99 Red Balloons Go By

Reuters reports that since December China has sent more than 100 balloons over Taiwan, often passing through air corridors used by civilian aircraft. It is unknown what the balloons are being used for, they could be weather balloons, but many suspect that they are being used to spy on Taiwan.

You may remember that in February last year many Americans became enraged by the presence of a Chinese balloon spotted over the United States. On that occasion the New York Times was able to use satellite imagery to work out the provenance of the balloon. In Tracking the Chinese Spy Balloon From Space the NYT was able to determine that the balloon had been launched from (or near) Hainan Island in China.

Reuters has now mapped out the flight paths of the balloons which have been spotted over Taiwan since December of last year. An animated scrollytelling map In Tracking China's 'grey zone' balloon flights over Taiwan visualizes the paths of all the possible Chinese spy balloons flying over the Southeast Asian island between December and April of this year.

The 'grey zone' reference in the Reuters headline hints at the news agency's take on the balloons as being used as gray-zone warfare, "designed to exhaust a foe using irregular tactics without resorting to open combat." Another data visualization in the Reuter's article shows that the balloons have been flying at much too low altitudes to be useful as weather balloons, indicating that they probably serve some other purpose.

Explaining Droughts in Taiwan

It rains quite a lot in Taiwan. However despite all that precipitation the country also often suffers from water shortages. One reason for these water shortages is illegal land use in reservoir catchment areas. CommonWealth Magazine has created a wonderful story map to visualize how such illegal land use around the Shihmen Reservoir has led to a huge silt build-up in the reservoir, severely restricting its capacity to store water.

Taiwan - The Water Starved Island is a cleverly designed story map which takes you on a journey along the Shihman Resevoir catchment area. To explore the story map use your mouse's scrollwheel. This will navigate you along the valleys of the catchment area and lead you to each of the highlighted examples of illegal land use (you can also just click on the map markers in the small inset map).

When you reach one of the mapped examples of illegal land use an inset close-up will appear of the featured location. If you click on this circle you can read all about the illegal land use at this location which is contributing to the reduced capacity of the reservoir.

The map was created using Leaflet.js using imagery from DigitalGlobe. You can read more about how the map was put together at Behind the Digital Newsroom.

Good News on Google Maps

If you live in Taiwan and you need cheering up you should read the happy tales posted to Cover Story. Corner Story is a Taiwanese Google Maps based application that enables anyone to post a good news story to a map.

If you have a heart warming tale or some good news to share then you just need to connect a Facebook account to Cover Story and you can post your own good news to the map. Alternatively you can just browse the map and click on the map markers to read the stories of human warmth that have already been added by others to the map. 

Taiwan Gets Breadcrumbs & Transit

Google Maps in Taiwan now has Driving Directions, Public Transit directions and what looks like a new Google Maps feature - dynamic breadcumb links to districts.

At the top right of the Taiwan Google Maps sidebar is this directory of Taiwan regions:

Clicking on one of the regions will pan and zoom the map to that region and then load links to districts in that region into the dynamic links box.

Choosing a district pans and zooms the map to that district and then adds links to neighbourhoods into the dynamic links box. As you can see there are breadcrumb links at the top of the box so it is also possible to navigate back a level at any time.

If you move the map around the links in the dynamic links box will change to reflect the current location.

I haven't seen this before on Google Maps so I'm pretty sure it is a new feature. It's a pretty handy feature as well, so I wouldn't be surprised if the new feature starts popping up for other countries as well.


Hat-tip to GMM reader Richy-Li for being the first to spot this new feature.

________________

Google Maps update for: Russia, Turkey, Taiwan, Thailand, Croatia, Slovenia, Lithuania!

Google Maps Mania readers from around the world are noting updates to Google Maps in several countries worldwide today! Here is the rundown of countries that are seeing updates:

• Russia
• Turkey
• Taiwan
• Thailand
• Greece
• Croatia
• Slovenia
• Lithuania

In some cases there are enhancements to the road/street maps that were there previously (Greece for example) and for some countries streets and roads are completely new (Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey) This update of streets, roads and other points of interest will have a huge impact on users of Google Maps in these areas. It means that satellite imagery is now more relevant and easier to identify when "sightseeing" using the hybrid map view toggle. In addition, Google's new My Maps map creation tool is now instantly available for millions of people to begin creating and sharing interesting maps for these countries!

Know of other countries seeing updates or want to leave some feedback? Post a comment! :)

[Thanks to Scott Dexter for the tip!]

For other recent feature and functionality updates to Google Maps, click on the "Google Maps" label below:

_________________