The Kissing Map

The Map of Romantic Kissing explores the custom of romantic kissing in cultures around the world. The practice of lovers touching lips is normal in some cultures. In other cultures kissing is not an established custom.

The Map of Romantic Kissing shows cultures where sexual-romantic kissing is practiced and also cultures where it isn't. The data for the map comes from the paper 'Is the Romantic-Sexual Kiss a Near Human Universal?', published in the American Anthropologist, 2015.

In the paper where the practice of kissing is unknown in a culture the authors have added that culture to the list of cultures that don't kiss. The Map of Romantic Kissing includes two layers. One layer includes the unknowns as part of the cultures that don't practice sexual-romantic kissing, as outlined in the research paper. The other layer actually shows the 'unknowns' as a third category, rather than subscribing those cultures to the list of culture which don't have the custom of kissing.

Map Poetry from What3Words

The what3words addressing system is one of the easiest ways to share your location with friends and family. The what3words location coding system divides the world into 57 trillion 3 x 3 meter squares. Each of those squares can be uniquely identified with just three words.

If I tell you I'm currently at 'Joke, Pretty, Dated', all you have to do is append those three words to the what3words URL (map.what3words.com/joke.pretty.dated) and you can view a map of my location to within a few feet of accuracy.

Apparently What3Words also has some other uses. For example Darren Wiens is using what3words to create map poetry. what3words Poetry starts you off with a random three word map address as the first three words of a poem. The last two words are then used to create the first two words of the next line of the poem.

Your task is to provide the third word of the second line of the poem. When you enter the word the three words of the second line of your poem is then used as a what3words address and you are shown that location on a Google Map. You can continue in this manner adding a word to every line and receiving another new location on your Google Map.

This sounds far more complicated than it actually is. In fact it is very simple to use. It is also pretty good fun. Here's a poem that I created (you can see the map it creates above),

  unlikely ants trilogy

  ants trilogy reread

  trilogy reread twice

My poem isn't going to win any literary prizes. Why not see if you can do better.

You can read more about the what3words Poetry map, including a link to a whole tumblr blog on what3words inspired poetry, on Darren Wien's Blog, Darren's Side Projects.

The Perfect Weather Map

If the weather never makes you happy then you need this perfect weather map from the Washington Post. The map allows you to enter your perfect temperature range (which BTW is 71-80°F) and then shows you the areas of the country with the most days within your range.

The Perfect Weather map allows you to set the coldest and hottest temperature that you are comfortable with. It then uses 30-year's worth of temperature averages from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to produce a choropleth map showing which U.S. counties get the most number of days within that temperature range (you can mouse-over individual counties on the map to discover how many days a year are likely to fall within your comfort zone).

Once you've discovered the perfect place to live all you then need to do is move house and get a new job.

The 3D Map Physics Engine

You can drop balls, barrels and boxes into the Grand Canyon with this new 3d map. Balls, Barrels and Boxes is an impressive demonstration of a physics engine running on a 3d Esri map.

Using the map you can drop balls, barrels or boxes on any location in the world and see how the objects react to the natural terrain. The map includes a number of interesting preset locations, with suitably hilly terrain for your balls, barrels and boxes to be able to roll downhill.

The map also includes a number of options to adjust the number of objects you wish to drop and apply different planetary gravity forces on your dropped objects.

The map was created using the cannon.js physics engine with Esri JS 4.0. You can explore the code behind the map in more detail on this GitHub page.

The Buenos Aires Property Price Map

Reporte Immobiliario is an interactive map of real-estate prices in Buenos Aires. The map allows you to view the cost per square meter of any building within the Argentinian capital.

Building footprints on the map are colored by the average square meter value of the property. You can mouse-over individual buildings on the map to view the exact value of the property per square meter.

Anyone can browse this basic version of the map but subscribed members of the site can also view more information on the map and filter the results shown by the number of rooms and type of building.

Get Your Map Kicks on Route 66

If you ever get around to realizing your dream of driving the whole length of Route 66 then you might want to check out this map. The Route 66 map plots roadside attractions and landmarks along the whole of the historic route of the original highway.

The attractions and landmarks on the route are sorted into four categories. The green Route 66 markers shows the locations of ghost towns, the blue markers indicate buildings, the brown markers indicate attractions and the black markers are used to show other points of interest.

If you have no interest in Route 66 then you might still be interested in this SQL query which was used to download all the landmarks and points of interest along Route 66 from Wikipedia. This is a neat idea to find data to help populate a topic specific map with related points of interest.

Mapping the Martian

In the novel 'The Martian' NASA astronaut Mark Watney is abandoned by the rest of his crew on Mars. In order to survive Watney has to drive a Mars rover 2,000 miles across the planet to Schiaparelli Crater where he has a chance of being picked up by another NASA mission.

Last year Andy Weir's The Martian Map was the first Google Map to track and plot a novel set on Mars. The map plots the course of Watney's journey to Schiaparelli Crater and marks the locations of some of the incidents he encounters along the way.

In anticipation of the release of 20th Century Fox's film of Andy Weir's novel Bing has now got in on the act. Bing Watney Home also allows you to track Watney’s journey on a map of Mars. The map is following Watney's journey in 'real time' and a new transmission is being added to the map every day, as Watney attempts to navigate his way to Schiaparelli Crater.

The orange map markers show the locations of Watney's transmissions. A countdown clock shows you how long you have to wait until the next transmission and the yellow dots on the map provide information on some of the points of interest along Watney's path across Mars.

Harbor Master

You can now pretend you are the harbor master of your very own shipping port using this live dashboard map of the Port of Leixões. 3Port is a map which provides a live view of ship activity in this Portuguese port, providing information on all ship positions and schedules.

At the heart of 3Port is the Automatic Identification System (AIS), the tracking system used on ships for identifying and locating vessels. This allows 3Port to show the real-time position of ships in the port.

The ships are shown on the map using boat shaped markers, which are scaled to show the size of the represented ship and color-coded to show the type of ship. You can click on the individual ships currently in the port to view a picture of the ship and its name. If you select the 'port traffic' button in the map menu you can also view a list of all the ships currently berthed in the port and details about scheduled arrivals.

The map includes a number of other features, such as the ability to view live webcam views from the port and the option to explore the port in Google Maps Street View.

The Canadian Talking Map

One of the many problems of living in Canada is that hardly anybody can pronounce all those weird sounding and strangely spelled place-names. Luckily the Globe and Mail has a solution. Its Mispronounced Towns Across Canada map can help you properly pronounce some of those weird town names.

Now, if you are unsure how to correctly speak the name of a Canadian town, all you have to do is click on its marker on this interactive map. You can then listen to a sound recording made by one of the town's inhabitants pronouncing the name in the correct Canadian accent.

Unfortunately, so far, only eight towns have recordings. So if you want to know how to pronounce Baie d'Espoir (Newfoundland) you are on your own for now.

Street View in Kenya

Samburu National Park

Google has added the first Street View imagery to Google Maps in Kenya. The new Street View imagery in Kenya consists of three special collections which allow you to walk among Kenya's amazing wildlife.

Using the new Street View you can view the elephants in Samburu National Park & the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and you can watch the zebras & elephants at play in the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy