The Maps of the Week

You have probably seen Hint.fm's beautiful Wind Map of the United States. You may also have seen the Tokyo Wind Map, a similar animated map of real-time wind speeds and direction in and around Tokyo.

The developers behind the Tokyo Wind Map have now created an even more impressive visualization of near real-time global weather conditions. Like Hint.fm and the Tokyo Wind Map, Earth uses D3.js to create an interactive map that displays wind speeds in near real-time, only this time the map is a gorgeous 3d globe.


I'm a sucker for real-time animated maps, so London on Trend was almost certain to feature in this week's Maps of the Week. London on Trend perfectly captures the pace of city life in the English capital through a live real-time Google Map of photos submitted to Instagram in London.

As soon as you enter London on Trend Instagram photos begin dropping on a Google Map of London. You can then just sit back and watch as new photos are continuously added to the map as Londoners submit photos to Instagram.


The title of most shared map of the week most go to Empire.is. The United States has well over 700 military bases across the planet with official facilities in at least 37 countries. Empire.is is a map showing the location of United States military installations, not only in the US but around the world.

As well as mapping known United States military installations Empire.es also provides aerial imagery of a large number of the bases, sourced from Google and Bing Maps.

The data for the military locations is from the 2013 Base Structure Report and from sites reported by journalists and geographers. The author of the map says that there are still many military bases missing from the map.