The Last Voyage of Costa Concordia Mapped

Live ship tracking website Marine Traffic shows the track of the cruise ship Costa Concordia just before it crashed into the island of Giglio in the Mediterranean Sea.

The International Maritime Organization requires all vessels over 299GT to carry an AIS transponder on board. The transponder transmits data on position, speed and course, among some other static information, such as the vessel’s name, dimensions and voyage details.

Thanks to this AIS data there are now a lot of Google Maps mashups showing the real-time positions of ships around the world. Marine Traffic shows the track of the last 30 minutes of Concordia's voyage.

Via: Landenkartenblog.de

The World-Wide Starbucks Map

Loxcel Web Services are an online map creation team who specialise in helping to create scalable maps.

Loxcel have two great demo maps featuring their own marker clustering system. The World-Wide Starbucks Map shows the location of 19,000 Starbucks cafes across the world. The Canadian Cell Tower map uses the same marker clustering solution to display the location of 16,000 cell towers.

Both maps use two backend services: Loxcel Web Services to manage and cluster the map markers and Google Fusion Tables to populate the information windows. The marker clustering system allows both maps to effortlessly handle and display a huge amount of data, providing a seamless experience for the end-user.

Heatmap.js for Google Maps

Heatmap.js is a new JavaScript library that can be used to generate web heatmaps with the HTML5 canvas element. The library can be used in any number of contexts, including with Google Maps.

There is a nice demo of the library, using random data, to create a heat map with Google Maps here, . You can even view and download the html behind the demo on github.

Some Google Maps Friday Fun

The Wax Museum, Fisherman's Wharf

The Google Street View guy has taken a trip to San Francisco's Wax Museum. Unfortunately he only made it into the lobby, but you can still see models of Mariah Carey, President Obama and Johnny Depp.

New York in the Summer

Zachary Goelman found this evocative scene in Google Maps Street View in New York.

Street View Stereographic

I love Street View Stereographic. Someone else obviously does as well, as they went to the trouble of creating this fun video of the app in action.

The Song Lyrics Map

This map in the style of London's A-Z Maps is made up entirely of song lyrics. If you like it you can even buy a print from We Are Dorothy.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions on Google Maps

The United States Environment Protection Agency has launched a Greenhouse Gas Data Publication Tool that allows users to view and sort 2010 greenhouse gas emissions data from over 6,700 facilities.

The tool uses Google Maps to allow the user to search and display the data in a number of ways, including by facility, location, industrial sector, and the type of GHG emitted. The tool can be used by individuals and communities to identify nearby sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

As well as providing the useful map view the site also includes tools to view the data in a number of different chart views.

Via: @geoparadigm

Tour the Tour Down Under

Cycling the Alps has created video tours of each of the stages in the upcoming Tour Down Under cycling race. The Tour Down Under is a UCI WorldTour cycling race, held in Adelaide, Australia, which starts next week.

Cycling the Alps has created Google Earth fly-through tours for each stage of the tour. You can view videos of each of the tours or view them with the Google Earth browser plug-in on the Cycling the Alps website.

Cycling the Alps has also created Street View tours for each stage of the race. The Street View tours animate through each stage using Google Maps Street View.

Not content with creating Google Earth and Street View tours you can also play a Google Earth based game for each stage. The game shows you the route of each stage on Google Earth and requires the user to guide a cyclist from the start to the finish of the stage.

If any of the tours or games grab your fancy you can even grab the embed code and add them to your own website or blog.

Mapping Iran's Nuclear Programme

Open Nuclear Iran is using the Ushahidi report mapping platform to try and map and assess Iran's nuclear programme.

Using the app anyone can report information about locations and incidents in Iran that might be linked to the country's controversial nuclear programme. The app includes relevant links to the latest news reports, in list form, about the continuing controversy and heightening tension caused by Iran's nuclear developments.

The Google Maps Carbon Calculator

Vizzuality's Carbon Calculator is a very impressive Google Maps based app that details the potential contribution of any area in the world to climate change mitigation.

The map allows users to draw an area anywhere in the world and view the carbon currently stored in the area, as well as the amount of additional carbon that potentially could be sequestered through restoration. Moreover, it links this information with the conservation value and forest status of the area.

To search an area users just need to click the 'Draw Polygon' button and define an area on the map (when finished remember to click on the first point added to finish defining your area). The calculation will start as soon as an area has been drawn and the results will be visible after a short moment in the map side panel. As well as drawing an area users can select from existing protected areas.

There is a huge amount of data behind this map which is made possible by using CartoDB as the backend.

The Tour Down Under on Google Maps

The Santos Tour Down Under is a UCI WorldTour cycling race, held in Adelaide, South Australia. The 2012 race starts on the 15th January, 2012.

Velowire.com has created Google Maps showing the routes for each stage of this year's race. In a detailed article Velowire.com examines each stage with accompanying pop-up Google Maps and elevation charts of each stage route.

A KML file has also been created for those who wish to view the stage routes in Google Earth.

UK Boundary Changes on Google Maps

In the UK the Boundary Commissions for England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have published their recommendations for proposed changes to constituency boundaries.

The Guardian has created this Google Maps based visualisation to show the proposed new constituency boundaries and also a crude analysis of how the 2010 UK election results would have played out under the proposed changes.

The visualisation displays two synched Google Maps, the 2010 election results with the new boundaries are on the left map and the 2010 results with the existing boundaries are on the right.