The Meaning Behind Our Place Names

Have you ever walked down a street and wondered where its name came from? Was it named after a historical figure, a local landmark, or an ancient word lost to time? The Open Etymology Map helps answer these questions by uncovering the stories behind place names - using data from OpenStreetMap and Wikidata.

🏷 The Etymology Tag in OpenStreetMap

The OpenStreetMap (OSM) project includes an 'etymology' tag that allows users to specify the origin or meaning of a place name. There’s also a related tag, 'etymology:wikidata', which links a feature’s name to a specific Wikidata entity. These tags are used by the Open Etymology Map to reveal the origins of local place names.

🗺 What Is the Open Etymology Map?

The Open Etymology Map is an interactive tool that showcases place names tagged with etymology data in OpenStreetMap. Using the map, you can zoom into any area and view features - streets, neighborhoods, towns - that have an etymology tag. You can then click on any of the highlighted features to learn more about where its name comes from.

For example, in London, if you click on Trafalgar Square, you’ll see a link to the Wikipedia entry for the Battle of Trafalgar, offering insight into the origins of one of the city's most iconic names.

The Open Etymology Map provides a fascinating, crowdsourced window into the history of our streets, offering a glimpse into the meanings behind the names we often take for granted. 

Unfortunately, the etymology tag is still rarely used in OpenStreetMap, which means there are currently large gaps in the Open Etymology Map’s coverage. The good news? You can help fill in those gaps. To contribute, simply research the origins of place names in your neighborhood and add an etymology tag to OpenStreetMap using an OSM editor like  iD.

The Anti-MAGA Protest Mapper

The Protest Mapper is a digital mapping tool designed to help journalists and community members contextualize local protests by visualizing them alongside broader regional or national trends. Using the tool, anyone can quickly create an embeddable, interactive map that displays all local protests occurring within a defined time period.

Created by Rahul Bhargava, a journalism professor at Northeastern University, this tool serves as a practical resource for embedding updated, interactive protest maps into news stories, blog posts, and community websites.

What It Is

Protest Mapper is a free, embeddable, browser-based tool that allows users to generate maps of recent protests within customizable geographic ranges (from 5 to 100 miles). The tool relies on two well-respected data sources: the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), which updates weekly, and the Crowd Counting Consortium (CCC), updated monthly. Users can choose between these datasets when generating their maps. Each protest event is marked by a pin that, when clicked, reveals a short summary of the demonstration.

How It Works

The Protest Mapper is designed to be simple and journalist-friendly and modeled after the workflow used in the popular DataWrapper. Users can input a location and select a time range to generate a map of protests, which is then exportable as either an embeddable iframe or a static image (.png). The map itself is lightweight - built with Svelte and hosted on GitHub Pages to keep it sustainable and low-cost. 

A Panorama of Victorian London

The city of London has inspired many beautiful panoramic maps over the centuries, each lovingly crafted by talented artists. Interestingly, these panoramas almost always share a common perspective - north from the south side of the River Thames. This same viewpoint is used in Frederick James Smyth’s 1844 Panorama of London.

Exeter University’s Digital Humanities Lab has created an interactive guided tour of Smyth’s Panorama of London. Using Knight Lab’s StoryMap.js platform, the project offers a rich, navigable journey through 19th-century London as captured in one of the era’s most visually striking urban illustrations.

Originally commissioned by the Illustrated London News and first published in 1845, Smyth’s panorama is a remarkable feat of Victorian printmaking. Stretching over eight feet in length, it presents a detailed bird’s-eye view of the city from a south-of-the-Thames vantage point.

Exeter University’s story-map guides viewers through some of 1844 London’s most prominent landmarks. These include long-lost sites such as Millbank Penitentiary (where convicts were held before deportation to Australia) and the Hungerford Suspension Bridge. It also features familiar icons that remain central to the city today, including St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament, and Buckingham Palace, to name just a few.

More vintage panoramas of London:

1543 - The Wyngaerde Panorama
1616 - Claes Jansz Visscher's Panorama (1848 copy)
1829 - View of London from the Adelphi

Europe in Drought

Spring 2025 has been exceptionally dry in Europe, with nearly every country affected by drought. To help monitor the increasing threat of drought due to global heating, the European Environment Agency (EEA) has launched a new interactive drought map. Updated monthly, the tool provides near real-time insights into drought conditions across the EEA’s 38 member and cooperating countries.

The Drought Conditions Map currently shows that around 38% of the mapped area experienced drought between 11–20 April 2025. It highlights severe impacts across much of northern and eastern Europe during April. An accompanying pie chart reveals that 15% of European cropland was exposed to drought in the same period.

The map features multiple data layers, allowing users to track drought effects across different ecosystem types, including cropland, grassland, heathland, wetland, and urban areas in the 38 countries covered.

The European Drought Observatory (EDO) map includes the UK in its assessment of European drought conditions, where extremely dry weather is also being observed. The latest data reflects conditions from the last ten days of April 2025.

Currently, 31.3% of the monitored area is under ‘Warning’ status. The EDO cautions that if these conditions continue, impacts on vegetation are likely to become apparent in the coming months. Many European rivers are already reporting abnormally low water levels, raising concerns for ecosystems and water supplies.

Mapping Your Future Climate Risks

The Natural Hazards Index Map, developed by climate experts at Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, is a new interactive map that visualizes how and where climate change is increasing risks from natural disasters across the U.S.

What Hazards Does It Show?

The map focuses on 14 different types of natural hazards, with a special focus on those getting worse due to climate change. Some of the main ones include:

• Wildfires
  Example: San Diego and Yakima County in Washington are expected to see a much higher risk of wildfires. Even areas like the Dakotas, which don’t see many fires today, may see more in the future.

• Tornadoes
  Tornado activity is shifting eastward, away from the traditional Tornado Alley and toward the East Coast.

• Flooding and Sea Level Rise
  As some areas receive more rainfall, the flood risk will rise, especially in places like Louisiana.

• Extreme Heat, Hurricanes, and Tropical Storms
  These threats are also expected to worsen as global temperatures climb.

Unlike traditional hazard maps, this tool doesn’t just display current risks, it forecasts future changes, helping agencies and policymakers plan long-term resilience strategies. The platform also includes a resources page with links to preparedness guides, making it a practical tool for community safety planning.

The 2024 Sea-Level Rise Map

The 2024 U.S. Sea Level Report Cards from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) reveal that Gulf Coast states, particularly Louisiana and Texas, continue to experience some of the fastest rates of sea-level rise in the country.

Published annually, the VIMS sea-level report uses observed tide gauge data to track sea-level trends across the United States and project future changes based on this long-term record. This year’s edition debuts a sleek, user-friendly interactive map that compiles data from 35 coastal communities, offering localized insights and projections through 2050.

A key finding in this year’s report is the accelerated sea-level rise now being observed in the southeastern U.S., including Georgia and South Carolina. Along the East Coast, sea levels are rising steadily, driven in part by meltwater redistribution from the Greenland ice sheet. Meanwhile, much of the West Coast has shown unexpected stability, defying earlier predictions.

The VIMS dashboard is grounded in over 55 years of tide-gauge measurements from locations stretching from Alaska to Florida. This long-term dataset allows for precise tracking of both historical trends and accelerating rates of sea-level change at each site.

Each report card includes monthly sea level averages, notes short-term anomalies like storm surges, and incorporates longer-term climate influences such as El Niño. Importantly, the projections factor in observed acceleration and compare future water levels under both linear and accelerating scenarios, providing a range of possibilities within a 95% confidence interval to aid coastal planning and risk management. 

You can explore sea-level rise projections for other countries (as well as additional regions within the United States) using the Climate Change Sea-Level Map. Climate Risk’s Coastal Risk Map also lets you assess your flood risk based on projected sea-level rise, coastal flooding, elevation, and specific timeframes. By sharing your location with the map, you can view potential flood risks for different years and sea-level scenarios.

The W3W Cryptic GeoGuessing Game

Pin the Tale

Pin the Tale is an interactive storytelling game that uses the What3Words geolocation system as its foundation. Webcurios describes Pin the Tale as “a combination of cryptic crosswords and Geoguessr,” while the creators themselves call it a "treasure hunt."

For those unfamiliar, What3Words is a geolocation addressing system that divides the entire world into a grid of 3 meter by 3 meter squares, assigning each square a unique combination of three random words. Pin the Tale uses these three words as prompts for location-based stories. From these stories, other players must try to work out the exact 3x3 meter square being described, using the clues embedded in the story.

🎮 How to Play Pin the Tale

1. Explore the Map 

• Open the Pin the Tale map. 
• Zoom into any location to view stories that users have submitted. 
• Each story corresponds to a unique 3-word address (a specific 3x3m square). 

2. Read & Discover Stories 

• Click on a story to read it. 
• Try to figure out the exact location it’s describing. 
• Once you think you know the spot, enter the corresponding What3Words address in the answer box to see if you’re correct. 
• Think of it as a geographical treasure hunt. 

3. Create Your Own Story 

• Choose a location on the map. 
• Look up its What3Words address (for example, ///apple.tiger.chair). 
• Write a short story inspired by that place, incorporating those three words into the story. 
• Submit it for others to discover and solve. 

Pin the Tale is far more difficult to describe than it is to play. My advice is to just dive in, search for your nearest clues, and try to see if you can solve them.

The Marine Migration Map

tracked migrations of the Green Turtle

Migratory Connectivity in the Ocean (MiCO) is an interactive map visualizing the global migrations of more than 100 species of birds, mammals, turtles and fish. The aim of the map is to bring together knowledge about the migratory routes and connected habitats of marine species, such as marine mammals, seabirds, sea turtles, and fish, in order to help support global conservation efforts.

The MiCO map was compiled by synthesizing decades of animal movement data from over 1,300 scientific studies published between 1990 and 2017. To create the map researchers compiled satellite tracking data from 109 migratory marine species, including seabirds, whales, sea turtles, and fish, collected through animal-borne tags that record and transmit migration routes. These tracking studies, conducted by universities, government agencies, and conservation organizations, have now been aggregated, standardized, and mapped to show key habitats and migratory pathways. 

By bringing together data from over 100 species and 100 studies, MiCO highlights critical corridors and habitats that multiple migratory animals rely on, helping policymakers and conservationists prioritize protection in key areas, especially in international waters where governance is fragmented. It is hoped that MiCO can help foster cross-jurisdictional collaboration, support data-driven policy decisions, and help prioritize conservation actions in both national waters and international seas, where migratory species are most vulnerable yet least protected.

Explore more migratory journey maps through the animal tracking tag

No News is Bad News

Over 200 counties across the United States now lack a single source of local news. Another 1,500 have only one. As a result, more than 50 million Americans live in what researchers call “news deserts”, areas with little to no access to reliable local reporting.

A new interactive map, developed by the Medill Local News Initiative, provides the most detailed view yet of this crisis. Their Local News Barometer and Watch List, updated in 2025 with new demographic and media data, serves as both a diagnostic tool and a forecast, helping journalists, lawmakers, funders, and citizens understand where local news is dying, and where it might disappear next.

The map includes a Local News Watchlist - a collection of counties identified as having more than a 40% chance of becoming news deserts within the next five years. The latest version, highlights 249 such counties. These at-risk areas are not just underserved - they are, on average, poorer, older, and less educated than even existing news deserts. If you select a state from the map sidebar then the Watchlist will update to show all the counties in the selected state in the most danger of becoming news deserts.

The map’s most sobering takeaway is that America is increasingly becoming two nations when it comes to local news: one with abundant access in affluent, urbanized regions, and another without. The consequences are profound. Research shows that communities without local news experience lower civic engagement, less voter participation, and weaker accountability in public institutions.

Serendipitous Street View Fun

Internet Roadtrip

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time virtually exploring cities around the world, guided by StreetWhip's impressive AI technology. Today's serendipitous Street View adventure, however, has been powered by the delightful Internet Roadtrip.

Internet Roadtrip is the latest engaging project from the always entertaining Neal.fun. It takes you on a drive through Google Street View—but with a twist. On this drive, it's the wisdom of the crowd that determines the route. Every ten seconds, Internet Roadtrip presents users with a choice. If we're at a junction, the options might be to turn left, turn right, or go straight ahead. The direction we take is then decided by the votes of the hundreds of people currently playing.

Sometimes, you're not at a junction. In those moments, the voting options might include continuing forward, changing the radio station, or turning the radio off entirely. A small mini-map insert tracks the journey so far, as guided by the crowd’s collective decisions.

When I first played the game yesterday, Internet Roadtrip was meandering through Boston. Today, it's in Norwood, Massachusetts. According to Google Maps, that’s about 23 miles as the crow flies. But with the circuitous route enforced by the crowd’s decisions, I’m sure the actual journey has covered many, many more miles.

A Guided Street View Tour of the World

StreetWhip

If you've ever lost an hour (or five) wandering the globe via Google Street View, you’re not alone. There’s something uniquely thrilling about virtually dropping into a faraway town and soaking in the details — the architecture, the people, the colors of everyday life. But what if you could do more than just look? What if you had a knowledgeable, curious local guide whispering in your ear, telling you what you're seeing and why it matters?

Welcome to StreetWhip — a wildly addictive mashup of Google Street View and artificial intelligence that turns virtual wandering into a rich, immersive learning experience. Think of it as a reverse Geoguessr: instead of guessing where you are, StreetWhip tells you where you are, what you’re seeing, and the deeper stories behind it all.

Not Just a Street — A Story

Let’s say you’re standing on a bridge over the Dijver canal in Bruges. To the untrained eye, it’s a scenic view with charming brick buildings lining the water. But click on a StreetWhip link, and suddenly you’re informed:

"That’s the Old St. John’s Hospital, one of the oldest surviving hospital buildings in Europe. Notice the row of smaller arched windows near the bottom? Those illuminated the original wards."

It’s like turning on an X-ray vision for cultural and historical insight. StreetWhip identifies buildings, styles, historical relevance, and even hidden quirks in the environment — all powered by AI that acts like your personal tour guide. It brings a layer of meaning to what would otherwise just be “some random street.”

Why StreetWhip Is So Addictive

What makes StreetWhip so brilliant is that it taps into something deeply human: curiosity. You’re not being led through a pre-designed museum exhibit — you’re exploring, poking around unfamiliar neighborhoods in Japan, Uruguay, or Morocco and then being rewarded with tidbits of local culture, architectural nuance, and historical backstory.

Google Maps Needs Street Whip

StreetWhip is so informative and useful that Google should seriously consider implementing something like it directly into Google Maps. I still fondly remember the Wikipedia layer that unfortunately Google removed back in 2013. StreetWhip feels like its spiritual successor: a smart, engaging map companion for those of us who love learning about the world.

Google Talking Tours

Google has actually taken some tentative steps toward implementing an AI travel guide for Street View. Google Talking Tours, a collaboration between the Google Arts & Culture Lab and artist-in-residence Gaël Hugo, is an experimental project that leverages generative audio and Google’s Gemini AI to provide dynamic, location-specific insights about cultural landmarks featured in Street View.

However, unlike StreetWhip, Talking Tours is limited to just 55 major landmarks around the world. It offers an AI-generated audio guide that delivers insights based on the visual content of Street View panoramas. Users can explore a 360-degree view of a site, take a snapshot, and receive detailed commentary from the AI. Additionally, there's an “Ask a Question” button that generates three contextual questions about the location, enhancing interactivity and personalized learning.

Google Talking Tours is a promising start, but it barely scratches the surface of what’s possible. Taking inspiration from StreetWhip — with its deep contextual insights, spontaneous street-level discovery, and playful interactivity — Google could use its Gemini AI to transform Google Maps' vast Street View archive into something far richer: not just a map, but a living, breathing encyclopedia of the world.

The World's Terrorist Hotpots

Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger all rank among the top five countries most impacted by terrorism (Pakistan and Syria are the other two). In fact, the Sahel region of Africa has become the epicenter of global terrorism, accounting for over half of all terrorism-related deaths worldwide. Notably, only seven Western countries appear in the top 50 most affected.

You can explore the full rankings on Vision of Humanity’s Global Terrorism Index. Their interactive map highlights the degree to which each country is impacted by terrorism, with the most affected nations shown in red.

The Global Terrorism Index (GTI) is an annual report that measures the impact of terrorism across 163 countries, representing 99.7% of the global population. Developed by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP), the GTI draws from data sources including Terrorism Tracker to produce a composite score for each nation. This score, which ranges from 0 (no impact) to 10 (maximum impact), reflects factors such as the number of terrorist incidents, fatalities, injuries, and property damage in a given year. 

In 2023 the United States experienced a 15-year low in total attacks. However despite this overall drop there has been a sharp 200% rise in anti-semitic attacks. The US also accounted for 76% of terrorism-related deaths in Western democracies.

Kangaroos Don't Vote - People Do

If ever an election needed a cartogram map, it was the 2025 Australian federal election.

If you were to view The Australian’s Electorate Map - 2025, you could be forgiven for thinking the Liberals had cruised to a landslide victory. This traditional cartogram election map is visually dominated by the blue of the Liberal Party. It also appears as if the Labor Party (shown using salmon pink) made only a few modest gains in the Northern Territory, Tasmania, and a handful of electorates in the southeast of the country.

It just goes to confirm the well-worn cliché: "kangaroos don't vote — people do."

The Guardian’s "Exaggerated" view does a slightly better job of visually representing the large number of urban seats won by Labor in this election. Their Australian election results 2025 map map allows users to toggle between a traditional geographical view and an exaggerated one, in which "smaller electorates are increased in size for visibility."

However, even The Guardian’s exaggerated view still falls short of clearly conveying the full story of the 2025 election - with 82% of the results called, Labor holds 82 seats compared to just 32 for the L/NP Coalition.

ABC News’ Live: Maps show swing to Labor, crash in Coalition vote does an excellent job of illustrating the massive swing to Labor in this election compared to 2022. Using a series of swing arrow maps, ABC visualizes the changes in vote share since the previous election in both the two-party-preferred vote and the primary vote. The screenshot above shows "the change in the two-candidate-preferred vote in each electorate." As you can see, there are far more red arrows — representing a swing towards Labor — than blue arrows — which indicate a swing towards the Coalition.

The Democracy Sausage Map

The 2025 Australian federal election will be held tomorrow, 3 May 2025. One of the most iconic and uniquely Australian traditions on election day is the “democracy sausage.” As voters head to the polls to cast their ballots, many are greeted by the smell of sizzling sausages at local polling places, where community groups and schools run sausage sizzles as fundraisers.

The Democracy Sausage Map is a crowd-powered tool that helps hungry voters find out exactly where they can score a snag (and sometimes cake!) while casting their vote. The map is powered by self-described “crowdsauce” data collected from social media, polling booths, and tip-offs from the great Aussie public.

The map uses different icons to show what’s on offer at each sausage sizzle stall. These include markers for sausages, cakes, vegetarian options, coffee, bacon and egg rolls, and halal choices. When zoomed out, a polling booth may not display the full range of available fare — but zooming in on your local neighbourhood should reveal the full menu.

Drinking & Eating in the Sun

Sunseekr

London is actually having one of its rare weeks in the sun so I have been using Sunseekr to help me find cafes and pubs which are in the sun.

SunSeekr is an interactive map with a sunny twist. The map helps users locate cafés and pubs currently bathed in sunlight, so you can sip your espresso or enjoy your pint while enjoying some rays. What makes Sunseekr shine (pun intended) is the clever integration of real-time sun and shadow simulation with a database of local venues, that allows you to instantly see which cafés and pubs are currently bathed in sunlight and which are in the shade.

SunSeekr uses terrain and building data to calculate where light actually falls at any given moment — not just based on general weather or time of day, but down to the angles and obstructions that might block the sun. The map even comes with a time control so you can plan which cafés and pubs to visit later. 

From a technical perspective, Sunseekr is impressive under the hood. It leverages Mapbox for interactive, global-scale mapping, and layers on tools like Turf.js and a shadow simulation plugin to bring the sun's position into focus in a hyperlocal, real-time way. 

JveuxDuSoleil 

Sunseekr is not an entirely original concept. JveuxDuSoleil is an amazing French interactive map (that has been around for a number of years) which also simulates the location of shadows. If you are looking for the perfect spot to catch a little sun (or escape from the sun) then you can open up JveauDuSoleil and quickly discover which areas will be shaded at any time of the day. In a number of French cities JveuxDuSoleil also shows the locations of restaurants with outdoor terraces — just what you need to find the perfect al fresco dining spot.

Shade Map

Shade Map is an interactive map which allows you to view the location of shadows from the sun throughout the day. Search for any location in the world on Shade Map and the application will show you which local areas are currently in shade. 

At the bottom of the map is a timeline control which allows you to view shadow locations for any time of the day. Drag this time slider back and forth and the map will automatically update to show how the shadows move during the course of the day. If you click on the date then the time control will switch to show months instead of hours of the day. Now you can use the time control to show where shade will fall during the different months of the year. Just click on the time to switch back to showing the hours of the day.

Shadowmap

Shadowmap is another interactive 3D map which allows you to view the location of building shadows around the world for any time of day and on any day of the year. 

Shadowmap not only shows you the shadows that will be cast by nearby buildings at any precise moment it also includes an interactive sun ray overlay. This overlay shows you the exact direction of the sun's rays — so you can see for yourself where the sun will be in the sky at any moment of the day.

Mapping the Sudanese Civil War

Two years into Sudan’s civil war, the country remains gripped by a humanitarian catastrophe and a relentless power struggle that has devastated lives and reshaped its landscape. What began on April 15, 2023, as a clash between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has since escalated into a nationwide conflict. With over 14 million people displaced and tens of thousands killed, Sudan now faces one of the world's most severe displacement crises.

Al Jazeera has published an interactive animated map to visualize the tragic scale of the conflict between April 2023 and March 2025. This map, created using data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) project, plots more than 11,000 recorded attacks across Sudan’s 18 states. What makes the map especially compelling is its temporal animation: showing the conflict unfold over time, attack by attack, with color-coded markers identifying the perpetrators - SAF, RSF, or other groups such as local militias and rebel movements.

The animation captures not just the quantity of violence, but its geographic concentration. Nearly three-quarters of all attacks occurred in Khartoum, Gezira, and North Darfur. Khartoum, the capital, emerges as the epicenter with over 5,500 attacks - an almost unimaginable transformation of an urban capital into a prolonged battlefield. Viewers can see the shift in the conflict over time, such as the rise in violence in Gezira following RSF incursions or the targeted assaults on displacement camps in North Darfur.

What stands out is the map’s ability to make an overwhelming dataset accessible. Color-coded pins differentiate between army strikes, RSF actions, and those of unaffiliated groups, while the gradual build-up of violence reveals critical inflection points - such as the peak in August 2023, and renewed escalations in early 2024. The result is a tool that is both informative and unsettling, allowing users to trace patterns of brutality, understand regional dynamics, and grasp the persistence of violence despite shifting frontlines.

2025 Canadian Election Maps

The Liberal Party, led by Mark Carney, has won the Canadian election but may fall just short of securing enough seats to form a majority government. Even if it falls short, it will still be seen as a massive victory for the incumbent party.

Just a few months ago, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives were riding high in the polls and seemed poised to return to power. That momentum shifted dramatically after U.S. President Donald Trump launched a new trade war and called for Canada to become an American state. The remarks appeared to have an immediate impact on Canadian voters, many of whom turned away from the Conservatives, whose policies are most closely aligned with Trump's Republican Party.

The Toronto Star's Live Federal Election Map provides real-time results from all 343 ridings. Readers can click on any riding or use the search box to view detailed voting breakdowns, including the number and percentage of votes cast for each candidate and the winner in each seat.

The Globe and Mail's 2025 Election Map is very similar, allowing readers to search for ridings by name or click directly on the map to view the votes cast for each candidate. French speakers can view a very similar election map on TVA Nouvelles Fédérales 2025.

19th Century Street View of Chicago

Imagine stepping straight into the heart of history - and finding yourself surrounded by the wonders of 1893. The Chicago 00 Project makes it possible, weaving authentic vintage photographs of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago into a breathtaking, time-traveling Street View adventure!

For example, click on the White City Court of Honor map marker, and you are transported into the historical Street View scene above. Before you stretches the Grand Basin, upon which a gondolier in traditional dress floats gracefully by. Across the water, you can see the soaring golden dome of the Administration Building. To one side, the intricate colonnades of the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building extend in stately rhythm, while on the other, the elegant Agricultural Building showcases its own classical grandeur.

Elsewhere on the map, you can find a bird’s-eye panoramic Street View of the entire Exposition grounds. Zoom in on the Midway Plaisance, and you can step into a whole series of vintage Street View scenes captured along the exposition’s central thoroughfare - including some breathtaking imagery taken from the towering Ferris Wheel.

Introducing Smart Maps

SmartMap

In the past two years, we’ve witnessed remarkable advancements in AI-powered mapping technologies. One of the most transformative innovations is the integration of natural language processing into interactive maps, enabling users to perform spatial searches using everyday language. This shift is revolutionizing how users interact with geographic data - not just by simplifying search, but by making maps more intuitive, responsive, and personalized. Whether it's finding “quiet coffee shops with outdoor seating near a park” or exploring complex multi-criteria routes, AI is turning static maps into dynamic, intelligent assistants.

One of the most compelling examples of this new wave of AI-enhanced mapping is SmartMap - a tool designed to let users ask open-ended, natural language questions directly on a map interface. Instead of typing rigid keywords or toggling filters, you can ask things like “Where can I find coworking cafes with power sockets and Wi-Fi in Manhattan?” or “What restaurants in London have the best view of the Thames?” The results appear instantly as interactive pins on a live map. Users can also plot historical or thematic journeys - “Train stops along the original Orient Express route” or “Places Alexandra David-Néel visited on her way to Lhasa” - transforming what used to be hours of manual research into a visual, intuitive experience.

Originally created to solve the developer’s own travel and research frustrations, SmartMap opens up a powerful new way of engaging with geography, culture, and history. While the system is still being refined - occasionally producing vague or duplicate results - ongoing improvements in prompt design and structured data integration will help push it toward greater precision.

Find Your Birthday Tree

Every year, the city of San Francisco plants a tree to celebrate my birth. Well, not just one - each year, it plants several. So far, the city has planted 455 trees on my birthday. And now, thanks to the thoughtful residents of San Francisco, there’s an interactive map that shows the exact locations of all my birthday trees.

If you’re curious, you can view the locations of all my birthday trees on the Birthday Trees map. Just enter the date of my birth, and the map will highlight every tree in the city planted on that date (if you're more interested in your own birthday trees, simply enter your own birth date instead). 

The Birthday Trees interactive map is a creative celebration of San Francisco's evolving urban forest. Designed to connect people more personally with their city's greenery, the map allows residents and visitors to discover which trees were planted on their birthday. By transforming a vast municipal database of the city's trees into a playful, personalized experience, the project hopes to create a closer connection for residents with the living, growing city around them.

Beyond its novelty, the map underscores a deeper message about environmental stewardship and community. Trees are vital for clean air, cooler neighborhoods, and climate resilience. By connecting the city's trees with our personal birthdays, the map brings those trees into our personal narratives - making it easier to see the urban forestry not just as a pretty background, but as a shared story worth celebrating.

Snakes on a Plane(t)

Last year, I created Map Snake - a playful adaptation of the classic computer game. The concept was simple: maneuver an ever-growing snake around a map of cities while avoiding collisions with your own tail.

Well, now Engaging Data has released their own take, called Snake on a Globe. And let me be clear: I’m not annoyed that they stole my idea - I’m annoyed that they made it better. And a lot more fun.

Snake on a Globe

In Snake on a Globe, the game expands to a spherical Earth and includes the largest cities in the world, turning your Snake adventure into a true test of geographical knowledge. Your mission? Navigate from city to city, gobbling up apples as you go. But there's a twist - movement is restricted to lines of longitude and latitude, and the Earth is round. That means you can move east, west, and even over the poles.

The game calculates the minimum number of steps it should take to reach each apple. If you exceed that number, your score begins to decline—and it turns red to remind you.

Behind the Scenes

The game is built using Three.js and Three Globe, powerful JavaScript libraries that render the globe in full 3D. The list of cities - and their populations - comes from Simplemaps, giving the game a real-world data backbone. 

Some Musical Maps in Motion

Elevation Music

Everybody hates elevator music but everyone will love Elevation Music.

Elevation Music is an interactive map in which the elevation data is styled based on the intensity of an accompanying music track. It is a dancing map!

If you want to know how Elevation Music works the author's blog post explains: 

'This demo uses Mapbox GL JS raster-color-value and other raster-* paint properties to alter the colors on the map by elevation, based on the intensity of the music. Turn sound on and click the play button to start the experience.'

The blog post also reveals that the song used by the map is actually called 'Elevation'.

Ohio is a Piano

Inside every cartographer, there’s a musician trying to get out - or at least it seems that way, judging by the number of musical maps.

Take, for example, the ever-popular Ohio is a Piano. Andy Woodruff’s map turns Ohio’s 88 counties into the 88 keys of a piano, meaning you can literally play the map like an instrument. You can even listen to it perform a version of Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer.

MTA.me

Transit maps can be instruments too. For example MTA.me Conductor transforms Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 New York subway map into a real-time string instrument. It visualizes subway trains moving across the network - and plays a note every time one train crosses paths with another.

Fire up the map and just sit back as a New York subway symphony is composed and performed in real time. You can even join the composition by plucking the trails created by individual trains.

Sing to Me

Mapbox's Animate 3D buildings based on ambient sounds is another dancing map - but this time, it’s the buildings that groove. Instead of elevation data being influenced by music, this map makes 3D buildings respond to sound.

According to Mapbox:

"It uses runtime styling with the Web Audio API to create a map where the 3D buildings dynamically change height to the rhythm of your ambient environment, giving the appearance of dancing."

In layman’s terms? The buildings on this map will dance when you sing to them!

The Walk Management System

🥾 The Walk Management System: 

I’ve decided to walk the length of the Jubilee Line on the London Underground. But before setting off, I figured I needed a WMS (Walk Management System) to help plan and document each stage of this epic hike.

With a little help from ChatGPT and MapLibre GL, I’ve built a lightweight web app that lets me create, edit, and view walking routes - complete with custom markers, images, and notes.

Let’s break it down:

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✏️ The Editor – edit.html

At the heart of the system is the walk editor page, edit.html. This is an interactive map that can be used to design walking routes and annotate them with rich, location-based information.

🔧 Key Features:

• Draw Routes (Polylines): Click on the map to draw consecutive points that form a walking route. Each route can be named for better organization.

• Add Markers with Images & Text: Drop a marker anywhere and attach an image URL and descriptive text to it - ideal for pointing out landmarks, rest stops, or scenic viewpoints.

• Load Existing Walks: Import previously saved GeoJSON walk files directly into the map for editing or review.

• Save as GeoJSON: Export your custom walk—complete with routes and markers—as a .geojson file for easy sharing or later use.

🧠 How It Works:

• Draw Mode: Click "Draw Route", enter a route name, then click on the map to create the route point-by-point. Each segment is drawn in real-time.

• Marker Mode: Click "Add Marker" to drop custom pins. You can attach an image and a short note that pops up when the marker is clicked.

• GeoJSON-Based: All route and marker data is saved in standard GeoJSON format, making it easy to reuse in other mapping tools.

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👀 The Viewer – view.html

Once your walk is saved, the view.html page becomes your user-friendly presentation map. Visitors can explore your routes visually, view markers, and even get a summary of total distance and estimated walking time.

🌍 Viewer Highlights:

• Auto-load Walks: Display any saved walk by specifying its file (e.g., walk1.geojson) in the URL or file input.

• Interactive Map: All drawn routes and markers from the GeoJSON are rendered beautifully with MapLibre GL.

• Walk Summary Panel: Automatically calculates and shows:

  • 📏 Total Distance Walked

  • ⏱️ Estimated Walking Time

• Responsive and Clean UI: The walk summary is neatly styled for clarity and blends into the overall map layout.

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🧹 How It All Fits Together

1. Use edit.html to create or modify a walk.

2. Click "Save Walk" to generate a .geojson file.

3. Open view.html to display that file and interact with the walk.

This separation of concerns means you get both powerful walk editing and a polished public-facing viewer - no backend or database required.

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🛠️ Under the Hood

• MapLibre GL powers the interactive maps.

• GeoJSON is used for route and marker data storage.

• Client-side JavaScript handles all logic - no server needed.

• Marker Popups include custom HTML, so you can embed images and rich text descriptions.

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🚀 Ready to Explore?

You can clone the entire WMS (Walk Management System) package from its Glitch page. Once cloned, simply upload any images you want to use into the Assets folder, then copy and paste their URLs into the edit.html interface.

By default, view.html is set up to map data from walk1.geojson, which is saved in the /public folder. You can easily modify view.html to work with any GeoJSON file stored in that folder. Once your custom file is working in view.html, you can edit it using the edit.html interface.

For example, after completing another stage of my Jubilee Line walk, I can upload walk1.geojson into edit.html, draw in the newly completed route, and add markers and photos. I can then download the updated GeoJSON file and replace the existing walk1.geojson in the /public folder of the Glitch project.

Russia's Disinformation Network Mapped

The Pravda Dashboard

The Pravda Network is a coordinated Russian disinformation campaign designed to disseminate pro-Kremlin content across the globe. At its core, the network launders news from sanctioned Russian media outlets and questionable Telegram channels, distributing it through a constellation of country-specific websites. In each country the news is recycled to fit local narratives and most likely distributed through AI-driven systems: 

In the last two years this disinformation network has published over 3.7 million articles, with an alarming focus on influencing audiences in countries like France, Germany, Ukraine, Moldova, and Serbia. To help researchers, journalists, and open-source investigators make sense of this complex ecosystem, the DFRLab has released a public interactive map. This map is part of a broader Pravda Dashboard, designed to provide near-real-time visibility into how specific countries are being targeted.

The map allows users to click or search for any country and immediately see how it is being influenced: the volume of articles, the most commonly cited sources, and notable surges in activity over time. The map is a powerful reminder of how Russian propaganda is not just local - it’s multilingual, multi-platform, and meticulously engineered for impact. The map reveals a sprawling operation pushing coordinated disinformation across over 80 countries, fueled by bots & AI.

The Hotness Map No One Needed

LooksMapping is a digital map that rates restaurants not by food or service, but by the attractiveness of their clientele. It scrapes millions of Google Maps reviews, runs each reviewer’s profile photo through an AI model trained to score “hotness” out of ten, and then color-codes restaurants accordingly - red for hot, blue for not.

LooksMapping feels like a relic from a digital past - with the dated visual style of a 20-year-old Google Map and the same superficial, objectifying logic that powered early websites like Hot or Not. The map gamifies human appearance in a way that feels both regressive and oddly voyeuristic, echoing a time when online interactions prioritized judgment over connection.

I'd like to believe the retro aesthetic of LooksMapping is an intentional satire of the outdated cultural views of Trumpian America. That it’s a sharp, self-aware parody of the very culture it mirrors. But more likely, it's not a commentary at all - just another product of the MAGA-fueled gamification of culture and human interaction.

For me LooksMapping earns a 'blue for not'.

Via: Quantum of Sollazzo

Scrambled Maps in the Wild

Maps in the Wild is a crowdsourced and curated map archive of real-world maps found in everyday life - such as park maps, museum guides, transit maps, or historical maps displayed in public spaces. The website consists entirely of images of real-world maps submitted by readers.

People from around the world submit photos to Maps in the Wild of maps they spot in real-life. These can include maps on clothing, tattoos, café walls, subway stations, advertisements, public murals, or even on cakes. The archive is a fun, often quirky celebration of how maps appear in unexpected places and how they’re used creatively outside of on-line contexts.

Scrambled Maps in the Wild

Now, TripGeo (to which I also contribute) has teamed up with Maps in the Wild to launch Scrambled Maps in the Wild - a new twist on the classic scrambled map jigsaw game. This special series takes selected real-world map images from Maps in the Wild and turns them into interactive puzzles.

The first installment features seven scrambled map games (with more to come), each challenging players to reassemble these creative and unusual map sightings.

Check it out and get puzzling!

If you have an image of a map that you want to contribute to Maps in the Wild e-mail it to "Maps at Mappery dot Org". 

Hyperlocal Social Media

Ever wondered what people might say if conversations were pinned to real places - like digital graffiti on a map? That’s exactly the experiment Pintalk is trying out.

Created as a minimalist web app, Pintalk invites you to talk where you are - or more accurately, to start or join public text conversations anchored to specific latitude/longitude points. Think of it like a chatroom stapled to a street corner, trailhead, or coffee shop patio.

The developer describes Pintalk as:

“an experiment in discovering real-time, hyperlocal public discussions. What happens when conversations are anchored to places?”

And that’s what makes it fun. There’s no algorithm feeding you trends. No follower counts or hearts. Just geography and curiosity. 

So far, only a handful of discussions have been started on Pintalk, so it might be too early to say how it might be used. However, there’s already a brief conversation in Florida referencing the Blue Origin space launch, and a note in East London about the closure of a local cycle path. These two pins hint at possible uses for Pintalk - as a live event thread or a tool for hyperlocal community chat. Other potential applications include offering tourist tips, venue reviews, documenting local history, or providing real-time incident reports.

🧭 How It Works

Pintalk is stripped down to the essentials - and that’s very much by design.

• Visit the site - Pintalk uses your browser’s geolocation (or IP fallback) to center the map near you.
• Click any spot on the map - That opens a chat panel for that exact point.
• Start talking - Send a message, & boom - you’ve created a persistent pin and public conversation.
• Or jump into existing pins - Click one to read and join ongoing discussions.
• No login. No account. - You’re assigned a username like User_1234, and that’s it.

🎯 Will it Work?

Letting users add notes or start local conversations on a map isn’t a new concept. Over the years, there have been plenty of attempts to launch “note maps,” but in my experience, most haven’t gained much traction. The ones that have found success usually serve a clear and focused purpose - like Hoodmaps with its crowdsourced neighborhood stereotypes, or FixMyStreet's local issue reporting tool.

Pintalk’s minimalist, open-ended approach might end up being a weakness - it risks feeling aimless without a defined use case. Then again, that very lack of structure could be its strength. By leaving space for users to shape its purpose, Pintalk might stumble into something more meaningful. Maybe the conversations that emerge will reveal a natural direction - or even inspire a more targeted version down the line.

The Tariff Busting Map Game

Introduction: The Egg Crisis

In a world where breakfast has become a luxury, an evil empire has imposed crippling tariffs on eggs, sending prices skyrocketing. Omelettes are now a distant memory for the average citizen, and scrambled eggs are a delicacy only the wealthy can afford. But hope is not lost! Rebel forces have uncovered a loophole in the empire's trade barriers - by launching eggs directly into strategic targets across the USA, you can disrupt the tariffs and bring egg prices back down to earth.

Welcome to Angry Eggs, a map-based catapult game where your mission is simple: fire eggs at targets to evade trade tariffs and make breakfast affordable again!

How to Play Angry Eggs

1. Launching Your Egg

Aim & Pull: Click and drag the egg away from the center of the screen to set your trajectory. The further you pull, the harder you launch!

Release: Let go to fire your egg across the map. Watch as it soars through the air—will it hit its target?

2. Hitting Targets

Red Zones: Your objective is to land eggs inside the red circular targets scattered across the USA.

Economic Impact: Every successful hit causes egg prices to plummet, giving the people relief from inflation.

Missed Shots: If you miss, prices keep rising—so aim carefully!

3. Tracking Progress

Egg Price Tracker: A live ticker shows the fluctuating price of eggs. Watch as your hits cause dramatic market crashes.

Distance Indicator: An arrow points toward the nearest target, helping you line up your shots.

Behind the Scenes: How Angry Eggs Works

Angry Eggs is built with JavaScript and MapLibre GL, an open-source mapping library that brings real-world geography into the game. Here’s how it all comes together:

Catapult Physics: The egg-launching mechanic uses vector calculations to determine trajectory, making each shot feel dynamic.

Procedural Targets: The game generates random targets across the USA, ensuring no two playthroughs are the same.

In truth I started developing Angry Eggs as a joke rather than as a fully-blown map game. It is being released on TripGeo Labs as it really isn't a fully developed game. I do think, however, that there is potential to use some of the features of Angry Eggs to develop a much more engaging map based 'golf-game'.

Play Angry Eggs

Live London Underground Trains

Live maps displaying the movements of planes, trains, and automobiles have been among my favorite mash-ups over the years, so it seems fitting to launch the third decade of Maps Mania with a beautiful illustration of a live, real-time transit map.

The Live Tube Map is a fully interactive, real-time 3D map that lets you watch underground trains move across London as they shuttle through tunnels, stations, and lines. It’s like the classic Tube map - but alive. Built by Ben James, the Live Tube Map uses real-time data from Transport for London (TfL) to visualize each train’s location, progress, and route. Each moving colored line you see gliding across the screen is a real train, updated in near real-time and placed on a highly stylized 3D map of London.

The choice of using moving colored polylines with transparent tails gives the map a beautiful and mesmeric aesthetic (although I think the blocky trains used by Mini Tokyo 3D are hard to beat). 

Under the hood, the map is powered by:

• MapLibre GL for rendering a high-performance, interactive map in WebGL
• TfL’s live feed to gather real-time train movements and trip plans
• MapTiler map tiles with 3D buildings

Hovering over a train on the map reveals a clean tooltip: line name, current status, journey progress (with a neat progress bar), and even upcoming stations. Beyond the sheer visual appeal, the Live Tube Map is a fascinating demo of what’s possible when you mix open data with open-source tech. It transforms a complex network of live infrastructure into something playful, transparent, and informative. 

It shows you moving trains on a map in real-time!

Celebrating 20 Years of Maps Mania

It was 20 years ago today Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play when Mike Pegg first started writing about Google Maps. Which means Google Maps Mania is 20 YEARS OLD TODAY! 

🎉 Celebrating 20 Years of Maps Mania: A Cartographic Journey

For twenty years Maps Mania has been tirelessly chronicling the evolving world of interactive maps. Since its inception on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 Google Maps Mania has been celebrating and showcasing the wonderful online interactive maps created by the cartographic community, and for two decades, Maps Mania has been one of the go-to destination for map lovers, geospatial techies, data journalists, and curious minds worldwide. 

In this time tt has showcased everything from quirky custom visualizations to groundbreaking tools that have reshaped how we interact with space and place online.

So today, we celebrate not only Maps Mania but also the incredible journey of online interactive mapping over the last 20 years. Let’s take a look at some of the pivotal developments that Maps Mania has tracked - and perhaps help shape since 2005.

🌍 2005–2010: The Birth of the Mashup Era

When Google Maps launched in early 2005, it didn’t take long for developers to start “hacking” the platform, overlaying their own data onto the base map. This gave birth to the map mashup - an entirely new genre of DIY cartography.

Maps Mania was there from the start, curating early examples like:

- Real estate listings on maps

- Live transit tracking

- Crime mapping

- Flickr photo maps

Soon, APIs from Yahoo, Microsoft, and OpenStreetMap joined the party, and online mapping became an even bigger playground for creativity.

🧰 2010–2015: The Rise of Tools and Platforms

As the web matured, so did mapping. This era saw the emergence of powerful tools like:

Leaflet.js and Mapbox GL JS, enabling slick, custom maps in the browser

CartoDB (now CARTO), democratizing geospatial data analysis

D3.js, pushing the boundaries of data-driven cartography

Maps Mania didn't just report on these tools - it spotlighted how people were using them to tell stories, explore data, and visualize everything from climate change to historical journeys.

📱 2015–2020: Mobile, Real-Time & Story Mapping

With smartphones in everyone’s pockets, maps have now become more than just static guides - they have become live, reactive, and personal. Highlights from this period include:

- The explosion of story maps (via Esri, Knight Lab, and others)

- Maps for activism and crisis response (like during Hurricane Harvey or COVID-19)

- Location-based games and apps like Pokémon Go, changing public space experiences

Maps Mania tried to capture it all, curating the finest examples of maps that moved - both emotionally and physically.

🧠 2020–2025: AI, 3D & the Future of Place

In recent years, interactive mapping has leapt into new dimensions - literally and figuratively:

- 3D mapping with Google, Cesium and Mapbox adds realism and immersion

- Machine learning now detects buildings, roads, and land use from satellite images

- Digital twins of cities are enabling simulations for climate, traffic, and urban planning

- WebGL and immersive web tech are making maps feel more realistic

💚 A Labor of Cartographic Love

For 20 years, Maps Mania has been more than just a blog - it has been a living archive of the internet’s mapping imagination. 

Here’s to the next 20 years of exploration. The world is always changing - hopefully, Maps Mania will continue to help make sense of it, one map at a time!

Spinning at a Thousand Miles an Hour

I'm currently sitting in London, spinning at 640 miles per hour. 

My friend Sofía lives in Quito, Ecuador, and because of the equatorial speed bonus, she’s currently spinning much faster than me - at 1,037 mph.

The Earth rotates once every 24 hours (roughly), and we all rotate with it. The circumference at the equator is about 24,901 miles, so at the equator, you're spinning at about 1,037 mph:

24,901 ÷ 24 hr = ~1,037 mph

But this speed decreases as you move toward the poles. The speed you're traveling is determined by your latitude, because - unless you live at the equator - you're moving in a smaller circle.

London is around 51.5° North, so I can calculate my rotational speed with this formula:

        Speed = equatorial speed × cos(latitude)

So:

        Speed = 1,037×cos(51.5)

        cos ⁡(51.5) ≈ 0.623 

        Speed = 1, 037 × 0.623 ≈ 646 mph

To calculate your speed, just plug in your latitude using the same formula.

Or you could just use the Earth Surface Rotatio Speed Calculator. 

Enter your location into this interactive map, and you won’t need to do any math - this map will automatically show you your tangential speed based on where you live.

The Most Beautiful Places in the World

Hollow Rock. Grand Portage, MN by @TuckOlson

The Earthporn Map is a simple interactive map that showcases the top 1,000 images submitted to r/EarthPorn. r/EarthPorn is a subreddit on Reddit dedicated to sharing stunning, high-quality images of natural landscapes and scenery from around the world.

To be clear—despite the name, there's nothing explicit or NSFW here. Just a whole lot of beautiful photography of nature from across the globe.

The Most Beautiful Countries in the World Are:

Based purely on the number of photographs featured in the top 1,000 posts, the most beautiful countries in the world (according to r/EarthPorn) are:

1. United States: Posts - 544 photos
2. Canada: Posts - 69 photos
3. Iceland: Posts - 60 photos
4. New Zealand: Posts - 29 photos
5. Norway: Posts - 29 photos

Conversely, the "least beautiful" countries on the list (again, based solely on the number of photos featured) are:

69. Kenya: Posts - 1 photo

70. Romania: Posts - 1 photo

71. Costa Rica: Posts - 1 photo

72. The Bahamas: Posts - 1 photo

73. Thailand: Posts - 1 photo 

Obviously, this is a definitive list, and I will not be entertaining any comments suggesting it's merely a reflection of the EarthPorn user base’s geographic distribution or where they can easily travel. Definitely not. Nope.

Geolocating the EarthPorn Top 1000

To determine the locations of the top 1,000 posts, a combination of AI and manual methods was used. A Large Language Model (LLM) extracted location data from post titles and comments. In about 10% of cases, manual review was required to refine or determine more accurate locations. Once each location was identified, the data was geocoded using the Google Maps API to retrieve latitude and longitude coordinates. This data was compiled into a GeoJSON file and mapped using Leaflet.js.

You may also like: r/MapPorn

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