PixyCity
PixyCity is a new location based service using Google Maps to share and discover local news and events.
PixyCity uses Google Maps to create city communities where people can meet, talk and inform others. PixyCity is crowd-sourcing this local news and event data and uses Karma points to encourage user contributions.
For every event or news item added to PixyCity users earn 'Karma points'. Karma points can then be used to buy poster and billboard space on PixyCity to advertise an event, website etc.
Using PixyCity you can save a location as your 'home' and you can define the area that you wish to view news and events for by using the map zoom controls.
Here at Google, we love the experience of browsing photos on a map, and today it just got a lot easier. We have launched an update to the design of the Photo layer in Google Maps to provide you with a better experience when browsing your favorite places:
There are three main improvements in this latest update:
Firstly, we have made improvements to the density of the photos on the map, making it easier to see clusters of photos in popular locations. On the screenshot above, you can now well see that there are a lot more photos taken on the coast than there are inland.
Secondly, we’ve made the small thumbnails partially transparent, making it easier to see the underlying map, and helping you to stay oriented. On the screenshot above, the city and neighborhood labels are now more legible.
Finally, we are showing more information when you hover over a photo. Now, you can see a large thumbnail and the title of each image, so you can get a fast preview of what any photo looks like.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on the new layer, so feel free to leave us your comments in the Panoramio forum.
Jonah Jones, User Experience Designer, Google Maps
Americans for Peace Now - Facts on the Ground
Americans for Peace Now are using Google Maps to display the data the orgainsation has collected about settlement activity in the West Bank.
The map contains several layers, that can be selected from the Layer Selector. The layers include the West Bank Barrier, the Israeli Municipal Jurisdiction and the Palestinian Residential Areas.
If you select an individual settlement you can view the data that the Americans for Peace Now organisation have collected about it, such as the year it was established and its population. The map also includes a few news stories posted by Americans for Peace Now. The news stories include links that you can click to read the story in full elsewhere on the site.
Directions Map with Animated Street View
Can you create the best Street View tour?
Today's task dear reader is to create the most scenic Street View tour with Directions Map and post a link to your tour in the comments below.
If you need a directions widget for your business, school or college you could do a lot worse than embed a free Directions Map widget on your website. Directions Map uses Google Maps to help users create an embedable driving directions map for their website or blog.
The really fun part of this Google Maps based widget however is that it also allows you to create animated Street View tours. If you just add a starting point and a destination to Directions Map you can then view the route entirely in Street View.
Directions Map allows users to create driving directions from any starting point to any location. Users can also define the height, width and the map type of their widget. Once the widget has been embedded on a website it can then be used to follow the given driving directions or to view an animated walk-through of the route in Street View.
The animated walk-throughs of routes with Street View are very impressive. Given the impressive nature of these Street View animated routes I can see Directions Map also being used by websites to create virtual tours. In fact Directions Map has created a number of example animated Street View routes for locations around the world.
Here are links to some of the example animated Street View routes:
Chapmans Peak Drive, South Africa
Chateau d'Eox , Switzerland
Golden Gate Bridge
Colosseum, Rome
Las Vegas Boulevard
London, from the Houses of Parliament to the British Museum
Because Directions Map uses dynamic URL's you can even play about with the web address to quickly create your own routes by changing the start point and destination in the URL.
Here is the URL for New York to Boston:
http://s3.tripgeo.com/dirmap/map.htm?from=New%20York&to=Boston
If you want to view a Street View animation of the route from New York to San Francisco just change 'Boston' to 'San Francisco in the URL above. So what routes can you create. Post links to your routes in the comments below.
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Directions Map with Animated Street View
Can you create the best Street View tour?
Today's task dear reader is to create the most scenic Street View tour with Directions Map and post a link to your tour in the comments below.
If you need a directions widget for your business, school or college you could do a lot worse than embed a free Directions Map widget on your website. Directions Map uses Google Maps to help users create an embedable driving directions map for their website or blog.
The really fun part of this Google Maps based widget however is that it also allows you to create animated Street View tours. If you just add a starting point and a destination to Directions Map you can then view the route entirely in Street View.
Directions Map allows users to create driving directions from any starting point to any location. Users can also define the height, width and the map type of their widget. Once the widget has been embedded on a website it can then be used to follow the given driving directions or to view an animated walk-through of the route in Street View.
The animated walk-throughs of routes with Street View are very impressive. Given the impressive nature of these Street View animated routes I can see Directions Map also being used by websites to create virtual tours. In fact Directions Map has created a number of example animated Street View routes for locations around the world.
Here are links to some of the example animated Street View routes:
Chapmans Peak Drive, South Africa
Chateau d'Eox , Switzerland
Golden Gate Bridge
Colosseum, Rome
Las Vegas Boulevard
London, from the Houses of Parliament to the British Museum
Because Directions Map uses dynamic URL's you can even play about with the web address to quickly create your own routes by changing the start point and destination in the URL.
Here is the URL for New York to Boston:
http://s3.tripgeo.com/dirmap/map.htm?from=New%20York&to=Boston
If you want to view a Street View animation of the route from New York to San Francisco just change 'Boston' to 'San Francisco in the URL above. So what routes can you create. Post links to your routes in the comments below.
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Destmapper
Destmapper uses Google Maps to show you how far you can fly on a specific budget. The map uses flight cost data from adioso.com.
On first loading the map determines your location and begins to load the destinations you can fly to from that location for under $189 (prices are displayed in New Zealand dollars). Users can then increase the cost of flights that they are prepared to pay for by using a slider control.
As you increase the cost of flights more locations will be marked on the map. You can also load different price-range locations on the map via a number of quick links. The markers displayed on the map are even colour-coded by the price range of flights.
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World Architecture Map (WAM)
The World Architecture Map is a database of architectural information that uses Google Maps to show the locations of architectural interesting buildings around the world. It is possible to search for buildings on WAM by location, building type, architectural style or by tags.
Searching by location it is possible to view architectural maps for individual cities or by country. If you click on a building's map marker you can click through to a dedicated page about the building containing information, links and Flickr photographs.
WAM really excels in its tagging system. Anybody interested in architecture is sure to love the ability to view a map showing all the locations of buildings that match a specific query. For example, if you want to look at examples of geodesic domes, you just need to click on the 'geodesic dome tag. WAM will then display a Google Map showing all the buildings matching that tag in the database
WAM includes the option to submit a building to the site by completing a short form. If you work in, are studying or are just interested in architecture you can help to improve WAM by adding buildings to the database.
The Guardian - National Transport Map
The Guardian newspaper has used Google Fusion Tables to map every bus stop, train station, ferry port and taxi rank in Britain. The map uses newly released data from the UK's National Public Transport Data Repository.
The map itself is very basic but it does let you find all the public transport stops for any location in the UK. The map is also a great demonstration of how a Google Map using Fusion Tables can handle a huge amount of data. The map plots more than 400,000 locations without any marker clustering and copes reasonably well.
The Guardian have also completed some analysis of the data, comparing it to population data to work out the number of bus-stops per 100,000 people in different locations in the UK. The Guardian's analysis reveals that London has relatively few bus-stops (for the population size) and that the Western Isles in Scotland and Gwynedd in Wales are very well served.
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The Ocean Mapping Group
The Ocean Mapping Group of the University of New Brunswick has created a bathymetry map for the Arctic. The map overlays a number of bathymetry layers of the region over the Google Maps base map tiles.
The transparency of the bathymetry layers can be adjusted using a slider control or can be turned on or off via a check box under the 'satellite' button. It is possible to download the data by clicking on any of the layers. If you click on a bathymetry layer an information window opens with a link to download the data.
Via: Le Technology du LAC
Robbery Maps
Robberymaps is a Spanish language crowd-sourced Google Map showing the locations of robberies around the world.
The site was launched in Barcelona and most of the user submitted reports of robberies are still submitted from the city. At the moment then the map is most useful for people who live in Barcelona or are planning to visit. The map is full of useful user submitted information about areas of the city that you should be particularly careful.
Barcelona is fairly well known for its gangs of pickpockets. This map could therefore be very useful if you want to find out the latest areas that the gangs have been seen operating in
