Plane and Ship Tracking with Google Maps

Pinkfroot - Plane Finder

Pinkfroot's real time plane tracking Google Map is now available as an iPhone, iPad, iPod or Android phone app.

The apps, as well as the desktop map, allow you to view the real-time position of aeroplanes throughout the world live on a Google Map. You can click on any of the planes shown on the map to view it's track alongside information such as the plane's speed, course and altitude.

Pinkfroot - Ship Finder

When you get bored tracking aircraft in real-time check out Pinkfroot's real-time Google Map of ship positions.

Ship Finder provides real-time information aabout ships across the globe. You can view detailed information about each ship on the map and even view photos of many of the ships displayed.

Google Maps on Google Shared Spaces

Google Shared Spaces
Google Shared Spaces is a Google Labs project that allows you to easily create a shareable space with a collaborative gadget and a chat box. There are already a number of collaborative gadgets that you can use in Shared Spaces, including games like Soduku and a number of Google Maps based gadgets.

TravelWithMe

TravelWithMe allows groups of people to plan trips together in real time. Once you open TravelWithMe you can start planning a trip by simply grabbing locations and dropping them in your itinerary.

The map includes a calendar that allows you to add a date to each destination. If you share your TravelWithMe map with others you can plan a trip collaboratively.

Map Gadget
Map Gadget lets you collaborate on a map of placemarks, paths, and shapes with other participants. Using the map you can draw shapes on Google Maps or you can just share locations or draw paths.

Map Cluster Gadget
The Map Cluster Gadget lets you create a Google Map to share locations. Everyone who opens the gadget can add their location to the map and also see where everyone else is from. This map is a great way for a website to create a map of readers' locations.

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The Year 2010 in Google Earth

Google Earth had another fantastic year in 2010 in terms of new features along with an amazing amount of content! The amount of new content Google has added in a single year is almost too large to comprehend. We wish we had detailed statistics on just how big it is, but Google doesn't usually release their content statistics. New imagery released during the year covered millions of square miles across all seven continents. And, not just current imagery, but in some cases multiple instances for different years going back several decades.

Also in 2010 we saw the release of Google Earth 6 and it's many great new features, tons of new 3D buildings released covering nearly every major city in the world, Street View was greatly expanded world-wide, SketchUp got some excellent new features, and dozens of applications using the Google Earth plugin were released.

Read the full entry to see our most popular posts and tips on Google Earth from each month in 2010.

January
In late January, we speculated on whether or not Google would release a special version ofGoogle Earth for the iPad. The official Google Earth iPad release came in June and users loved it!

February
In February, the world watched the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and Google provided a wealth of tools to help provide additional information. Our post about the Games provided links to 3D models, Street View imagery and a variety of other interactive tools.

February was also the month where details were released on the horrible earthquake in Chile, and Google helped facilitate assistance by releasing imagery as quickly as possible. However, the first aerial imagery of the disaster came from Japanese astronaut Soichi Naguchi, and the photos were viewed many thousands of times by our readers.

March
In March, the big story was our post on the great games you can play inside of Google Earth. The number of games available to play using Google Earth technology continues to increase.

April
The big story in April was the volcano in Iceland that was causing flooding and delayed thousands of flights in Europe. NASA and GeoEye released imagery of the volcano, and it proved to be a very popular post.

May
Paul van Dinther from PlanetInAction has build some cool applications, but his most popular (at least on our site) is likely the "Drive the A-Team Van" game that he created to help promote the movie. It had nice controls, built-in collision detection, and allowed you to unlock special video clips from the upcoming A-Team movie.

June
June saw the final release of Google Earth 5.2, which offered some great new features such as tracks and elevation profiles.

July
July's hottest story was the imagery update they pushed out on July 4. It was a substantial update, covering a variety of cities around the world.

August
August was a similar story to July, with the big imagery update on August 10 capturing the "most popular post" title for the month. It was another large update for Google Earth, with tons more cities getting some fresh imagery.

September
The annual Burning Man event is growing more popular each year, and a special GeoEye-captured image of the event was a very popular item in September.

October
Our most popular post in October was Frank's announcement that his kite photos from Manihi were now available in Google Earth. The imagery he captures from the kite is quite amazing, and it's neat to see that imagery end up as part of the base layer in Google Earth.

November
The big news in November of the release of Google Earth 6. It brought out a handful of awesome new features and continues to raise the bar for what's possible with this program. Some of the new features included 3D trees, tighter integration with Steet View and an improved historical imagery system. Much of this was made possible by the slick new ground-level view, which allows you to browse around as if walking or driving on the ground.

December
Not surprisingly, the NORAD Santa tracker was by far our most popular post in December. People love it, and Google helps add more fun features to it every year.

Garage Sales on Google Maps

Salecator

Salecator is a Google Map mashup from New Zealand that displays upcoming garage sales.

It is possible to select garage sales from the map sidebar or by clicking on a map marker. If you click on a marker the address, date and time of the sale is displayed. It is also possible to view the Street View for each sale.

All listings displayed on the map are validated by date and expired listings are not shown. You can list a garage sale on the map by logging in with a Facebook account.

Also See

Weekend Treasure - thousands of US garage and yard sales on Google Maps. The site maps sales from dozens of online sources, including newspapers and Craigslist.

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How to Find An Open Starbucks

If, like me, you are in desperate need of coffee today you should use the Starbucks Finder which displays all the Starbucks, worldwide, that are currently open on a Google Map.



These three Google Maps based, smart phone friendly, store finders, all come from the same developer:

1. A Starbucks finder - that shows Starbucks that are currently open (Worldwide)
2. A Tim Hortons coffee finder - (Canada & US), and
3. A Skating Rink finder - (Canada Only)

All three apps feature click-to-call and auto-positioning based on your current location. The Starbucks app is also sensitive to the current time and time zone.

If you don't have a smart phone don't worry all three maps also work on your desktop computer.

A Google Maps Hangover Cure

HMSG Spiral Map

You might want to save this sound map for tomorrow when you are a little hungover. The Hudson Mohawk Sound Gate Spiral Map is a virtual walk around the Capital District of New York featuring sound and video. And it could just be the perfect ambient mood shift that you will need after your exertions tonight on New Year's Eve.

For the project one minute videos and sound recordings were made at a number of locations. Each recording is synced to the relevant location on a Google Map. Once the application has loaded all you need to do is press play. You can then sit back and watch and listen as you are taken on a spiral path through New York's Capital District.

Sublime!

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New Year's Mashups on Google Maps

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Map Clock
Use this Google Map to find out whereabouts in the world it is midnight right now. This ingenious Google Map has an embedded clock that changes to show the time in the current map view.

The map sidebar includes some quick links to find the time in cities around the world.

World Webcams
Times Square Live Streaming Cam
This live streaming webcam of Times Square has a lot of different views, so you should catch all of the midnight action.

Nasdaq Times Square Live Streaming Cam (Windows Media Player link)
This live streaming webcam is centred on the Nasdaq Market Site Tower on Times Square.

Sydney Harbour Bridge
This live streaming cam of Sydney Harbour should catch the Sydney Harbour Bridge fireworks.

Grand Place, Brussels Live Streaming Cam
This streaming webcam has a great view of the Grand Place in Brussels.

Google Maps Mashups to help you ring in the New Year:

• World Weather
• World Sunrise Times & World Times
  
• World Daylight Map
• World Webcams
• New York City webcams
• Taxi Fare Calculator (US/Canada)
• Stay Up Maps (US)
• World Live Music Map
• World Transit Mashups

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Google Earth Flight Simulator

GE Flight Simulator (0.4)

GE Flight Simulator is a very realistic flight simulation game that uses the Google Earth plugin.

Using the simulation you can fly anywhere in the world. The simulation uses Google Maps to display and help you navigate to over 30,000 airports around the world. To view the map in flight just click the "show map" button in the option bar.

If you click on any of the displayed airports you can choose to fly from or fly to the selected airport. In "Aeronautical" mode, the map also shows a layer of airspace areas. This overlay has been generated using DAFIF data.

You can also view the map of the 30,000 airports on its own here.

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Regifting with Google Maps

Gift A Stranger

Here is the perfect application to get rid of all those unwanted Christmas presents and to partake in a random of act of kindness at the same time. Gift A Stranger uses Google Maps to produce a random address that you can then use to send a gift.

To send a gift to a random stranger simply click 'send gift'. Gift a Stranger then gives you a random address somewhere in the world that you can then use to send your gift.

You can also browse the map to view the locations of gifts sent by other users. If you click on any of the map markers the map zooms to the chosen location and displays a picture of the gift that was sent to this location.

911 on Google Maps

Incident1

Incident1 uses Google Maps to plot police, fire, and emergency incidents from around the nation. The map shows the most recent incidents for your area.

Incident1 shows data from multiple agencies on one map, and it lets you search by zip code and region.

Gothamist NYC Incident Map

The Gothamist uses Google Maps to plot the locations of crimes, fires, accidents and other incidents in New York City. Think of it as police scanner chat.. mapped. Map pins include police, fire and 'exclamation point signs'.

IncidentLog

If you live in New England you can view the latest New England incidents on this Google Map. You can search the map by state, city or street name.

Seattle 911 Calls

This site uses live data publicly available on the Seattle Fire Dept. web site to show Seattle 911 calls live on Google Maps.

Fire Incident Map
The City of Nanaimo have integrated their Fire Incident Report with Google Maps. This allows the citizens of Nanaimo (or anyone else) to query the city’s Fire Incident Report and see the results on a map. The map shows the location of incidents and the apparatus that the fire deployment deployed.

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