Highlighting terrain by only showing the roads on the map

 

What if someone were to create a map that showed every street in the country and nothing else? Fathom Information Design did just that, and the results are amazing!

 

streets.jpg 

It feels kind of like the city lights of Earth that we recently wrote about, as you can clearly see cities form without any kind of borders or other overlays in there.

What’s even more remarkable about the “All Streets” map is how clearly the mountain ranges are defined. Simply by drawing in the roads, you can see them without any difficulty. A great example is the Appalachian Mountains, seen here:

 

appalachian.jpg 

You can view and/or purchase the map over on the Fathom website.

(via +Adrienne St. Aubin)

The Atlantic’s Google Earth quiz

The Atlantic ran a fun article with a Google Earth quiz as part of it. The quiz is multiple choice, but still quite difficult. Can you identify the location of various aerial imagery from across the globe?

Take the quiz

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If you enjoy this kind of puzzle, be sure to check out PlaceSpotting.com for many more quizzes like that. The entries on PlaceSpotting are more difficult because you aren’t given multiple choice options, but that makes it more rewarding when you get one right.

The Art on Earth

 

We’ve seen sites in the past the collect various placemarks to view in Google Earth, giving you quick access to interesting sites around the world. Searthing.com is similar to some of those, but with a focus specifically on artist-looking imagery.

Searthing was created by Mack Lazarus and Tim Schmauch, who are behind the similar EarthArtWorld.com site. The two site both focus on artistic-looking imagery, but Searthing is designed in a blog format to show off much more of it.

With that in mind, here are some of the great places that they’ve uncovered:

Blue Phoenix (details)

blue-phoenix.jpg 

Masterful Peace (details)

masterful-peace.jpg 

The images are stunning, but there’s a minor problem — most have no context to go with them. No maps, no KML, just an image. Fortunately, they’re working on adding that kind of functionality to the site, and some are already complete. Here are a few examples of items that are shown using the Google Earth Plug-in:

New Ruins

Sea Cliffs

Mystic Eye

Sand Still

Ultimately, it might be best to do a hybrid of those ideas. Show users a static image so that it loads quickly, but then offer them a view via the plug-in and/or a downloadable KML file so they can explore further.

More at Searthing.com.