Google Maps find: Large face found on hilltop in Canada

The latest Google Maps satellite image discovery this week comes to us from my home country of Canada. Google geo-spotters have come across what resembles the side profile of a face etched into the top of a flat rock formation, in the hills of Alberta just east of Medicine Hat. Like many of the  interesting Google Maps sights that have popped and have been discussed from around the blogosphere, this hill-face has also been featured on Digg (link dead).



Is that an iPod he's listening to?

In fine fashion Sydney Morning Herald journalist Stephen Hutcheon has added some humor to the find by pointing out that it looks like this guy is listening to an iPod. His story in The Herald's Tech section titled "This iPod user rocks" points this out. In reality, this is a road that leads to the area that would be his ear on the profile and the image makes it looks like he's listening to an iPod. Stephen also created a cool little vid that he uploaded to YouTube that uses Google Earth to show you where this face is located. I'm embedding it in the post here:


(If the video doesn't appear below click here..)

TripAdvisor + Google Maps = The best hotels on the map!

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The good folks at TripAdvisor stopped by to let me know about how they're mashing up millions of hotel reviews to show the most popular hotels in any given area on Google Maps. For an example check out New York City. The cool part about this site as a travel mashup is that it isn't just plotting the location of hotels like many other travel mashups do, but rather plotting the most popular, as chosen by millions, upon millions of reviews on the site. When you're looking at the map, you're only looking at the best. You'll find links to these new Google Maps throughout the site on each of:

• Hotel overview pages for 32,000 featured U.S. cities and towns
• 17,000+ Pages covering U.S. attractions
• 135,000+ Pages covering U.S. restaurants

The map interface has been customized to match the look and feel of TripAdvisor by modifying the map controls to give them a softer, seamless look. Each map pin features a tab where you can link off to book at that hotel as well as candid traveler photos and other info about each hotel. TripAdvisor lets you research before you make your reservation. Keep in mind when you shift the map around you need to hit the reload button to re-display the locations. If the map could "auto-magically" know you have shifted the map and display locations for that current map view, it would be a great future site usability improvement.

Be sure to add this one to your list of Travel Google Maps Mashups!

Live Google Map of UK trains

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= Realtime UK Rail Map!
Remember Dartmaps, the realtime Dublin commuter mashup that plots the real-time locations of trains on a Google Map? A similar Google Maps mashup has been created for trains in the UK National Rail Network: Live UK Rail Map

The map, created by Matthew Somerville shows all trains which are currently inbound to a particular station. Yellow pins mark station stops and red pins indicate trains in motion. Zoom in close to see them chugging along the tracks and an info-window will tell you the departing and destination stations along with the time if left. Google Maps is being mashed up with real time data from the National Rail website. Those who are just tuning into Google Maps Mania for the first time might not know I get very excited about Google Maps mashups that map real time objects or vehicles. I think it can mean great user applications in the area of transit, sport and even public safety!

[Found Via ProgrammableWeb]

Google Maps adds address search for Australia and New Zealand

Google Maps has added the long awaited address searching for the countries of Australia and New Zealand making the previous released street maps even more useful. When Google released this map data for Australia and New Zealand the maps could only be browsed, but not searched by address. Now this is possible. Local business search and driving directions do not yet appear to be working.

Example (Australia): 5 Lowanna Place Hornsby, New South Wales 2077 Australia

Example (New Zealand): 20 Holly Rd, St Albans, Christchurch, New Zealand

This might also pave the way for Australia and New Zealand geocoding support within the Google Maps API and more mashups from these countries!

Update: Sept.7/06 6:41AM: As expected the folks at Google have announced geocoding support for Australia and New Zealand over on the Google Maps API Blog!

[Thanks to Ed Groenendaal for the tip!]

Google Maps on your site in 60 seconds using Wikimapia

I've always been a big fan of Wikimapia, the Google Maps site that lets you describe locations in much the same way that Wikipedia allows you to add to articles in its database. It's a great way to share information and also to add some context to the vast amount of satellite map viewing available from Google Maps.

Until recently Wikimapia was only able to viewed from the site itself. This has changed with a new feature that lets you frame an area on Wikimapia and add it to your own site or blog instantly! To put this feature into action head over to Wikimapia, zoom to the location you wish to display and click Wikimapia from the top right corner, then select "Map on your page" from the list. Frame up the area that you wish to put on your website or blog, then copy the code that is provided. I did the following in about 60 seconds:



(Hit "Refresh" in your browser if the map is not displaying)

Here are some more examples of it on some other sites:

• The Bostonist
• AimK @ Blogspot

This new feature will let you share an area of the map (College campus, tourist area or your hometown) on your website so people can interact directly with Google Maps and add details to Wikimapia without leaving your site! Wikimapia has at present 660,000 described locations after just 2 months of being operational. The Russian developers behind this great tool expect that by 3 months they'll be displaying 1 million spots on the map. Keep in mind as well that the multi-language functionality means that Wikimapia is being used in nearly 40 languages!

New Google Maps US Zip Code Mashups and Tools

Map helps you see neighoring zip codes - Maps.Huge.Info has long had a great list of Google Maps based boundary and zip code tools. Geo Developer John Coryat has informed me that he has improved his zip code map to use a custom tile layer which covers the US from zoom level 5 to 17 with potentially millions of tiles. When you search a zip code you see all other zip codes close by - give it a try!

County and Zip code Boundary Maps - Here is another zip code mashup of census.gov data and the Google Maps API (V.2.57) that lets you enter a zip code and plot the county lines that zip belongs to and also the zip code boundary. There is no restriction on the number of hits/second on this so have at it. Also, the polyline XML files are available for download for any given zip code.

Mapping Your Photos with Google Maps

Since the introduction of the Google Maps API, many sites have added functionality that allow you to "Google map" your photos to the geo-location they were taken or where they may have location-based significance. This post will serve as a roundup of all sites that facilitate this or that help the process along. If I've missed any sites/tools that might be out there, please post a comment letting others know.

Sites that let you add your photos to a Google Map:

• Panoramio - Create slideshows, if photos include geodata in EXIF they are automatically located. Geotag photos in Picasa and suggest locations for mislocated photos.
• SmugMug
• CommunityWalk
• Tagzania
• Platial
• Mapbuilder

Flickr-to-Google Maps:

• GMiF - Google Maps in Flickr App
• Flickr2GMap

Google Photo Mapping Resources:

• GPS Visualizer
• RoboGeo

Example Google Photo Map Concepts:

• Sean's PhotoMap
• Flickr Memory Maps

Google Maps tool EarthTools intros contour maps

Update: EarthTools.org no longer exists so all links have been removed from this post.

Jonathan Stott has been hard at work over at EarthTools.org writing a contour map overlay which looks pretty snazzy and compliments the height finder tool already on his site. His coverage is growing all the time and he aims to cover the whole world at zoom levels 10, 9, 8, 7 and 6 and then selected areas at closer zoom levels. To see the areas of the world that have contour maps, check here. To use these maps from his main site toggle the "contour" map control when you're exploring.

Jonathon explains some of the technical challenges in creating this additional mapping layer:

For example, I cover the whole of the western United States up to zoom level 13 as well as an area of the Alps in Europe. The United Kingdom and Ireland as well as Cyprus are covered up to zoom level 14. One limiting factor is the speed of my computer - it will take about a month to generate all the tiles for zoom level 10 for the whole world. The other is the space on my webserver - the maps currently take up about 20GB. Another slight problem is that I use an alpha transparency layer for the PNG images so that I can darken the satellite and still see the contours well enough. This doesn't work on Internet Explorer 6, so I have given people the option to install FireFox or people will have to wait for Internet Explorer 7 (the current beta shows the contour maps well).

Wiki + Google Maps = Wikimapia

WARNING: The Google Maps tool/mashup/app that you are about to read about is extremely cool. Please be seated and clear time from your schedule before proceeding. :) It also seems to only be viewable in Firefox presently..

Wikimapia is a new project created by Alexandre Koriakine and Evgeniy Saveliev aimed at "describing the whole planet earth". They have created an excellent way to accomplish this goal. Using a mixture of Google Maps satellite imagery, a "wiki" editing mechanism and tagging, Wikimapia lets anyone add or edit a description for any place on earth (without registering). It also provides a new, unique way of browsing Google Maps satellite images. Here are some examples:

Egypt pyramids:

Male, the capital of Maldives:


Wikimapia presents itself in a multilingual fashion with interface controls available in English, Russian, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Portuguese languages! Honestly, screen captures from this site don't do it justice.. Get in and have a play and you'll realize the full potential and how nice and easy it is to use. This one gets the "awesome" label from Google Maps Mania for top notch interface, great idea, and concept stikiness. The only thing lacking is the Internet Explorer interoperability.

Make an "Earth Sandwich" with Google Maps!

Update: Zefrank's Earth Sandwich map no longer works. You can now use the Antipode Map instead.

If the earth were a sandwich....

"..If you put a piece of bread on the ground, and somebody exactly opposite you (on the other side of the world) put a piece of bread on the ground, you would have an Earth sandwich!"

Try it out:

It turns out that Waipatiki, New Zealand and Madrid, Spain have an interesting connection with one another! :) Give it a try to see where you end up. The geo developer has placed some other good country-combos along the bottom of the map for you to check out. This tool makes it very easy to move the map around and see your "sandwich partner" as you center the map. Good fun!