Google Maps Mashups IIL

Blogabond


Blogabond is a neat application that allows anyone to create their own travel blog with an accompanying Google Map that shows the location of your blog posts and photographs.

Blogabond is very easy to use. After you create an account you can create a new travel blog. This simply involves choosing a location, adding your text and uploading any photographs that you want to share.

When finished your travel blog is presented on its very own page. The blog includes a Google Maps header that displays markers for all of your entries. The map can therefore be used as an index for your blog. You just need to click on a map marker to view the entry for that location.

Discovery Channel – Remembering 9/11


Nearly everybody can remember where they were when they heard that flight 11 had flown into the World Trade Center’s North Tower and that the South Tower had collapsed.

The Discovery Channel has created this Google Map to commemorate the collective presence and kindness of strangers that got many people through the unimaginable horrors they witnessed that day.

On the 10th anniversary of 9/11 the National Geographic Channel is inviting everyone to rebuild this collective history of 9/11 by sharing their personal stories on an interactive Google Map.

The Remembering 9/11 Facebook app allows users to post brief accounts of their 9/11 experiences and mark their stories on the interactive map. Users are also able to explore all posted anecdotes by location and filter stories to see their friends’ stories and share comments.

The app is available worldwide in nine languages.

Opus Dei – Iniciativas Sociales

This Google Map from Spain’s Opus Dei shows some of the social initiatives undertaken by the organisation around the world.

You can filter the initiatives shown on the map by category. The social initiatives are divided into four categories, ‘youth’, ‘health’, ‘education’ and ‘social promotion’.

If you click on a map marker you can read details about the initiative shown. Many of the markers include videos about work being done by Opus Dei at that location. Each information window also contains a link to read further details on Spain’s Opus Dei website.

Amud Anan

Amud Anan is an online travel guide and geographical encyclopaedia for Israel.

The map uses the Google Maps API with topographical map tiles of Israel to display user submitted points of interest. As well as adding points of interest users can add routes and trails to the map.

The map is in Hebrew only and is available as a desktop and as an iPhone and iPad application.

Hiroshima Panoramas

360Cities has posted five amazing and shocking 360 degree panoramas of Hiroshima in Japan, taken just six months after the USA dropped an atomic bomb on the city.

Panning the photos around 360 degrees and viewing the total destruction as far as you can see powerfully conveys the effect that the bomb had on the city. According to Wikipedia ‘4.7 square miles (12 km2) of the city were destroyed (and) Japanese officials determined that 69% of Hiroshima’s buildings were destroyed and another 6–7% damaged.’

The panorama taken by Shigeo Hayashi clearly shows what is now the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. Last week Google released imagery of the Peace Memorial that allows you to view the interior of the memorial on Google Maps Street View.

Localley

Localley is a tool that broadens the functionality of Facebook Places by letting you check-in to places using a date and time in the future. It also allows you to view your check-in history on a Google Map, visualise your friends’ latest check-ins and view the people who are checked in around you.

Localley has now released checkintab for Facebook pages. If your business or venue has a Facebook account you can use checkintab to allow users to check-in directly from your Facebook page.

Once you add checkintab to your Facebook account a ‘check-in now!’ button is added to the right hand menu of your page. When visitors click on the button they can check-in to your business and venue without having to leave your Facebook page.

Your visitors can even create a future check-in and inform their friends that they will be at your venue at a specific time. This is a great way to get users to share and promote your business with their Facebook friends.

Foodspotting

The food sharing app Foodspotting has passed one million downloads. The Foodspotting apps lets you take photos of your favourite dishes and share them with the world. Foodspotting is a great way not just to find a good restaurant nearby but to find the best rated dish in a restaurant.

Don’t worry if you haven’t downloaded the app to your smart phone as you can also browse all the dish photographs and reviews on the Foodspotting website. If you enter a location you can view all the dishes shared near that location on a Google Map.

Click on one of the dish photographs displayed on the map and you can view where the picture was taken and how many people have rated this dish.

The Growth of U.S. Newspapers

For the last few years Paper Cuts has been documenting layoffs and buyouts at U.S. newspapers with the help of Google Maps.

This year’s map from Paper Cuts already shows over 2,500 layoffs at newspapers throughout the country. As newspaper readership and advertising revenues continue to dwindle I suspect Paper Cuts will become busier and busier mapping the loss of newspaper jobs and newspapers.

Whilst Paper Cuts seems to be mapping the decline of American newspapers The Growth of U.S. Newspapers has created a great map visualisation that documents the growth of newspapers in the U.S. over three centuries.

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The visualisation from Stanford University plots the growth of newspapers since the publication of ‘Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick’ in Boston in 1690. It is possible to filter the data shown on the map by date, language of publication and by frequency of publication.

Around France

Randonee dans l’Ain is a really nicely designed website promoting hiking, horse riding and bike trails in Ain, an area of the region Rhône-Alpes in France.

Each of the trails can be viewed on Google Maps. The route of each selected trail is displayed on the map and you can select to view restaurants, activities, photos and accommodation along and near the trail.

Each trail also comes with an elevation chart and with information concerning the route’s length and the approximate time it takes to complete.

Metro Vancouver Mapped

The Vancouver Sun has put together a great series of 21 interactive Google Maps looking at all aspects of life in the city based on the 2006 census. Metro Vancouver Mapped uses Google Fusion Tables to create heat maps that explore answers given by residents in the 2006 census.

The maps examine the demographic differences in the city and allow you to see in which areas residents have the best educational attainment, the best commute times and the highest property values etc.

Each map is accompanied by a brief analysis of the census results.

Around London

London is a very large city that can be very confusing to travel around, especially if you are a visitor to the UK capital. CityMapper London can help you navigate the city by providing you with bus, subway, cycling and walking directions. Or, if you want to get a taxi, it can give you an estimated cost for your journey.

To get directions the user just needs to add their starting point and destination, either by text input or by simply clicking on the map, and then selecting the mode of travel.

If the user selects bus or tube directions CityMapper London shows you the route of your journey on Google Maps and in the sidebar explains which stops you need, any transfers you need to make, the estimated time of your journey and the cost.

The biking directions show the user the locations of London bike hire stations near your start point and how many bikes are currently available at each station.

Both the walking and biking directions give the user an estimated time for the journey and an estimation of the number of calories that will be burnt.

Wandercast.TV

Wandercast.TV is a travel video website that aims to allow you to “Watch where you’re going before leaving home.”

If you are planning a trip you can search Wandercast.TV for great places to visit and view a video of the location before travelling. Alternatively you can of course just browse Wandercast.TV to virtually visit places in the world that you may never get a chance to visit for real.

Each video on Wandercast.TV is accompanied by a Google Map showing the location where it was shot. If you have your own travel videos then you can also upload them to the Wandercast.TV map.

via:googlemapsmania

Google Maps with WebGL

 

Google has just introduced a test mode on Google Maps that enables WebGL to help draw the maps, and the results have moved it a step closer to Google Earth. If you’re using a WebGL-enabled browser, such as a recent version of Google Chrome or the new Firefox beta, you’ll see a note in the lower left corner of Google Maps inviting you to try it out.

 

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The result is a much smoother experience; lots of animations to ease the transitions when zooming in, rotating 45 degree imagery, or switching into Street View. It also enables the transparent 3D buildings like you’ll see in the Android version of Google Maps.

All in all, it feels very similar to the Android version of Maps, with a few exceptions:

1 — You can’t angle your view or rotate the map, with the exception of the 45 degree imagery. On Android, you can angle and rotate freely on the street maps.

2 — The new transparent 3D buildings in Google Maps now cast shadows, which is a nice effect not seen in the Android version. Even better, as +Nick Altmann pointed out, the shadows are time-of-day (and likely day-of-year) accurate! Very cool. Here’s a screenshot of Los Angeles, taken around 3:45pm local time:

shadows.jpg 

It’s certainly no where near the depth of Google Earth (or the Google Earth Plug-in, also available inside of Google Maps), but it’s another step in that direction. It’s possible that the products could one day merge, but it seems that we’re still quite a distance from that.

SketchUp: Speed Up Using Fast Styles

You might not realize that the display settings you choose to apply to your models can affect SketchUp’s speed and general responsiveness. Turning on fancy edge effects and other doodads will slow you down when your model gets big.

When you’re working on a big model, you want to make sure that you’re using a style whose Edge Settings panel looks like the one in the image below. Everything but “Edges” should be turned off.

The Face Settings panel is where you can choose not to display Transparency. When Transparency is turned on, SketchUp has to redraw your model on the screen several times—each time you change your viewpoint. If you don’t need to see through your windows just now, opt to temporarily view these faces without transparency.

The Background Settings panel is handy for turning off Sky and Ground, both of which cause your computer to do extra thinking while you’re working.

Unless you absolutely need them, you should use the checkbox in the Watermark Settings panel to turn off Watermarks.

The only toggles in the Modeling Settings panel you really need to worry about are the ones for Hidden Geometry and Section Planes. Obviously, you shouldn’t have wither of these displayed if speed is what you’re aiming for.


Once you’ve configured your own fast style, you should save it. Just give it a new name (I suggest “Fast Style”), hit Enter, and click the Create New Style button in the Styles Browser. You new style is saved in the “In Model” collection of styles, which is only associated with the model you’re currently working on.

Incidentally, almost all of the choices in SketchUp’s Default Styles collection are so-called “Fast styles” — their Edge Display settings are already configured for speed. Choosing any one of these styles will switch off extraneous effects.

Make a Fast Scene

True SketchUp whizzes invariably go one step further and add a special “Fast” scene that they can activate whenever they need to. Rather than having to mess with the Styles Browser every time they want to activate their Fast Style, they just click a scene tab at the top of the modeling window. This Fast scene is usually set up to do three things: Switch to a Fast style, turn off Shadows, and turn off Fog.

Follow these steps to add a Fast scene to your model:

  1. Apply a Fast style to your model by choosing it from the Style Browser’s Select tab.
  2. Make sure Shadows and Fog are both turned off. These toggles are in the View menu.
  3. Choose Window > Scenes to open the Scenes Manager.
  4. Expand the Scenes Manager by clicking the Show Details button in the upper right corner.
  5. Click the Add Scene button to add a new scene to your model.
  6. Rename your new scene “Fast” (or something similarly descriptive) and hit Enter on your keyboard.
  7. Make sure that only the “Style and Fog” and “Shadow Settings” checkboxes are selected in the Properties to Save section of the Scenes Manager.