The Where in the World Street View Game

Where in the World is a new Street View quiz from SuperBreak. In this fun little game you are shown a succession of Google Maps Street View images of famous locations around the world. All you have to do is choose the correct location from three different answers.

The game allows you to choose from five different categories, History, Travel, Royal Attractions, Nature & Parks and Entertainment. Once you have selected your categories you are shown 10 different Street View images and your job is to guess where in the world each image is from.

The main difficulty with Where in the World is the time element. You are only given twelve seconds to answer each question, which isn't really enough time to explore the Street View scene in any detail. However, even with the time element, I found it easy to get ten out of ten each time I played. But then I spend way too much of my time exploring the world on Street View.

Hat-tip: Street View World

Improving the Tiled Grid Map

In the last UK general election the biggest winner in data visualization techniques was the tiled grid map. The NPR Visuals Team has written a good explanation of why (and where) the tiled grid map is a good option for visualizing geographical data.


Recently there has been some interesting developments in tiled grid maps - specifically in using individual grids to visualize historical data. For example, after the Scottish Election in May, The Guardian used Sankey diagrams in each tiled grid to show the historical percentage of votes by each political party over previous elections in each electoral district.


Esri has also been experimenting with using different types of charts and graphs within individual tiled map grids to visualize U.S. election history data. US Election History is an interactive tiled grid map which visualizes the historical voting pattern of each state in a number of different ways.

My favorite view in this tiled grid map is the Waffle Grid, which presents the historical election data in each state with a series of small colored squares. Each square is colored red or blue to show how the state voted in previous US elections.

This waffle grid view provides a neat and simple visualization of the historical political tendency of each state. With the most recent election results shown at the top and the oldest elections at the bottom of each square it is also very easy to read the most recent historical voting tendency in each state.

Beeping Cyclists

Hövding, the creators of the cycling airbag, and the London Cycling Campaign have started a campaign to improve cycling in London. The Give a Beep campaign has given 500 wireless buttons, connected to a mobile app, to cyclists in London.

Every time one of the cyclists is frustrated with cycling conditions on London roads they can press the wireless button to send an e-mail to the London Mayor. Each 'beep' is also added anonymously to the Give a Beep interactive map.

500 cyclists are probably not enough to present a real picture of cycling conditions on London roads. At the moment I suspect that all the map really reveals is the most popular routes of the chosen cyclists. However, other cyclists can download the Give Beep mobile app and connect it themselves to a flic wireless button.

The Illegal Trade in Rhino Horn

Surprisingly Europe has been one of the global hot-spots of the organised theft of rhino horns. This is mainly due to organised criminal networks stealing rhino horn from government stockpiles, private homes and museums.

The reason why these organised criminal networks exist is because of the huge demand in Vietnam and China, primarily where rhino horn is used (with no effect) in traditional medicine. Of course the real tragedy in this illegal demand for rhino horn is the poaching of live rhinos in Africa,

The Environmental Investigation Agency wants to raise awareness in the illegal trade of rhino horns with this interactive map of Illegal Trade Seizures of Rhino Horn. The map shows incidents of seizures and thefts of rhino horn and convictions related to the rhino horn trade. Colored scaled markers are used on the map to show the number of horns stolen and horns seized by authorities around the world.

NYC Restaurant Inspections

Safe Dining NYC is an interactive map which allows you to search for New York restaurants by type of cuisine and also see their Health Department Inspection ratings.

If you select a restaurant on the map you can view the latest Health Department Inspection rating (the lower the better), the average rating over all inspections and the most recently awarded grade. You can also read the Health Department Inspection summaries for the selected restaurant for the last few years.

The map sidebar provides links which allow you to view all restaurants with A+ grades or all restaurants with Z grades (the worst of the worst). The colors used for the map markers are a little confusing as they indicate the type of cuisine rather than the Health Department ratings. I can't help thinking that the map would be more useful if it just used a green to red color scale for the map markers - so you could quickly tell which restaurants had good or bad Health Department ratings.

The Map of Life

The average Briton's adult life consists of University, London, suburb, retirement and then death.

At least that seems to be the major lesson from No Place Like Home, an interactive map exploring the life migration patterns of the British. The map visualizes migration data documenting the residential moves made by the British between local authority areas and regions.

Using the map you can select a town to view data on the numbers of people who have migrated to and from the town. You can even filter the data by age to see how many people move in and out of any town in different age groups.

A really nice feature of this map is the 'Stories' section which explores the migration patterns of the British at different stages of their life, including 'flying the nest, 'off to work, 'family time' and 'retirement'.

The Maps of the Week

Inside Asia Tours has produced three very impressive custom designed interactive maps showcasing some of the wonderful destinations that can be visited in Burma, Japan and in Vietnam, Cambodia & Laos.

Each of the three custom designed maps feature some wonderful touches, such as animated boats and sea monsters. The custom map marker icons also include small animations and unfurling scrolls which reveal the place labels.when you mouse-over a marker.

If you select a marker on the map you can then explore the chosen tourist destination using Google Maps panoramic Street View. imagery. The only thing really missing from Inside Asia is some background information on the featured locations. It would be nice if the Street View scenes also included a little information about the selected destination.


Between 2011 and 2015 NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft orbited Mercury, studying the planet's chemical composition, geology, and magnetic field.

Melown's 3d Map of Mercury uses imagery collected by Messenger to provide an interactive 3d globe of the planet. The map includes four different imagery layers: natural color, morphology, false color and enhanced color.

The map itself was created with Melown's new 3d mapping library. Melown are currently accepting applications from developers who wish to alpha test the new Melown Map API.


This week a team of researchers, led by Fabio Falchi, published The New World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness. This new atlas shows light pollution around the world, with light pollution rated as a ratio to natural sky brightness, measured at around 1 a.m..

The scientific paper accompanying the new atlas explains how the team measures light pollution and explores in more depth which populations around the world are most and least affected by light pollution. However, if you want to explore The New World Atlas of Artificial Sky Brightness for yourself, you can view an interactive version of the map created by the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

CIRES has created both an interactive map and an interactive 3D Globe from the new light pollution atlas and says that it will also soon release a KMZ data file for noncommercial use.

The New World Atlas of Light Pollution

Only 12% of Europe is not affected by light pollution and because most Europeans live within the 88% of Europe which is affected by light pollution 99% of Europeans live under light polluted skies. If you live in Paris and you want to see the Milky Way you would need to travel over 900 km to Corsica, Central Scotland or to the Cuenca province in Spain to reach an area not significantly affected by light pollution.

In the USA almost half of the country has light pollution and again around 99% of the population live under these light polluted skies.

Yesterday a team of researchers, led by Fabio Falchi, published The New World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness. This new atlas shows light pollution around the world, with light pollution rated as a ratio to natural sky brightness, measured at around 1 a.m..

The scientific paper accompanying the new atlas explains how the team measures light pollution and explores in more depth which populations around the world are most and least affected by light pollution. However, if you want to explore The New World Atlas of Artificial Sky Brightness for yourself, you can view an interactive version of the map created by the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

CIRES has created both an interactive map and an interactive 3D Globe from the new light pollution atlas and says that it will also soon release a KMZ data file for noncommercial use.

The Secret Life of Cats

Wild Life's Cat Tracker Project is a citizen science project studying the movements, diet and health of domestic cats. As part of the project volunteers have fitted GPS trackers to their feline friends in order to track the movements of the cats over a five day period.

You can view interactive maps showing the movements of around 140 different cats from the Cat Tracker Cat Tracks page. Each cat has its own interactive map, with yellow polylines showing the straight line paths between every recorded location of the cat during its five days of tracking.


If you want to know more about the movements of domestic cats then you should have a look at the BBC's Secret Life of Cats. In this television documentary the BBC attached GPS trackers and micro-cameras to a number of domestic cats in an English village.

To accompany the television show the BBC published Ordnance Survey maps showing the tracks of ten of the featured cats over a 24 hour period. Each of the maps is accompanied by a small film clip of the particular tracked cat in action and a summary about how far each cat roams from its home and the size of its roaming area.

Mapping the Supply Chain

There is a trend among the most ethical businesses to be more open about how and where goods are manufactured and about the environmental impact of the company's products. As part of this trend some businesses have created supply chain maps to inform consumers about the origins of the raw materials, products or ingredients that make up the company's products.

In the UK the retailer Marks & Spencer has released the M&S Supplier Map. In order to be more transparent with their customers M&S has created this interactive map to show the factories around the world where M&S source their branded clothing, clothing accessories, footwear, food, non-alcoholic drinks and household products.

Using the map you can view details on individual factories around the world which are part of the M&S supply chain. If you select an individual manufacturer on the map you can view a few details about the factory, such as the total number of employees and the percentage of female & male employees.


French yogurt producers Les 2 Vaches have also created a source map for their range of organic yogurts. This Google Map shows where all the ingredients used in Les 2 Vaches yogurts are produced or grown. The map also shows where the ingredients are stored and prepared.

If you select a marker on the map you can click on the '+' icon to read more about the farm or company which produces an ingredient or product used in Les 2 Vaches. The map sidebar displays the ingredients used in the yogurt. If you select an ingredient the map highlights the companies and farms involved in producing the selected ingredient and a supply chain is displayed on the map to show how the ingredient makes it to the final product.


Story Maps can be a great way for businesses to show how they source raw materials and to explain the manufacturing process which leads to the final product. Clothing manufacturers Loomstate has used Odyssey.js to create the Loomstate Difference, a narrative map which guides potential consumers through the manufacture of a Loomstate T-shirt, from the sourcing of materials to the finished product.

The map takes you on the complete production journey of a Loomstate t-shirt, from cotton farm to mill, from cotton to garment, from dying to printing, the map reveals the whole process of how a Loomstate t-shirt is created.