Google Maps Gets Weather

Google Maps now has a weather layer!



If you select the weather layer on Google Maps you can view the current temperature and weather conditions for where ever you are. You can also see the current cloud coverage for the whole world.

If you want a weather forecast for a location you can also click on the weather icon for a particular city. An info window will then open with a detailed summary of current humidity and wind conditions, as well as a forecast for the next four days.

Via: Official Google Blog

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It's Time to Forage with Google Maps

If you live in the northern hemisphere then the time and fruit is ripe to put on your foraging cap. I've been picking and cooking & baking with this year's blackberry crop for about a month now. If you want to know where you can find your nearest fruit trees and edible plants then these Google Maps should be able to help:

Urban Edibles - This crowdsourced map can help you find wild food sources in Portland, Oregon.

Concrete Jungle - Your Google Maps based guide to wild food sources in the Atlanta area.

Boise’s Urban Foods Map - If you live in Boise then consult this Google Map to find your nearest foraging locations.

Neighborhoodfruit is a crowdsourced map of fruit trees on public land in the U.S.. It is possible to search the map by zipcode.

Forage.rs is a collaborative map of edible and useful wild plants worldwide. Plants added to the map are linked to information about how they can be used, including photographs, stories, and recipes added by users.

Urban Edibles - a collaborative map of wild edible plants and fruits in Amsterdam.

Mundraub - showing you where you can pick free fruit and vegetables in Germany.

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Guess the Country Game

Country Explorer uses Google Maps Styles to create a very simple but effective game with Google Maps. Using the game you can test your knowledge of the countries of the world by guessing the name of a country and clicking on the map to see if your guess is correct.

Using Map Styles a Google Map has been created without country or other administrative labels. When the map user clicks on the map the Google Maps API geocoder is used to determine which country the user clicks on. The map then loads the name of the country and the country's flag.

The game could be developed a little more by prompting the user to find a particular country and keeping a score of correct guesses. A timer could also be added for each guess to rack up the tension a little.

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Brazil's Cachaças on Google Maps

Brazil's most popular alcoholic drink is cachaça. In fact it is so popular that there are over 4000 cachaça distilleries in Brazil.

Guia Mapa da Cachaça is a crowd-sourced map plotting the location, photos and histories of Brazil's cachaças and cachaças distilleries. The Google Map of the distilleries allows you to find where each cachaças is made and can help you find your nearest, locally distilled cachaças.


In other news, Google LatLong revealed today that Street View of the Amazon rainforest is currently being captured. So very soon, you’ll be able to float down the Amazon and Rio Negro Rivers of northwest Brazil and experience some of the most remote and biodiverse areas in the world with Google Maps Street View.

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Your Google Maps Guide to Paris

If you want an alternative to The Guardian's Google Maps city guides then you need look no further than the New York Times. The NYT's Travel section provides Google Maps based guides for many of the most popular tourist destinations around the world.

Each of the city guide maps allow you to select different categories of markers to view on the map. The categories are hotels, restaurants, attractions, shopping and nightlife.

As well as using the map as a guide to the city you can use the links in the map sidebar to click through to the New York Times' recommendations in each category.

NYT Travel Guide to Paris Map

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Your Google Maps Guide to Berlin

The Guardian's Google Maps based city guides now includes Berlin.

The Berlin City Guide maps the best places to stay, eat and shop in the German capital and also maps great bars, clubs, museums and galleries to visit. You can select a category to view on the map from the menu above the map. When you select a category as well as dropping the appropriate markers on the map a list of the venues is displayed beneath the map.

If you select an individual venue, by clicking a marker or from the list beneath the map, The Guardian's review of the location will then be displayed.

The Guardian - Berlin City Guide

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The London Riots & Social Equality

In the UK I think it is now illegal to try and connect the recent rioting with social deprivation or economic inequality. The government and the mainstream media has decided that unless you blame bad parenting, social networking sites or a breakdown of moral order for the riots then you should be publicly castigated as a supporter and excuser of wanton criminality.

The Centre of Full Employment and Equity seem to be ignoring this new political orthodoxy by creating a Google Map overlaying the location of riot incidents on top of unemployment data.

The British Local Unemployment and the August 2011 Riots Map includes two layers: the local area unemployment rate range and riot incident data from the UK Guardian Open Data Blog.

The dark blue areas on the map show areas with high employment rates. At the risk of encouraging a visit from the UK thought police I have to say that the areas with high employment rates seem to have been largely unaffected by the recent rioting.

The Guardian themselves have used the riot incident data to create a Riots & Poverty Data Map.



The Guardian says that "The darker reds represent poorer places, the blues are the richer areas. What do you think? Is there a correlation between the two?" I'm going to say it - 'Yes, there is'.

Someone has also taken a KML from the London Riots - Verified Areas map and displayed it on MapTube Map with the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD). The IMD is a method of identifying deprived areas across the UK.



Overlaying the locations of the riots and looting on top of the IMD layer reveals that most of the trouble is occurring more in areas with high deprivation than in more affluent locations.

Curating Geodata from Social Media to Map the London Riots:
Whilst we are on the subject of the UK riots Directions Magazine has a good podcast discussion looking at the challenge of using social media as geodata and what journalists, geospatial professionals and the public can learn from these efforts.


OK, with that done we can now get back to blaming the parents and Twitter.

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The Iraq Museum on Street View

Iraq’s National Museum in Baghdad is now on Street View.

Google LatLong has a nice post on how Google collected the imagery for this latest addition to Google Maps, which included inventing the 'Street View Trolley'.

As well as collecting Street Views of the interior of the museum Google also managed to capture close-up 360-degree views of individual artifacts, a selection of which can be seen on the Antiquities page of the Iraq Museum website.

A neat addition to the Street View controls on Google Maps allows allows the user to navigate between the 1st and 2nd floor of the museum. So Street View now goes upstairs as well as to Iraq!

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Australian Postcodes on Google Maps

Postcode Finder is a great application that shows Australia's postcodes on a Google Map. Using Postcade Finder a postcode search can be performed as either a text search or as a geographic query with a simple click on the map.

All Things Spatial has a nice post about the latest version of Postcode Finder. The post explains the choice of using Fusion Tables to create the application rather than a Web Map Service (WMS), and looks at the positive and negative outcomes of this choice.

Postcode Finder

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Video Map of Syrian Uprising

The Syrian Uprising 2011 Information Center has created a Google Map of videos shot by activists during Monday’s protests.

To view a video you need to click on a map marker and click through to watch the video on YouTube. The map markers themselves are colour-coded to show towns with reported protests, towns on strike and towns under attack or besieged.

Syria Monday 15/08/2011

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