Christchurch 22 Feb 2011 Earthquake
This Google Map uses the Ushahidi map reporting system to record the latest news from Christchurch. The map shows closed roads, open hospitals, recovery centres and hazard zones.
Anyone can post a report to the map by sending an email to eqnzfeb@gmail.com, by sending a tweet with the hashtags '#christchurch', '#eqnz' or '#ChristchurchQuake' or by completing a short form.
Christchurch Quake Map
The Christchurch Quake Map allows you to play time-lapse visualisations of the 4,870 quakes and aftershocks that have struck in the Christchurch area since September 2010. It is also possible to view visualisations of the last seven days of quakes or the 47 that have hit today. The Google Maps plot earthquake data from GeoNet.
The animations show the epicentre of each shock and are colour-coded to show the depth of each quake and scaled to reflect the quake's strength.
Google Person Finder - Christchurch
Google have released a person finder application for today's Christchurch earthquake. Using the application it is possible to search for information or add information for someone who may have been affected by the earthquake.
Marine GeoGarage
GeoGarage Marine, the portal to international marine maps, has added 227 marine charts for the Netherlands.
GeoGarage uses Google Maps to display marine charts from around the world. The site currently provides marine chart overlays from NOAA (US), DHN (Brazil) and Linz (New Zealand). Marine GeoGarage's web interface also gives subscription members access to all private charts from the UKHO (UK), CHS (Canada), SHN (Argentina).
GeoGarage Marine is not only a seamless chart viewer, overlaying charts at different scales on aerial and satellite imagery from Google Maps, but also allows the user to plot waypoints and to prepare navigation routes. These can be saved and uploaded to GPS (in gpx format or directly to Garmin GPS via its Communicator web plugin).
RepresentMe
If you live in Ottawa, Canada then RepresentMe can help you find out who your elected representative is and what they've done lately.
When you enter your postcode RepresentMe will display your electoral ward on a Google Map and tell you who your Member of Parliament, Member of Provincial Parliament and City Councillor are.
RepresentMe also displays the recent activity of your elected representatives, including their recent voting record and mentions in press articles.
Rain Alarm
This Google Map based application will send you a warning when rain is approaching.
Rain Alarm displays an animation of current precipitation and can warn you against approaching rain or snow. The app checks a perimeter of 75 km around your selected location every 30 minutes. If rain is approaching your location the map will then sound the alarm.
The app is currently available for the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, Ireland, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain including the Balearic and the Canary Islands.
Crazy Boat: The Curse of the Trash Vortex
The Pacific Trash Vortex has reached critical mass, flooding nearby seas with strange and valuable debris. A new age of sea entrepreneurship has arisen. Can you man your rusty old boat and save the Pacific Ocean from the floating debris of the Trash Vortex ...?
I've been waiting a while for someone to come up with an interesting use of theGoogle Static Maps API Styled Maps feature. It was definitely worth the wait. This Facebook game makes great use of the Google Static Maps Styled Maps feature and HTML overlays with real latitudes/longitudes to create a realistic backdrop for your challenge to clear the Pacific Ocean of the Trash Vortex.
Echo Team has called upon some of the greatest mid-century American action serials to make a game that both harkens back to the adventures of yore and puts a new face on the idea of exploration, with an emphasis on the environmental impact of what reckless exploration means to the planet at large.
Crazy Boat uses your Facebook profile data to give you in-game bonuses for your real-world skills and strengths. If you you post messages about the game to your Facebook wall, you might earn the Forest Ranger skill, and if you post about current events, you might score points as a Politician.
5% of the in-game revenues go to benefit Project Kaisei, a non-profit organisation dedicated to cleaning up the real Pacific Trash Vortex.
So, are you up for the challenge?
Get live alerts for incoming rain or snow.
The simple idea of this web map and app is to warn you against approaching precipitation like rain or snow. Therefore the app checks in a perimeter of 75 km / 47 miles every 30 minutes, if there is something approaching. Simply leave the page open in the background and you'll get notified.
Note that the map is refreshed automatically so you do not have to reload the page. The buttons on the bottom right en- or disable the animation and the alarm functionality.
The data used originates from governmental weather services and isavailable for the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, Ireland, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain including the Balearic and the Canary Islands.
Browsers:
The alarm notifications work best with Google Chrome. For Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer the alarms work as well, though they are not as pretty and intuitive.
With some browsers your location can be determined automatically or otherwise a rough estimate is used. To correct your location, simply drag the marker to be able to receive correct alarms.
Internet Explorer
You need to keep Rain Alarm as the active tab to be able to receive alarm notifications even when the Internet Explorer is minimized.
Mobile
The app is also available for Android as well as iOS.
Map:
http://www.rain-alarm.com/
Source:
http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2011/02/google-map-warning-of-rain.html
NSW Suburbs: What's in a name?
Did you know that 227 towns in New South Wales are named after UK towns? Well this double Google Map shows you all 227 NSW towns and shows you the location of their namesake in the UK.
The towns are displayed on both Google Maps and listed in the map sidebar. If you click on a town name in the sidebar both the New South Wales and UK map will centre on the chosen town.
If you want to produce a similar map for the namesakes of US towns you can view the code for the map at github. Alternatively you could create a dual map showing the cities/towns other cities/towns were twinned with.
Rally-Maps
Rally-Maps, the rally web portal, uses Google Maps to show the locations of rallies all over the world and allows users to place their rally videos on an on-line map.
The site has recently released a number of new features. One of these new features is the synchronisation of rally videos with Google Maps. This examplelets you view a video of the 2011 Sigdalsrally, with Kjær Motorsport's Subaru Impreza group N rally car.
As the video plays the car's position is shown on the Google Map. The video is truly synchronised with the map, if you pause the video the car's movement on the map will pause and if you select a different time in the video the map will also update automatically.
If you love motor sports you should also check out these other great Google Maps features on Rally-Maps:
- Rally map, showing the locations of the world's rallies: click
- 3D Tours: click
- Localized videos: click
- Street View support: click
- Elevation profile for special stages with mouse over effect: click
Video Breaks Around the World
It is easy to forget what a great mapping tool Google My Maps is. Even without programming skills you can use Google My Maps to create a great Google Maps application.
This map from The Guardian newspaper is a nice example of what can be created with My Maps. The map showcases The Guardian's travel video collection, from taxi driver tours of Buenos Aires to atmospheric backstreet workshops in Istanbul.
The map uses custom map markers and allows you to view The Guardian's travel videos directly from the map. So. if you have a little time this weekend. you can while away the hours with a little sightseeing from the comfort of your own home.
World Cup 2011 Twitter Map
The Cricket World Cup started in India today. Mibazaar has stepped up to the wicket and produced this World Cup Twitter map.
The map animates through the latest Tweets mentioning '#cricket'. It picks up all such Twitter messages sent from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
At the time of writing India are setting about Bangladesh with a vengeance and are looking to establish a huge target for Bangladesh to chase down. Judging by Mibazaar's map this is going down rather well with Twitter users in India.
