Ye Olde San Francisco on Google Maps

Time Shutter

Time Shutter is another great Google Maps based website that allows people to see how cities used to look and how they have changed. Users can upload historical images to the site and browse through the images submitted by others.

Currently the site is concentrating on historical images of San Francisco but images for New York will also soon be added. The site includes many postcards of San Francisco from around 1900 and includes a historical map overlay featuring the Chevalier Commercial, Pictorial and Tourist Map of San Francisco from 1903.

Time Shutter is also available as a free iPhone application.

A Google Maps Guide to Hotels in Lima

Hospedate.pe

Here is the first ever Peruvian Google Maps mashup to feature on Google Maps Mania. Being one-eighth Peruvian myself I hope it is only the first of many.

Hospedate.pe is a Google Maps based guide to hotels in Lima. The map allows you to search for hotels by location and order the results by price or by the hotel's rating.

If you click on a hotel's map marker you can get details about the services provided, the address of the hotel, a link to the hotel's website and view the hotel's rating.

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The Top 5 Historical Photograph Maps

What Was There

What Was There uses Google Maps to show historical photographs in their modern physical context.

Anyone can upload a photograph to What Was There with two straightforward tags to show the pictures location and date. The fun however really comes from browsing the uploaded photographs superimposed on the modern view in Street View.

What Was There includes a slider that allows you to adjust the transparency of the photograph. This really helps in allowing you to compare the photo to the current Street View.

Historypin

This joint effort from Google and We Are What We Do allows anyone to add historical photographs to Google Maps.

Historypin includes a great interface allowing users to superimpose a photo on the Street View of the location shown in the picture. When users upload photographs to the site they are invited to tell the stories behind the pictures. This makes browsing the uploaded photographs a fascinating experience.

SepiaTown

SepiaTown is a website that geo-tags historical photographs on Google Maps.

You can search the map by location and the thumbnails of available historical photographs will be displayed on the Google Map. You can click on a thumbnail image to see a larger version with file and credit information, as well as notes and commentary.

If you have your own historical photographs you can add them to the map.

LookBackMaps

LookBackMaps is a collection of historical photographs that can be compared to the same current view as seen on Google Maps Street View.

The photographs are geotagged and displayed on a Google Map. Users of the map can select a date range for the photographs that they wish to view. To view a photograph alongside the current Street View just click on any of the pictures inside the information windows.

To add your own historical photographs to the map you just need to register with LookBackMaps.

HistoGrafica

HistoGrafica is an on-line community whose aim is to show in pictures how the world has changed through time. In essence HistoGrafica is an archive of old photographs and pictures tagged on a Google Map.

Bonus Map

There and Then

'There and Then' is my attempt to create a map based portal to view some historical films, uploaded to YouTube, superimposed over their current Street View.

When you select to view a particular Street View you need to use the buttons beneath the map to control the embedded video.

Your Twitter Followers on Google Maps

Your Twitter Followers Mapped

Here's a cool way to view what your Twitter followers are saying, on a Google Map. Your Twitter Followers Mapped animates through the latest Tweets from people you follow on Twitter.

To view your followers on the map just change the name in the URL to your Twitter user name. Once the page loads the map will then animate through the latest messages from your followers. You can then just sit back and watch.

Also See

Map My Following
An application that lets you view on a Google Map the locations of people who follow you on Twitter.

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Cycle the Alps with Street View

Cycling the Alps

Cycling the Alps is a Google Map with a lot of information and some very nice features for anyone who is interested in cycling the Alps.

The application has featured on Google Maps Mania in the past but has recently added some nice Street View tours using the Directions Map widget wizard.

If you fancy a relaxing virtual Sunday cycle ride through the Alps then check out these two trips:

Galbier
Bonette

Cycle the Alps with Street View

Cycling the Alps

Cycling the Alps is a Google Map with a lot of information and some very nice features for anyone who is interested in cycling the Alps.

The application has featured on Google Maps Mania in the past but has recently added some nice Street View tours using the Directions Map widget wizard.

If you fancy a relaxing virtual Sunday cycle ride through the Alps then check out these two trips:

Galbier
Bonette

Google Maps Adds A Fuel Cost Calculator

Google Maps has added a fuel cost calculator to driving directions on Google Maps in Europe. At the moment the estimated fuel costs seem to only appear in driving directions in Europe and not in the USA, Canada nor Australia.

The fuel cost estimation appears at the bottom of the driving directions in the map sidebar. If you click on the estimation a calculator opens allowing you to adjust the price, the type of vehicle you drive or switch between petrol and diesel.



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The Big Blue Marble on Google Maps

Earth Snapshot

Earth Snapshot is a website dedicated to the observation of the Earth. The site posts daily satellite images and provides information on storms, hurricanes, fires and meteorological phenomena.

The website includes a map created with the Google Maps API and satellite images from the Envisat satellite. The map also includes map markers to show the location of the last 100 articles on Earth Snapshot.

The articles take a closer look at the most interesting of the latest satellite images. The map markers are categorised to indicate if the related article concerns the weather, environment or a fire etc.

Friday Fun with Google Maps

Subway Symphony Map

Alexander Chen has built a New York subway map in HTML5 and Javascript. That in itself is impressive but Alexander has improved on Vignelli's subway map by turning the subway lines into the strings of a musical instrument. The strings are played by the movement of the subway trains.

Atlantis Found on Street View

Weekly World News claim to have found the lost city of Atlantis on Google Maps. Whatever you think of Weekly World News' Photoshop skills their claim is at least more convincing than this attempt by the British newspaper The Sun to claim to have found Atlantis in Google Maps' bathymetry imagery.

MacGyver - How to use a Map
In this episode of MacGyver the eponymous hero shows us why Google Maps will never fully replace the good old traditional paper map.



Via: @druidsmith

Community News on Google Maps

OpenFile

OpenFile is a new collaborative community news site for Canada. Anyone can submit a story to OpenFile and reporters are then assigned to the story. However anyone can add comments, images, video and helpful links to the story.

Currently OpenFile covers four cities: Vancouver, Hamilton, Toronto and Ottawa. The dedicated page for each city includes a Google Map that shows the location of the user submitted stories.

If you select any of the map markers you can then click through to read the story in full. The web page for each story also includes a smaller Google Map highlighting the location of the story.