My Map of Chile Roads - Post Earthquake

#caminoschile

This Google My Map aims to help Chileans keep up-to-date with road closures in the country after this week's earthquake.

You can help keep the map up-to-date by Tweeting any road information to #caminoschile. The map's developer says that you need to include date information in order to help keep the map current.

Green markers on the map indicate roads without problems. Yellow are roads that are passable but with great caution. Red indicates roads that are closed.

Open Shops Map

Paniko has put together this Google My Map, called Mapa Comercio Activo, to show the locations of supermarkets that are still operating in Chile after the earthquake.

The map is set as open collaboration, so anyone can add open stores to the map.

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Historical Photos with Street View

New York Historical Photos

This website allows you to view historical photographs of New York alongside the current view as seen in Google Maps Street View. Thumbnails of the historical photographs are displayed on the right side of the screen. If you click on a thumbnail the Street View will change to show the modern day view.

All the photos on this site come from the New York Public Library Digital Gallery and all the coding was done by yours truly.

Ironically for a blog about Google Maps the one thing missing is a Google Map. This is mainly due to the fact that I couldn't fit a map into the screen and display all the thumbnails. If I have time I might try and create a tab in the Street View so that so that it is possible to switch to a map view.

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D66 on Google Maps

D66 op de Kaart

The Dutch political party D66 is using Google Maps to help promote their 13 candidates in tomorrow's election in Zaanstad.

The map includes a number of map markers with links to the party's candidates (presumably mapped to where they are standing). The map also highlights some of the debates during the campaign and includes some embedded videos of the candidates in action.

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Australian Motorbiking on Google Maps

Motorcycle Network

Motorcycle Network is a directory of everything to do with motorcycles in Australia. The site uses Google Maps to show all the parking spots in the major cities and also show all the motorcycle and scooter dealers, mechanics and gear shops, as well as all the training facilities, tours, insurance and hire places around Australia.

The Motorcycle and Scooter Parking map is also available as an iPhone app. Since release, the app has consistently been in the Top 20 apps on the iTunes App Store and made the Top Ten Best Apps Ever for Location based services.

Last week the Motorcycle Dealer App was released on iPhone at the Australian Motorcycle Expo. This is a free download for iPhone users and shows all the dealers, workshops, accessory stores and tyre shops across Australia with a direct link to their email, website and phone.

Motorcycle and Scooter Parking app (iTunes link)
Motorcycle Dealer app (iTunes link)

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Create a Travel Itinerary with Google Maps

Rutamina

Rutamina is a Spanish language website for creating routes and travel itineraries. Users of the site can create their own routes using Google Maps or browse the routes created by others.

Routes are displayed on a Google Map with points of interest shown along the route using numbered map markers. Descriptions of the points of interest are given below the map. Each point of interest on the route also includes its own Google Map.

Nearby Street Views of the route and photographs are also provided. It is also possible to select from a number of layers to view additional information on the map, such as hotels, museums, bars and restaurants.

The site includes integration with Facebook and an option to rate individual routes.

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Street View Contest: And the winner is ...

Google have announced the winners of the Street View trike suggestions contest.


Street View from San Diego Zoo

In October, Google opened a poll for Americans to vote on which special attractions they would like to see visited by the Street View trike.

The winners of that competition are:

Rochester Institute of Technology
Boulder Creek Path
Faneuil Hall Marketplace
National Mall in Washington, D.C.
The Detroit Zoo

The Street View trike will now be visiting these locations over the next few months.

Via: Official Google Blog

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Visit Brazil YouTube Channel & Google Map

Visit Brazil YouTube

The Brazilian Tourist Board and YouTube have today released a brand channel on YouTube to promote tourism in Brazil. The channel features over 85 Brazilian tourist videos geo-tagged with Google Maps.

The videos have been placed in a number of categories, including Sun and Beach, Culture, Ecotourism, Sport and Business and Events. When you select a video the location of the video is shown on the Google Map.

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Google Map Beach Guides

Coast Radar

Coast Radar is a comprehensive global beach guide. Whether you are looking for a beach holiday, a day at the coast, a coastal path walk, tourist attractions or energetic sports activities, this site has all the details.

The site uses a Google Map as one way to find reviews about different beaches around the world. Finding a beach is simple with Coast Radar's map guide. Simply click on a map marker, if the marker is a cluster the map will automatically zoom in. At the lowest level you can retrieve a guide to a beach by clicking its marker.

Good Beach Guide
The Marine Conservation Society's Good Beach Guide is a Google Map mashup being used as part of a campaign for clean seas and beaches in the UK. The Good Beach Guide uses the Geograph API to provide photographs of beaches throughout the British Isles and Ireland.

Clicking on any of the map markers opens an information window containing a photo and a link to the guide for the selected beach.

Wetter

Do you want to know whether you should pack your wet suit before heading for the beach? Wetter is a German website that has a great Google Map that provides not only beach reviews for the whole world but can tell you how cold the water is as well.

The map uses a simple colour coded system to indicate the sea temperature of the world's oceans. The beaches are shown by beach umbrella map markers. Clicking on a map marker opens an information window that displays the current weather and rates the beach in a number of areas, such as 'sand', 'infrastructure' etc.

The site is in German only.

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The Perfect Espresso with Google Maps

espressomap

Eric Schrepel has made this Google Map to help you find the perfect cup of espresso in the USA.

To be listed on the map the cafe has to pour "an excellent, sweet espresso, or perfectly textured milk-based espresso drink, every time, regardless of who's behind the counter".

Each cafe shown on the map has a link to its website, its opening hours, address and a brief review.

Espresso Finder

This mashup of the Google Maps API and the Shizzow API can help you find the best espresso anywhere in the US. For each town listed the Espresso Finder shows a Google Map of all the places tagged coffee in Shizzow.

The front page of Espresso Finder contains a list of cities. Each city listed has its own Google Map. It is possible to add a location to any of the maps by adding a place to Shizzow and tagging it #espresso.

CoffeeSeeker

Google Maps mashups that help you find the nearest place to buy coffee are always popular. CoffeeSeeker maps all coffee shops within five miles of a search location.

One nice feature of the map is that the coffee shops are marked on the map with coffee cups bearing the logo of the mapped shop. Registered users can add their favourite coffee shops to the map, they can rate coffee shops and or add comments.

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Google Maps and the Simile Exhibit Widget

In the past I've featured a few Google Maps mashups that have used MIT's Simile Timeline (maps using the Simile Timeline).

Today I'm showcasing a few maps that are using Simile Exhibit. Simile Exhibit lets you create web pages with advanced text search and filtering functionalities, with interactive maps, timelines, and other visualizations.

"Exhibit enables you to create html pages with dynamic exhibits of data collections without resorting to complex database and server-side technologies. The collections can be searched and browsed using faceted browsing."

In short it is an awesome tool for displaying large sets of data on a Google Map with advanced filtering options.

Irish TD's

This is by far the most sophisticated of the examples and really shows the power of Simile Exhibit to great effect.

This Google Map shows members of the Irish Dail (parliament). Dail TDs are shown on the map by small map markers which are actually small photographs of the TDs. Each TD is shown at the location of their Dail Constituency. If you click on a photograph you can get information on the TD and links to their website etc.

However it is in the data filtering that this map really excels. You can select to filter the members shown on the map in a variety of ways. For example you can view TDs by sex, age range, number of terms served and political party.

The map's creator, Dublin Streams, has even written a great article about his experience of creating a Google Maps mashup using Simile Exhibit.

Billionaires in History

I bet you'd like to know where all the world's billionaires live. I can't tell you that but this map can show you where they all come from. Hmm, mostly the USA.

US Cities by Population
This Google Maps mashup shows you the major population centers in the USA. The larger the circle on the map the larger the density of population. New Yorkers sure can breed.

Flags of the World

This simple demo of Exhibit shows the flags of the world on Google Maps.

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