The Google Maps of the Week

The Saturday on Strava Heatmap is a visualisation of one day's sporting activity tracked by users of the Strava application.

The map shows 4,890,000 miles of bike rides and runs completed on Saturday July 20th around the world. The map includes options to adjust the data shown by time of day and to view either bike rides or runs.

The time selection control reveals some interesting data. For example in the UK, the 'Dunwich Dynamo', an annual night time ride from London to Dunwich, stands out when you view the map during night-time hours. In Tucson, AZ you can also see the early riders of the 'Shoot Out' leaving in the early hours of the morning.


Bikesy is a great bike routing application that can help you find the flattest, safest or fastest routes anywhere in the San Francisco Bay Area.

San Francisco is hilly, very hilly. Bikesy, however, can help you find a bike route that avoids the steepest climbs. Each route comes with an elevation profile for your ride, so you can tell in advance where and when you will have to face the toughest hills on your ride.

For each request Bikesy suggests nine different routes. You can choose from the flattest route, a route that takes in reasonable climbs or routes that take in the steepest hills. You can also choose the 'safe', safer' or 'safest' route, which takes into account bike lanes and paths. 


Regular readers of Google Maps Mania may remember A Ship Adrift, an art project by James Bridle that was situated on the roof of the South Bank Centre in the middle of London last year.

James now has a similar project running at London's Barbican Centre from the 7th to the 31st of August, 2013. 'Unmoored' is a virtual airship that is currently flying in the skies over the south of England. A weather station on the roof of the Barbican continually records the wind speed and direction, and uses this to 'drive' the virtual airship on its journey.

You can follow the airship on its own Google Map as it makes its virtual journey (currently heading towards France). You can also get a first person view from the cockpit of the airship in the Unmoored Google Earth Window.