Sting: Saviour of the Universe

Earth Destroyers

Will you look at that - Sting really is the saviour of the universe.

Enter a band name into Earth Destroyers and it will show you how eco-friendly the band's touring schedule is. Earth Destroyers calculates the total distance travelled from the first to the last gig on a band's tour. If an artist has an average inter-show distance of greater than a 1,000 km it is branded an 'Earth Destroyer'. If an artist averages less than 1,000 km it wins the accolade of 'Earth Saver'.

The application also displays a Google Map of the artist's tour so you can see just how inefficient the tour is. The event data for the map and the app comes from Bandsintown.

London Tube Strike Mapped

London Tube Strike Map

Workers on the London Underground system are currently on a 24 hour strike, causing disruption to the journeys of London's commuters. The BBC are using the Ushahidi incident reporting system to provide a Google Map of the disruption caused by the strike.

Londoners can use the map to report which stations and tube lines are currently experiencing delays. It is possible to report a disruption by sending an email tolondontravel@bbc.co.uk, by sending a tweet with the hashtag '#TubeStrike' or by completing a short form.

As with all crowd-sourced systems this map is reliant on user input and, to be honest, at the moment the map looks a little empty. It probably isn't the best source to find out if your journey is likely to be disrupted by the strike. It is nice however to see Ushahidi being used by the BBC.

Kashgar panoramas and another apology

I'll be off the internet again for a week (this time traveling in Indonesia) so preëmptive apologies for the lack of updates, but before I'm off: I managed to get the first two panoramas done from Kashgar. Here's my favorite spot in Kashgar:

Tea house and evening market, Kashgar in Xinjiang

(It was used as a backdrop for The Kite Runner -- that movie was shot in Kashgar, BTW.)

And here's a panorama taken from inside another tea house. I've got more updates planned for as soon as I'm back.

Google Maps Mania Map of the Week

CommonSpace
If you live in Philadelphia you should definitely let CommonSpace try to find you a great night out for you and your friends. CommonSpace lets you add multiple starting points to a Google Map and then finds things to do in areas that are convenient to you and your friends.

To start planning your night out just enter your name, a Philadelphia address, the length of time you are prepared to travel for and your mode of transport. CommonSpace will then show you the area within which you can travel in that time.



A slide control at the bottom of the map allows you to adjust your travelling time and expands or contracts the shaded area on the map accordingly. If you are planning to meet up with friends you can now add their names and addresses to the map. As you add your friends to the map their travel areas are also shaded on the map. Most importantly the area that can be reached by youand your friends is highlighted to show where you can all meet.



Now that you have determined where you are all going to meet you need to find a venue. In the map sidebar you can choose to search for events and venues from Yelp!, SBN, Philly Live Arts, Uwishunu and the Phillyfun Guide. You can choose from a large number of different categories including bars, restaurants, arts and theatres etc. You can also choose the date and time of events.

When you have selected a date, time and the kind of events / venues that you are interested in the results for your selected area of search are displayed on the map.



You can now browse the selections chosen for you by CommonSpace. When you find an event or venue you wish to visit you can add it to your 'Plan'. You can add as many events as you like to you Plan and when you have finished you can get directions and a link to share your itinerary with all your friends.

Transportation Costs on Google Maps

Abogo

Abogo can help you discover the average transportation costs for different addresses. You can use Abogo to discover the costs of where you live now, or where you would like to live. Abogo measures the money an average household in a neighborhood would spend getting around, including car ownership, car use, and transit use. 

To check a neighborhood's transportation costs with Abogo you just need to search for an address. Abogo then shows the address on a Google Map. A map marker (in the shape of a house) is placed over the address. If you click on the marker you can view the estimated monthly transportation cost at that address.

It is easy to compare the cost of your transportation to other areas as Abogo overlays a heat map on your results. You can therefore tell at a glance how your transportation costs compare to those living in other neighborhoods. 

Christchurch Earthquake Visualizations

By now you've likely heard about the earthquake that struck Christchurch, New Zealand over the weekend. While there have been no deaths reported, the magnitude 7.1 earthquake has caused quite a lot of damage.

GEB reader Kelvin sent us a file that is a great visualization of the quakes, with data from the GNS Science and their GeoNet website.

You can view the data by simply downloading this KMZ file and then clicking the [play] button in the upper-left corner. If you find any other Google Earth resources related to the New Zealand earthquake, please let a comment and let us know.

Timeline of the Christchurch Earthquake

Mapping Quakes in Canterbury

New Zealand's Sciblogs has used Google Maps to create a storyboard of seismic activity for the Christchurch earthquake and its aftershocks. The data for the maps comes from New Zealand's GeoNet data portal.

Each map represents one hour. The circles on the maps represent seismic events and the larger the circle, the higher the quake’s magnitude. A reader of the blog has also uploaded images of the maps to Picasa to create an animationof the earthquake and its aftershocks.

GeoNet has created its own map of the Christchurch earthquake that shows instrument recordings of the earthquake and felt reports submitted by the public from different localities around New Zealand.

How Global is your Social Network?

Twittermap.tv

How global is your social circle? Using twittermap.tv you can get the answer to this question by visualising the locations of your Twitter followers on a Google Map.

And this is only one of the features of twittermap.tv.

To see where your followers are on a Google Map you just need to enter your Twitter user name. Your location is then shown on the map with a map marker. Your followers are displayed on the map using their profile pictures.

As well as visualising the locations of your followers you can view all the tweets sent from different locations. For example, you can view all the tweets sent from New York. You can also use twittermap.tv to find all the Twitter users at a location.

Finally, you can search twittermap.tv for all tweets about a specific term. The tweets about that subject are then shown on the map and in the map sidebar. A really nice touch in this visualisation of tweets is that if one of the tweets is in reply to another user a polyline is drawn between the two users.

Commuting Distance on Google Maps

BCEmissions

BCEmissions was created for the Canadian Apps for Climate Action Competition to help British Columbia residents explore the carbon dioxide emission and energy consumption patterns of their hometown,

For each BC town and city the application examines a number of areas; heating and electricity, commute mode, commute distance, housing, land use and green space, solid waste and air quality. The commute distance section for each town uses a Google Map with an interesting radius tool to display the distance that workers commute.

The map for each town displays a number of circles to show the commuting distances travelled. If you mouse over any of the circles the map displays the percentage of citizens who commute that distance to work. 

The Banff Triathlon on Google Maps

Banff Triathlon Course Map

Banff Hotels has used Google Maps to create this Subaru Banff International Triathlon route map. The triathlon is being held on September 11th.

The map shows the route of the bike and run routes and the starting locations for the running, biking and swimming stages. The bike and run stages are shown in different colours.

In satellite view the map does a great job of showing the spectacular Canadian Rockies setting for the race.