpenStreetMap in 3d

The F4 map is an amazing 3d map built upon OpenStreetMap. The map includes some incredible 3d buildings, 3d trees and even the water is animated. The shadows on the map are in real-time and reflect the position of the sun and therefore move throughout the day. I've also been told that the map displays real-time weather - so if it it is currently raining at a location you should see it raining on the map.

There is no 'about' page on this map so I have no idea who developed this (there is a fairly empty Wiki page that includes an empty 'about' page). Hopefully at some point in the near future we might learn a little more about the development of this map.

My one user tip is to use the ctrl key with the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard to change the angle of the map. Update: microformats.dk has sent me a few interesting locations on the F4 Map:

• Animated windmills
• Animated Bellagio Fountains

GitHub Africa is an impressive visualisation of GitHub users in Africa. The map was created using MapBox. It is worth zooming in on the map to find out how many active GitHub users there are in individual cities in Africa.

The map is an initiative of the CodeAfrica project which seeks to grow, promote and highlight coders in Africa.


Over the last couple of months there has been an amazing number of mapped visualisations of the world's flight paths. Contrailz is a visualisation of tracking data from Planefinder.net during the whole month of October in 2012.

The map displays about 1 billion location 'dots'. The result reveals some amazing traffic patterns, especially around the world's larger airports. For example, the stacking patterns around Heathrow in London (above) are clearly visible on the map.

The Tour de France on Google Maps

The 100th Tour de France starts in Corsica tomorrow.

Cycling the Alps has this year released an Android app that allows users to view each stage of the tour using Google Maps, Google Earth and /or Street View. Each stage includes a route profile and includes a Google Earth tour. It is even possible to view videos of featured climbs via the Tour 2013 Routes app.

The Cycling the Alps website includes many of the same features, including stage profiles, Street View and, my personal favourite, Google Earth fly-over tours of each route stage.

The official Tour de France website is also featuring Google Maps of all the stages on the tour. The maps include an option to view the route using the Google Earth browser plug-in. The map also shows time schedules and points of interest along each route of the tour.

The Strange Case of the Werepigeons

In Japan Google Maps Street View has managed to capture a group of strange pigeon-people.


I'm not sure what has caused this strange case of werepigeons in Japan but something similar has affected the customers of a bar in Quebec. Google Sightseeing found this Street View, which suggests that after dark the drinkers in the P'tite Grenouille Boîte à Chanson appear to turn into werehorses.


In New York Street View has captured at least one example of a weredonkey on the loose.

Mapping the Best of the World's Architecture

Archilovers is a social network for architects, designers and lovers of architecture. Users of the network can post projects, exchange opinions and interests, and get to know designers and architects around the world.

The Archilovers Google Map presents a mapped interface to featured architectural projects around the world. Users can select the featured project on the map and click-through to visit the dedicated page about the project. The map includes a Street View layer so, where available, it is also possible to view the projects with Google's interactive panoramic images.


The World Architecture Map (WAM) is a database of architectural information that uses Google Maps to show the locations of architectural interesting buildings around the world. It is possible to search for buildings on WAM by location, building type, architectural style or by tags.


Arti-Fact is great collection of architecturally important buildings and sculptures that can be found on Google Maps Street View.

It is possible to search the collections by either 'architecture' or 'sculpture' and then search by country or by city. It is also possible to view collections of featured artists and architects. For example, you can view a map of links to Street Views of the buildings of the recently deceased Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer.

If you select a marker on any of the collection maps a Street View of your selection will load, with details about the sculpture or building displayed and the responsible artist or architect.


MIMOA is a Google Maps based guide to modern architecture around the world. It is possible to browse the collection of modern architectural gems by location and by type of project.

The Sun Always Shines on Google Maps

Google has had a busy week with Google Maps, releasing new cloudless satellite imagery and a new DynamicMapsEngineLayer for the Google Maps API.

The new satellite imagery virtually eliminates clouds on Google Maps. Google has been able to achieve this new virtually cloudless world by mining data from a large number of Landsat 7 satellite images of the same areas.

The new DynamicMapsEngineLayer for the Google Maps API allows developers to visualise and interact with data hosted in Google Maps Engine.

The new layer gives developers access to public datasets hosted by Maps Engine. You can find out the data sets available in the Maps Engine gallery (look for the 'Maps API code' link below a map for accessible data). The new layer obviously also allows you to access Google Maps Engine data that you own yourself and use the data inside your Google Maps API applications.

Let's Meet for Coffee

Up for Coffee? is a neat little Google Maps app that shows you nearby coffee shops and then allows you to send a friend an invite to meet. The application works as a very quick way to pick a coffee shop and fire off an invite to a friend. 

The application uses the Google Places API to show you coffee shops that are near your current location. If you want to meet up elsewhere you can use the search function to find coffee shops near other locations.

When you select a coffee shop on the map you can then pick a date and time and send an invite via email with a calendar attachment or log-in with a Facebook account and invite a friend via the Facebook event calendar.

The Ayrton Senna Memory Map

Formula 1 racing driver Ayrton Senna died nineteen years ago in an accident while leading the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. The McClaren Formula 1 team has released a Google Map so that racing fans around the world can share their memories and post tributes to Senna.

Fans can post Senna pictures, YouTube links or their own written memories and thoughts about the legendary driver. McClaren have also added their own tributes and photos to the map (zoom in on the UK to view these).

Mapping the (Boston) Globe

For some reason the Boston Globe seems obsessed with Boston. At least that seems to be what the Mapping the (Boston) Globe shows.

Mapping the Globe is a set of interactive Google Maps visualising where the Boston Globe directs its attention. Each marker on the shows a location that has been covered in a Boston Globe article. You can mouse-over a marker to reveal the introductory paragraph of the story and click on the marker to open the article on the Boston Globe website.

The map is a really interesting interface to browse the newspaper by location. However the map at the moment is quite slow (its probably best to view this map in Chrome). There is something wrong with the marker clustering system used by the map, which seems to force the map to load all the markers individually before the clustering is applied (kind of defeating the point of applying marker clustering).

The German Digital Media Maps

The Digital Media Map NRW is a Google Map showing the locations of companies in the digital media industry in the North Rhine-Westphalia area of Germany.

It is possible to search the map for companies by sector and also by those who are currently hiring or searching for funding. It is also possible to filter the results shown on the map by company size. The information window for each displayed company includes a link to the company's website.


Berlin also has a thriving startup scene. If you want to find startup companies in Berlin then you can use the BerlinStartups map.

This Google Map is built using the popular Represent Map platform, which is a great resource if you want to create a startup map for your own town or city.

Fresh Produce on Google Maps

Farmers Markets Now is a database of over 7,800 farmers markets. It is possible to find the markets nearest you by using the Farmer Markets Now Google Map.

If you select a market's marker on the map you can click through to get details of the market's schedule and a breakdown of the type of produce that is normally for sale at the market. 


Falling Fruit is a crowd-sourced map of edible fruits and berries that can be found on publicly accessible trees and shrubs. The map contains over 500 different types of edibles at over half a million locations.

It is possible to search the Falling Fruit map by location and by type of edible produce. All the locations on the map can also be downloaded in CSV format.


Grow Local is an online community designed to share, trade and swap home produce. In effect the Grow Local map seems to have become another resource for users to share foraging opportunities.

Like Falling Fruit the map mostly seems to be a collection of locations with accessible trees and shrubs. This is a shame really because a map of places and times when local home-grown food producers are going to share excess produce is a great idea for a map.

The Google Map of Languages

Verbix is an organisation aiming to promote and protect linguistic diversity. Their website includes a neat Where on Earth .. feature that allows you to view Google Maps of where hundreds of different languages are spoken.

The maps themselves are a very simple implementation of the Google Maps API, but then they don't really need to be any more complicated. Users simply choose the language that they are interested in from an alphabetised list and are taken to a Google Map showing all the countries where the language is spoken.

The map displays markers on each country where the language is spoken and also displays the total of all worldwide speakers of the language.

The LA Traffic Map

Commuterama is real-time traffic map for Los Angeles. Commuterama uses the Google Maps API to display the latest Los Angeles Fire Department reports, current road closures and Google's real-time traffic layer. 

The application also provides dedicated Google Maps for specific one-off events. For example Commuterama creates route maps for CicLAvia events. These maps show the event routes, points of interest along the route, nearby parking facilities, as well as the app's usual real-time traffic information.

Street View from the Burj Khalifa

You can now view Street View imagery from the world's tallest building the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. The Street View trekker actually boarded one of the building's maintenance units to capture breathtaking views from the 80th floor.

There are also Street View images captured from the world’s tallest observation deck on the 124th floor and some neck-aching views from the areas around the Burk Khalifa.

The World Bike Share API

CityBik.es may not be the first map of the world's bike share schemes (Oliver O'Brien's Bike Share Map has been mapping the world's bike schemes for a few years now), but I think it might be the first global API of bike schemes.

Like O'Brien's map CityBik.es allows users to select bike schemes in cities around the world and view bike stations and data about how many bikes and bike docks are currently available at each station. The CityBik.es API allows users to get a list of bike schemes and bike availability in JSON and HTML format.

The Portsmouth History Map

The Portsmouth History Picture Map is a really beautiful looking map of historical Portsmouth. The map includes an historical map overlay of the city from 1896, as well as historical photographs of the city.

I particularly like the custom map markers, combining circular historical photos with an accompanying text label. The map itself contains information about important historical locations in the city and some of the city's historically important citizens. It is also possible to view on the map over 200 vintage photographs that help to illustrate the history of Portsmouth.

The Google Maps of the Week

ShotHotspot is a great resource that helps both professional and amateur photographers find great locations to take photos.

The application uses data from sites like Flickr and Panoramio to analyse the most photogenic areas. ShotHotspot's Google Maps allows users to scout for locations around any location worldwide. It is possible to narrow down the area of search by drawing the area you are interested on the map. It is also possible to zoom in on a location and update the results shown by selecting the 'Search Visible Area'.

You can select any of the hotspots displayed on the map and preview the photo opportunities by viewing photographs of the location taken by other photographers which have been posted to Flickr or Panoramio.


The Mapdwell Solar System helps Cambridge, Massachusetts residents find out how much electricity can be produced from solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, how the financial investment will pay off and how much pollution will be reduced.

The map uses Google Maps satellite imagery overlaid with a layer that displays the solar irradiation that falls on each roof in the city. The map takes into account the shape of roofs and even predicts the amount of solar radiation down to every hour of the day.

Users can click on their house on the Google Map and receive an overview of their building's recommended system. System tabs allow users to view detailed information in four categories: money, investment, technical and environment. 


Race Shape has released a Google Map of 240,658 Strava bike rides worldwide. The Strava Global Ride Heatmap is therefore a great resource for cyclists to explore popular cycling routes near their location.

Race Shape also has some great tools for analysing Strava rides that can show you how a gap changes between two riders on the same ride. Using the tool a Strava user can compare their performance against other bike riders over the same ride and explore the segments where they may be under-performing compared to other bike riders.

The Maps of the Week - Part Two

Amsterdam Campus is an amazing 3d map of Amsterdam created to highlight Amsterdam's creative industry. The project was built using three.js and D3 and requires a modern browser that supports WebGL.

The map includes links to fly-to specific areas of the city that have clusters of creative companies. The map also includes a demo link that continuously repositions the camera randomly. 


The Country Shape Quiz has used D3 country shapefiles to create a little geography quiz. Players are presented with a series of country shapes and they have to correctly guess the country displayed.

The game is fiendishly difficult - at least it is for me.


The Neighborhoods Project is a really interesting attempt to crowdsource US neighborhood polygons. The Project uses location data from geotagged Flickr photos to provide neighborhood shapefiles for US towns and cities.

If you are unhappy with a neighborhood polygon you can edit the shape to your own satisfaction. User edits then feedback into the project to hopefully improve the neighborhood polygons. 

All About the MapBox

This week MapBox released a series of dot map visualisations of Twitter data. The maps explore every geotagged Tweet since September 2011 "revealing demographic, cultural, and social patterns down to city level detail, across the entire world."


My personal favorite visualisation is Mobile Devices, a dot map displaying the brand of phone used when people use an official Twitter application.

The map reveals a really interesting pattern across American cities that seems to suggest that the iPhone is more popular in higher socio-economic neighborhoods, while Android phones predominate in areas with lower socio-economic residents. In business neighborhoods the Blackberry seems to be the device of choice.  

Across the rest of the world there doesn't seem to be such a split in the economic level of Apple and Android device owners, while the Blackberry seems to be popular in business areas across the globe.


The Locals and Tourists map highlight areas of cities popular with locals and places where tourists visit. The map shows the locations of Tweets sent by locals (those who post in one city for one consecutive month) and tourists (whose tweets are centered in another city).

This map provides a fascinating insight into locations that are popular with tourists. For example, in this screenshot (above) of my neighborhood in London you can clearly make out the 2012 London Olympics stadium.


Languages of Twitter is a map that displays where different languages are used in Tweets. Different languages have been given a distinct color on the map. One obvious use for this map is to visualise areas with large immigrant communities.

LA Pollution on Google Maps

Vector Health is a Google Map that shows the sources of pollution in the Los Angeles area. There are in fact so many sources of pollution in LA that you might need to view this map in Chrome (this map is in need of a marker clustering system and will severely test most browsers).

Users of the map can view pollution sources by type (including airports, oil fields, refineries etc). It is also possible to view the locations of schools, hospitals and parks on the map if you want to find how close they are to a source of pollution.

Tag a Street View Today

Doodle Street View lets you take a virtual tour of the Boulevard Saint-Laurent in Montréal.

The application presents you with a side on view of one side of the Boulevard using Google Maps Street View. However these are Street View images which have been drawn on by other users of Doodle Street View.

You can scroll left and right to move down the street. At any point in your virtual stroll down the Boulevard you can actually draw on the Street View image yourself and leave your own virtual mark on the Boulevard Saint-Laurent.

Hat-tip: Google Street View World

The World's Most Popular Bike Rides

Race Shape has released a Google Map of 240,658 Strava bike rides worldwide. The Strava Global Ride Heatmap is therefore a great resource for cyclists to explore popular cycling routes near their location.

Race Shape also has some great tools for analysing Strava rides that can show you how a gap changes between two riders on the same ride. Using the tool a Strava user can compare their performance against other bike riders over the same ride and explore the segments where they may be under-performing compared to other bike riders.

The UK's Best Food on Google Maps

The Guardian newspaper has created some very interesting mapped visualisations over the last few years. However the newspaper is normally happy to let the data do the talking and doesn't often give their designers the opportunity to explore more aesthetically pleasing ways of presenting the data.

That isn't true for The Observer Food Monthly Awards Map. For once the designers have been allowed to tinker with the map style, to create custom map markers and create an impressive marker clustering solution. And the map is so much the better for it.

The Observer Food Monthly Awards Map shows the location of all the newspaper's previous monthly award winners, going back ten years. The map is therefore a great resource to find great food in the UK. The map even includes a time-line so users can filter the award winners by year.

Nothing is New in the New Aesthetic

iSkyTV is an interesting art project that uses Google Maps Street View to re-imagine Yoko Ono's 1966 video art work 'Sky TV' for the digital age.

Yoko Ono's original installation brought the outside space inside the art gallery by displaying a television set playing video of the sky. "In contrast, iSkyTV brings the interior space of the database outside and invites viewers to reflect on a world in which our natural resources and landscapes have been digitized, databased, copyrighted and archived".

In effect iSkyTV uses your location to present you with a nearby Street View image of the sky. It is the perfect app for the in demand developer who is too busy to actually go outside.

Hat-tip: Google Street View World

Find Photogenic Locations with Google Maps

ShotHotspot is a great resource that helps both professional and amateur photographers find great locations to take photos.

The application uses data from sites like Flickr and Panoramio to analyse the most photogenic areas. ShotHotspot's Google Maps allows users to scout for locations around any location worldwide. It is possible to narrow down the area of search by drawing the area you are interested on the map. It is also possible to zoom in on a location and update the results shown by selecting the 'Search Visible Area'.

You can select any of the hotspots displayed on the map and preview the photo opportunities by viewing photographs of the location taken by other photographers which have been posted to Flickr or Panoramio.

A la Carte Maps

A la Carte Maps create beautiful paper map guides to locations around the world. The guides are a combination of map, guidebook and art that provide information about cities from a local perspective.

If you want to know which cities you can buy an A la Carte Map for then you can check out their 'Destinations' map. The map uses Stamen's watercolor map tiles with the Google Maps API. If you select a city's marker on the map you can click through to view images from the city's map and, if you want to own it, you can place your order. 

Science Institutions on Google Maps

PlazaScience is a Spanish website that is trying to build a world map of scientific institutions. The project is being developed by Fundación madri + d and is funded by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

The map uses thumbnail photographs of each institution as the map markers. Users can click on the individual photographs to be taken to a dedicated page about the institution, where they can favourite and comment on the selected scientific institution.

Australian Renewable Energy on Google Maps

Act on Facts is an Australian Google Map designed to promote renewable energy and highlight renewable energy campaigns and projects.

Check out the information windows on this map. If you mouse-over a marker on the map a small window opens, displaying the title of the marker project. If you click on the marker the small window animates into a larger information window, which contains the full details about the project.

The Solar Panel Planning Map

The Mapdwell Solar System helps Cambridge, Massachusetts residents find out how much electricity can be produced from solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, how the financial investment will pay off and how much pollution will be reduced.

The map uses Google Maps satellite imagery overlaid with a layer that displays the solar irradiation that falls on each roof in the city. The map takes into account the shape of roofs and even predicts the amount of solar radiation down to every hour of the day.

Users can click on their house on the Google Map and receive an overview of their building's recommended system. System tabs allow users to view detailed information in four categories: money, investment, technical and environment.

Mapping New York's Citi Bike Scheme

My guess is that the most mapped data in the world over the last couple of months has been from New York's new Citi Bike scheme. Here's a little round-up of some of the maps created so far.


Let's start with the official Citi Bike Stations map. The Citi Bike Google Map shows the location of all the city's bike stations. If you select a station's map marker you can find out how many bikes are currently available and how many docking stations are free.

That's about it for this map, although the map does show planned bike stations, using yellow map markers. So you can at least see if a station is likely to open anywhere near you in the near future. 


The CASA Global Bike Share Map is one of the better bike share maps. The map (using OpenStreetMap map tiles) allows users to mouse-over bike stations and view how many bikes and empty docking spaces are available. The markers are also color-coded to show at a glance which stations are more empty and which are more full.

The Global Bike Share Map includes an interesting feature that allows the user to animate through the last few days of activity at each bike station. It is fascinating to watch the bike station activity pick-up and die down through rush hour periods and through the night.

The Global Bike Share Map has the added bonus that you can view the same visualisations for many other city bike sharing schemes around the world.


The WNYC Bike Share Map doesn't do anything amazing. You can click on each station's marker and view how many bikes and how many empty docks are available. However I have to include it here because it uses the Google Maps API new map style - so it does look beautifully clean and fresh.

The Atlantic Wire has a near real-time Google Map that updates with the latest activity at all the city's bike stations. A few times a minute, the map checks the Citibike database and drops a marker on the map where there has been some activity.

Messages are also added below the map that report which stations have just seen a bike returned or borrowed. 


If you want to join the biking crowd then you should check out this map of routes and tips to cycling in New York.

The New York Times' Your Biking Wisdom in Ten Words is a handy reader's guide to biking in the Big Apple. The map includes readers' tips on good and bad biking locations and a number of popular cycling routes, care of Strava users.

If all these Citi Bike maps have got you inspired you should get along to the City Bike Civic Hack Night on Wednesday June 26th. You should also check-out Citi Bike Stats, which has a lot of interesting graphs and charts using data from the Citi Bike scheme. There are no maps but there is a lot of lovely data.